A toothpick brand just cracked the code on viral marketing

A brand selling flavoured toothpicks grew to nearly a million followers, with hundreds of millions of views and became a multi million dollar company in the process.

Read that again.

Toothpicks.

Pick 'Em - founded by four university friends in the UK - turned one of the most boring products imaginable into a Gen Z phenomenon.

And the way they did it is a masterclass in creator-first marketing that most brands completely miss.

Max Schröpfer, Niklas Terrahe, Folkert Bowler, and Joel Enayat started with a product nobody cared about.

Flavoured toothpicks with flavours like Mango Madness, Cola Cherry, and Matcha.

But they understood the product doesn't matter nearly as much as the story around it.

And they built a story that Gen Z couldn't stop watching.

Pick 'Em's CMO Folkert Bowler basically created a show where the brand is the protagonist and every episode builds to something.

Here's the framework they used - and it's so simple it's almost annoying that more brands aren't doing this:

Episode 1: The Challenge

They'd announce a mission.

"We're going to get KSI to try our newest toothpick flavour."

Or David Dobrik.

Or Gary Vee.

Big names.

Zero connections.

No established relationships.

Episode 2-4: The Hero's Journey

Then they'd document every attempt to make it happen.

Sneaking into celebrity events.

Flying across countries.

Sending increasingly creative PR packages.

All filmed. All shared. All building toward a resolution that viewers wanted to see.

The genius part?

They'd end each video on a cliffhanger.

Did the package arrive? Did the celebrity see it? Will they respond?

Same technique TV shows use to keep you watching the next episode.

Episode 5: The Grand Finale

Eventually - and this is key, they actually achieved the mission - they'd get the product into the celebrity's hands and capture their genuine reaction.

That moment becomes both a testimonial and a viral piece of content simultaneously.

KSI trying their toothpick and saying "Oh, this is sick" is the payoff to a story their audience has been following.

Most brands approach influencer marketing backwards.

They pay creators to post about their product.

The audience knows it's an ad.

The creator knows it's an ad.

Everyone's in on the transaction and nobody really cares.

Pick 'Em flipped it.

The journey to get the product to the influencer becomes the content.

The audience is invested in whether they'll succeed.

When the influencer finally tries it, their reaction is genuine because they're not being paid - they're responding to this brand that just went through an entire quest to reach them.

It's entertainment that happens to feature a product.

This only works if you actually document the failures too.

That's what made the eventual success feel earned rather than manufactured.

The numbers

Seven hundred thousand TikTok followers.

Hundreds of millions of organic views.

Enough traction that they're now a household name in the UK with significant D2C sales, especially through TikTok Shop UK.

They positioned flavoured toothpicks as "the 5GUM of the younger generation" - a healthier alternative to chewing gum with no sugar, no nicotine, no artificial additives.

Sustainable wood.

Natural flavours.

The product positioning is fine.

But that's not why it worked.

It worked because they made the brand's growth itself into content.

Every challenge.

Every attempt.

Every win.

The audience isn't just buying toothpicks - they're supporting the underdogs they've been watching try to make it.

They made their brand the protagonist in a story their audience wanted to follow.

Not because the toothpicks are inherently interesting - they're not - but because the journey to build the brand became the entertainment.

The framework you can use

You don't need to sell toothpicks to apply this.

The framework works for anything:

Pick your impossible mission.

What would be a huge win for your brand that seems out of reach?

Getting a specific person to use your product?

Achieving something ambitious? Make it public.

Document every attempt. Every failure, every pivot, every creative solution you try. That's what makes people root for you.

Build in cliffhangers. End updates before the resolution. Create anticipation for what happens next. Make people want to follow along.

Deliver the payoff. Actually achieve the thing you said you'd do. The audience needs the satisfaction of seeing you succeed after watching you struggle.

Repeat. This isn't a one-time campaign. It's an ongoing approach to how you build your brand.

Pick 'Em didn't just get lucky with one viral video.

They built a system for creating episodic content that keeps their audience engaged long-term.

That's why they have nearly 1M followers instead of one viral moment that faded.

Pick 'Em is proof that you can take literally any product - even something as commodity and boring as toothpicks - and turn it into a cultural moment if you understand how to create content Gen Z wants to watch.

That's thinking like a creator.

That's the model that wins now.

Remember, the creator mindset is all you need to grow 🌱

Did someone forward this to you? Sign up here to get the next one straight to your inbox.

If this email landed in your spam or promotions folder, move it to your primary inbox so you never miss an update from me.