When Ninja’s CREAMi machines began popping up on TikTok and Instagram feeds, the momentum didn’t come from paid partnerships or traditional influencer seeding. It came from fans. Everyday users were posting recipes, remixing flavors, and turning an at-home ice cream maker into a social phenomenon, often without any brand involvement.

Rather than attempting to replicate that energy through a conventional influencer push, Ninja chose a different route. Working with creative agency Movers+Shakers, the brand built a campaign that put those fans at the center, using creators not as spokespeople, but as amplifiers of community creativity.

“They have all of this UGC [user-generated content]. People are making tons of their own UGC content about Ninja,” says Sarah Gerrish, Senior Director of Influencer and Creator Marketing at Movers+Shakers. “They have a really engaged community, and they wanted to see if there was a way to do something creative with it.”

The result was the CREAMi Celebration Squad, a fan-led creator campaign that flipped the traditional influencer model by using paid creator reach to spotlight organic fan behavior rather than replacing it.

The Strategic Problem: Organic Love Brands Can’t Manufacture

By the time the campaign launched, Ninja didn’t need to convince audiences that the CREAMi was popular. The product had already gone viral, driven by unpaid creators who were experimenting publicly with recipes and sharing results across platforms.

“A lot of that content was organic,” Sarah says. “So how could we tap into that organic content with some paid influencers and really amplify it, celebrate the community, and engage them in those conversations?”

According to Sarah, this tension between organic fan culture and paid creator marketing is increasingly common for brands operating at internet scale. The risk is obvious: overproduced content can flatten what made the product resonate in the first place. Ninja’s brief to Movers+Shakers was intentionally open.

“What can we do that is unexpected, that will get people talking, that will drive engagement?” Sarah says. “That was basically our KPI [Key Performance Indicator] for this campaign.”

Rather than leading with product messaging or conversion goals, the fall campaign was designed to extend a conversation that was already happening.

From Fan Recipes to Campaign Framework

The foundation of the campaign was simple: fans were already creating standout CREAMi recipes, so the campaign would start there.

Movers+Shakers worked with Ninja to identify recipes from the brand’s existing UGC ecosystem. Those recipes were then handed to creators, who selected which ones they wanted to make and interpret in their own style.

“We gave those recipes to the influencers and allowed them to choose their favorite ones,” Sarah says. “Within each video, they called out the person that they got the recipe from.”

Each piece of content followed the same core structure – recreate the recipe, credit the creator, and celebrate it – but the execution varied widely by format. Some turned the recipes into musical moments. Others leaned into dance, comedy, or family-style taste tests.

The campaign also introduced a shared language for the phenomenon, officially dubbing it the CREAMi community.

“It was funny to see a lot of the influencers’ audiences saying, ‘What is the ‘creamy’ community?’” Sarah says. “Sometimes, it was even a little negative, but we call that a success.” 

From a strategic standpoint, she adds, introducing new vernacular, even imperfectly, helped extend Ninja’s cultural footprint beyond its core audience.

Choosing Creators Outside the Obvious Lane

Creator selection became the campaign’s most critical lever. Because the content required creators to actually use the product, including learning the machine, freezing ingredients overnight, and following fan recipes, credibility mattered more than reach.

“I think the choices of the influencers were the most important part of the campaign,” Sarah says. “This idea was more involved, and it had to be authentic to their audiences and their style.”

Rather than defaulting to family or food-first creators, Movers+Shakers intentionally mixed in unexpected voices. “We wanted to work with unexpected influencers for Ninja, not someone that you would typically see them working with,” Sarah says.

The campaign ultimately worked with 17 creators across platforms, blending established internet personalities with emerging voices whose formats felt native to TikTok and Instagram culture rather than traditional food or appliance marketing.

Among the top-performing participants was Morgan Evelyn Cook, whose whisper-style inner monologue content gained momentum following “The Summer I Turned Pretty.” Sarah says Cook stood out precisely because she was not an obvious fit for a kitchen appliance brand.

“I loved her content and thought, how fun would it be to see her inner monologue about what recipe she should make and bring it to life,” Sarah says. “She’s not someone Ninja would traditionally partner with.”

The roster also included Tom McGovern, known for writing original comedic songs, who turned a fan recipe into a musical tribute, and Jason Rodello, a dance creator whose performance-first approach helped push the CREAMi into entertainment-led feeds rather than food-only audiences.

International creators were part of the mix as well. Ninja suggested Tim Cheese, a UK-based creator who performs in a rat costume, and produced an intentionally absurd take on the CREAMi by making a cheese-based recipe.

Other participants included Matthew and Paul, an LGBTQ+ couple whose video featured Matthew, who is blind, navigating the recipe-making process with his partner’s guidance, an execution Sarah describes as both humorous and reflective of the product’s accessibility.

The campaign also worked with niche-format creators, including a cat-focused creator who adapted a recipe to be pet-safe, highlighting the machine’s flexibility while staying true to her audience.

To close the loop between creators and fans, longtime CREAMi community member John Jung (@j_jungy) served as the campaign’s final judge, ultimately crowning Maddie Milton’s “Salted Maple” recipe as the winning fan creation.

Some creators were suggested by Ninja’s internal team; others by Movers+Shakers. All were selected through a collaborative process that balanced creative fit, audience overlap, and practical constraints such as timing and budget.

“It was a full collaboration; our team, the Ninja team, everyone weighing in,” Sarah says.

Creative Control as a Performance Strategy

While the campaign brief required creators to execute specific actions, it deliberately left room for interpretation. 

“We allowed influencers to have a lot of creative control over this one,” Sarah says. “We had to. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have worked.”

Some creators issued kickoff posts asking their audiences what they should make with the CREAMi. Others skipped straight to the celebration phase. The flexibility was intentional, designed to preserve authenticity rather than enforce uniformity.

Speed, Flighting, and Execution Under Holiday Pressure

The campaign moved quickly. From ideation to launch, the entire process took roughly six weeks, according to Sarah. Seventeen creators produced 64 pieces of content across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube Shorts, and Facebook. All posts went live tied to holiday gifting behavior.

“We had all the content go live within two weeks,” Sarah says. “Sometimes, you want to space things out, but the urgency really mattered here.”

As Sarah points out, the compressed timeline left little room for mid-campaign optimization, but the tight flighting helped sustain momentum and visibility across platforms.

Measuring What Mattered

Sales attribution was not the primary success metric. The campaign was evaluated on engagement, sentiment, and conversation.

“Our KPI was awareness and driving engagement,” Sarah says, revealing that the results exceeded internal benchmarks: 6 million views, 275,000 engagements, and a 7.4% engagement rate.

Beyond raw performance, sentiment analysis revealed repeated signals of success. “We saw a lot of comments saying, ‘This doesn’t feel like an ad,’” Sarah says. “For us, that’s gold.”

Audiences also expressed purchase intent and interest in the newly defined CREAMi community, even while expressing skepticism about the terminology, per Sarah.

What the Campaign Signals About Creator Marketing Now

For Sarah, the CREAMi campaign reflects a broader shift in how audiences engage with branded content, particularly among Gen Z.

“Gen Z has such a filter for anything that feels fake or manufactured,” she says. “They crave human-led, relatable content.”

At the same time, audiences are becoming more accepting of sponsorship when it feels earned. “I saw people in the comments saying, ‘She needs to make money. This is her living,’” Sarah says. “And also saying, ‘This was such a fun ad, I don’t even care that you’re selling me something.’”

Sarah’s takeaway for brands is not to avoid paid creator work, but to design it in ways that respect platform culture and existing fan behavior.

On Fan-Led Campaigns

Sarah cautions that fan-led strategies require more than good intentions. Legal clarity, consent, and active community management are non-negotiable.

“You have to be careful legally when you’re using organic content in a paid way,” she says. “You want to honor the community without taking advantage of it.”

In the CREAMi campaign, every fan recipe used in paid creator content was pre-approved by its creator. Giveaways and recognition were built into the framework to reinforce participation rather than extraction.

“Listening to your audience, being in the comments, responding – that’s key,” Sarah says. She notes that Ninja’s CREAMi Celebration Squad was not designed as a template, but as a response to a specific cultural moment.

“Using your existing brand love, but using it in an interesting and creative way with new voices. That’s how you continue to drive culture,” Sarah concludes.

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