Surge Marketing connects live events with 10,000 ambassadors who have generated $6 million in ticket sales in just over a year since launching in August 2024, demonstrating how sales impact matters more than follower counts. The Nashville-based company operates entirely on commission, taking a percentage of ticket sales that ambassadors drive for events ranging from music festivals to sporting competitions.

“We don’t really reward influencers on their content and posting, but we reward them through their sales,” explains Alex Hilburn, Surge Marketing’s Managing Partner. “Some of our biggest sellers have 40 followers on Instagram, but they have a massive database of emails, or they run a blog, or they just have a lot of close friends at home.”

Founded by Alex alongside partners Zach Mendelsohn and Bo Thede, Surge emerged from the team’s observation that thousands of mid-tier events struggle to sell tickets despite having passionate fans. 

“You have the big festivals that are selling out every year, no issue. But there are hundreds, if not thousands, of events and concerts and festivals and sporting events that don’t,” Alex notes. “And there are people who love them and want to take their friends, but there’s no opportunity for them.” 

Their solution transforms these enthusiasts into commissioned ticket sellers, averaging $200,000 to $300,000 in weekly sales across clients, including Ultra Europe, Kygo’s Palm Tree Music Festival, and Dave Portnoy’s One Bite Pizza Festival.

Surge’s principle is “reward results, not reach.” The company’s commission-based model means they only make money when their ambassadors drive ticket sales. “If we don’t sell any tickets, at least no harm was done. There’s no cost associated with it,” Alex says. 

This performance-based system addresses a key challenge for event organizers: the uncertain return on investment of traditional influencer marketing. With Surge’s model, clients only pay for actual ticket sales, eliminating the risk associated with upfront influencer fees that might not deliver results.

Freedom to Influence Genuinely

Perhaps most notable about Surge’s approach is what they don’t require from their ambassadors.  “There’s no required UGC [User Generated Content]. No required posting,” Alex says. “That pressure makes content feel forced.”

Instead, Surge empowers ambassadors to promote in a way that makes them feel most comfortable. “If they want to be an influencer with a large following, great. If they’d rather skip social media and hand out flyers, also great,” he says.

As Alex points out, this flexibility has opened new channels for promotion that traditional influencer campaigns might miss. Some ambassadors rely on email newsletters, campus organizations, or even direct messaging within close-knit communities. Others have built “full companies” within the Surge ecosystem, creating their own promotional sub-companies. The common thread is genuine passion for the events they’re promoting.

The No-Data-Collection Approach

In another difference from typical marketing practices, Surge has made the deliberate choice not to collect attendee data.  “We’re not here to take your data or resell it,” Alex explains. “This is your ambassador program. Everything filters through you.”

This approach, he adds, builds trust with both clients and ambassadors. For clients, it means their customer relationships remain intact without a third party collecting and potentially monetizing their audience information. For ambassadors, it means they can confidently promote to their networks knowing personal information won’t be sold or repurposed.

“We try to build trust and a safety net for festivals and our ambassadors,” Alex says. “They feel like, ‘I can go to this event, be safe, get rewarded, and not work for free.'” This trust-based foundation has been important to Surge’s growth.

Leadership Driving the Vision

Surge’s business model relies on the expertise of its founding team. Zach Mendelsohn brings more than a decade of experience in travel, nightlife, and ambassador-driven marketing. Alex worked for Breakaway Music Festival for nearly six years as Director of National Promotions, where he gained extensive experience with ambassador programs. Bo Thede rounds out the leadership team with additional expertise in the live event space.

Their firsthand experience with traditional marketing methods shaped Surge’s practical approach. “We saw the typical influencer post, and their content was the reward,” Alex explains. “That’s just a commercial. We go further; we reward them through sales.”

This leadership philosophy extends to how they’ve built their ambassador network. When it comes to their recruitment strategy, Alex simply says, “Legwork. No secret. We just work hard. DMs, emails, texts, traveling to cities, finding people.”

This commitment to direct outreach rather than automated scaling has been key to maintaining the quality of Surge’s ambassador network. “Everyone in our network was either recruited by us or referred by existing ambassadors,” Alex explains. “We try to know everyone personally or as best we can.”

Challenging Common Assumptions

When it comes to results, Surge currently averages between $200,000 to $300,000 in weekly ticket sales across all its events. For Palm Tree Music Festival, one of their early clients that gave Surge “their big break,” the ambassadors have generated close to a million dollars in total sales.

They’ve also shown consistent growth with recurring clients. “We had festivals where, in year one, we sold $30,000 in tickets. Year two, $400,000 to $500,000. Hopefully, year three, millions,” Alex says.

Alex is straightforward about the variable results across different events: “We don’t succeed in every event. Sometimes it’s 10 tickets. Sometimes it’s $500,000.” This honesty about variable results has helped build their business relationships.

For ambassadors interested in joining the network, the process is simple. “Each event has its own sign-up sheet,” Alex explains. “We also have a subscriber sheet for people interested in multiple events.” Once signed up, ambassadors receive onboarding emails with event-specific instructions and best practices.

While many creators focus on building large followings, Surge has developed a different path, one that values sales conversion over content creation.

“Entrepreneur is the right word,” Alex responds about how Surge’s ambassadors fit into the creator economy. This framing moves the discussion from content creation to value creation.

The Outlook

Surge aims to hit $10 million in annual sales by 2026 while maintaining its network of 10,000 active ambassadors. They’re also looking into expansion beyond live events, though Alex acknowledges their background gives them “a bit of an unfair advantage” in the live events space.

“We’d be dumb not to explore other opportunities,” Alex says. The company has already begun diversifying beyond music festivals into sporting events, food festivals, and other areas.

Their immediate focus, however, is on client retention. “For our first company, the goal is making sure every client comes back the next year,” Alex explains. “If people want to be part of it, everything else follows.”

For Surge, success in 2026 would mean having “the majority of our clients return, keeping 10,000 active ambassadors, and hitting $10 million in sales.” With their current approach, these goals are their focus.

As Alex succinctly puts it when describing Surge’s unofficial motto, they are: “Turning transactions into relationships.”