Ridwell, a Seattle-based recycling subscription service, had just launched their first national product, Mail-In. The new product opened up a much larger addressable market than their original city-by-city pickup service, but the company hadn't yet cracked the code on what angles and creative would convert. Their primary growth lever up to that point was in-person activiation events: the Founder & CEO would fly across the country, present to 50-80 people at a time, tell Ridwell's origin story, and selling the product live in the room. If they could crack the code with Meta, there was a large opportunity to gain significant leverage. Their Meta ads program had promising signals, but needed a refresh to expedite growth. My goal was to figure out how we could take Ridwell's story and translate it into creative that could scale online. The Approach Instead of more polished, brand-produced ads, I decided to test more UGC-style creative that gave the brand a more personal feel and allowed for more storytelling. I took the same angles that worked well in door-to-door sales and in the in-person activation events (guilt around recycling, discovery of better options, problems with the status quo, how Ridwell is different) and translated that into native-feeling TikTok videos. Actionably, I... • Built an independent TikTok page to test content outside Ridwell's main brand account • Made employee-generated content (EGC) videos • Took the organic winners and funneled them directly into Meta as paid ads • Doubled down on winning formats, interating into related categories A handful of videos went viral. The hook that broke through featured trash being dumped on my head. Long-form explainer videos that were over a minute-long performed the best. By telling the whole story from start to finish, the longform-explainer videos allowed viewers to resonate with the big problem Ridwell is trying to solve, be inspired by the change that is happening, and want to take part in Ridwell's mission.