Every founder-led consumer packaged goods brand reaches the same crossroads. The product works, early customers love it, reviews are glowing, and direct-to-consumer sales have proven real demand. Now the questions get harder: how do you grow beyond your first loyal customers without burning cash on paid ads, and how do you build the awareness that makes retail buyers take notice? For many emerging brands, the answer is partnering with a CPG influencer marketing agency like CelebExperts to build a disciplined influencer campaign strategy that scales from mid-tier to macro creators and, when the timing is right, adds athlete and celebrity endorsements.
Done well, that approach becomes the engine that carries a brand from D2C traction to retail shelves. Done poorly, it becomes one of the fastest ways to waste a startup’s marketing budget. CelebExperts, LLC helps early and expanding-stage companies build influencer, athlete, and celebrity programs designed for measurable growth. This guide covers the challenges founders face, how a targeted influencer growth model works, how the agency helped Azuna Fresh scale, and the full range of services available to founders ready to grow.
The Unique Challenges of Scaling a Founder-Led CPG Brand
Founder-led brands have advantages large corporations spend millions trying to manufacture: authenticity, a compelling origin story, passionate customers, and the ability to move quickly. They also face a distinct set of growth challenges.
Limited budgets demand efficiency. Early-stage brands can’t afford to experiment endlessly. Every marketing dollar needs to acquire customers profitably or build brand equity that pays off later. One poorly chosen influencer partnership can consume a quarter’s budget with nothing to show for it.
Rising customer acquisition costs. Paid social has grown more expensive and less predictable. Many D2C brands see customer acquisition cost (CAC) climb just as they try to scale, squeezing margins. Founders need channels that build trust and lower the cost of winning customers.
The retail readiness gap. Retail buyers want to see brand awareness, social proof, sales velocity, and a marketing plan that will drive customers to the shelf. Brands with an engaged community and a credible marketing engine have a real advantage in buyer conversations.
Founders are stretched thin. Founders often run product, operations, fundraising, customer service, and marketing at once. Vetting influencers, negotiating rates, managing contracts, and tracking results is a full-time job, and rarely the best use of a founder’s time.
Follower counts can mislead. Engagement can be inflated, and a creator with two million followers may deliver fewer sales than one with three hundred thousand if the audience isn’t the right fit. Without experience and data, brands often pick talent on surface-level numbers rather than true audience alignment.
Why a Targeted Mid-Macro to Macro Influencer Strategy Works
Creators operate in very different tiers, and each plays a different role in growth. Micro-influencers offer tight-knit communities and strong engagement but limited reach. Mega-influencers and A-list celebrities offer massive reach at price tags that can exhaust a young brand’s budget in one post. For founder-led CPG brands in the early-to-expanding stage, the sweet spot is often the mid-macro to macro tier, creators with followings from the low hundreds of thousands to the low millions.
This tier has enough reach to move awareness and sales while keeping the trusted audience relationships that make recommendations convert. Rates are typically more accessible than celebrities, so brands can test, learn, and scale across several creators rather than betting everything on one name.
The key word is targeted. A scalable model grows in deliberate phases:
Phase one is audience precision. Identify creators whose audiences mirror your ideal customer in demographics, geography, interests, and purchasing behavior. For a U.S. D2C brand, that means prioritizing creators with predominantly U.S. audiences who match your buyer profile.
Phase two is testing and learning. Launch with a carefully selected group of mid-macro creators, measure which content, messaging, and platforms perform, and identify your strongest partners.
Phase three is scaling what works. Reinvest in top performers, expand into macro creators with similar audiences, and turn one-off posts into ongoing celebrity brand ambassadors and creator partnerships that compound over time.
Phase four is strategic amplification. Once the influencer engine is working, layer in athletes and celebrities for targeted moments, such as a product launch, retail entry, seasonal push, or new market, to accelerate awareness and credibility.
This phased approach protects founder budgets, builds a library of proven content and partners, and creates the sustained momentum retail buyers want to see.
Case Study: How CelebExperts Helped Azuna Fresh Scale
Few examples show this approach better than CelebExperts‘ work with Azuna Fresh, an all-natural, plant-based odor eliminator based in Buffalo, New York. Rather than masking odors with fragrance, Azuna focuses on purifying the air naturally. Led by founder and CEO Scott Dancy, the brand had already built strong traction when it hired the agency to handle influencer acquisition, planning, influencer-driven e-commerce, and activation, along with its celebrity and athlete endorsements.
Dancy brought real experience with influencers and a clear understanding that choosing creators on follower counts and basic demographics alone doesn’t work. Azuna needed a partner who could bring more sophistication to talent selection and campaign strategy.
A Targeted Multi-Tier Influencer Program
CelebExperts built a focused program centered on creators with followings between 250,000 and two million, with audiences that were roughly 80% U.S. and female, closely matching Azuna’s core buyer. Rather than chasing the biggest names, the program was engineered to reach the right households and drive transactions. Through organic content and whitelisting, the multi-tier influencer program has driven millions of dollars in sales for the brand.
Celebrity Partnerships with a Business Purpose
As the program grew, the agency expanded into celebrity and athlete endorsements, each tied to a specific business objective. One goal was to reach real estate agents and encourage them to give Azuna as a closing gift, placing the product in homes at exactly the moment people want a new space to feel fresh. To lead that effort, CelebExperts sourced, vetted, and negotiated a partnership with Heather Rae El Moussa, a highly influential realtor and fan favorite from Netflix’s Selling Sunset with a social following of more than four million. Her audience follows real estate closely and also cares about health and wellness, a strong match for Azuna’s natural positioning.
An Athlete Endorsement Built on a Timely Story
Azuna is a sports-centric brand with pro football team sponsorships. To build broader awareness, the agency partnered with Tommy DeVito during his 2023 breakout run as a New York Giants starter, when his story of living at home with his family had captured fans’ hearts. The team developed creative featuring his mom placing Azuna in his room while he was at practice, then negotiated, contracted, and activated the partnership in less than a week to capture the moment.
The Result
By combining a precise influencer program with purpose-driven celebrity and athlete partnerships, CelebExperts helped Azuna Fresh grow its awareness and revenue substantially. It’s a blueprint for what founder-led brands can achieve when influencer, athlete, and celebrity marketing are built strategically rather than bought randomly.
Why Founders Choose CelebExperts
There are countless influencer platforms and talent agencies. What sets CelebExperts apart is that it was built with emerging brands and entrepreneurs in mind.
Founder and CEO Evan Morgenstein has spent three decades in athlete representation, sports marketing, and brand partnerships. When he launched the agency, the original vision was to help startups and emerging brands acquire celebrity spokespeople and social media influencers in a way that generated real ROI. That founder-first DNA still shapes the work today.
The agency consults with startups, emerging brands, mid-sized companies, and Fortune 500 corporations, with a distinct strategy for each. For founders, that means a team that understands limited budgets, investor expectations, and the leap from D2C to retail. It operates as a strategist first and talent broker second, focused on measurable outcomes rather than vanity metrics. Its business model is simple: when CelebExperts books a celebrity or influencer, it earns a percentage of talent spend, aligning its success with yours.
How CelebExperts Supports Founders at Every Stage
CelebExperts offers a complete suite of corporate consulting, campaign strategy, and talent booking services for founder-led CPG brands.
Brand and growth strategy consulting. The team works with founders to clarify positioning, define target customers, set growth goals, and map how influencer, athlete, and celebrity marketing fit the broader business plan, including the path from D2C to retail.
Influencer campaign architecture. Phased programs are built around your budget and objectives, setting the right mix of creator tiers, platforms, content formats, and timing.
Influencer sourcing and vetting. Creators are sourced across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, and emerging platforms, then vetted for audience demographics, geographic breakdown, authentic engagement, content quality, brand safety, and existing brand conflicts.
Athlete and celebrity endorsements. When it’s time to accelerate, the agency sources, vets, and secures professional athletes, NIL college athletes, reality TV personalities, celebrity chefs, and other well-known talent, each tied to a specific business goal.
Negotiation and contracting. The agency acts as your buyer, not the talent’s, negotiating fees, deliverables, usage rights, exclusivity, whitelisting rights, and performance terms to stretch your budget while protecting the brand.
Creative development and content strategy. Campaign concepts, messaging, and content briefs are shaped so every post feels authentic to the creator while clearly communicating what makes your product different.
Influencer-driven e-commerce. Programs drive transactions through trackable links, discount codes, landing pages, and content that converts, turning creator partnerships into a measurable acquisition channel.
Brand ambassador programs. Long-term relationships with top-performing creators and talent build familiarity, trust, and a steady stream of content.
Retail launch support. Influencer and celebrity activity can be designed to support retail entry, drive customers to shelves, and give founders a compelling story for retail buyers.
Paid amplification and whitelisting. Top-performing content can run as paid social through creators’ handles, reaching new audiences with the trust of an authentic recommendation.
Execution, measurement, and optimization. From talent outreach and content approvals to posting schedules and reporting, the team manages day-to-day execution and tracks results against sales, acquisition, engagement, and awareness.
Single-campaign engagements. Not every founder needs a retainer. The agency also scopes, runs, and reports on single campaigns built around a specific launch window.
Signs Your Brand Is Ready for a CPG Influencer Marketing Agency
Common signals include proven product-market fit with strong reviews and repeat purchases, D2C growth that is plateauing or CAC that is rising, a plan to enter retail within the next one to two years, a need to build awareness beyond your current customers, and a founder or small team that no longer has time to manage influencer relationships alone. If several of these describe your brand, it may be the right moment to build a more strategic growth engine.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s the difference between mid-tier and macro influencers? Mid-tier influencers generally have followings in the low to mid hundreds of thousands, while macro influencers typically reach from several hundred thousand into the millions. Mid-macro to macro creators often offer the best balance of reach, trust, and cost for emerging CPG brands.
Can a startup afford celebrity or athlete endorsements? Often, yes, when partnerships are strategically scoped. CelebExperts helps founders identify talent within budget and structure deals around specific goals, deliverables, and timing, subject to talent availability and approval.
How does influencer marketing help a brand get into retail? Influencer marketing builds awareness, social proof, and sales velocity, all of which strengthen a brand’s story for retail buyers. After launch, influencer and celebrity content can drive customers directly to store shelves.
How does CelebExperts charge? When CelebExperts books a celebrity or influencer, it earns a percentage of talent spend, aligning the agency’s incentives with your results.
Build the Growth Engine Your Brand Deserves
Founder-led CPG brands have the authenticity consumers crave. What they need is a disciplined, targeted strategy that turns that passion into scalable growth, from D2C traction to retail success. As Azuna Fresh’s story shows, the right strategy and the right talent can transform an emerging brand. If you’re looking for a CPG influencer marketing agency with founder-focused consulting, precise creator programs, and the ability to secure athletes and celebrities when the moment is right, contact CelebExperts today to talk through your growth goals.