The core insight: emotional bias quietly tanks campaign performance. Brands select creators based on vibes, then hope metrics follow. This backwards approach wastes millions and is an educated guess at best.
We flipped it. The RealReal campaign tested a radical hypothesis: what if we started with probability of success, then applied our creative and emotional lens?
The specific goals were threefold:
Prove predictive technology outperforms human intuition. We needed hard proof that mathematical modeling could beat gut feel, and not incrementally, but dramatically enough to shift industry practice from art to science + art.
Establish efficiency of spend as the new success metric. The creator industry is obsessed with impressions but we introduced VPD (Views Per Dollar) which forces the conversation toward real outcomes and efficient spend over vanity metrics.
Prove data-driven selection doesn't compromise creativity. In general, brands fear losing brand voice if they surrender to algorithms. We needed to demonstrate that probability-first selection amplifies both performance and cultural relevance, building long and short term value for the brand.
Why this mattered: The campaign was our proof of concept for Fohr's broader mission to transform creator marketing from guesswork to mathematical certainty. Success here meant that Fohr was the first company to have the combined data, technology, and cultural intelligence to make brand building predictable.
The results would become our most powerful proof point: tangible evidence that the industry's entire approach to creator selection was mathematically inefficient.
Plan of Action
We designed a controlled A/B test with The RealReal: identical campaign pool, one variable changed which was selection methodology. This clinical approach eliminated noise/bias and made causation undeniable.
Phase 1 (Traditional): Fohr selected from 500 interested creators using standard industry practice which was to look at historical averages and pick creators who we felt aligned with the accurate brand identity. The result: 550K views, VPD of 6.
Phase 2 (Predictive): Our predictive technology analyzed the same 500 creators and surfaced the top 40 most likely to deliver results using 13 years of in-house performance data and our proprietary simulations. The result: 2.2M views, VPD of 60, which is a 10X efficiency shift.
Key Execution Features
The experiment leveraged Fohr's proprietary platform capabilities: cultural mapping (to understand authentic audience fit), mathematical modeling (to calculate results needed to create actual impact before spending a dollar) and predictive platform (to forecast campaign and individual campaign performance before we started). Critically, we didn't sacrifice quality creative. The predictive-selected creators delivered content that was polished, brand-safe, and highly engaging, proving the "different vibe ≠ off-brand" thesis.
Unique Approach
This approach, technology and creativity, positioned Fohr not as an agency claiming superiority, but as a partner confident enough in its technology to prove it empirically and share those results publicly.
We also introduced VPD as a unified efficiency benchmark, replacing misleading averages with a single comparable metric. This innovation alone shifted how the industry evaluates creator performance.
Challenges Overcome
One challenge was convincing the brand to try our technology while in beta and take a new approach. We addressed this through education, not persuasion. We showed the math. We explained that their emotional preferences, while valid, were expensive, and that probability-first selection didn't eliminate personal and creative considerations, it just applied them to a pool already positioned to win.
This reframe changed the conversation from do you trust this to can you afford to not optimize for this in a future state?
Why This Matters Beyond The RealReal
This case study became our foundation for repositioning Fohr in the market. It provided the hard proof that successful creator marketing requires combining cultural intelligence with mathematical certainty and that the industry's reliance on intuition borders on fiscal negligence. Since we have gone on to use this with the world’s leading consumer brands like Aerie, Shutterfly, Kohl's, Marriott, and Dick’s Sporting Goods.
Objective Achievement
The campaign exceeded every goal we set:
Objective 1: Prove technology beats intuition: We delivered 513% more views and 14X better spend efficiency.
Objective 2: Establish VPD as industry standard: By introducing Views Per Dollar as a unified efficiency metric, we reframed how brands evaluate creator performance. VPD became the language to replace misleading averages and the tool that forces outcome-based thinking. In this case, we achieved 46 VPD
Objective 3: Prove creativity survives prediction: The predictive-selected creators delivered not just better metrics, but brand-safe, culturally relevant content that distributed to new communities and use cases. We eliminated the false choice between data and creativity.
Why This Was Success
Beyond the numbers, this case study became Fohr's most powerful positioning asset. It proved our core narrative: predictive cultural intelligence isn't about replacing human judgment; it's about empowering better creative decisions.
For The RealReal specifically, the efficiency gains translated to measurable ROI and their stock continues to increase and they take a sharp focus on Gen Z. For Fohr, it provided proof of concept that could be replicated across enterprise clients.
This campaign became the foundation for positioning Fohr as the only creator marketing company that makes brand building predictable while amplifying the cultural intelligence that actually resonates with audiences.