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A self-pitch feature that helps creators reach brands directly, levelling a marketplace that has long favoured creators with the largest followings.
Historically, establishing a brand partnership has been driven by the brand. This has led to a more one-sided marketplace, with brands favouring experienced creators with a larger audience. More recently, research has shown that brands want to partner with smaller, niche creators and their more targeted and engaged audiences, but have difficulty finding these creators. By helping creators be proactive and more confident in reaching out, we can make it easier for brands and creators to find each other and start stronger partnerships. I designed the content and UX to allow creators to pitch themselves and the content they create to brands.
UX and content, working closely with my product design partner to design a simple and intuitive MVP.
Led the naming process, including namestorming, user testing, localisation checks and reviews (e.g. with leads, legal and trademark teams).
Crafted messaging for go-to-market materials, such as a video script for creator griztriz (37.5K followers), promoting portfolios and posts for the @creators account (12.8M followers), contributing to a successful launch.
Created high-quality design specs with accessibility labels and implementation instructions for engineers.
I worked closely with the Product Manager to determine the strategy, thinking through decisions like enabling creators to add content from other platforms, the best way to share a portfolio, and how to use it to encourage brands onto Instagram’s creator marketplace. We balanced each decision against creator pain points and business goals, and plotted ideas on a graph of impact versus effort to sequence the build and agree on an MVP. Finally, we established product principles to guide us throughout.
Simple and low effort
We help creators get started and make it feel easy to create a portfolio by auto-populating some content and insights.
Live preview
Creators edit directly on the UI, so they can see the end result and what it will look like to brands.
Customisable
All sections, including auto-populated content, are customisable, allowing creators to add, edit, remove and re-order sections as they wish.
Creator-led
Regardless of a creator’s experience, they can show off their personality and talent by adding unique content.
Creating a portfolio
First-use, in-product education leads with the user benefit and a confident, courageous-creator tone of voice.
About creator portfolio
Prefilled content prompt
Set up portfolio
Editing a portfolio
Prompt text helps creators fill out each section, and creators edit directly on a live preview of what brands will see.
Your portfolio
Add new section
Insights added
Sharing a portfolio
Clear descriptions and visible privacy settings let creators control and understand who can see their portfolio.
Portfolio visibility
Private vs. public
Shared portfolio
The MVP launched as a simple, intuitive feature and quickly became one of the most used tools in Instagram’s creator marketplace. Clear onboarding and messaging helped creators feel confident pitching themselves directly to brands.
17K+ portfolios created in the first week of launch, 3x our 5K goal.
Remained a highly used feature among creators months after launch.
Go-to-market content for a 37.5K-follower creator and the @creators account (12.8M followers) contributed to a successful launch.