Case study · retainer

Zero Waste Cartel

August 2022 – October 2023

I was the fourth post on their TikTok. They launched the account with a small group of creators and I stayed on retainer for fourteen months — including the first video on the channel to pass a million views, which was mine.

Fourteen months, 27 videos

Across TikTok and Instagram, on the brand’s own channels.

  • 12.8Mviews
  • 547Klikes
  • 200Ksaves
  • 53Kshares
  • 27videos

The brief was never “make an ad.” Every video is a zero-waste how-to — kitchen scraps turned into something worth keeping, or a swap that saves you buying the disposable version. And every one of them puts a product they sell into your hands while it teaches: the jar, the wrap, the tool.

That is why the numbers lean the way they do. 200K saves against 547K likes — close to one save for every two likes. People weren’t watching these, they were keeping them to make later, which is the closest thing short-form has to purchase intent.

The two platforms also didn’t behave the same way, which is the point of running both. Junk mail into paper did 296.6K on TikTok and 698K on Instagram. Orange peels into vitamin C powder did 1.5M on TikTok and 2.6M on Instagram.

The work

More from the series

Instagram only

Earlier videos that didn’t travel on TikTok but found their audience on Instagram.

All posted to Zero Waste Cartel’s own channels, not mine. Figures pulled September 2026. Saves are TikTok only — Instagram doesn’t report them the same way. There are more videos in the set than are shown here.