Deals
Big Dicee Converts College Scout Character Into Brand Deal
Micro creator leverages 16k Instagram followers into recurring brand partnership
Big Dicee didn’t land his first meaningful brand deal by acting like a spokesperson.
He landed it by acting like himself—specifically, one of the characters he already plays: a college basketball scout.
That detail matters, because it’s the entire reason this partnership works. Athlete Narrative, an AI-powered recruiting app, reached out to Dicee directly via Instagram DM when he had around 16,000 followers, after noticing strong engagement from young basketball players—the exact demographic the product is built for (high school athletes trying to get recruited). The deliverable is simple: a minimum of one video per month, integrated natively into Dicee’s existing content style.
Big Dicee’s Video That Led To Athlete Narrative’s Inquiry
What Athlete Narrative is (in plain English)
Athlete Narrative positions itself as a recruiting tool that helps student athletes build a profile and contact coaches faster.
On its site, the company describes a flow that looks like this: athletes create a “Radar Page” profile with highlights, stats, grades, measurables, then use a tool it calls “The Recruiter” to select divisions and schools and send messages to coaches. Athlete Narrative also says an AI assistant (“HOPE”) can help write the email.
That aligns with Dicee’s description: input your info and footage, generate an email template, and send coach outreach with a few taps.
Why Athlete Narrative chose Big Dicee
Dicee says the company selected him for one reason: his engagement with young hoopers.
That’s the part most people miss when they talk about “influencer marketing.” Follower count is only the top of the funnel. What brands actually pay for is trust inside a specific audience.
Athlete Narrative isn’t trying to reach “everyone who likes basketball.” They’re trying to reach:
- athletes who genuinely want recruitment opportunities
- parents who want a clean system
- players who are already thinking about film, stats, grades, and outreach
Dicee’s content sits right in the middle of that reality—especially because he already runs a scout persona that speaks the same language as recruiting culture.
The integration that makes this deal work
The easiest way to kill a creator partnership is to force a creator into a script that doesn’t match their voice.
Dicee’s advantage is he doesn’t have to pretend. The product fits his character.
He can incorporate Athlete Narrative into his existing basketball videos as:
- the “scout” asking for a player’s Radar Page
- the “scout” reacting to a player’s measurables/grades/film
- a comedic bit where the “scout” shows how athletes should reach out properly
- a punchline about “send it to coaches in one tap”
That’s not just entertaining—it’s functional education wrapped in comedy, aimed at exactly the people who would use a recruiting tool.
Meanwhile, Athlete Narrative’s site leans heavily into “easy-to-build profile” and “email coaches quickly” messaging, which makes the integration clean and believable.
What the deliverables are
Dicee says the partnership fulfillment is:
- minimum 1 video per month
That’s it. No messy 10-post bundle. No “spam your Story 8 times.” This is a straightforward monthly integration.
Big Dice x Athlete Narrative Partner Content
Why this deal is a case study for the “Creator Mainstream”
This partnership signals a shift that’s happening across the creator world:
Micro creators with the right audience can outperform big creators with general reach.
Because for a company like Athlete Narrative, the ideal customer isn’t “a sports fan.” It’s a high school athlete actively trying to get recruited (plus parents). That’s not a mass-market audience. It’s high-intent.
This is the same pattern you see in the most effective creator marketing:
- niche creator
- niche audience
- product that solves a real problem
- integration that doesn’t break the creator’s content
That’s how a 16K creator becomes more valuable than a 500K creator who reaches the wrong people.
The bigger takeaway for creators trying to land deals
Dicee’s deal blueprint is repeatable:
- Build a character or content lane that attracts a specific community
- Drive engagement with that exact community (not random virality)
- Make your content naturally compatible with a product category
- When brands reach out, keep deliverables simple and sustainable
- Make integrations native, not scripted
This is how creator marketing becomes “mainstream”: not through celebrity endorsements, but through creators who feel like part of the audience they’re speaking to.
Meta has announced the start of a new invite-only, three-month program for creators on Facebook. The “Creator Fast Track” program is offering eligible content creators with at least 100,000 followers on TikTok, YouTube or Instagram $1,000 a month for three months for posting content on Facebook. According to Meta, the program promises payment up to $3,000 a month for three months for accounts with over one million followers. The program comes just after news of significant layoffs as well as reports of Meta winding down large aspects of its investments in the metaverse. In a press release, Meta said that enrollment in the program also gives accounts access to Facebook’s “Content Monetization Program”, enacted in 2024. The older “Content Monetization Program” allows members the option to make money on their content after the “Fast Track” program ends. Here’s how the new “Creator Fast Track” program works and who is able to apply.
“Creator Fast Track” is invite-only and seems to be limited to accounts with 100,000 followers or more, but creators who are curious about the program can fill out an interest form by navigating to Content monetization in the Monetization tab of the Professional Dashboard on the Facebook mobile app. The program comes with three new metrics for creators to view and understand how they’re getting paid from content. “Qualified Views” tells you the number of views of your content that could be eligible to earn money from. “Earnings Rate” is a simple measurement of your earnings per 1000 views. Finally, “Non-Qualified Views” breaks down why some views don’t qualify for payment. According to Meta, creators can earn from short-form Reels, longer videos as well as photo and text post, but creators have to post at least 15 eligible reels a month to receive payment, on 10 separate days a month. Program members with at least 20,000 followers but less than 100,000 can expect between $100–$450 dollars a month, while those with over 100,000 followers can earn the advertised $1,000 a month and creators with over a million getting $3,000 a month. Program members must have a recent Facebook account (at least 30 days old) and at least 30,000 views on videos in the past two months.
The platform says it wants to reward original content with the “Creator Fast Track” Program. In Meta’s press release, the company touted a “35% increase” in payments to content creators in 2025, totalling nearly $3 billion, the highest annual total the platform has paid to creators ever. Additionally, Meta says that “creators earning more than $10,000 annually on Facebook have grown by over 30%” annually”, although they did not provide a full time-frame. Despite the promised focus on original material, it seems that creators can reuse content posted on other platforms as long as it’s their material, hasn’t been posted on Facebook before, and meets the platform’s community guidelines.
It’s unclear what will happen after the three-month program ends, or how long the promotion will last. The program is a part of Facebook’s bigger push to gain back users lost to other social media platforms. Meta stopped breaking down daily user data by platform in 2024. Overall, social media usage peaked in 2022, and has declined since, likely related to pandemic lockdowns and time spent indoors. Facebook has seen a significant overall decline in usage for years, as newer social media platforms came along, and the app was perceived as dated. Despite this decline, a recent social media analysis by media engagement company Buffer, reported by tech news platform BetaNews, showed a slight increase in users on the platform, alongside other previously declining platforms like X (formerly Twitter). If the program pays off, maybe Facebook will have an even greater resurgence as a social media platform, especially as many content creators already cross-post most of their material.
The Federal Trade Commission has set its sights on influencers once again. Starting in December, expanding on their new round of disclosure guidelines from 2023. The guidelines went into effect in 2024 and the FTC has put out a series of letters, press releases and blog posts, attempting to tighten the standard for what has to be disclosed for sponsored social media posts. This comes after years of controversies related to content creators and brand partnerships, cryptocurrency endorsements and unregulated blank on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. So what do these new guidelines mean for influencers in the U.S.?
Federal regulators have sent a clear message to brands and creators: disclosure rules in influencer marketing are not optional. On December 22nd, the FTC announced that it had sent warning letters to 10 companies regarding potential violations related to the agency’s new Consumer Review Rule, related to potentially “fake or false consumer reviews, consumer testimonials, or celebrity testimonials.” Fines could be up to $53,088 per violation. Legal analysis by the law news publication The National Law Review earlier this month emphasized that disclosures in social media remain a central enforcement focus, particularly as content moves fluidly across feeds, stories, and short-form video. Essentially the FTC wants someone to be able to tell if a post is sponsored or an ad when they scroll past it.
For years, many creators relied on brand tags, brief in-content references or hashtags blended into a long caption to signify a sponsored or partnered post. Regulators are signalling that they are increasingly skeptical of those approaches, especially when those notices are easy to miss and easy to potentially misinterpret. Platforms are also responding, with YouTube, Instagram and TikTok labeling branded or promotional content in the past few years. Additional layers to sponsorship exist as well. An article by daily Legal news outlet JD Supra made clear that disclosure is not limited to obvious ad reads with scripts provided by a brand. A creator who casually praises a product while participating in a broader paid partnership may still need to disclose that relationship. The focus is on context that would matter to viewers, not on how formal the arrangement looks behind the scenes.
The placement of where you disclose that a post has been sponsored is also an issue. With shorts on social media, a disclosure that appears only in the description field can easily go unseen, especially when videos are reposted or embedded elsewhere. Regulators have signaled that disclosures should appear within the content itself in a way that stands out, whether spoken in the video or displayed as readable on-screen text. If viewers are unlikely to see it, it is unlikely to satisfy the standard. A related, recent study on tobacco marketing found that influencers were one of the main groups who failed to disclose business relationships with tobacco companies, noting that “influencer-related posts lacked proper FTC-mandated disclosures of financial relationships”.
Livestreaming adds another layer of complexity. Audiences join and leave at different points, and many viewers skip the opening minutes of a broadcast. A single disclosure at the beginning of a two-hour stream may not reach a significant portion of the audience. Recent guidance suggests that repeating disclosures during the stream, or maintaining a visible on-screen notice, is a more reliable approach. The expectation reflects how live content is actually consumed rather than how it might look on paper.
The practical effect of these developments is easy to understand. For creators, when money, free products, or commissions are involved, being straightforward is a legal requirement, even if the post is styled as a casual recommendation. The current round of warnings suggests regulators are less concerned with punishing technical mistakes and more focused on patterns that make paid influence look organic. If sponsorship is part of the business model, it has to be visible in the content itself.
Fortune cookies, a staple of Westernized Chinese food, are normally a message contained within a small fried cookie. Aside from an actual “fortune”, the message within the cookie may have a Chinese phrase, a saying or proverb and lucky numbers. But soon, the cookie from your Chinese take-out order may display a different message. Starting January 13, 2026, millions of fortune cookies distributed across Chinese restaurants and food delivery services in the United States and Europe began carrying custom messages promoting Beast Games Season 2: Strong vs. Smart, the Amazon Prime Video competition series created by Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast.
Campaign partner OpenFortune sells advertising inside fortune cookies. According to their research, roughly 2.5 million cookies were circulated as part of the advertising campaign, making it one of the largest physical media drops attached to a streaming series in recent memory. So, why fortune cookies? When speaking to Fortune Magazine (I swear I’m not doing this on purpose), OpenFortune’s cofounder Shawn Porat said – “The fortune cookie is one of the last truly shared media moments people still slow down for, read out loud, and share.” “It’s intimate, social, and culturally ingrained—everything advertising often isn’t anymore.”
OpenFortune’s internal data suggests that almost every fortune cookie is opened and read. In contrast to digital impressions that may last fractions of a second, the fortune cookie creates a shared moment that naturally invites reaction and discussion. In an era of advertising overload (and many options to block digital advertisements), a company that can orchestrate marketing campaigns that offer high visibility and brand recall is quite the rarity. For Beast Games, a series structured around anticipation, reveal and audience participation, that kind of exposure is important. Contestants make choices without knowing outcomes. Viewers watch tension build before results are shown. The fortune cookie mirrors the action of the series.
Jeff Housenbold, CEO of Beast Industries, described the campaign as an attempt to reach audiences “outside the feed” by embedding the show into everyday rituals rather than interrupting online behavior. Beyond placement and scale, the campaign also included targeted distribution in specific regions to maximize reach. OpenFortune worked with local restaurants and delivery networks to ensure cookies reached major cities and suburban areas alike. While the vast majority of messages promoted the series, a small percentage contained numbered messages written by MrBeast himself. Fans who discovered these rare cookies began sharing images and videos on social media, creating organic buzz that extended the campaign beyond the initial offline distribution.
The integration of physical media into a digital-first franchise reflects a growing trend among content creators. Streaming platforms and social media feeds are increasingly crowded, making audience attention more difficult to capture. By leveraging an offline channel, the campaign offered a high-visibility opportunity that could not be skipped or muted. Analysts note that for creators with established followings, physical activations like this provide a measurable way to supplement online promotion while reaching new audiences.
Early social media tracking suggests that the campaign generated engagement in multiple forms. Photos of the cookies appeared on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter, with users highlighting the numbered messages or sharing the standard promotional lines. The offline interaction created a secondary wave of online content, effectively turning the fortune cookie into a hybrid touchpoint linking physical and digital marketing. The Beast Games Season 2 campaign was not without naysayers however, as some social media users have complained that the advertisement and similar marketing campaigns had taken away from the fun of fortune cookies.
Beast Industries emphasized that the campaign was designed to complement traditional digital promotion rather than replace it. By embedding the series into a familiar ritual—dining—the initiative aimed to reinforce awareness among both casual viewers and the franchise’s existing fanbase. The campaign also demonstrates how large-scale entertainment properties are experimenting with unconventional placements to maintain visibility in a competitive media environment.
Overall, the fortune cookie campaign illustrates how creators are expanding the boundaries of marketing beyond digital feeds and algorithmic targeting. By situating content in a physical medium that is widely distributed, shareable, and difficult to ignore, MrBeast and his team created a multi-layered promotional strategy that engages audiences on multiple levels. It highlights the potential for hybrid campaigns in which offline and online experiences reinforce one another, and it underscores a broader trend in entertainment marketing: attention is increasingly earned not only through reach but through strategic placement and context.
