<growth_engine_budget>
This is the modern, AI-native distribution brain — the part that takes a business from
"good marketing" to "billion-dollar trajectory." It is grounded in a primary teardown of how
Higgsfield AI went from launch to ~$300M ARR and 300K paying subscribers in 11 months almost
entirely through creator-powered organic distribution rather than performance ads. It also
encodes the guardrails Higgsfield FAILED to install — guardrails this product cannot skip,
because our marketing is a public demonstration of the product (marketing.md
<operating_contract> rule 4: everything real). Read fully. This is where outsized results come
from, and where reckless growth-hacking destroys a brand. Both lessons live here.
</growth_engine_budget>

<how_this_connects>
Use AFTER the research brief (skills/market-research) and the strategy diagnosis
(marketing.md <diagnosis_first>). This file decides HOW distribution compounds once the offer
converts and the funnel holds. It feeds the content/ad system (marketing.md <content_and_ads>)
and the creative-generation skills (ad-image-gen, ad-video-gen). It governs, and is governed by,
marketing.md <operating_contract> and <on_target_virality>.
</how_this_connects>

---

<the_higgsfield_thesis>

The single most important modern growth lesson, stated plainly:

> You do not buy attention with an ad budget. You build a machine that pays OTHER people to
> manufacture attention for you, and you make it trivially easy for them to win.

Higgsfield commissioned 10,000+ creators, distributed ~$1M+ in creator payouts, and got 3B+
social impressions and "organic creator-driven reach" — at a fraction of what equivalent paid
reach would cost. The founder's philosophy: "loudest player wins... cheap acquisition only
happens when you stay on top of people's minds."

The mechanism that made it work was not "go viral." It was four compounding loops stacked on
each other. Each loop below has the principle, why it works, how to apply it to a client, and —
critically — the guardrail that keeps it honest.

</the_higgsfield_thesis>

---

<loop_1_creator_distribution>
PRINCIPLE: Turn creators into your paid distribution network instead of buying performance ads.
Pay for OUTCOMES (engagement/impressions), not for posts.
WHY IT WORKS: a micro/mid-tier creator with a loyal, engaged audience produces content that is
(a) native to their platform (marketing.md <platforms_are_islands>), (b) pre-trusted by their
followers, and (c) priced per-result rather than per-impression — so you only pay when it works.
It compounds: each creator's post seeds the next, and winning formats spread across the network.
This is "referral" as the primary growth lever, not an afterthought.
HOW TO APPLY:
- Identify 20–100 micro/mid creators whose audience IS the client's ICP (not the biggest
  accounts — the most ON-TARGET ones; marketing.md <on_target_virality>).
- Give them a dead-simple way to win: templates, hooks, pre-made styles, a clear payout tied to
  real engagement, fast approval. Friction kills creator programs.
- Pay for performance (per validated impression/engagement/conversion), tiered so bigger results
  earn more — this is the "Earn" flywheel.
- Track per-creator ROI; double down on winners, cut dead weight (marketing.md <creative_testing_loop>
  applied to creators).
- PAYOUT ECONOMICS: set payouts so creator cost per acquired customer stays under the CAC ceiling
  (knowledge/unit-economics.md <scale_gates>). Work backwards: LTV → allowable CAC → payout per
  validated view/signup/sale. A creator program without a CAC ceiling is a virality-shaped money
  leak — big impression numbers can hide negative unit economics for months.
- FINDING CREATORS: search natively per platform — the niche's hashtags and keywords; "format
  theft" (who is already using the winning formats from research Role 6); competitors' tag and
  mention lists; and the comment sections of the niche's biggest accounts, where engaged
  micro-creators live. Vet on audience-ICP overlap and real engagement (comments-to-likes ratio),
  never on follower count, plus a brand-safety scan of their recent content.
GUARDRAIL (where Higgsfield failed): incentivizing virality with NO content review produced
racist and offensive videos that became a Forbes exposé. "The content you incentivize is the
content you get blamed for." So: every creator program ships with brand-safety rules, a content
review gate, and disqualification for hateful/deceptive content. Non-negotiable — a viral racist
clip is not a growth event, it's a brand-ending one, and for THIS product it would prove the
product generates harm.
<example>
  <good>"For your $300 fitness program: recruit 40 micro-creators (5k–50k followers) in the
  'busy professional fitness' niche, give them 5 plug-and-play Reel templates + a hook bank from
  customer language, pay $X per 10k validated views + bonus per signup, review every post before
  payout for brand safety. Scale the 8 that beat a 2% signup rate."</good>
  <bad>"Pay big influencers to post about your product and hope it goes viral."
  — Why bad: pays for posts not outcomes; picks reach over on-target fit; no templates (high
  friction); no review gate (Higgsfield's fatal flaw).</bad>
</example>
</loop_1_creator_distribution>

---

<loop_2_templatization>
PRINCIPLE: Reduce the creator's (and customer's) effort to near zero by shipping templates.
Move people from "blank page" to "click-to-publish."
WHY IT WORKS: Higgsfield went from "prompt-to-video" to "click-to-video" with 100+ cinematic
templates and hit $10M ARR within weeks. Effort is a variable in the value equation (marketing.md
<value_equation>) — every unit of effort you remove raises adoption and output volume
(marketing.md <volume>). Templates also enforce quality and on-brand consistency at scale, which
a pile of free-styling creators never will.
HOW TO APPLY:
- Productize the winning content formats (from research role 6, Format & Trend Scout) into
  fill-in-the-blank templates: hook + structure + shot list + caption pattern + CTA.
- Give creators and the client's own team these templates so output volume goes up without
  quality going down.
- Maintain a living template library; retire fatiguing ones by engagement data (see
  <loop_4_velocity>).
GUARDRAIL: templates must be honest. Higgsfield was accused of passing off Envato stock as
AI-generated. Templates and showcase content must accurately represent what the product/offer
actually delivers (marketing.md <operating_contract> rule 4). Misrepresentation in a template
scales the lie across the whole network.
</loop_2_templatization>

---

<loop_3_persona_assets>
PRINCIPLE: Build persistent, ownable brand/creator assets — recurring characters, a consistent
visual world, named personas — not one-off posts.
WHY IT WORKS: Higgsfield's "Soul ID" let creators build persistent AI personas with consistent
faces and personalities that became standalone monetizable accounts. Persistence compounds
recognition (marketing.md <context_is_the_frame> and <reverse_engineer_influence>): a recurring
character or world is recognized in 0.5s, which wins the scroll and builds a brand moat a
faceless feed never gets.
HOW TO APPLY:
- Define a small set of recurring assets for the client: a spokesperson/founder persona, a
  mascot or recurring character, a signature visual treatment, a catchphrase, a format the brand
  "owns."
- Reuse them across every creative so the brand becomes instantly recognizable (this is also how
  AI ad-gen with nano banana / Seedance should be directed — consistent persona, not random
  stock; see ad-prompting.md and the UGC realism techniques).
- For AI-generated UGC personas: keep them consistent and DISCLOSE appropriately where required.
GUARDRAIL: persona authenticity. Synthetic personas and AI UGC must not deceive about material
facts (fake testimonials, fake "real users"). Use them to dramatize a true value, never to
fabricate proof. Real proof comes from real customers (marketing.md <audit_rubric> proof density).
</loop_3_persona_assets>

---

<loop_4_velocity>
PRINCIPLE: Ship at high velocity and let engagement data, not opinion, decide what survives.
WHY IT WORKS: Higgsfield shipped 4–7 releases/week (sometimes daily), created 10 new presets a
day and cycled out underperformers by engagement, and ran 200+ releases in 11 months. Velocity
is how you discover winners you could never pick in advance (marketing.md <volume> +
<creative_testing_loop>) and how you stay "top of mind" so acquisition stays cheap. The market,
not the marketer, picks the winners; your job is to feed it enough at-bats and listen.
HOW TO APPLY:
- Set a realistic, SUSTAINABLE shipping cadence for content/creative (marketing.md <volume> —
  match the client's real capacity; don't prescribe daily if they can't sustain it).
- Generate many variants (AI ad-gen makes this cheap), test cheaply, kill losers fast, multiply
  winners' DNA.
- Treat presets/templates/hooks as a portfolio: continuously add, measure, retire.
GUARDRAIL: velocity without review is how the racist-video and "scam unlimited plan" failures
happened. Speed must run THROUGH the brand-safety + honesty gates, not around them. Fast and
honest, or slow down.
</loop_4_velocity>

---

<the_higgsfield_meta_lessons>

Three strategic repositioning lessons from the teardown, beyond the loops:

1. AGGREGATION / BEST-INTERFACE PLAY. "You don't need your own model to build $300M ARR; you
   need to be the best interface to everyone else's." Applied here: a client rarely needs to
   invent a new category — they need to be the clearest, lowest-friction, best-packaged way to
   get the outcome the market already wants. Positioning as the best interface to a known desire
   beats inventing demand.

2. REPOSITION TO THE HIGHER-LTV AUDIENCE. Higgsfield abandoned casual mobile consumers and
   repositioned to professional social-media marketers WITH BUDGET — that single GTM shift
   unlocked exponential growth. Always ask: is the client selling to the highest-willingness-to-
   pay segment they can credibly serve? (marketing.md <diagnosis_first> Gate 1 + offer layer.)

3. CELEBRITY/AUTHORITY ORGANIC PROOF. Madonna, Snoop, Will Smith used Higgsfield unpaid; that
   organic adoption was the highest form of validation. Engineer the conditions for authoritative
   organic proof (make it easy and prestigious for respected voices in the niche to be seen using
   it) rather than only buying endorsements.

</the_higgsfield_meta_lessons>

---

<the_virality_predictor>

Higgsfield built a tool that scores a video's likely virality on Hook Score, Hold Rate, and a
"brain heatmap." The agent encodes the same judgment as a pre-publish checklist for any creative
(this is also the scoring rubric the ad-gen skills should self-apply before presenting work):

- HOOK SCORE: does the first 1–1.5s stop the scroll? Pattern interrupt, a face, motion, a bold
  claim in the ICP's own words (marketing.md <context_is_the_frame>). Weak hook → nothing else
  matters.
- HOLD RATE: does it sustain attention past 3s, then to the end? Tight pacing, curiosity gap,
  payoff. The 3-second hold is the first hard metric (marketing.md <measurement>).
- RELEVANCE/ON-TARGET: will the people it attracts actually buy? (marketing.md
  <on_target_virality>) Reject pure-virality bait.
- CLARITY OF NEXT STEP: is there one obvious action? (marketing.md <audit_rubric> one primary CTA)
- TRUTH CHECK: is every claim/demo real? (marketing.md <operating_contract> rule 4)

Score each creative on these BEFORE spending to distribute it. Scale only what passes.

</the_virality_predictor>

---

<honest_growth_guardrails>

These exist because Higgsfield is simultaneously the best modern growth case study AND a
cautionary tale: a Forbes exposé and "scam" reputation followed within 11 months because growth
optimization outran ethics. For THIS product the stakes are higher — the marketing IS the
product demo, so a dishonest or harmful growth tactic doesn't just risk the brand, it proves the
product produces harm. Hard rules:

1. CONTENT REVIEW GATE on any incentivized/creator content. No hateful, deceptive, or harmful
   content earns payout or distribution. Ever.
2. NO MISREPRESENTATION. Don't pass off stock as AI, AI as real, or staged as organic. Don't
   claim "unlimited" and throttle. Don't fake testimonials, scarcity, or results.
3. INCENTIVES SHAPE OUTPUT. Before launching any "earn"/affiliate mechanic, ask: "what content
   does this reward, and would we be proud to be blamed for it?" Design the incentive so the
   content you GET is the content you WANT.
4. ON-TARGET OVER LOUDEST. "Loudest player wins" is true only until the loudness attracts the
   wrong crowd or the wrong content. Optimize for loud AND right (marketing.md <on_target_virality>).
5. SUSTAINABLE VELOCITY. Match cadence to real capacity and to the review gate's throughput.
   Never ship faster than you can keep honest.

Breaking these is not a growth shortcut; it is the failure mode that ended the case study.

</honest_growth_guardrails>

---

<applying_the_engine>

When building a growth plan, the agent:
1. Confirms the offer converts and funnel holds (marketing.md <diagnosis_first> Gates 1–2) —
   distribution amplifies a working machine, never rescues a broken one.
2. Picks the primary loop for THIS business: usually <loop_1_creator_distribution> for products
   with visual/demonstrable output and an addressable creator niche; otherwise the underpriced-
   attention wedge from research.
3. Builds the templates (<loop_2_templatization>) and persona assets (<loop_3_persona_assets>) so
   output is high-volume, on-brand, and low-friction.
4. Sets a sustainable velocity (<loop_4_velocity>) with the virality-predictor gate and the honest
   guardrails enforced.
5. Defines the economics: payout/incentive structure, target CAC vs LTV, and the metric each loop
   is judged on (marketing.md <measurement>).
6. Sequences it (marketing.md <strategy_synthesis>): one loop first, proven, then stack the next.

OUTPUT: a distribution plan that names the primary loop, the creator/channel targets, the
templates and personas, the cadence, the incentive economics, the virality gate, and the
guardrails — all specific to this business, none of it copy-pasteable.

</applying_the_engine>

---

<provenance>
- GROUNDED: primary teardown of Higgsfield AI's growth (creator-distribution/Earn flywheel,
  templatization/click-to-video, Soul ID persistent personas, 4–7 releases/week velocity,
  aggregation play, higher-LTV repositioning, organic celebrity proof, Virality Predictor) and
  reporting on its failures (incentivized harmful content, stock-as-AI and "unlimited"
  misrepresentation) — used to build both the playbook and the guardrails.
  Sources: Product Growth "Higgsfield Growth Teardown: $300M in 11 Months"; Adweek; Forbes
  (Shrivastava, Fink); 36Kr; Higgsfield Marketing Studio.
- COMPOSES WITH: marketing.md (the strategic brain) and skills/market-research (the recon).
- NOTE: these are modern, fast-moving tactics. Verify current platform/program specifics with the
  research engine at engagement time rather than assuming this file is up to date.
</provenance>
