Good afternoon, and welcome to the seventh issue of Creator Games.
I’m Salil, co-founder of Third Studios, I lead everything creator economy at THIRD, and I’ll be writing and editing this newsletter every week.
Creator Games exists to discover, fund and tell the stories of the next generation of creator entrepreneurs. This newsletter is where we share the ideas, companies and opportunities driving that mission across Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
If you’ve got any stories to share or any feedback, feel free to email me at salil@third.group.
— Salil
Today’s lineup:
Virgin Voyages hosted a party at sea for 1,000 creators to document.
Ba Thức Food used TikTok LIVE Shopping Ads to achieve 23.7x ROAS.
Bilibili relaunches globally to attract Western creators.
Virgin Voyages hosted a party at sea for 1,000 creators to document.
Continuing with my Vietnam series, this is a really cool story that I read about which made me go like I should share this one with you guys.
The Business Case →
The cruise line partnered with TikTok to pull off what they’re calling a Creator Voyage mobilizing over 1,000 nano, micro, macro, and VIP creators to sail with the brand and post from onboard in real time.
It was all done just to make content that feels native to TikTok.
The results were hard to ignore. The campaign generated over 20M+ video views, triggered over 3000+ organic posts from the broader community, and drove almost 700% increase in TikTok-referred traffic to the Virgin Voyages website.
The infrastructure behind it matters too. Virgin worked with TikTok Creative Exchange partner to build a custom Creator-led package, handling onboarding, contracts, and content deliverables for 1,000+ creators at scale.
They also locked in 180-day usage rights through TikTok’s Branded Buzz solution, which let them take the highest-performing creator videos and push them through paid amplification without losing the authentic, creator-first feel that made them work in the first place.
My POV: In the previous edition I had covered how authenticity is winning over the internet, backing the story with proof. This is an example of why that’s the case. What once paid ads did for brands, creator-led GTM is doing at the moment.
Ba Thức Food used TikTok LIVE Shopping Ads to achieve 23.7x ROAS.
Ba Thức Food is a Vietnamese dried beef snack brand, and their TikTok story is one of the cleanest small-business turnarounds I’ve come across. Think of it as a business turning itself into a creator.
The Business Case →
The offline sales of the brand were dropping. So Ba Thức Food did what more and more Vietnamese brands are doing, they moved the store to TikTok.
They started by making high-quality self-produced videos that pulled in millions of views and built a loyal following. To get the money in they layered in two tools: Video Shopping Ads (VSA), which put shoppable product cards directly inside their best-performing videos on the For You feed, and LIVE Shopping Ads (LSA), which pushed their livestreams out to users who hadn’t found them yet.
The livestream piece is worth slowing down on. Once a viewer clicked in, they could browse products, ask questions in the live comments, and buy all without leaving the app. It’s basically a virtual store, running in real time, with a host who can answer any objection on the spot.
The numbers that came out of this were crazy.
23.7x ROAS on live shopping ads
10.4x ROAS on video shopping ads
15% on-site complete payment rate, and
Over 2,000+ completed purchase events.
Their videos also hit the trending leaderboard in Vietnam, which compounded the organic reach on top of everything else.
My POV: Ba Thức Food is a masterclass in sequencing. First earn attention organically, then amplify what’s already working with paid. Most small brands do it backwards, they pay before they’ve proved anything. These guys proved it first, then put money behind the proof.
Bilibili relaunches globally to attract Western creators.
This one is big and honestly, not enough people in the creator world are talking about it yet.
The Business Case →
Bilibili, China’s answer to YouTube, just went global. The Shanghai-based platform has more than 300 million monthly active users, and until recently, it was almost impossible to use if you weren’t in China.
Uploading required government ID verification, a passport, a national ID card. Most international creators didn’t even bother. That wall is now gone. The relaunched international app only needs an email address or phone number to sign up. It’s live on Android, with iOS coming soon. And according to Bilibili themselves, the Chinese and global versions of the platform carry the same content library.
Here’s what makes it genuinely interesting for creators. Bilibili Studio, their creator services hub, automatically translates uploaded videos into Chinese for the domestic audience.
You upload once, in English, and the platform handles the localization into a market that YouTube can’t even reach.
YouTube is blocked in mainland China. That’s a billion-person audience that most creators have had zero access to.
My POV: I first discovered the platform when Varun Maya’s team put their game trailer on it and it was received really well. The same opportunity could exist for creators outside China. In return, the world could discover entirely new ways of creating content emerging from China.
🗞 Creator Gossip
Adidas and Puma are both reviving their iconic originals, tapping nostalgia and heritage to make classic designs feel culturally relevant again.
Chicken Shop Date is coming to a close, marking the end of one of YouTube’s most distinctive creator-led interview formats.
Media investment firm WTSL just invested in the world’s most valuable female creator, highlighting how female-led creator businesses are becoming major forces in the global media economy.
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