How to Consult for Brands with Emma Apple Chozick
Thingstesting's former Head of Community and Curation discusses her new venture
GM everyone. Today I am speaking with Emma Apple Chozick, former Head of Community and Curation at Thingstesting (where she took the platform from 0 to 100K+ reviews)
Emma has been one of my favorite follows on TikTok for the last few months. Her videos provide incredible insights into world of design-led brands in consumer, hospitality, and tech spaces.
She also is a frequent contributor to Architectural Digest.
Emma truly has her fingers on the pulse of what is in vogue, which has led to her to consult with several freelance clients.
Now Emma is embarking on a new journey, gr8 collab, her new consultancy helping brands build and drive impactful community, content, and partnership strategies.
She’s also launching a Substack which premieres TODAY so go subscribe.
Emma provided tons of insights into:
Her work at Thingstesting
How to launch your own business
What brands are catching her attention
How to develop your tastes
Let’s get into it—
Can you give me a summary on your career to this point and any key accomplishments you want to highlight?
Let’s start when I was in middle school. I insisted my soccer team needed a social media platform. In high school, I convinced a family friend to let me shadow her at the URBN HQ. In college, I landed my first internship at Fuckjerry by creating memes about working for them. By the time I graduated, I had interned with 13+ consumer brands, had a platform where I interviewed women in creative fields, and was overseeing the social team for a mentorship program based in London.
I joined Thingtesting as the first community hire where I took the platform from 0 to 100K+ reviews, created and launched Thingdrop, a product testing program, and oversaw the directory of 15K+ brands and curated the weekly newsletter. My role as head of community and curation allowed me to work closely with the buzziest brands of today like Vacation, Graza, and Jolie, but also champion smaller, emerging brands.
In 2022, I was approached to contribute to Architectural Digest’s Clever. Since then, I’ve written about trends like chrome, interviewed food artists about kitchen design icks, and profiled creatives in their homes. At one point I was even featured in my own home for the publication!
In November of last year, I challenged myself to post on TikTok every day for the month as a way of learning the platform. I had no intentions of it going anywhere, but by the end of the month, I had published 80+ videos and had gained 10K followers. I didn’t feel like anyone was talking about brands through the lens of design in the way I wanted to be– approachable, educational, and the real stories behind things. I very quickly got inbounds for branded partnerships, but most of it didn’t feel aligned, and I started to feel like there could be something larger to build. The more I posted, the inbounds shifted from content partnerships to hiring pitches. Brands looked to me to tell them how they should be showing up on social, building community, and launching into the world. I took on a few brand clients who felt aligned and continued to invest in building my platform.
At the end of February, I decided to take the leap leaving my job at Thingtesting after three years, and go all in on that work I was doing with brands. And now you’re up to speed.
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Tell me all about your new venture, gr8 collab. What can you share on the client work you’ve done thus far?
gr8 collab is the company I always wanted to launch but I didn’t know the exact shape it would take or when it would come to fruition, but it was always based on the idea that the best things are built by a collective bonded by a shared goal.
Today that looks like a consultancy focused on building thoughtful community, content, and collaboration strategies in partnership with commerce, hospitality, and tech brands. Over the last few months, I’ve built TikTok strategies for Rocky’s Matcha and Yowie Hotel, worked on retail partnerships with Cliik, a home storage brand that launched this week and built a go-to-market plan for a brand that’s launching this summer. I care deeply about working with brands that are story and design-led and it goes back to that philosophy about a shared goal and vision. It’s what drives me and the brands I work with.
What made you want to make the pivot into your own consulting/strategy agency?
It wasn’t a simple decision to make and I don’t want to pretend that it was, but having inbound work and opportunities helped me see that this was truly a possible avenue for me. I wanted to work closer with brands than I already was. It’s ultimately one of those jumps that I don’t think you can ever be fully ready for, I just had to do it, and I haven’t looked back!
How has writing and video content helped you grow your personal brand and forge connections in this space?
It’s helped me infinitely, personally and professionally – I don’t know if I’ve seen or realized its full impact yet. It has all unfolded very organically and also quite quickly. Taking the time to hone in on my voice through my writing and then through TikTok has given me the space to further develop my taste, on my own terms. It’s been so surreal and special to see it resonate with so many people. I don’t think I’ll ever be chill about it when someone tells me they watch my videos or read my stories.
What design-forward/tech brands are catching your attention and doing something special right now?
I love brands that feel like an immersive universe. Gentle Monster is top of mind– they make sunglasses, but that’s almost the by-product of their creative work. They do these extravagant launches for their collections, they integrate tech into a lot of what they do, and I want to go to Seoul just to go to their store.
Any advice for anyone looking to hone their taste and establish a career strategizing with brands?
Save things you love, digitally or physically, and do it as frequently as you can. Spend time with these collections and revisit them often. Be discerning and take the time to distill what it is that you love about the things that catch your eye. This is how to build taste or an opinion about anything really, it’s a muscle we all have, you just need to train it to pay attention. And if you find that over time, things you’ve saved years before no longer resonate with you, take that as a sign… your taste is evolving (as it should).
Who Do You Know? is a daily newsletter covering marketing, business, branding, products, design, founders, and culture.
Its written by Jake Bell, a content marketing and brand strategist in NYC.
To get in touch visit www.jb.studio or email jake@jb.studio
Enjoyed this very much!!! Love Emma's content on TikTok and can't wait to see where she goes with gr8 collab!
Thank you for having me, Jake 🍎