How Simmy is Using UGC to Build Hype Before Their App Even Launches

Simmy isn’t on the App Store or on Google Play yet. So they don’t have much in the way of formal reviews. If you search for it, you’ll mostly find TikTok and Instagram posts about it.

That’s the interesting part. They’re running a full-blown UGC campaign for a product that’s still in TestFlight. Their website leads to a Discord invite, and the iOS link from the server goes to a beta download. And somehow, they’ve pulled in 6.8 million views across about 8 creators in less than a month.

Most UGC campaigns are built to drive app installs, but this one is building a community and a waitlist before the product is publicly available. That’s a different paybook and it’s worth looking at how they’re doing it.

What Simmy Is

From what we could gather, Simmy is an AI chat and roleplay game positioned as a Character.AI alternative. Their pitch is essentially: be the main character, date your fanfic crush, write your own story chapters. So basically an ai-powered chatbot with a fandom angle. 

Since there’s no formal app store listing or reviews due to it being in closed beta, discovery is almost entirely through short-form UGC. So let’s look at their content playbook

Content Playbook

Simmy’s campaign basically consists of a few core tactics that are being repeated (literally copied) across every creator account.

1. Competitor displacement as the primary angle.

Many videos reference Character.AI’s problems. With hooks positioning Simmy as the better option.

• “5 years of c.ai and i’m just finding out this“

• “How c.ai feels after losing all its users with those dumb updates“ 

But instead of leading with Simmy does, they’re jumping on what c.ai does wrong. This works because recent Character.AI updates came out that were received poorly by users, so Simmy is stepping in to capture the gap it created.

2. Engagement bait for awareness

Some of their top performing posts don’t even show the product. For example, hooks like:

• “What are your worst c.ai secrets? Not ‘i spend 30 hours on it.’ I mean your worst“

These posts pulled over 600k views on TikTok and over 1.26M on Instagram, with thousands of comments. This sort of engagement bait gets the algorithm moving. They don’t need to demo anything, and the descriptions have a nicely plugged CTA like “quit c.ai, simmy is better, link in bio”

3. Reaction-style hook & sell

This is the dominant format we’re seeing with most UGC campaigns these days. Typically there’s a creator reacting with shock or some other emotion, and a text overlay hook - then it transitions to an app demo. With some text hooks like:

• “I love gen z bc wdym someone made an app where u get snaps from Draco”

These are usually followed by a quick app demo. These videos are usually short, no speaking, maybe some lipsyncing to a trending audio, and CTAs sit in the description: “quit c.ai. simmy is better. link in bio”

4. Multi-Platform Amplification

All creators are posting the same content on both TikTok and Instagram. And the results vary wildly per platform. 

One video got 1.3M views on Instagram and 121 views on TikTok.

Another hit 356k views on Tiktok and 174 views on Instagram. 

Simmy is essentially letting the platforms decide what works. 

The Numbers

Across roughly 8 creators with accounts on both platforms, the campaign generated around 6.8M views in total, with over 3M of those coming in the last week alone. Total engagements sit around 527k.

• TikTok came in at 2.6M views.

• Instagram with 4.2M.

On TikTok, Simmy’s top performer is @marilynn.simmy with a TikTok video hitting 1M views and a 23.4% engagement rate. 

On Instagram, @gracie.simmy pulled 1.3M views on a single post. 

It’s interesting to note that while Instagram trumps TikTok in terms of views (4.2M vs 2.2M), TikTok is getting A LOT more engagement (408.1k = roughly 15.69%) vs Instagram (118.1k = roughly 2.8%)

For a beta product with no App Store presence, those are solid numbers. The Discord server has 5.3k members, which suggests the funnel from content to community is working. Given the extra steps involved in accessing the app right now, I expect downloads to surge if the campaign continues at this scale with an official app store listing. 

While the difference is quite extreme, it does align with industry data showing that TikTok typically gets 3-5x the engagement rate of Instagram. So it’s fair to say that Instagram is giving Simmy broader but shallower reach, while TikTok gives them fewer views but with deeper interaction per view. 

Also, Simmy’s value prop is highly “Character/Roleplay/AI” coded, which fits with TikTok’s native culture (POVs, fanfic tropes, AI chat) so the people it does reach might be more qualified than Instagram’s viewers.

What Simmy Could Be Doing Better

Simmy’s campaign is getting solid results, but there’s a clear limitation in how it’s being run. 

1. They’re scaling a template instead of iterating. 

The same hooks appear across nearly every creator account.

• “When someone mentions that phase where I was unfathomably addicted to using c.ai every day of my life” - this is pasted on to at least five different accounts with different creators, using the same text and audio.
  
  

• The same goes for “How c.ai feels after losing all its users” where every single creator posted the same format, same hook, same gestures.

While this isn’t necessarily bad, it feels like a missed opportunity on iterating / testing variations (however small) to find new winners.

This is fine for scaling what works, but there’s no visible testing of new angles. No hook variations. No format experiments. They found something that gets views and they’re copying it across every single account. 

2. All creators fit the same profile. 

All of Simmy’s creators are young females. This plays to the Character.AI demographic of users who engage with AI romance and fanfic content. And this does makes sense for their core audience, but it also means they’re not testing whether other creator profiles could expand their reach or resonate differently, maybe promoting alternative angles or value propositions.

3. The positioning is very negative.

So many hooks are about what’s wrong with c.ai. And that works for pulling dissatisfied users, but it doesn’t build a distinct identity for Simmy beyond “not Character.Ai”. At some point, they’ll need to answer what Simmy actually offers that’s worth staying for.

What This Means for Pre-Launch UGC

Simmy’s campaign shows that you don’t need a publicly available product to run UGC. If you have a beta that people can access (Or at the very least a waitlist, like Daze Chat) and you have a clear competitor to position against, UGC can do an amazing job of building community and hype before your official launch. 

A few things are making this work for Simmy. They have:

• A defined competitor with known pain points

• A product category with an interested audience

• Beta access that lets users actually try the product

• A Discord community to capture the funnel

The limitation is that they’re treating UGC purely like a volume play rather than a learning system. When every creator posts the same hooks with the same delivery, you’re maximising your reach with only a single approach. 

You’re not learning what else might work. 

For a campaign at this stage, dedicating some accounts or posts to testing different angles, formats, or even creator types would give them a lot more to work with once they launch publicly.

Still, 6.8M views and a 5.3k-member discord for an app that isn’t even on the App Store is a decent result. The question is whether the playbook that got them here will be enough once they’re competing for real. 

We’ll definitely be keeping a closer eye on them to see how this campaign shapes up.