UGC As a Franchise? What Shelf's Country Launcher Model Gets Right

Shelf is a social app where your profile is built around the media you consume rather than photos of yourself or life updates. You connect your Spotify, Goodreads, streaming accounts, and other media accounts, and your “shelf” updates automatically to show what you’re watching, reading, gaming, listening to, etc.,

It’s basically described as Letterboxd x Goodreads x Spotify Wrapped, and it’s positioned as “vibe via media” rather than selfies. The product is inherently aesthetic and identity-driven, which matters a lot for how their growth engine works.

When we first saw the sheer volume of Shelf content flooding our feeds, we actually thought they were running a sort of ambassador programme for users, but they weren’t. Well, at least not in the way you’d expect. 

The Numbers That Got Our Attention

• Over a hundred different TikTok accounts posting UGC content with a variety of different hooks.

• Over 23,000 videos on TikTok with nearly 540 million views. 

• Content in English, German, Italian, Arabic, Czech, Turkish, Spanish, and more.

I actually stopped looking for more accounts as it seemed to never end.

Shelf is running one of the most interesting UGC operations we’ve seen. Though the most interesting part of it isn’t the actual content being posted (although it is textbook good UGC driving CRAZY numbers). The interesting bit was the system they built to produce it at scale. 

The Country Launcher Model

Here's what Shelf did: instead of hiring a central team to manage thousands of creator relationships, they decentralized the whole operation.

I dug into their LinkedIn and saw a few older job posts where they were hiring "Country Launchers". The job description tasks Launchers with taking "Shelf to millions on TikTok and Instagram in your country." They recruit creators, train them, and coordinate waves of content.

Here's the job description

Help Launch the Next Big Thing: Shelf

Shelf is koodos' consumer app. A platform about what you like, rather than what you look like. Better known as the lovechild of Letterboxd, Goodreads and Spotify Wrapped.

After a buzzy launch—topping app charts and earning a spot on Business Insider’s Top Apps of 2024—Shelf is now expanding worldwide.

The Opportunity ✨

We’re looking for powerhouse entry-level strategists to take Shelf to millions on TikTok and Instagram in your country.

• Join an A-team of ex-YouTube, ex-Airbnb, ex-BeReal, ex-TikTok, and ex-Google pros.

• Launch Shelf in your country using our TOP SECRET Shelf Playbook (🤫).

• Recruit, train, and collaborate with creators every week.

• Build your dream team of Shelf Ambassadors to spread the word.

• Work remotely, part-time, and make an impact.

• Long-term opportunity to join our founding team in NYC.

Who You Are 🎯

• A self-starter hungry for experience

• A university student or recent grad eager to build something from 0→1

• A TikTok addict who understands

• Ready to dive into the startup world and make waves

• Lives in the country we are launching (Italy OR Germany)

Each launcher is essentially a mini-agency. They get a playbook from HQ, they build their own local squad of ambassadors (students, BookTokers, FilmTok creators, MusicTok accounts), and they coordinate posts in their region.

This explains why they maintained consistent messaging across so many languages without losing anything in localization. The control happens at the strategy layer (the playbook, the hooks, the positioning), not at the individual video level.

The pattern seems to be: The launcher recruits local creators who set up dedicated accounts. The creators are provided with Shelf's playbook and messaging guidance, and the Launchers coordinate posting schedules. Individual creators might have a degree of freedom in how they execute, but the strategy is consistent. 

This is Shelf’s system, and it results in hundreds of accounts posting at once. Best part is, there isn’t a central team trying to micromanage hundreds of relationships and thousands of videos. 

Dedicated UGC Accounts

Take a look at some of the TikTok accounts we’ve found:

And that’s just scratching the surface of their TikTok presence. 

To get an idea of Instagram, I took a sample of 20 accounts that posted about 4.2k videos so far, and those all netted around 94M views. It’s not a stretch to think they’re near the 1 billion view mark across all accounts in this campaign, and it’s still going strong with new videos getting published daily.

All the accounts we found were created specifically to post about Shelf, and nearly all of them have “Shelf Ambassador” or “Shelf Intern” in their bio. While the posted content all looks very native and casual, the infrastructure is very intentional.

Why This Works for Shelf Specifically

This model doesn’t work for every product. It works for Shelf because of a few specific things:

1. The Product is visual and the format is simple. Most Shelf videos follow proven templates, and they're not reinventing the wheel nor trying any new UGC formats. for example, the classic reaction-style Hook & Sell. A creator shows their face reacting with a trendy text hook overlay (e.g., "wdym the creator of Pinterest made a new app??!" or "I love gen z bc wdym…") - then it transitions to the app, where creators show their “Shelf”. There’s no heavy creative direction nor any professional production. The app’s interface is aesthetically interesting enough to carry the content
   
   

2. The target demographic overlaps with the workforce. University students and recent grads are both the target users, AND the people they’re hiring as Launchers. As a result, Launchers genuinely understand the audience because they are the audience. 

Tradeoffs

1. This model suits consumer apps targeting younger demographics. The whole structure depends on finding students and recent grads who can authentically create content for their peers. That's straightforward when the product is a social app targeting that exact demo. A B2B SaaS or a product targeting older demographics couldn't replicate this the same way.
   
   

2. Scale takes time to build. You need to develop a playbook, hire launchers, train them, have them build their squads, and ramp up content production. The payoff compounds over months as each launcher's operation matures. This isn't a model for quick wins.

What Brands Can Learn From This

Most brands reading this won’t build their own country launcher program. But there are a few things worth taking from Shelf’s approach:

• Think about the system, not just the content. The interesting question isn’t “what videos are they making?”, it’s “how are they making thousands of videos at once?”. Their content strategy is downstream of the operational model.
  
  

• Purpose-built accounts can work. You don’t need influencers or established creators with existing audiences. Shelf’s results show that dedicated accounts, when created as part of a managed program, can generate some serious reach. The content, consistency, and volume matter more than the follower counts.
  
  

• Decentralization can work when you have clear playbooks. Shelf has a playbook that each launcher follows. Control happens at the strategy layer, and execution is distributed. That structure enables scale. 

Bottom Line

Shelf built something closer to a growth franchise than a traditional UGC campaign. Each country launcher operates semi-independently with a shared playbook, producing local content that adds up to massive global reach. 

It’s a very different model than what most brands are running, but for apps that can pull it off, the ROI is compelling. You can get volume at scale without the overhead of centralized creator management. 

Whether you can replicate this depends on your product, your target audience, and whether you can build the operational infrastructure to support decentralized execution with centralized strategy.