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SULT: HOW TO LAUNCH A VIRAL PRODUCT
The content playbook for building hype, creating demand, and making people care before you even launch...
Niall Ratcliffe
February 23, 2025
Morning!
After a week of being as sick as a dog, I’m finally back on the horse - thank god! But during my week of nearly dying I stumbled upon a new brand who are dominating the content game.
Today, they sit on a measly 5000 followers. But the content playbook I’m about to break down could be the driving force that turns them into a multi-million-pound company.
Let’s get into it!
LISTEN TO THE AUDIO VERSION
BREAKING DOWN THE STRATEGY
As I lay in bed, wiped out with the flu this week, I came across a post from Grace Andrews.
At first glance, it was just a celebration of her four years with Diary of a CEO. But something in it stood out. In the post, she highlighted the three core things their team obsesses over:
Content
Audience
Distribution
Pretty obvious things to focus on when you’re trying to grow a podcast. But it got me thinking. Diary of a CEO isn’t just a podcast - it’s a product. And like any successful product, it only grows if people see it, engage with it, and talk about it.
And that’s not just true for podcasts. It’s true for every brand.
Because no matter how good your product is, if no one knows about it, it doesn’t exist.
That’s why content is no longer just a marketing channel - it’s the foundation of modern brand building. The brands that understand this early are the ones that win.
They don’t just launch a product and hope people find it. They build distribution before they even have something to sell.
And that’s exactly what SULT is doing.
They’re a new electrolyte brand that hasn’t even launched yet but is already everywhere. Their pre-launch content strategy is one of the best I’ve seen—turning what could be just another hydration product into something people actually care about.
So today, I’m breaking down SULT’s content playbook.
How they’ve built demand before even launching.
How they’ve crafted a brand that feels bigger than just another product.
And most importantly, what you can take from their strategy to apply to your own brand.
Here is SULT’s content playbook:
Principle 1: Build With, Not For
Most brands wait until they have the perfect product before they take it to market.
Fancy packaging
The perfect branding
Put together social profiles
But Sult… well they did the complete opposite.
Right now, you can’t even buy a Sult product. Their electrolyte drinks don’t exist yet. But their brand is flying. With just 5,800 Instagram followers, they’ve racked up half a million views - and they’ve done it by making the audience part of the process.
They’re not using social media to just launch the brand, they’re using it to let their audience build the brand with them:
Posting taste tests in real-time
Shared meetings with their email marketing agency
Taking people behind the scenes of a brand shoot (involving water, sunglasses, and some questionable aim)
When you follow Sult, you’re not just watching a launch—you’re part of it.
By the time they release their first product, they’ll already have a wave of loyal fans waiting to buy. Not because they want the product, but because they feel like they’ve been on this journey with them.
And that’s exactly what they’re selling right now. They aren’t selling an electrolyte drink. They’re selling a journey.
Principle 2: Behind-The-Curtain Content
Most brands are obsessed with looking polished. They think that looking perfect will make people think they have a better product.
But yet again, Sult does the complete opposite.
Rather than crafting the perfect high-production content with no errors, they show it all.
The stuff that’s usually cut
The massive blunders
The raw takes
They all get published.
For example, they tried to film a piece of content where one founder FaceTimes the other and “accidentally” catches them as they’re about to pour a glass of their electrolyte drink.
A classic, staged social ad.
But instead of posting the final, polished version, they uploaded the entire process. The butchered takes, the awkward pauses, the moments where they had to reset the shot - they kept it all in.
The result? It feels real. You’re not just watching an ad - you’re watching two founders figuring it out as they go.
And that’s why people are falling in love with the founders and this brand. Because their content makes it feel like they aren’t hiding anything. You can trust them and that trust comes quickly because of the extreme authenticity in their content.
In today’s world, people don’t just buy products, they buy from people they trust - and it’s this behind-the-curtain content that SULT are putting out that creates that trustworthy feeling.
When a brand gives you everything—the messy, the real, the raw—it’s impossible not to trust them.
Principle 3: Repeatable Series
One of the biggest misconceptions around content marketing is that every piece of content needs to be new and unique.
The truth: If a piece of content goes viral, your audience is telling you one thing - we want more of this.
Most brands ignore that signal. Sult doesn’t. Instead of making one-off content, they create repeatable series - content formats they can keep posting again and again.
Sult does this perfectly in two ways:
1/ On their brand account
They launched ‘Episode 1 of Building Sult’. It’s already done 30,000+ views in three days, and there’s no doubt they’ll keep pushing Episode 2, 3, 4…
2/ On their personal accounts
They’re doing the same. Henry, one of the founders, is already up to Episode 7 of Building the Brand. So many brands burn out trying to come up with fresh content ideas every day. Sult just keeps running the same play - and it works.
Watching these series just makes me wish I did the same 3 years ago.
Principle 4: Founder Stories (AKA Rocket Fuel)
Most brands think their company brand is enough, but those days are well and truly gone. In 2025, you need founder brands if you want any sort of chance of getting a brand like this off the ground.
But Sult understands that better than everyone as their co-founders, Millie Goldsmith and Henry are constantly cranking out content on their personal brands. In fact, their personal profiles are the content engine that is driving the attention right now.
But they do it in two very different ways.
Millie is the documenter. She shares the raw, unfiltered reality of building Sult - what’s working, what’s failing, and what she’s learning along the way. Her content is relatable, real, and scrappy. It makes people feel like they’re building the company with her, not just watching from the outside.
Henry is the storyteller. His content is more about positioning - the vision behind Sult, what makes their brand different, and why this product exists in the first place. He’s not just showing what’s happening - he’s making people believe in what they’re building.
Together, they’ve created a growth loop that most brands ignore.
Their personal brands attract attention.
That attention feeds into Sult.
Sult grows faster
Most startups spend millions trying to cut through the noise.
Sult’s founders are doing it for free, just by showing up and sharing the journey.
Principle 5: Undercover Aspirational Content
Aspirational content has become the norm for most DTC brands nowadays. They use beautiful models, fast cars, and luxurious lifestyles as a way to get you to want their products.
Yet Sult takes a completely different approach.
They make starting a brand look possible.
Most people have thought about launching a business. But it feels complicated, expensive, and unrealistic. Sult breaks that illusion.
They make it look basic.
Their first brand shoot? No flashy set, no huge production. Just a small studio and a joke about the only budget being the taxi to get there.
Their billboard campaign? They made it seem like a massive challenge to pull off - when it was probably sorted in minutes.
Even their brand name… They had a viral video pretending to misspell it as ‘Slut’.
They make building a company feel scrappy, not polished. And that’s why it works.
Most brands make success feel untouchable. Sult makes it feel doable. The second someone thinks, “I could do this too”, they don’t just follow the brand. They believe in it.
And when people believe in your brand, they don’t just buy. They root for you.
🌱 THE GREENHOUSE
Things I’ve saved this week that are worth seeing:
TL;DR
Build with them, not for them
Bring them behind the curtain
Always work in series
Use your founders' story
Go undercover with aspirational content
I almost feel like I wrote this breakdown too early because I’m so confident these guys will rocket the SULT brand to the moon over the next few months - but at least I was early.
If you’re thinking of launching a brand at some point, this right here is the content playbook to follow. Love love love what they’re doing.
Hopefully this was helpful, if it was - please share it with a friend :)
Until next Sunday.
— Niall
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