Launching Honestly (now shop.firi) on X.
the context
Honestly (now shop.firi) is an AI-powered skincare search app. Type something like “best sunscreen for acne-prone skin that won’t leave a whitecast” and it gives you product recommendations ranked by 33 million real reviews and full ingredient analysis. No sponsored placements. No brand claims deciding what shows up.
The app was live on the app store but nobody knew about it. Our entire public presence was one funding announcement and a couple of founder posts from a year back. That was it.
I joined the founding team as the 5th member and only marketing hire. The job was simple: take this app to market and make people care about it.
the strategy
The app works best when you see it in action. Someone asks a skincare question, the app gives them an answer backed by real reviews and ingredient science. So the launch had to create that moment at scale. Publicly. On a platform where every interaction is visible to everyone.
Twitter made sense. I wanted people tagging @askhonestly.ai with their skincare questions. We reply with real recommendations from the app. Their followers see it. Some of them try it too.
Every reply is basically a product demo sitting on someone’s timeline. The campaign builds on itself.
how the loop was designed to work
user
tweets a skincare question publicly on X
us, publicly
reply with the app’s top pick - every follower in their network sees it
us, in DMs
trash can + nykaa voucher to buy the product we just recommended. on us.
user
buys the product, tries it, it works. full experience closed in one touchpoint.
user, publicly
posts about it. their network sees. new queries come in from strangers.
loop
the campaign kept producing content without us having to create any.
it played out exactly like that ↓
a skincare query goes out on X
we’re the top reply. the app does the talking.
trash can lands. product works. they tell their friends.
the trash can
Every user interview had the same complaint. People buy skincare that doesn’t work and there’s no going back. You can’t return opened skincare. It just lives on your shelf reminding you of money wasted on something an influencer told you to buy.
So I thought, what if we just gave people permission to throw it out? A branded trash can for your skincare shelf.
It has the message and it is absurd enough to trend on X. What brand sends their users a trashcan?
Inside the trash can: a card with who we are, and a Nykaa voucher to buy the product the app recommended for them. On us. They throw out the bad product, search on the app, get a recommendation they can trust, and buy it right there. One package that takes them through the entire experience.
the creators
Reached out to 150+ KOLs. Went ahead with 40.
Honestly isn’t for skincare junkies. It’s for people making smarter buying decisions. So the creators I picked reflected that. People active in startup Twitter, people who track their workouts, curate their space, read labels. The “that girl” archetype. If they’re that intentional about everything else, skincare is a natural extension.
Engagement over followers. Always. Someone at 5k followers pulling 5k impressions per tweet over someone at 30k barely crossing 1k.
the impact
785k
impressions on X in one month
1,500
sign-ups post-launch
50+
strangers tagging us with skincare queries - unprompted
@askhonestly.ai got treated like grok for skincare
50+ organic tags in a month, all from completely new users asking real skincare questions on X.
Took the account from dead to being treated like “grok for skincare”.
A few early users naturally turned into community members who kept coming back and posting about us, sharing new use cases week after week.
reflection
Every marketing playbook talks about doing things that scale. This launch reminded me that the stuff that actually works early on is the opposite. Individual DMs. Following up three times. Getting on calls. Nudging people to actually try the product before posting about it. None of it scales. All of it compounds.
The one thing I’ll take from this into everything I do next: show before you tell. Get the product in someone’s hands. If it’s good, they’ll talk. If it’s not, no campaign is going to save it.