Gissele Alzate spearheaded Truff’s social growth and viral brand collabs

When a brand starts amassing hundreds of thousands of social media followers, you’d typically expect it to recruit an agency to help direct its social strategy, or at least add a few new members to its internal social media team. But for hot sauce brand Truff, there’s just one woman behind its social content, from viral engagements with pop culture moments to social-first collaborations with brands such as Popeyes, Nintendo and Illumination—Gissele Alzate. See all of Ad Age’s 2024 Creativity Award winners here Since 2019, when she joined Truff as its first social media hire, Alzate has undertaken the work of an entire social team, overseeing everything from social strategy to content creation and community management. In 2023 alone, she grew Truff’s Instagram following by 5.2% year over year and upped its engagement rate on the platform by more than 72%. Alzate also netted 40,000 new TikTok followers for the brand from 2022 to 2023. Much of that engagement has stemmed from Alzate’s knack for inserting Truff into timely internet trends and pop culture moments. When netizens began buzzing about possible UFO sightings last summer, for example, Alzate animated a flying saucer labeled with the brand’s name zipping past an airplane window. That post alone secured Truff more than 6,000 new Instagram followers and quickly garnered nearly 240,000 likes on the platform. View this post on Instagram A post shared by T R U F F (@sauce) Alzate also spearheaded key brand collaborations with Popeyes and “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” last year, leveraging Truff’s large social following and high engagement to reveal both partnerships. More than 5,000 Instagram users had shared the post announcing Truff’s limited-edition hot sauce collection for the movie within the first hour of it being uploaded. View this post on Instagram A post shared by T R U F F (@sauce) “Gissele built a brand from scratch on social media,” said one Creativity Awards juror. “This is a brand that didn’t exist, and now all of us know exactly what Truff is—and it’s because of the work that was done in social.” See all of Ad Age’s 2024 Creativity Award winners here

Gissele Alzate spearheaded Truff’s social growth and viral brand collabs

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