mornin’ merry makers 🕊️🧃🛒🦋🤳

everyone loves to talk about “bridging physical and digital.” the word is omnichannel. but most brands still act like stores and social are two totally separate planets.

online teams optimize for clicks.
store teams chase foot steps.
rarely talking to each other.

walk into a store and the irony smacks you in the face. it’s already a content studio. gorgeous light. curated displays. unfiltered human reactions you could never replicate in a campaign. but most retailers pretend their stores don’t exist online.

i find it infuriating & inefficient.

for all the money poured into attribution models & algorithms, the biggest driver of foot traffic hasn’t changed in decades.

it’s still word of mouth.

that’s the disconnect emily steele built hummingbirds to solve. not better tracking, but everyday people making content that feels real and makes their friends want to show up.

because it’s not about followers. it’s not about viral. it’s about the friend who shows you their costco haul and suddenly you want to try the same thing.

bts q&a: emily steele

Q1: can you share a little bit about you and the work that you do at hummingbirds?

I spend a majority of my days building Hummingbirds—a people-powered platform that connects everyday creators (we call them Hummingbirds) with brands to drive retail awareness in nearly 30 cities across the U.S.

Before this, I ran a local marketing agency for a decade, so community-building and word-of-mouth have always been the superpowers that scaled my clients’ companies.

What started with me sharing favorite coffee shops in Des Moines, Iowa—and influencing my local network—has now grown into more than 25,000 people sharing the brands they love in their own neighborhoods.

I’m a big believer that we all have influence, and when we use our voices—even in small ways—it sparks real impact.

Q2: your platform operates in 25+ cities and focuses on hyperlocal content creators called hummingbirds. why did you choose to go local versus competing with national influencer platforms?

The truth is, 92% of consumers trust friends and family over any other form of advertising—so why wouldn’t marketing start there?

We didn’t build Hummingbirds to be “another influencer platform.”

Instead of chasing follower counts, we focus on bringing everyday people together to discover new products where they actually shop—Target runs, Costco hauls, Whole Foods staples.

Q3: how do you work with retail stores themselves to create compelling location-based content?

We love partnering directly with retail stores to bring their spaces to life in a way that feels fun and natural.

This summer, for example, we teamed up with Outlets at the Dells on a campaign called Red, White, and Retail Therapy, where creators took their followers along for a festive 4th of July shopping trip.

Tying campaigns to holidays or cultural moments gives creators an easy entry point, while still letting their personalities shine.

For the Dells, the focus was strong UGC, high engagement, and reels views—and leaning into that holiday theme made it all click.

When stores align their goals with what creators are already excited to share, that’s when location-based content feels the most authentic.

Q4: you mention generating content that reaches key audiences in key markets. can you share an example of a particularly successful hyperlocal campaign at a brick & mortar retailer?

One of my favorites was OLIPOP’s variety pack launch in Costco this summer.

We activated 37 creators across 24 cities, and in less than two weeks they drove 85K+ people in reach, 26K+ reel views, and 1.5K+ engagements.

But the real win? These creators weren’t just posting—they were showing their real Costco runs, making the campaign feel like a recommendation you’d get from a friend in the aisle.

For OLIPOP, it wasn’t just about content; it strengthened their relationship with Costco by proving customers cared about that product on-shelf.

Q5: working across so many cities, you must see different retail behaviors across markets. what regional differences do you notice in how local creators drive growth?

Every city has its own “retail personality.”

In some places, Target is the default grocery run. In others, it’s Costco or Whole Foods.

What we’ve consistently seen is that Midwest and Southeast cities—often overlooked—are full of everyday people who love sharing brand finds with friends and family, and those hyperlocal audiences pack real punch.

As we expand into Florida this year, we’re eager to see how creators there show up in their favorite retailers and bring that same authenticity to shelf-level awareness.

Q6: you're focused on people-powered marketing that drives real retail behavior. how do you see the relationship between social content and physical store success evolving in the next few years?

Word‑of‑mouth has always been the most trusted form of marketing—but now it comes to life on Instagram and TikTok.

Pairing social content from trusted locals with physical store launches is only becoming more powerful. The future looks like this: someone sees a friend share a new product on Stories, then picks it up the next time they’re at Costco or Target. It’s old‑school word‑of‑mouth—just scaled by technology and social media.

What’s more, despite their digital upbringing, younger generations aren’t abandoning physical stores:

This underscores a shift: social content drives awareness and excitement, but the physical store remains the conversion point. Brands that blend local, authentic storytelling with memorable in-store experiences will be the ones that win at shelf-level impact.

Q7: what’s one thing you wish more brands understood about hummingbirds?

We’re not here to replace influencers—we’re here to complement them.

Hummingbirds is about authenticity, scale, and shelf-level impact that feels like a friend’s recommendation, not an ad.

And the real bonus is that you’re acquiring new customers by working with creators, they are real people who have the opportunity to fall in love with your product and buy it repeatedly. No other ad channel can also be a lifetime customer.

We’re also not a simple self-serve platform. Our software and team fully manage campaigns—from the creative brief and selecting the right creators to organizing content and reporting results—because most small teams don’t have the bandwidth to wrangle all of that.

At the end of the day, we’re a partner for brands that want more than just content; they want measurable, real-world impact.

retail rapid-fire round

• fave retail store of all time? 

  • Anthropologie, the color & creativity is inspiring!

• retail center that gets it right? 

  • SoHo is my favorite retail area in NYC

• can’t live without retail tool?

  • Dare I say Hummingbirds 🥳

• retail metric you obsess over?

  • Shelf-level impact (are people buying in this store?)

• your signature style of merrymaking? 

  • Travel, exploring new coffee shops, and family time with my young kiddos & husband

• best retail advice you've ever received?

  • Your brand is how you make people feel

• what do you love about working in retail? 

  • It’s creative, fast-paced, and fun

connect with emily steele & hummingbirds

emily built hummingbirds on the truth that people still trust people they know the most. everyday voices creating in store impacts. if you’re done chasing vanity metrics, hummingbirds is the hyperlocal play orth knowing because it actually sells product.

🔗 link up here:

• follow emily & hummingbirds on linkedin

• follow hummingbirds on instagram

• learn more about how hummingbirds work

my hope is that brands wake up to the fact that their stores are not just sales floors, they are living, breathing studios. the lighting is already perfect, the stage is already set, and the actors (your customers) are already giving the kind of unscripted performances no marketing team could dream up.

the tragedy is pretending it does not exist.

because the future of omnichannel will not be coded in some back-end dashboard. it will be whispered from friend to friend, captured in fleeting stories, passed along in the language of trust.

and trust, inconveniently for marketers, has always been the one metric you cannot fake.