1
The Problem

Doing It Manually Doesn't Scale

Media Labs runs a creator affiliate program (CAP) with over 2,500 in-house creators. That's not a small operation — that's an infrastructure problem. And for a long time, they were solving it the hard way.

Every campaign brief was built from scratch. Hooks, CTAs, camera angles, talking points — Hayden Coon, the brand manager running day-to-day ops, was piecing it together manually for every creator and every brand deal. The work added up fast. What should have been a streamlined handoff was eating hours every week.

Reporting wasn't better. Data lived across three separate platforms. To pull performance numbers, Hayden had to log into TikTok Shop analytics, cross-reference creator metrics from a second tool, then manually copy everything into a Google Sheet. Three platforms. One spreadsheet. A lot of copy-paste. Every performance update was a thirty-minute process.

The current floor is what the old ceiling used to be. And thanks to SFN, now it's just all the way up here because we can just handle so many more brands.

— Hayden Coon, Brand Manager, Media Labs
2
The Shift

What Changed When They Brought in SFN AI

The first thing that changed was the briefs. Instead of building them manually, Hayden now gets daily content ideas delivered through SFN AI — fully formed. Each idea comes with a hook, body, CTA, and camera angle already mapped out. Ready to send to creators immediately.

The second thing that changed was reporting. Instead of three platforms and a Google Sheet, everything lives in one SFN AI dashboard. When the team needs to share performance data, there's no export, no file attachment. Just a link.

Coaches could suddenly handle more brand deals — not because they hired more people, but because the admin that used to eat their time was gone.

That sounds simple. But when you're managing 2,500 creators across multiple brand deals, "just send a link" is the difference between a two-minute update and a thirty-minute manual process. It changes how fast decisions get made.

3
The Result

Scale Without Adding Headcount

Joe Papandrea has a clear thesis: you can't run a creator operation at this size manually. Every creator you add multiplies the complexity. If briefs, reporting, coaching, and content review are all manual, growth means more people — not more output per person.

SFN AI flipped that equation. The coaches who were spending hours on admin started spending that time on work that actually moves the needle: more brand deals, stronger creator relationships, higher content volume. The program didn't get more complicated as it grew. It got more efficient.

Your one stop creator shop.

— Joe Papandrea, Partnerships Manager, Media Labs

The team at Media Labs didn't change their creators or their brand partners to make this work. They changed the infrastructure underneath them.

6 to 8 hours per week might not sound massive on paper. But for a team managing one of the largest creator affiliate programs in the space, those hours were the difference between staying in reactive mode and actually building something.

If you want to scale, you gotta use SFN.

— Hayden Coon, Brand Manager, Media Labs