Behind the Screen: Rothy's Prioritizes Creator Content Across all Channels
Interview with Lacey White, Rothy's Director, Partnerships + Events
Behind the Screen is a series on Following Up, featuring the minds behind brand’s influencer + community strategies. We often forget that there is a person or team behind the paid partnerships we consume, so I wanted to bring these people in front of the camera for a change.
Where are you based?
I’m in LA, but Rothy’s team is spread across New York, LA and San Francisco. Rothy’s HQ is in San Francisco.
How long have you been working in the influencer/creator industry?
Since graduating from college in 2012, in some capacity, I’ve been in the space. It was so nascent at the time. When I graduated, social media was just coming on the scene in a real way. My first job was running a small consulting agency I started (with the help of my dad as a business advisor), helping brands navigate social media. I was living in Quogue, NY and reverse commuting into the city on weekends, which quickly made me realize it was time to move to the city full-time. I started at Vayner Media in 2013 which felt like getting an MBA in social media. I was on the paid media team which is pretty different from what I do now, although it has been enormously valuable in allowing me to understand the intersection between growth and brand and specifically how influencer and paid media work together. In October 2015, my best friend had been hired to run marketing at Rothy’s. She called me and told me to get ready to pitch them on their social needs because I was going to be her first hire.
That’s incredible! So you’ve been at Rothy’s for 10 years now. What was it like in the beginning?
Yes, since November 2015! In the early days, Rothy’s was basically run by an army of consultants, but technically, I was the third hire who wasn’t a founder. I started out focused solely on social, but because it was such a small and scrappy team, that quickly expanded.
Given my background at Vayner, I also pushed for us to start running paid ads. Since I was still technically a consultant at the time, I set up the Facebook Business Manager under my own company, Young Media. When our ad spend reached a certain threshold, I had to hand it over to Rothy’s because by then, it was too late to build an entirely new Business Manager from scratch.
I love how embedded you’ve been in the business from the beginning. How has your role evolved since then, especially as it’s expanded into brand marketing, touching influencer, events, and other partnerships?
It was a natural progression from being on the social team to thinking about creators with influence and strong social presence we should collaborate with. Around 2016, I started doing cold outreach to influencers. I still have some hilarious email threads offering The Point and The Flat, the only two silhouettes we had at the time, along with links to our three press hits. The responses were a mixed bag: some ignored it, some passed, and a few said yes. A couple even replied over a year later saying the email had been buried and they’d love to accept the offer now.
And this was just gifting outreach?
Yes, this was just gifting. We didn’t really put budget behind influencer until 2018. As the brand has evolved, we’ve been able to partner with creators who feel more aligned with who we are now.
Thinking about your cold outreach gifting in the early days, were there any influencers or talent that you were thrilled to see an organic post from?
Reese Witherspoon was one of them, and I remember that she posted us on Snapchat.. Another standout moment was with Gwyneth Paltrow. In 2016, we created a custom shoe for her at Goop Market, and it sold out completely. Recently, we participated in the Breakthrough Prize in LA, which is like the Oscars for science. We had a shoe bar and were gifting shoes as people left, and Gwyneth Paltrow was one of them. She’s just as lovely as you’d imagine! I asked if she remembered meeting Stephen and Roth at Goop Market, and she said yes! She was so sweet about it. It was a wonderful full-circle moment.
With these full-circle moments, how has the strategy evolved?
There have been so many phases. We build a playbook that works beautifully, but each year we have to reinvent it due to the rapid pace of this industry. Our current strategy has evolved thanks to our CMO, Jamie Gersch, who recognized our success but pushed for more cohesion across all channels. For example, when we host an event, we think about how assets will appear across our website, email, social, and paid media. This approach has helped make our events more visible and consistent. The same goes for our creator program, which we run with many micro-influencers under a ‘direct’ model. My colleague Michael manages this in-house program, doing the work of an agency, but we also collaborate with an agency to scale and ensure we meet the volume needed across all social channels.
Is the ownership of the strategy divided between the agency for scaling and in-house for relationship building?
Yes and no. Our internal team focuses on building relationships, inviting VIPs to events and creating high-touch interactions, but they still engage with all creators. The agency handles scale, as we couldn’t manage the volume of content ourselves. We’re now working with many more assets from creators than we used to. The content we get from creators via the agency supports our Omni Media team, who use it for TikTok and Instagram whitelisting or allow-listing. The size of the creator’s audience isn’t as important because we’re putting spend behind it and if it’s a strong asset, it will scale, regardless of the creator’s following. We also often dark post this content, targeting specific feeds.
Given the needs of the Omnimedia team, is the briefing for these assets very prescriptive?
Yes, exactly. For this strategy, the briefing is very detailed because the objective is to create content specifically tailored for conversion. My personal philosophy on influencer marketing is that you get the best content when you don’t over-brief, but this approach is different. Here, we need content that’s designed to perform, so we focus on all the unsexy details. On the brand side, our team works with a more flexible approach. It's about striking a balance. We set clear guardrails, but leave plenty of room for creative interpretation.
I love hearing how you think about influencers serving different purposes across channels. A lot of brands think one brief works for both brand and paid needs, but that’s not always the case.
Exactly. If I put myself in the influencer’s shoes, I wouldn’t want to post an asset hammering a product that hard. The influencers are building audiences too. Everyone has their own personal brand to manage in a way.
Agreed! Consumers are smart and can read right through it.
On the flip side, I was pulling content examples for a deck yesterday, and some of the influencer videos we’re running in ads are getting 5 to 6 million views thanks to the paid spend behind them. For smaller creators just starting out on TikTok, allowing a brand to use their content in ads can be a huge opportunity to grow and get noticed by other brands.
One great example is
, known as @natgawd on social and the creator of The Big Silly Trivia Game. Our relationship started organically. She attended an event we hosted with Melanie Masarin at Ghia House in LA, where we gifted her shoes. A couple of months later, she posted a TikTok wearing our Mary Janes that went viral and caused the shoe to sell out. We purchased that asset, ran it in paid media, and the shoe sold out again. We reconnected with Natalie, and since then, have partnered with her in so many ways. She became an ambassador, co-hosted a Big Silly Trivia event with us, and created a "Mary Jane Marathon" video with three friends in a Sex and the City-style concept. Working with her has been a direct partnership without an agent, and she’s been such a fun and amazing collaborator. Since then, Natalie has had so many brands reaching out to work with her, and she told us that was really a "launch" moment for her content creation with brands. Her video was also a lightbulb moment for our team to double down on TikTok creators in our program.
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So you are seeing success on TikTok with creators over Instagram or does it feel equal?
I think the scale on Meta is still higher, but TikTok is absolutely working for us. The cool thing is that our strategy there, coupled with some new footwear silhouettes, has brought our demographic age down considerably.
I love that your approach to paid partnerships focuses more on organic content and genuine brand affinity, regardless of platform.
Absolutely. That’s a key part of our ecosystem, and it's where ShopMy has been incredibly valuable.
, the founder, shared a great piece of advice with us: start with gifting and see who accepts. If they do, it’s a sign they’re genuinely interested in the brand. If they pass, that’s also useful insight. It doesn’t mean you never reach out again, but gifting helps reveal who’s truly excited to engage with your product. From there, we’re able to identify who might be a strong fit for paid partnerships or event invitations.So are you prioritizing Shopmy for your affiliate strategy?
We have a separate team who runs affiliate. We think about Shopmy more through the brand lens which I know is a funny take. It is a mix of conversion and brand, but because the names on Shopmy are so strong from a brand point of view, it has been a really nice way to get people who we would already want to be approaching for other partnerships talking about us. LTK actually still drives more volume for us, but we aren’t working as closely on the brand side with them. The thing I love about Shopmy is how transparent their data is: who is talking about you, who is driving sales for you, and it makes the mechanics of seeding so much easier. Once you connect your Shopify, you can simply send an influencer a gifting lookbook, and from there they place the order directly by rather than our team having to collect sizes + addresses.
Do you think communication through ShopMy still feels personal, especially with so many brands using it to reach out?
Yes and no. I’m actually on ShopMy as a creator for my Substack, partly to understand how it works from the other side. You get a range of messages, some of which can feel generic, especially around sales. Compared to other affiliate platforms like LTK, it does feel slightly more personal. While it may not be as tailored as a direct email, it strikes a good balance between personalization and scalability, which makes it a valuable tool from a brand perspective.
When you think about events with influencers, are many of them co-hosted or in partnership with an influencer?
At some point, we shifted to a host model for our events. We realized that when influencers bring a group of friends or host a party themselves, the energy feels more authentic and fun. This model has been a game-changer for us. We identify a host, target a specific neighborhood, and choose a venue that fits the vibe. For example, we recently hosted an event in Pasadena with Pia Baroncini, where she brought her friends and we supplemented with our community. Pia hosted at her house, which made it feel personal. Her husband and a team cooked the meal, and they designed the tablescape themselves—it was a true reflection of them.
A few weeks ago, we hosted our first event in Paris to celebrate the Rothy’s popup at Le Bon Marché. Louise Follain, a model and founder of the art magazine Combo, hosted an incredible dinner at Maison Rocher, a venue that’s typically reserved for luxury brands like Hermes and LVMH. The venue owner loved our brand’s values and agreed to host us. We pre-dressed everyone in shoes of their choosing, so we get social buzz and assets from the event. These events not only help us build relationships, but they also provide social proof and generate organic buzz. Plus, we often meet people who we later we later partner with and fold into our friends of the brand community.
How many of these events are you producing per year with influencers?
With our ambassador program, we aim to host about four events per year. In addition, we have smaller, "ambassador light" moments with creators. For example, this weekend we’re hosting an event with
at our Soho store. This year, we’re also testing into Substack with creators like Erika, who have such loyal audiences. I believe that what will set creators apart in the next few years are those who engage with their communities offline. Erika does this exceptionally well with EV Salon, and Natalie does the same thing with Big Silly Trivia.Can you define what ambassador means at Rothy's, as it can vary across brands?
I’m really proud of our ambassador program, which we launched in 2022. We wanted long-term, meaningful partnerships rather than just one-off posts. The goal is to build relationships and create a consistent presence where ambassadors regularly talk about Rothy’s, making them feel like true friends of the brand. Our first ambassadors were Marlien Rentmeester, Cleo Wade, and Babba Rivera.
Our program is built around our brand wrapper, "Possibility," which was developed under the leadership of our CMO, Jamie Gersch. It reflects our ethos of challenging the status quo—just as Roth and Stephen questioned how shoes were traditionally made and innovated with 3D knitting and recycled materials. That "anything is possible" mentality is something we want to carry through to our consumers.
The women we work with are those doing it all, like
, who inspired me at our recent lunch together. She’s a mom of two, the creative director at LPA, runs Baroncini Olive Oil, the CMO of her husband’s cashmere brand Ghiaia Cashmer, and has grown an incredibly loyal social following on her own channels. That’s a perfect example of someone who embodies the spirit of possibility.You run so many different programs with various tiers of creators. How do you measure success?
I’d break it down into three key pillars:
Paid Media/Allow Listing: We look at the volume we’re driving, the conversion rate, the efficiency of the creative, and how well it scales.
Seeding: Here, we measure the acceptance rate, the excitement around receiving the product, organic stories and mentions, impressions, buzz, and the overall quality of the content. I credit our social team for reposting much of the organic content, which has helped humanize the brand.
Events: The first measure is the quality of the content we get back for our team to use. The second is the social buzz—impressions and engagement. We also track how our team has been able to repurpose that content across paid media, email, and other channels.
You’ve already shared so many amazing examples, but can you share a few partnerships that you are proud of?
For several consecutive years we had a presence at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party, gifting party guests shoes as they departed the party. It was an amazing way to get our shoes on tired, hurting celebrity feet in an organic way. I'll never forget this post from Jennifer Coolidge, right on the heels of her second season of White Lotus. It was the perfect moment! All entirely organic. Not a dollar was spent on this!
And I can’t not mention, our coolest collaboration ever (Rothy's x Evian in August 2022). We made a tennis collection using Evian bottles collected from the previous year's evian bottles, and debuted it at a party at Rockefeller Plaza during the US Open. It was one of our best, with an amazing mix of athletes and tennis talent plus some stars like Emrata.
Now for a few final, fun questions:
Favorite product from Rothy's?
Honestly, our lightweight tote. I got this one from a collaboration with Vogue a few years ago and it’s still one that I use on a daily basis. I love the way
styled it in her Substack.
Screenshot from Laure’s Substack, Earl Earl
Book, podcast or music on your morning commute? (can you link to the book, podcast or song/playlist?)
I’m currently listening to The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins on audible (a little late to the party, I know). I also love the podcast Fashion People by Lauren Sherman of Puck. Last but not least,
has a great podcast episode with who writes the popular substack . I loved it.
If you were on the other side of the business as an influencer yourself, what brand(s) would you want to partner with?
Great question. I’ve recently become enamored with Perfumehead, a luxury fragrance brand out of LA. It is “scent inspired by cinema” and an ode to LA, although the scents are made in France. I think as an influencer, it would be a really sexy brand to work with and you could really get creative. I also love clean beauty and skincare, so I think Westman Atelier or RŌZ Hair would all be really fun. I’d try to choose brands whose values align with mine rather than those who will cut the biggest check. Both Westman Atelier and RŌZ are making waves in the clean beauty space and leading the sustainability charge within beauty, which is really wasteful. I also think a cute baby brand would be fun, since I love nothing more than dressing my daughter up and taking way too many pictures.
Can you also share the last item you bought based off of an influencer's post and who the influencer was?
Admittedly, too many to count. It’s an occupational hazard, I guess you could say! The last item I purchased was this bag from Loeffler Randal, after reading about it from
‘s Substack. I have to say, it is living up the hype! It is the dream airport workhorse with so many pockets. I just packed for a weekend in Cabo (including snacks and toys for our daughter on the plane…) and it fit everything and zipped.Separately, I buy a lot of links from
. I think she’s adorable and she lives in LA (same as me) and I really like her taste. I also worked with an incredible stylist this year (who, by the way, has an amazing Substack and I shop all of her lists), and she really validated this for me. She said, influencers are doing a lot of the work for you. Don’t discredit them. If they’re genuine, they’re curating the best of the best, testing for quality, fit, and price and flagging when something isn’t right. So, as long as you are careful about who you follow (and know how to spot when something is clearly only paid and disingenuous), I think it can be a great tool for discovery. Amen to that.
You can stay in touch with
on Substack & if you aren’t already, give Rothy’s a follow! Highly recommend the Clogs and Mary Jane - comfiest travel shoe out there.
The Buckle Clog is quite literally the best clog out there 😍 loved this piece!!!
Love Rothy's influencer strategy! Great interview.