Inside a comedy creator’s journey to become a beauty influencer—and why T-Mobile sent him to Coachella

When Abdullah Zaidi set out to become a beauty influencer last November, he outlined five steps he needed to complete to earn that title. Within just a few days of embarking on his beauty influencing journey, he had already accomplished one of them: receiving a PR package from a beauty brand. A few months later, he fulfilled a second self-imposed requirement: being invited on an influencer trip. And, on Friday, Zaidi crossed off a third item on his “beauty influencer master plan” checklist when T-Mobile flew him out to Coachella with a branded wardrobe and, of course, a supply of skincare products. Key takeaways for creators How it happened Zaidi, in keeping with the comedy skits and humorous pop culture takes he has been uploading to TikTok since 2023, initially began documenting his efforts to become a beauty influencer as a joke. But after the first few videos in his “trying to become an influencer” series quickly amassed over 1 million views each, Zaidi decided to stick with it. He’s since become an unconventional darling of the beauty influencer space, receiving piles of PR packages from beauty and skincare brands such as Milk Makeup, The Ordinary, Cetaphil and Glow Recipe, among dozens of others. “I think that what I provide to brands from a marketing standpoint is different from what other beauty influencers provide,” Zaidi told Ad Age. “My content, I feel, is not going to convince someone to buy something because I’m pushing the benefits or talking about how amazing it is for your skin. My content is akin to just a giant, memorable billboard, so that the next time you’re in the store, you remember that video that that guy made in his room about XYZ product.” Indeed, Zaidi’s content concentrates on entertaining viewers far more than educating them about product benefits or ingredients—other than niacinamide, which has evolved into a catchphrase he blurts out in many of his videos as a parody of how influencers often name beauty products as they apply them in their “get ready with me” videos. Zaidi often skirts the lines of brand safety with his raunchy sense of humor, particularly when he’s unboxing packages from brands. For instance, after reading one of the benefits of Laneige’s facial toner was to “visibly firm” skin, he joked that “the camera is from the waist up.” In another video, after pulling an under-eye moisturizer out of a package he received from Sephora, he quipped, “Eye cream? Only for you, Sephora.” Zaidi’s racy humor hasn’t stopped brands from mailing him products, sponsoring his videos or sending him to music festivals. His satirical beauty influencer content has more than doubled his TikTok following (from roughly 560,000 to over 1.2 million) and propelled his Instagram audience from 40,000 to more than 600,000. “At one point, I was getting 4,000 or 5,000 new followers a day [on Instagram],” he said. It’s also allowed him to turn content creation into a full-time career. Zaidi, 24, said he took this semester off from college to direct all his attention to his beauty influencer journey. “I feel like when you have lightning in a bottle, it’s best to try and capitalize on it,” he added. Below, Zaidi discusses the evolution of his viral beauty influencer video series and what creators can take away from his explosive social media success. This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. What made you want to start your ‘trying to become a beauty influencer’ series? I was running errands downtown in the city [Toronto] on the first night that Taylor Swift was in town, near the place she was having the concert—the Rogers Centre—and I kind of just got caught up in the excitement. When I got home, I went on my phone and saw that there were so many beauty influencers that I had never heard of watching the concert in these suites or booths that brands had bought at the stadium. And with the Taylor Swift concert, everyone knew how much those tickets were. So, I was like, “Oh, wow, these influencers are really living the life.” I made a little video about how I wanted to be a beauty influencer that was just an extension of my normal content at the time, and I thought that was it—but then brands reached out, and they were like, “Oh, we want to send you something.” So, it was a natural part two, and then a natural part three, and it kind of spiraled from there. When did brands start reaching out about wanting to be part of your beauty influencer journey? It was right away, honestly. That first video did really well—I guess because the idea that influencers are living pretty fantastic lives is relatable to a lot of people. There were a lot of brands in the comments, and a lot of them ended up reaching out to me over DM. Milk Makeup was the first one that reached out and said they wanted to send me something, and it took off from there. What about sponsored social content? When did you start working with brands on that? I’d say opportunities started coming in within a few weeks, and then those videos started going out about a month in. I think those first few videos that came out really set the tone for other brands, and then everyone quickly kind of wanted to hop on the train because the series was going viral. My following almost doubled in less than three months. The holiday season was when things really kicked off, and it was kind of strange timing because a lot of people were out for the holidays—like, my agent at the time was on his break. So, everyone was kind of scrambling to figure out some last-minute things. Milk Makeup was adamant that they be the first to sponsor one of my videos, because they were the first brand that sent me stuff. And it was a pretty seamless video to make because the story was already there. Are there any other brands that have stood out to you? I judge a lot of them by the packages they send. When I first started, a lot of these packages were customized for me. There were little personalized notes and things in there, and those are the most memorable brands for me. Vaseline was one of them. Bell [a Canadian telecoms company] gave me a phone as part of theirs, which was huge. When the beauty thing started, I kind of just took every deal that came my way. But I’m very fortunate now to have built relationships with certain brands, and there’s brands that I’m on round two of working with. How do you determine which brands you want to work with? What’s your vetting process? For me, the content is the most important thing. Obviously, the financial element matters, and something I’ve struggled with is knowing how to value my platform and deciding what is worth my time or not. Sometimes these brands are playing with dollar amounts that would seem absurd to pass up. But when you have a large platform, there’s always a bigger fish. That’s my talent manager’s job—to basically make sure that we’re valuing me appropriately. But the content is the core thing. Can I make something that feels authentic and organic to me, something that is still funny, something that is still an extension of this series about me trying to be a beauty influencer? Does it feel like I’m too much of a sellout? I mean, sometimes that fits into the story. But, a lot of the time, I approach these brands with a content-first mentality, because I think that’s what connects with audiences. You have a pretty racy sense of humor across most of your videos. When you’re working with brands, are they usually on board with that, or do you usually get a lot of pushback from them? When I tell a brand what I’m about to say, there are sometimes a few things that have to get pulled out. But, for the most part, I feel like brands trust my understanding of my own audience and what works. Even when there’s stricter guidelines—when brands aren’t necessarily willing to take that risk, or we haven’t built that rapport—I’m still typically able to push back a little bit. Sometimes, brands will be like, “You have to say the name of the product in the first five seconds,” or they want to start the video with a stitch of another video. But I’m very adamant that the first few seconds, that hook, needs to be really strong. That’s something I’ll really push back on—I need those first few seconds to be really, really good. One of the overarching storylines in your beauty influencer series is your one-sided rivalry with Katie Fang, another beauty influencer. Can you talk about where that idea came from? Although I don’t typically consume beauty content, Katie Fang was a name I was familiar with, because her story is so unique. Her rise to the top was so quick, and people were able to see it happen in real time. So, there was no calculation there—I just kind of “prayed” to her in my original video where I said I wanted to be an influencer because that was a name I knew. And then she commented on that video, so I just began to run with it. When I worked with Cetaphil, it was their idea to lean into that Katie Fang rivalry, because she’s one of their ambassadors. I like to push the boundaries a little bit with brands, but that wasn’t a line that I was going to cross—I wasn’t going to talk about somebody else in a video for Cetaphil, let alone one of the faces of the brand. But having Katie Fang be part of it was their idea, so I went with it. What can creators take away from your success? I’d say there are two things. For people observing the beauty space at a macro level, I would say that I should be a testament that you don’t have to focus on perfection—the perfect skin care, the perfect routine. I feel like that is overemphasized in the beauty space. If there’s one thing that I could hopefully disrupt about the space, it would be to bring fun back into it. And building on that, for creators who want to enter the beauty space, try to find the reason for someone to watch your content. There are countless people that talk about products and are just gorgeous people, and that’s their whole bit. But I would say the value that you bring to the space should be apparent in your content, and it shouldn’t be replicable by anyone else. The second thing is that series do really well. People are more likely to follow you if you’re starting a series. For my first ever video that went viral [before the beauty influencer videos], I didn’t mean to, but I phrased it in a way that insinuated it would be a series. That was my second video ever, and from it going viral, I got 10,000 followers. But ultimately, I think that the more authentic that you can be to yourself, the more other people will see that. And hey, maybe the algorithm won’t pick it up. And maybe this isn’t for you—maybe that stroke of luck doesn’t happen for you in this space, and you have to find another space where it will happen. But the biggest thing is just keep trying and keep going, as long as you enjoy it. What does your skincare routine involve these days? I kind of treat skincare like a Subway order—you choose it when you’re young, and then you just feel this really strong allegiance to it for the rest of your life. And I’ve used the same skincare for, like, three years. I cleanse in the morning. Typically, it’s CeraVe cleanser. Sometimes it’s the foaming one, but sometimes I accidentally buy the other one. Then it’s the niacinamide serum from The Ordinary, then it’s CeraVe moisturizing lotion, and then it’s Laneige sunscreen. Sometimes I forget. Obviously, I don’t put the sunscreen on at night. But that’s it.

Inside a comedy creator’s journey to become a beauty influencer—and why T-Mobile sent him to Coachella

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