Who is Gstaad Guy? If you have been following ASM for a while, you probably know that I’m interested in the economics of luxury brands and the skillsets of people who establish and build them. That makes Gstaad Guy—whose real name is kept under wraps—fascinating to me, because in 2023 he managed to 5x his prior income at Apple by making comic videos that caught the attention of Loro Piana and other luxury brands.
I didn’t realize the celebrity he had achieved until a TikTok video I made about him became one of the most viral ASM posts ever. At the time he had a much smaller following, and I thought I had stumbled upon a small but interesting trend. But then the video surpassed 625K views. Unfortunately, my celebrity didn’t hold up for a second video announcing his new jewelry line, Poubel (and I was really hoping to get one of those vicuna charms).
Back to Gstaad Guy’s success, here’s how it happened.
He tells stories through two characters he portrays in Instagram videos. Constance is a comically snobbish Briton, often found in the absurdly chic (and absurdly spelled) Swiss ski enclave of Gstaad, pronouncing everything either “fantastique” or “a la poubele” (meaning trash). His Americanized younger cousin is Colton, who is more into social media celebrities and cryptocurrencies. Together these two characters satirize the lives and manners of the ultra-wealthy, both young and not-so-young.
Constance came first, in a video Gstaad Guy made as a friendly parody of someone he knew who was in Gstaad at the time. It soon became a viral in-joke among Gstaad’s moneyed set (which is a significant percentage of the town’s population). With each new post, the Gstaad Guy ripple expanded. At first it was Gstaad residents who recognized in Constance people they knew. Then Colton brought in a younger demographic happy to laugh at themselves and their friends. The Instagram account is nearing a million followers—an impressive audience in terms of eyeballs, but even more so in terms of the net worth represented, a fact which brought Loro Piana calling.
It was a brilliant move by Piana, which perhaps a little unexpectedly chose to display a sense of humor about itself, one that paid off. By incorporating this iconic old world luxury brand into his content, Gstaad Guy made it cooler than it has ever been. Product lines based on the collaboration became the fastest-moving in the company’s history, selling out in a matter of hours.
A series of other high-end brands beat a path to Gstaad Guy’s door, so now Constance is always officially dressed in silent (or in Colton’s case, loud) luxury. La Petite Maison restaurants even have Constance and Colton drinks on the menu.
Not content to promote and collaborate with other brands, Gstaad Guy is now pouring his cachet into his own creation—a luxury jewelry label named Poubel. Gstaad Guy is the king of IYKYK, and naming a luxury brand “trash” is the ultimate inside joke. If you get it, you are part of the club.
With so many levels of irony at work, it should be no surprise that beneath the humor Gstaad Guy has a semi-serious goal: Getting people to take themselves less seriously while finding fun in the absurdities in life.
There is more, however, that we can learn from Gstaad Guy’s success. Here are my top takeaways:
- Side hustles work (remember, Gstaad Guy started creating his content while he was still working full time in tech).
- As Mark Twain said, “Write what you know.” Gstaad Guy clearly understands the world of wealth that he lampoons. And he has succeeded by staying in that niche.
- Know your audience. Brand alignment is Gstaad Guy’s key to monetization. The audience he reaches is precisely the one his advertisers want exposure to (and are therefore willing to pay for). When he first started working with Loro Piana, Gstaad Guy’s followers still numbered in
the low six figures, so if you have the right audience, it doesn’t have to be the most massive.
Given Gstaad Guy’s fictional, character-driven approach to humor, it’s not surprising that he cites Sasha Baron Cohen (the creator of Ali G and Borat) as an inspiration. And there are rumors that Constance and Colton, like Borat, will soon get their own feature-length film. When that happens, it will be interesting to see how big the ripples may become. Fantastique!