Lil Yachty Close Friends
Turning a private Instagram feature into a public cultural moment.
The Moment
Instagram needed to introduce new product capabilities without acting like a brand explaining itself. At the same time, it was feeling the pressure of a faster, younger social landscape. Any traditional launch would have been ignored — or worse, felt out of touch.
What I Did
I led the team that came up with the idea: use Lil Yachty's actual Close Friends list as the launch. By adding his entire audience of 13 million people to Close Friends, we turned a private feature into a lived experience.
I shaped the concept and led the rollout end to end — including working directly with Yachty on the very first post. We kicked things off with an intentionally messy, insider-feeling moment from Camp Flog Gnaw — the kind of thing you'd only ever share with friends. I even selected the image. The goal was simple: make it feel unmistakably real.
What Became Possible
People didn't feel marketed to. They felt let in. Fans flooded social media saying, "I'm in Lil Yachty's Close Friends," without realizing they were experiencing a product launch at all. The feature spread through culture the way Instagram actually works — by people discovering it for themselves.
