How Hailey Welch Built and Destroyed a Multi-Million Dollar Brand: A Marketing Analysis

Howdy, marketer! 

We need to talk about what happened with the Hawk Tuah Girl because this is one of the wildest marketing stories of the past year. 

Some say it's genius and others think of it as a cautionary tale.

There's a lot to learn here about riding viral moments, building a personal brand at lightning speed, and what happens when you move too fast without the right guardrails.

Hailey Welch went from complete obscurity to internet fame in June 2024 when a street interview clip went massively viral. 

Hailey actually tried to build something from her viral moment. 

She launched merchandise, started a podcast called "Talk Tuah," partnered with brands, and then made the move that would eventually become her downfall: launching a cryptocurrency called $HAWK.

The whole arc from viral moment to FBI investigation took less than a year.

Today's Treasure Trove

• Who is the Hawk Tuah Girl? 

• Who Was Buying Into This?

• The Marketing Playbook (And Where She Went Wrong)

• Alternative Strategies That Wouldn't Have Destroye …

• Wrap Up

Who is the Hawk Tuah Girl? 

Some stats:

Instagram: 2.2M followers

YouTube: 199K subscribers 

TikTok: 1.8M followers

For context, she built this audience in under a year, which is incredibly fast even by influencer standards.

After that initial viral moment, Hailey Welch moved quickly to capitalize on her sudden fame. Her team (yes, team) launched her podcast "Talk Tuah" in September 2024, partnering with Jake Paul's company, Betr. 

The show actually gained traction, featuring celebrity guests and discussing relationship topics, pop culture, and internet trends.

Who Was Buying Into This?

Hailey's core audience was primarily Gen Z and younger millennials, who spend significant time on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. 

People who understand internet culture, appreciate self-aware humor, and don't necessarily need someone to be "qualified" to listen to them talk. 

She leaned into the raunchy humor that made her famous in the first place. 

Her audience was looking for entertainment and relatability. She was positioned as "one of us" who happened to go viral.

This is actually a smart positioning for someone in her situation because it set realistic expectations and created parasocial relationships built on accessibility rather than aspiration.

The Marketing Playbook (And Where She Went Wrong)

The strategy here was textbook "strike while the iron is hot" creator economy moves, executed at an incredibly compressed timeline. 

1. Merchandise

This is Creator Monetization 101.
When you go viral, you immediately launch merch because your window of peak interest is short.
The hats and t-shirts with her catchphrase let people buy into the moment and signal that they were part of the joke.

2. Podcast

This was the move to establish legitimacy and create a sustainable content platform.
A viral moment gives you attention, but a podcast gives you a weekly touchpoint with your audience.
It's the difference between a spike and a plateau.

3. Public appearances and brand partnerships. 

She showed up at events, collaborated with other creators, and kept herself in the conversation.
This is about maintaining relevance when the algorithm moves on to the next viral moment. It was about omnichannel presence.

4. The cryptocurrency launch 

Here’s where her journey goes off the rails.

In December 2024, she launched $HAWK coin, a memecoin. The pitch was essentially "invest in me" packaged as a crypto token. 

And this marketing strategy was reckless.

The coin launched with massive hype. Her team promoted it heavily across her social channels. There were promises about utility, community, and future value. 

The initial market cap hit $500 million as fans rushed to buy in. 

And then, almost immediately, it crashed. 

The value dropped over 88% in just a few hours. People lost real money. A lot of it.

This is what's called a "rug pull" in crypto circles, where insiders dump their holdings and leave regular investors holding worthless tokens. It was investigated by the FBI and SEC, while the team denied any wrongdoings. 

From a marketing perspective, this was the nuclear option. 

She majorly burned through all the goodwill she'd built in a single day.

The marketing around the launch was tone-deaf. There was no education about the risks. There was no transparency about who held what percentage of tokens. There was no proper disclosure about the speculative nature of the investment. 

Instead, it was hyped like any other product launch, except the "product" was a financial instrument that could (and did) lose people real money.

When the crash happened, the response was even worse from a PR standpoint. There was initial silence, then defensive statements, then attempts to distance herself from responsibility. 

When you've attached your name to something that hurt your audience, you take responsibility and try to make it right. None of that happened effectively.

The FBI investigation that followed turned this from a marketing disaster into a legal nightmare. Now every article about her includes the words "fraud," "investigation," and "rug pull." 

That's irreparable brand damage. Even if she's never charged with anything, that association is permanent.

Alternative Strategies That Wouldn't Have Destroyed Everything

Hailey was actually building something sustainable before the crypto move. The podcast was working. The merchandise was selling. She had real audience engagement and growing social numbers. 

There was a legitimate path to becoming a long-term content creator with a seven-figure annual income from sponsorships, ad revenue, and product sales.

Here’s what she could have done instead of the crypto launch:

• Launch a lifestyle brand – straightforward, a bit raunchy, and everything her female audience wants to feel empowered.

• Dating advice content and products for her demographic – a sex and dating-themed product suite.

• Write a book about her experience going viral and navigating sudden fame – the good ol’ “become a coach” playbook.

• Partner with established brands as a spokesperson – brands selling to Gen Z would’ve loved to have her in their ads.

All of these would have been natural extensions of her brand and positioning.

Instead, she went from rising creator to cautionary tale.

Wrap Up

Moving fast is good, but moving too fast without infrastructure is dangerous. Viral fame creates opportunity, but it also creates pressure to monetize before the moment passes. 

The creator economy rewards speed, but it punishes recklessness even harder. One bad campaign, one ethical lapse, one poorly thought-out product launch can undo years of work.

The other lesson is about audience relationships. Your followers are real people who've given you their attention and, to some degree, their trust. When you monetize that relationship, you have a responsibility to be worthy of that trust. 

That's the real tragedy of the Hawk Tuah phenomenon.

✌️,

Tom from Marketer Gems