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Chris Reubel is a professional digital marketer turned full-time content creator and founder of Strawhat Sama, a viral gaming and lifestyle brand built around nostalgia, motivation, and creativity. Chris’ content blends gaming, anime, and real-life storytelling to inspire people to level up personally and professionally. Chris has collaborated with brands like FlexPro, Ewinracing, Warcodes, and RetroSnap to create authentic, high-performing content that connects culture, storytelling, and purpose.
Can you could tell us a little bit about your background in digital marketing, including what led you to seek this career path?
I started learning digital marketing from working in a bootcamp, basically. I wanted to get my marketing skills up to be able to basically reach more people on my social media accounts. And that led me to working in a digital bootcamp by the name of Seth Hymes Marketing Academy. So that’s where I learned how to do marketing pretty much on a general scale. I learned ads, SEO, basically website building, and then social media as well.
That led me to getting my first career job in PPC or basically running ads as a Google specialist. And to segue to the social media stuff, I was doing social media on the side while working with digital ad brands, basically. So that’s kind of the path that I took, I guess. Then from there, I’d started to figure out how to grow viral pages basically. So that’s kind of what led me to creating Strawhat_Sama and scaling it as kind of as far as I have basically.
Tell us a little bit about your favorite brand collaborations that you’ve had.
I work with about 10 brands up to now. Recently, I’m working with the brand, a couple brands that basically want to promote their games, the games that they have and that they’re kind of basically just creating out. And they contact me to basically get them more marketing, get them more exposure through introducing their game to my audience. So I work with them on a close basis, definitely communicating any type of deliverables or asks that they want to help showcase their product and their brand.
What are some steps that you’ve taken to grow Strawhat_Sama?
Originally it was just me doing gaming content, just my own personal gaming content. It turned into more of a general theme page where basically I would find viral content on the internet and basically kind of repurpose the content and add my own spin or likeliness to it. And I would basically do that a billion times over and it’s got me a lot of traction, a lot of success just from figuring out what’s viral, what’s trending, and adding my own spin to it and being able to post it as well.
Have you had any pitches from brands that just were not a good fit?
I get a lot of different pitches on … I don’t know. It’s been a reoccurring basis. I get them through DMs. I get a lot through emails that I’ll answer to. I answer to every pitch just because my whole thing is I want to learn something from whoever I work with. And I feel like I don’t really like saying no because it’s a missed opportunity for me to learn more about myself and about expertise or whatever people are doing in the market right now.
So I try to say yes to everything, but people, I’ll answer to them and then they won’t say anything. And I don’t know, it just kind of goes up in the ether somewhere. But yeah, I get a lot of pitches about working with different brands and they’ll be like, “Oh, I want to send you my product,” or, “My product is really great for your audience. Do you want to check it out?” And I’ll be like, “Sure, let’s do it.” And I don’t hear anything back. So I’m just like, okay, onto the next then.
Give us a little insight into what your daily life is like in terms of content creation and promoting your brand.
I try very hard to stick to a routine and a schedule. Sometimes life gets in the way and we don’t end up following the routines that we set out for ourselves. I’d say right now, a lot of what I do has to do with research. That’s kind of the first step of what my day is. I’ll go on TikTok. TikTok is kind of where I find basically what’s happening in the market or social media and everything. It’s kind of where all the trends are. For me, it’s just super present to figure out what’s going on.
So I’ll go on TikTok, my niche is gaming, so I look for a bunch of different viral gaming content, especially things that are trending right now or have done really well in the past. I’ll find content, I’ll basically save it, and then I’ll basically start trying to figure out how I can repurpose the content to be able to post it onto Instagram. Instagram is kind of like the home for where I do a lot of my business and where I find I have a lot of success basically.
So after I do the research and I kind of repurpose the content, I’ll post out the content on various Instagram pages. I have over, I think, six right now on Instagram and they have their connected Facebook pages as well too, and Threads accounts as well too. So that’ll kind of even up to maybe like 12 or 13 accounts that the content gets posted to overall basically. After I do that a couple times, I’ll be checking different brand websites that I’m part of, making sure that there aren’t any … There are brand jobs that I can apply to or accept to basically get more partnerships because that’s kind of the goal as well too.
Post content, do brand partnerships. And then at the end of that, I’m working with one brand right now where I’m selling their product. It’s like a gaming console, so I affiliate for them basically. And that’s another thing that I kind of tailor into my content as well. I’ll advertise their gaming console pretty much at the end of my content. And also I’ll do a daily game picture of whatever game that I’m playing that day for that console to let people know what the different features in the games are that are on the console. So that brings in some sales too as well. So that’s kind of, I guess, my threefold strategy, really. It’s just research, posts, and then brand deals basically.
Do you have any advice for aspiring content creators in terms of getting started and growing their follower base? Because you’ve laid out a very solid strategy. So I’m interested to hear if you have anything, any insight for people that want to follow your path.
I guess this is kind of what comes to mind. It’s kind of cliche, but it’s like you have to do something that you are passionate about to an extent because I think being in the long game, it’s more successful. It almost sounds counterintuitive to what I’m saying, but you have to pick something like a niche-wise or whatever you’re doing that you have interest in and you have to stick to it for a long term. And it should be something that you find interest in. And it obviously has potential to grow and has potential to work. It has an audience. You want to stick to that niche as long as possible.
So you’re giving yourself a chance to learn the niche, learn the audience, learn their pain points, learn what works, what doesn’t work so that you could basically become the top creator for whatever you do. You want to be a specialist in whatever you do, and it’s going to take a lot of time. I’ve been doing the gaming niche for, I think since 2016 or maybe 2015, I don’t know. But I’ve been doing it for a long time and I’m now kind of seeing the fruits of my labor, I would say after years of just trial and error and everything.
But I mean, you want to pick something that you’re passionate about and something you want to stick to for the long term and try not to redirect too much because that kind of just cuts your learning curve in half each time you start over. And I always tell everybody this, and this is kind of my thing, it’s like you want to put learning over results. You want to just be able to learn as much as you can. Don’t worry about the results. The results will come as a result of learning as much as you can about said niche or said specialty of whatever you’re doing.
What are some of your goals, going into 2026?
I definitely want to get more sales for the console than I’m doing for the affiliate. I want to get a ton more brand deals. I want to get a brand deal that … I think that the highest brand deal I’ve got so far is like a thousand. I would like to get to 2K. I would like to get to 5K, 10K. I want to get higher and higher brand deals. So I would like to get more partnerships as well as more sales for the affiliate that I’m doing as well and grow accounts too. So it’s like a kind of a threefold thing. I just want to improve, basically.
Andrew is the Head of Client Services for Intellifluence and has a background in communications. He is committed to helping brands get the most out of their campaigns and is the co-host of the Influencer Spotlight series.
