5×
The leaderboard changes depending on what you measure.
Hailey Bieber: 2,309 posts. Sandy Liang: 170 posts, and five times the engagement rate.
Plot Research / August 2026
Gap Collaboration Insights
The largest partnership created the most conversation. The smallest created the most intensity.
6
Collaborations
5,863
Creator posts
221.3M
Est. impressions
30,316
Comments analyzed (2 campaigns)
Three findings
0
Paid volume did not explain engagement.
The collaboration with zero paid posts led. The one with the most paid posts came last.
427
The best post in the portfolio was untagged.
427 followers, no handle, no hashtag, no ad disclosure. 283.7% engagement.
The investigation
Six collaborations, side by side.
All six collaborations, every metric side by side. There is no column where the same name sits at the top.
| Collaboration | Posts | Likes | Impressions | Comments | Shares | Avg. eng. | Paid |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hailey BieberScale leader | 2,309 | 6.68M | 94.1M | 69.8K | 224.6K | 0.67% | 3.9% |
| Summer Fridays | 1,479 | 1.65M | 37.3M | 26.5K | 77.4K | 0.31% | 22.5% |
| Victoria Beckham | 942 | 1.51M | 34.9M | 28.7K | 52.7K | 0.05%* | 1.1% |
| Coachella | 764 | 3.83M | 36.4M | 25.1K | 45.3K | 0.56% | 1.6% |
| The Brooklyn Circus | 199 | 107.9K | 5.6M | 2.6K | 11.2K | 0.05%* | 1.0% |
| Sandy LiangIntensity leader | 170 | 1.29M | 13.1M | 10.1K | 65.7K | 3.50% | 0.0% |
Data powered by Plot AI Video Social Listening
The two poles
Scale and intensity did not move together
Who created the most conversation
Hailey Bieber
2,309
Summer Fridays
1,479
Victoria Beckham
942
Coachella
764
The Brooklyn Circus
199
Sandy Liang
170
Creator posts captured (UGC)
Every post Plot detected mentioning the collaboration, whether or not the creator tagged Gap.
Who did the most with the least
Sandy Liang
2.95×
Coachella
1.95×
Hailey Bieber
1.13×
Victoria Beckham
0.62×
Summer Fridays
0.43×
The Brooklyn Circus
0.21×
Share of all likes ÷ share of all posts
Sandy Liang made 2.9% of the posts and earned 8.6% of the likes — 2.95× its share. The vertical line marks 1.0: earning exactly what post volume would predict.
What happened: Hailey Bieber occupied the scale corner; Sandy Liang occupied the intensity corner. Coachella sat between them. Last place on one chart is first place on the other.
Data powered by Plot AI Video Social Listening
Sentiment / a preview
The comment sections were harsher than the posts above them
Post-level sentiment on Hailey Bieber looked fine. The 28,538 comments underneath did not. This is a sample.
Comment analysis · Hailey Bieber15,094 classified · 17.3% negative
■ Negative 17.3%■ Everything else 82.7%
“Gap is truly true to its name when it comes to this Jean for curvy girls”
Sizing and fit · 106 likes
“The gapping is something I struggle with so bad”
Comfort and fit — 24.0% of sentiment mentions
“thank you for deinfluencing me”
Competitor recommendation · Abercrombie, Old Navy, Levi’s named unpaid
Both collaborations, 30,316 comments
The report carries the same layer for Sandy Liang, where the negativity was about access rather than product — and where no competitor was recommended anywhere in the sample.
Creators / a preview
Small unpaid creators drove the strongest result
On Sandy Liang, four of the seven top creators had fewer than 2,500 followers and produced 274,036 likes between them. The top post came from an account with 427 followers and never tagged Gap at all.
| Creator | Followers | Views | Likes | Comments | Shares | Eng. / follower | Content |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| @myjoiedevivre | 427 | 1.1M | 120.8K | 287 | 5,863 | 283.7% | Hoodie unboxing |
| @lalalooti | 239 | 52.8K | 4.2K | 21 | 198 | 215.1% | Try-on |
Inside the report
Nineteen pages, six chapters
03
Methodology
How Plot read 5,863 posts, tagged or not, and separated earned from paid.
04
Executive Summary
Three findings a campaign dashboard could not have surfaced.
05
The landscape
All six collaborations side by side, before any interpretation.
06
The investigation
Why scale and intensity produce two different winners.
07
Chapter one / Hailey Bieber
The portfolio’s largest conversation, and the sizing debate that drove it.
10
Chapter two / Sandy Liang
The smallest collaboration, and why each post travelled furthest.
15
Chapter three / Hailey Bieber vs Sandy Liang
Identical negative scores, entirely different problems underneath.
16
Chapter four / Paid vs Organic
What the one heavily paid partnership tells us about buying reach.
17
Chapter five / The Brooklyn Circus
A strong cultural story that creators had no way to enact.
18
Chapter six / Coachella and Victoria Beckham
An experience people could join, and a reputation that reached the earnings call.
19
Themes
The content creators actually made across all six collaborations.
Plot reads the video, not the hashtag.
A tagged-mentions report would have surfaced a few hundred of these 5,863 posts — and missed the one that worked best.