Captain Puffy has 1.5 million followers on Twitch. She knows how your brand can reach them

Captain Puffy needs help. She’s received a mysterious letter asking her to join a resistance group that’s working to take down Truth HQ, a fictional broadcasting center that controls the citizens of Oceania. Thankfully, Puffy has a few thousand members of her Twitch community tuned in live to solve puzzles, uncover links, and decipher encoded messages. “I’m glad you’re here,” she says to her chat after they follow the clues to discover a reboot code for subsystem access. “You got us in!”

This mission to destroy Truth HQ is part of a custom game designed by Twitch and Audible to promote a new audio drama release of George Orwell’s 1984. Over the course of two hours, Puffy and her livestream audience navigated a series of challenges—at one point even catching an imposter in the chat—to evade the Thought Police and free themselves from the clutches of Big Brother.

“That was one of my favorite brand collaborations I’ve done with Twitch,” Puffy says during an interview a few months later. “That was really well done. They completely coded a custom game, and my viewers had to watch my stream to give me clues and get further into the game. It was just really cool and a great way to get the next generation excited about reading.”

In her 13 years as a content creator, Captain Puffy has built a large and passionate fan base on Twitch, where she has 1.5 million followers. On her streams, she’ll bounce between gaming content to cooking, chatting, the occasional visit from her mom, and more. There have been times when she’s streamed for a massive audience of tens of thousands of fans. “That’s enough people to fill a stadium,” she says. “It’s just insane.” She’ll also work with some of the biggest brands in the world on collaborations that have helped support her as a full-time streamer and part-time computer science student in London, where she now lives.

But before she built her massive fan base or was gaming in front of tens of thousands around the world or helping take down fictional totalitarian governments, Captain Puffy was a shy kid in New York City who found gaming and streaming as a way to express herself.

Puffy’s interest in gaming started when she was little, playing her older brother’s games. In middle school, she started doing occasional livestreams of herself playing Minecraft. “I was a super quiet kid, like quite shy, quite reserved. I was basically a 40-year-old in a teenager’s body,” she remembers of her early days streaming. “So streaming helped me communicate more and gave me better social skills, and it was a safe space for me to express myself and make friends.”

Back then, her family saw gaming as a fun hobby for her. “It wasn’t seen as a career or job at all,” she says. "At that time, it was not really a sought-after career like it is now.”

She kept at it though, streaming to an ever-growing audience. By the time she was 16, she was also working an after-school job at a fast-food restaurant and realized that punching a clock at a traditional workplace wasn’t for her. “I knew that if I didn’t try to take streaming seriously, I was going to have to go to college and pursue some boring job,” she says.

Throughout the rest of high school and her teenage years, she focused on building her Twitch audience and becoming a better content creator.

“I was genuinely passionate about it,” she remembers. “I love video games, and the idea of making a career out of playing my favorite game in the world was just incredible. Also, I still have friends now over a decade later that I played Minecraft with when I was 12. It’s so special to have those connections from across the world—people who share the same passion.”

It’s a community she has been with as they’ve gone to prom or left for college or gotten engaged or had a kid. “I’ve grown up alongside them, and they’ve grown up alongside me,” she says. “It just shows how pure the relationship is that started when I was just a kid doing this as a hobby.”

Today, streaming is much bigger than it was when Captain Puffy started creating content with a borrowed laptop and a webcam as a teenager. More than 35 million viewers visit Twitch every day to chat, interact, and make their own entertainment together. And brands have recognized the value of authentically connecting with these millions of viewers live as they stream their favorite creators.

According to the recent From Ads to Zeitgeist research from Amazon Ads, 62% of consumers surveyed believe that advertising should enable creative interactions. Twitch has emerged as a place where brands can take part, and even add, to these online communities by creating shared experiences similar to Audible’s game with Puffy and her livestream audience.

“There’s just an immense payoff because it’s fun to watch and the creators are obviously having fun,” Puffy said about brand campaigns like Audible’s. “The viewers also know that the brands care enough to make it interesting and genuine for them. It’s almost like you’re having a board game night with a group of friends instead of asking you to click a link or buy X, Y, or Z.”

In the same From Ads to Zeitgeist research, 73% of global survey respondents said they appreciate advertising that entertains them. Seeking out brand collaborations that entertain her audience have always been a priority for Puffy. She’s done video game challenges with Skittles, giveaways with the gaming brand Razer, and even created her own drink with Coca-Cola.

“I’ve spoken to a lot of brands who are doing super cool things with creators trying to engage their next generation of consumers,” Puffy says. “They have realized that creators have a big reach—sometimes millions of fans—and these viewers tune into a stream every single day so they trust what the creator is saying. And I think for the fans, when they see brands give me the opportunity to pull off these crazy streams, they get to see something that’s fun and interesting.” And it’s not just about the size of the audience, but how deeply the viewers are engaged on Twitch. The service is interactive—after all, viewers are active participants—and they’ve forged meaningful relationships with the creators they hang out with live every day.

Looking ahead, Captain Puffy has even more exciting and new content ideas in mind. This month, she’ll be doing a Subathon in which she puts a camera in every room of her house: reality TV–style. She also plans on doing more IRL content along with the gaming streams she’s done for half her life.

Plus, there will always be the opportunity to join the resistance against Truth HQ.