Time and attention tend to be unforgiving to internet personalities and the World Wide Web in general; what was popular yesterday is not popular today and will be forgotten tomorrow. It makes sense that influencers, streamers, and YouTubers try to establish brands that won't solely rely on the number of views and ad conversions from their content. But not many of them actually manage to make the brands work as relatively standalone independent income sources, let alone as reliable and trustworthy ones.

Turns out attention does not equal retention. Out of thousands of YouTuber/streamer products, the most memorable cases of big brand names or viral products are the Beast Burger chain, Feastables, Top of the Mornin’ Coffee, and PRIME Hydration. On the opposite side of the spectrum are either outright scams or purposeless products with little proof of their potency and legitimacy, like the RFLCT skincare line that was advertised to protect skin from blue light with no published research, and CryptoZoo — a promised NFT trading platform that took money with no follow-through. And, somewhere in the middle of the two polar opposites lies the infamous bath water of a "gamergirl".

There is something that unites all of these brands no matter how successful they may have been at their peak — they are temporary. If brands like Pampers or Chapstick became household names for all alternatives of the same type of product, then these influencer brands could be considered that household's kids room name — children grow up, interests change, and the brand fades away.

The outlier among the most recent influencer brands, however, right now is PRIME Hydration. Although the company was co-founded by two influencers with the majority of their audience being children and teenagers, the company's reach spreads from school hallways all the way to professional soccer leagues, wrestling, and mixed martial arts. PRIME's marketing seems noticeably untraditional — the bottled drink is so obviously placed in videos or becomes the sole topic of trends that it's funny and yet effective. PRIME could probably be described as a trendy product, the supreme of hydration solutions, the Kardashian of drinks — popular because it's popular, a ticking hype bomb, and the property bubble of viral products.

While the established sports hydration giant, Gatorade, prides itself on being the beverage choice of top athletes in entire leagues promoting excellence in performance and recovery, PRIME started off smaller focusing on its image, relevance, and appeal to a major audience of Gen Zers.  Starting off small but with a bang and at a rapid pace, PRIME is now the partner of Arsenal, Barcelona FC, and Bayern Munich, endorsed by top fighters in the Ultimate Fighting Championship, and sponsoring one of the top NASCAR racers and a rising soccer star.

For now, these partnerships and sponsorships appear to be promising and long-lasting, but the core question still stands — when the founders become inevitably irrelevant, what fate awaits PRIME? And how much time do the co-founders have to solidify and segregate PRIME's image from their relevance? 

Surprisingly and at the same time not, the influencer brothers Jake and Logan Paul have managed to stay relevant battling major controversies and coming out on top for years — a feat not many can be proud of. The unsurprising factor is that it makes sense, too — their content evolves together with them: from early acting careers for the Disney Channel to Vine's six-second skits, vlogs, and now huge events in boxing and wrestling.  Olajide Olatunji or KSI, the other co-founder of PRIME, also built his platform through many pivots — reaction videos, soccer video games, gaming, skits and vlogs, and a joint diverse influencer group known as Sidemen. Through all these years of producing various content, the target group for both didn't seem to change much — children, teenagers, and early-twenties young adults.

This pool of consumers, from a business standpoint, is judiciously highly attractive to any industry and its profitability. The younger generation interested in following a public figure will inescapably adopt their opinions or preferences — the very essence of influencer marketing. What makes it so potentially profitable is the fact that younger audiences tend to have more malleable predilections; it is easier for them to transition into other industries to become loyal consumers as they mature and their interests settle.

This peculiar example of influencer branding is arguably one of the best — it's loud, it's everywhere, it's fairly controversial, it's… rebellious. No matter what opinions the general public has of the co-founders of PRIME and influencers as a whole, when it comes to money it's a fair game, and a fantastically well-played one… at least for now.