Savannah Blewden, (“call me Sav!”), is Dunedin’s hottest influencer right now. On TikTok, her biggest platform, she sports nearly 40k followers and 4.5 million likes. Being online, making videos, and portraying her life so openly and visually is just something she’s “always kinda done”, she explained to Critic Te Ārohi. Before TikTok, it was random vlogs in her childhood, or a ‘Sustainable Sav’ Instagram account in year nine and ten. Sav’s heart has always beat in time with the blink of that red recording light.
Sav aims to post once a day on TikTok and Instagram. She constantly films throughout the day, spending over an hour focused on perfecting each and every video – editing and doing voice overs. She posts her YouTube videos less often, given they’re even more time consuming. Despite her success now, she’s only been in the influencer game for a couple years at this point. “It hasn’t been long at all when I think about it,” she reflected. “It’s crazy how much has changed.”
“Gaf” Mindset
When COVID-19 shut the world down, TikTok was beginning to blow up. Sav had always been “quite a sharer”, so it was natural that her and her friends would find shooting vlogs and editing them together an entertaining way to get through lockdown – stuck in their physical bubbles, but united in the digital. She just thought it was good fun to post about her life, and that’s pretty much what she did. It’s what she’d always done – but by time it was her final year at high school, Sav explained that she’d proudly embraced the “gaf” mindset. Given she was jetting off to university soon, Sav reckoned she was just going to post whatever she wanted – on her own terms.
“Everyone was very supportive and they thought it was cool,” Sav recalls, speaking to the initial reactions she received as she began to do more content creation. Her whānau, especially her mum, always championed her drive to make content. She can’t actually recall any nasty comments from anyone – including her peers. At the time though, nothing had really taken off. “It was never like, there were these crazy changes happening,” she reveals. Instead, everyone just assumed it was Sav off “doing her thing.” Being an “influencer” was never something she did on purpose – she never made an effort to go viral. To her, it was all just “fun”.
However, the more fun she had with content creation, the more seriously others took her online presence. Sav dipped her toes in the water with a few user generated content deals first – paid partnerships where a brand hires a content creator to produce authentic, relatable content for marketing purposes. She spent her final summer before moving to uni developing her content skills, pretty elated with how things were organically developing until she opened her emails on an average day in December 2024 and had her “craziest moment ever”. There, buried among all the other random messages and requests filling her inbox, was an offer for her very own athlete code with Gymshark. “It was mindblowing for me,” she shared. “I’ve always been Gymshark obsessed [...] ever since I started going to the gym, it was like my brand – everyone knew.” At first, Sav could only believe that it was a scam. She had less than ten thousand followers at the time, and was a small New Zealander creator being contacted by a multi-million dollar UK company. “There was a full week where I couldn’t figure out if it was real,” she laughs. “I was emailing them back and forth, but because of the time difference I would [have to] wake up in the middle of the night to try and get a moment where we could talk.” The Gymshark deal was a “big one” for Sav – one of her first moments when she would have one of those “what is this life sorta thing” realisations.
“People have started to understand that this is a job for me, and everyone needs to make money.”
Her following has been steadily increasing since this pivotal moment. Now, social media is her main form of income. Despite working throughout high school in cafes, pajama stores and as a math tutor, she just doesn’t have “time to do another job” these days. Admitting that she probably spends more time working on her content than uni (about a “65/35 split”), she shares that social media is the same commitment as a full-time job for her. To make it work, she often skips lectures to make time for pressing social media and brand deal deadlines, reckoning it’s more efficient to just watch them back on 2x speed later. “People may not get my schedule, but it’s what works for me,” she concluded.
Sav Meets Selwyn and A Lack Of Sad Cowboys
Armed with a Gymshark code in her Insta bio and her accounts gaining traction, it was time for Sav to take the leap down South for uni. It was the content she made during her move that saw a “big and rapid increase” to her followership, and she attributed this to students at other universities being “intrigued about what it's like being in Dunedin [...] and also lots of year thirteens wanna see what it's gonna be like next year.” She’d certainly found her niche.
Sav attended Selwyn College, opting to study a Bachelor of Commerce, majoring in Finance and a Bachelor of Science. She’s “always loved maths,” “especially calculus”, being a STEM girl pretty much her whole life. While she continues to adore Finance, Sav decided to scrap the Science degree, pretty keen on the idea of shortening her degree by an extra year. Initially in some denial that anyone already knew of her, that quickly melted away when she started “whipping the phone out in the dining hall.” She laughs when talking about comparing the usual stalk of someone’s Insta that might extend to their tagged photos to her own online presence. “Like, someone could stalk me for three days and still be there finding out more information about me. People could find out whatever they wanted.”
Despite Selwyn having a “bad reputation of being cultish [and] very up themselves”, Sav had nothing bad to say about her time there. She got a “really nice vibe from it” and the location was a massive plus. “I honestly didn’t know if I would get into it, it’s very competitive to get into,” she says. “But I got in and I was very happy.” Sav revealed that not many people from her high school came down to Dunedin, so she ended up needing to put herself out there once again – something that came naturally to her.
After a while at Selwyn, despite her friends being too polite to mention it sooner, they admitted they’d known who she was all along. Pretty meta. Sav’s friendships are undoubtedly a cornerstone of her life down in Ōtepoti. She feels “very lucky” to have her close friends and her circle. “They get in videos and it’s just so casual,” she shared. “I’m so grateful”. Sav does ponder how her time in halls would have gone if she wasn’t so transparent about her life, especially as a flourishing influencer. Sav understands if people resented her for it as well, adding that she “would be jealous if I was looking at this girl getting sent free makeup and stuff.”
With her follower count growing exponentially due to her uni content, more brands began approaching her. “I was feeling a little out of my depth,” she admitted to Critic – all while bearing the weight of adjusting to university life at the time. She was living in a hall miles away from home, “trying to make friends, trying to be social, trying to learn how uni works”, and brands were beginning to ask her questions that she “didn't know how to answer”. Sav was faced with navigating this whole process herself, which she described as very “foreign”. Brands would ask her to send a concept, and Sav describes herself Googling it all “I was like, ‘what is that?’ [...] It was very much learn as you go.” Questions of rates, concepts and timelines began to inundate her, and she described a trip back home to Auckland during her first midsem break where she and her mum realised that her socials had become much more than a hobby. She needed a helping hand in the influencing world.
It was at this point that Sav ended up in a meeting with her current agency, No Sad Cowboys. No Sad Cowboys manage the likes of Rachel Taylor (another prominent Otago-based influencer), Win Wolf and Kylee De Thier. Sav had already been approached by a few agencies that had been scouting influencers, but she hadn’t really gelled with any before. However, Sav “really liked the vibe” at No Sad Cowboys, and ended up signing with them. Nowadays, most brands that want to work with Sav approach her manager first, who then passes on the brief to Sav. She then writes up a concept explaining her plan for the video, even down to the specifics of what exact shots will be in her videos, and any claims made about the product. Once Sav sends through her concept for the video, it’ll either be accepted, or the brand will come back with changes. “Sometimes you go back and forth quite a bit,” she laughed. When the concept is accepted, Sav will film and edit the video, send through a draft, and the brand will either accept it or request changes. When the video is finally good to go, the brand will tell Sav their expectations for the posting timeframe, and up it will go.
Despite all the work she does hands on, Sav described herself as feeling “lucky” that her agency does the "admin backside”, signing contracts and understanding the legality of advertising – it’s one less thing to worry about when so much of her time is already spent handling emails, invoices and taxes. On top of that, she also works directly with some brands without her agency's management if she feels it’s easier. Plus – there’s a full time degree on top of that. Gone are the days of a spontaneous post to socials.
Dunedin is a “Bubble”: “I do notice a lot of looks or whispers…”
Describing Dunedin as a “bubble”, Sav isn’t blind (or deaf) to the fact that most people know who she is, given the University is basically her target demographic online. “I’m aware that most people walking down the road have probably seen my face before, and I do notice a lot of looks or whispers,” she recalled. But Sav doesn’t feel that the visibility is something that really gets to her head – “I post my life online, what else can I expect? Of course people are going to do a double take. I would too.”
However, despite feeling people watching her, not many people tend to come up to her on the day-to-day. Sav estimated that about 85% of the in person interactions she has with people who know of her are when people are drunk and “lose their filter”. Despite this, she “obviously” still goes out and has fun. “I get drunk. I mean, I am in Dunedin,” she continued. She doesn’t want her job taking away from her uni experience, but she does admit that she has to keep in mind the optics of her conduct in public. “Like, I can’t be out here doing astronomical things in public,” she explained. It can be difficult sometimes, and she reckons that her nights out are “quite different to the average person”, but she also endeavors to “not to deep it that much.” That’s especially true when considering the prevalent drinking and party culture in Dunners, a fact that Sav is well aware of. “No one can blame me because everyone's probably doing it tenfold,” she exclaimed, smiling slyly. To Sav, a social life is just as important as essential as going to the gym or lectures.
When she’s out and about at night, people often come up to her asking for photos. She gets a lot of “Tiktok Girl”, but she doesn’t mind. “That’s my slogan around Dunedin,” she laughed. “I always think it's so funny, and my friends are kinda used to it by now,” she revealed. In fact, her friends are so in step with Sav’s life that they even offer to hold the phone for the pictures. “It’s like a routine,” she recognised, smiling to Critic as she explained her answer.
Sav reckoned that the vast majority of in person interactions are positive. “People are very, very nice – I’ve had such beautiful conversations with people.” While she’s “sure people are saying what they want behind my back and all that stuff”, she focuses on the people in front of her. She attributes the general positivity she receives as at least in part being due to being “quite realistic online [...] It’s not like I’m always posting myself at the peak of everything, always put together. I think I’m always honest,” she says. “People can relate, so they like to come up and chat [...] people think I’m not that scary to approach.”
During the day (and without liquid courage), the public aren’t always so forward. “It’s more looks or whispers,” she described. “Or, if there's a group of people walking towards me having a conversation, they’ll stop talking.” Again, it’s not something that bothers her – she isn’t the type to get in her head about things. “Everyone who exposes themselves online this much has to take everything with a pinch of salt and know that there is going to be backlash,” she said openly, shrugging. She’s aware that she’s no doubt circulating in group chats, being well aware of the share count on her posts. However, she’s not in the business of “trying to please everyone”, and there's just “nothing you can do about what people will say.”
Even in the online sphere, Sav describes herself as “quite lucky” and that “it’s not that bad” in terms of the negativity she has been faced with. While Sav does get the odd mean or weird comment, she thinks she’s got it fairly easy compared to some other creators. She has also occasionally graced the infamous Castle26 Facebook page – from people asking where she lived, to anon accounts claiming that they’d found a breatha’s ID in Savannah Blewden’s bedroom – and of course wanted a box on return. “Such a lie,” she said, shaking her head. It’s just “students being dumb.”
She puts the minimal number of hate comments down to being a “physical person in Dunedin”. It’s a lot easier to post a mean comment if you don’t have Sav sitting in front of you in your Finance lecture the next day. She added that “95% of the hate comments come from faceless accounts with no names and no followers”. For the haters putting in that much effort, “the onus is on them”. “They've gone out of their way to spread negativity.”
“I’m lucky that I don’t really let things get to me much.”
Relationships, Relationships, Relationships! “Like, what dating life?”
“I was going through these questions with my friends and we were laughing,” she admits to Critic, smiling. Having a boyfriend is not really on the cards for Sav. Dating is something that she reckons is impacted by her social media presence, but she “can’t speak for other people” in terms of how it affects their perception of her. Sav does think it must impact “expectations” people have, given she shares so much of her life online. “They kind of know who I am [already],” she explained. While guys still do approach her, she thinks that the motivation is more “haha, there’s TikTok Girl” and to grab a photo, as opposed to wanting to genuinely spin a yarn. “Like, it’s more of a joke,” she explained to Critic, not seeming phased.
Sav also admitted that she does wonder how her uni experience would have been different if she wasn’t an influencer, but concluded that she “genuinely just wouldn’t have time for a boyfriend”, and that it’s simply not something she’s after right now anyways. “No part of me needs that in my life [...] I’m pretty content with my friends.”
Even if she was looking for love, Sav is a hard woman to get in comms with. She hasn’t added anyone on Snapchat in over a year, despite her friends worrying that there may be “hotties in there”. She also can’t see who likes her stories, which ruins a D1 flirting strategy. Sav has “always been adamant” that she doesn’t want to meet someone online anyways, dissing Snapchat smalltalk and DM convos. “Everyone falls into that, and it's such a routine [...] I think there should be more, and it should be more exciting,” she justified. If Sav were to meet anyone, she reckoned it’d definitely be face-to-face. However, given how many people know of her already, Sav thinks it slims the chances of a meet cute “down even further.”
Online Versus Reality! “I can just whip out my phone and film, it's not a production!”
Authenticity is front-of-mind for Sav, and she thinks it can get to the point where she is actually “too honest”. She wonders if sometimes she shares a “bit too much” about herself, but she hopes that people who know her personally would say she’s the same as how she presents herself online. “It makes it so much easier to keep this thing up when you’re not putting on a show,” she admitted. “I can just whip out my phone and film, and it's not a production [...] It’s me documenting my life.”
Being a “sharer” does have its worries though, and she had many people last year when she was in halls asking where she lived. Even though she thought it was “extremely obvious”, she never outwardly said that she went to Selwyn. While it’s been drilled into her not to post outside her flat or places she frequents, Sav thinks that it’s “unique” that every aspect of her life is known. Her gym, papers and schedule is all public knowledge for her followers. She also knew that people must see her walking into her flat, so some people are aware of where she lives. She can’t really do anything about the fact that she’ll be seen walking into her flat. “I can’t be naive about that,” she said calmly. Occasionally, people will yell out of their cars when they drive past too – reminding her how watchful eyes are on her, all while she’s living her normal routine. While she tries not to let it rattle her, “it is something that weighs on my mind in terms of safety”.
Despite her resilience, Sav did reveal that there will be days where it’s “all really getting to me” and that she “really can’t face it right now”. She’s just accepted that’s the way her life is: “I can’t just go to the supermarket, and get my stuff, and go home,” she said matter-of-factly. For Sav, there is always an extra element of who she will see, and more importantly, who will see her. She does feel like she’s accepted that people might see her on a bad day, since they’re looking “no matter what I do, or where I go.” Despite that, she’s not afraid to stroll out of the house “looking like a wreck” – “dirty hair, in trackpants, I don’t care,” she laughed.
“No matter how bad I feel, I have to just keep going.”
Sometimes it’s also hard for Sav to not compare herself to those around her, hearing that uni is meant to be the “best” time of your life, or the most relaxing. Her experience has been “quite different”. Instead, her days are practically scheduled to the half-hour. While Sav’s “never been good at relaxing”, she loves managing her time and feeling busy with this level of pressure, plus she also has dusty Sundays where she wants to “just hang around and lie in bed with my friends”. But she has to be up and editing, or in the library. “No matter how bad I feel, I have to just keep going.”
Her job is a constant. She doesn’t just get to “sit down and work for eight hours” and then clock off. Instead, she never really switches off – if she’s not filming or editing, she’s thinking and planning. “It’s a very constant thing playing on my mind,” she explained to Critic, causing her a “bit of stress” on top of her full-time courseload. But, ever the positivist, Sav thought that it’s a “very small thing to give” for the life she leads. Day after day, she marvels at the fact that making a living off of content creation is her reality, thanks to her hard mahi. It’s something she could “never complain about.”
Sav doesn’t want to give up anything in her life, and doesn’t think that’s necessary. “Yes, I’m very busy, but I’m managing with it,” she assured. In fact, she likes that social media gives her an out from the North D bubble, not putting “110%” of her life only into Dunedin, uni and lectures. “I have this other part of me,” she said. “This other part of my life that feels more removed.” She reckoned that she would “go crazy” without having social media to pour her focus into.
She also acknowledges that social media may not be a permanent part of her life – understanding that it can be very “volatile” as a career choice. “No one knows what’ll happen, and things are always changing, so you can’t really plan,” she said calmly. Despite that, Sav hoped to continue down this path for as long as possible – even if that’s just so she can look back on the different phases of her life visually. She revealed that she often rewatches her vlogs of moving into halls, or travelling videos with her family.
Beyond that, Sav never really planned on any of it, so she hasn’t really figured out exactly what she’ll end up doing post-uni. In her own words, “I don't know what I want to do with my life. I don't know where I want to live, I don't know anything,” she admitted. Instead, she tried to take every day as it comes.
Despite the lack of solid plans for social media, Sav also exclusively revealed to Critic that she’ll be heading over to Germany for an exchange next semester. She’s looking forward to getting out of Dunedin for a bit, and is excited to just be another face in the crowd – not the “TikTok Girl”. She’s always loved travelling, and is taking extra papers so she has more time to make the most of the exchange and travel beforehand. While she knows that second-year tends to be the “peak partying year”, she is unphased about missing half of it. She actually reckoned that the idea of being able to get out of the Dunedin bubble has helped her “compartmentalise” some of the struggles she had felt, describing that spending three years in Dunedin felt daunting, and hopes that people will have “calmed down a bit” when she returns back for her third year of uni.
Sav is motivated to complete her degree and get out into the real world – that’s one thing she knows for sure. Even though her agent told her she was doing more content creation than some people who do it as their full-time job, studies come first – always. Doing content creation full-time would “put additional pressure on it”, and take away some of the creativity she felt – “especially if it was 100% of my income.” She wasn't really sold on the idea of “climbing the corporate ladder my whole life” either, but she does know “you have to be realistic.” She understands that the finance industry often demands “crazy hours, and a crazy work-life balance”, but she does want to hopefully end up using her degree – and, somewhat surprisingly – keep that “separate to social media at all times”. Considering herself a very driven person, Sav just knows that she wants to use her mind – possibly integrating some of the practical knowledge and experience she’s gained through her online hustle. “A lot of uni degrees wouldn’t offer that sort of thing,” she said.
Sav understands that while she is someone who likes organisation and planning, you can’t always plan and control life. “Things change and you can’t do anything about it,” she said simply. Even comparing her life now to a year ago, Sav couldn’t believe how quickly things change, and in such unexpected ways. For now though, Sav enjoys every aspect of being an influencer. There are “so many opportunities within it,” she said earnestly.
“I’ll just see where it takes me, and ride whatever crazy wave it is.”
