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Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Bar Bruhis spent ten years building SaaS for Shopify brands. He helped start one of the first email capture tools in 2015, then co-founded KnoCommerce, the post-purchase survey tool 6,500 brands use. In December he finally took his own leap: Boostcous (boostcous.com), the first protein couscous. Six months later he's about to cross 10,000 orders, bootstrapped, with a team of two. Try it: boostcous.com. The tagline says it all: "Finally a carb that pulls its weight." (An AI copywriting agent wrote that. More on this below.) If you're sitting on a product idea you haven't launched, or you're a CPG founder trying to turn DTC numbers into retail meetings, this episode is the working playbook. What's inside: Why couscous: protein pasta has Banza, Brami, and Goodles. Couscous had nobody. Chickpea, lentil, and pea flour, gluten free, protein and fiber naturally derived from the legumes themselves. The launch: a front-page story in the local Carbondale paper and free pickup from his garage. The first 400 to 500 orders were handed over face to face, and he asked every customer why they bought. First-order profitable on Meta with a product almost nobody has ever bought online. "That doesn't really happen" in CPG. The KnoCommerce lessons applied to his own brand: "what almost prevented you from buying today" for CRO, and "which retail stores would you like to see Boostcous in" as ammo for buyer meetings. The pitch: in the last 30 days, this many of our customers asked for your store by name. The first one-star review, after 155 five-stars. He emailed her, got on a call, learned she was cooking it wrong, and updated the packaging. She rewrote the review herself as a five-star essay. Where AI actually helps a two-person brand (product seeding draft orders, static ads, most of the website photos, sell sheets built from survey and review data) and his warning: "we swung the pendulum a little too far at first." Calling customers stays human. Expo West on a $0 badge. He got the ticket by pitching his podcast, and the Gelson's deal came from walking the floor. His read on the protein trend: protein soda and protein sprinkles exist now. Naturally derived protein in foods you already eat is the part that lasts. Who this is for: founders sitting on a long-gestating idea, CPG operators heading into retail, and SaaS people wondering what their skills are worth on the brand side. What to steal: add two questions to your post-purchase survey today. "What almost prevented you from buying?" fixes your site. "Which retail stores would you like to see us in?" fills your retail pipeline with proof buyers can't ignore. Try Boostcous: boostcous.com Timestamps: 00:00 Building a First-Order Profitable CPG Brand 07:24 Launch Strategy That Validated Product-Market Fit 11:50 Using Post-Purchase Surveys to Drive Growth 18:08 Turning DTC Success Into Retail Expansion 31:12 Advice for Launching Your First Ecommerce Brand Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Advertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertise Work with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouse Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletter Watch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
31 min
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Liam Robinson and Nate Vankoughnet were two of Pilothouse's first employees and spent years scaling some of its biggest accounts on Meta. Now they've spun out Marlbank Digital (website coming soon), a Meta-only agency built for the brands Pilothouse moved past as it went upmarket: pre-launch up to $100K/month. Want them in your ad account? Email nate@marlbank.co or liam@marlbank.co. No website yet. They've been busy in client accounts. If you're a founder running your own Meta ads, or the one marketer at a brand doing under $100K a month, this episode is a working session on why your account structure is probably answering the wrong question. What's inside: The Meta hierarchy of needs: unit economics at the base ("you'd be surprised how many people need a 3.5 ROAS to barely break even"), marketing strategy in the middle, creative at the top. Most brands skip the middle. Circumstance testing, their replacement for jumping straight to creative: articulate your product's real distinction, find the cultural currents it's relevant to, then map the specific moments it fits into someone's life. Each moment becomes a campaign. A full anonymized case study: the ceramic to-go cup brand that couldn't scale on pretty product shots or the eco angle, and unlocked the account with one question: "Would you use a metal mug at home?" Selling an upgrade to existing to-go cup users beat converting the single-use crowd, and the commute became the winning niche. What this looks like in the account: open audiences, existing customers excluded, CBO single ad set, 4 to 6 ads per set, creative held constant so circumstance is the variable. Why one ad usually takes 80% of an ad set's spend, and how to structure launches around that. The four foundations they ask for before a brand spends a dollar: a decent website, email flows, some social presence, and Meta. Plus the origin story: the agency is named after the small Ontario town where they spent a summer hand-building tree stands for a bow-hunting brand. Who this is for: ecom founders and marketers between pre-launch and $100K/month, and anyone whose Meta account is a graveyard of creative tests that never compounded. What to steal: before your next creative batch, write down your product's distinctions, then list every circumstance where it slots into a customer's day. Test those against each other first. Work with Liam and Nate: nate@marlbank.co / liam@marlbank.co | marlbank.co Timestamps: 00:00 Why Meta Marketing Has Changed 02:01 The Story Behind Marlbank Digital 08:14 Why Foundational Marketing Beats Meta Tactics 13:15 The Ceramic Cup Case Study 20:10 How to Structure Circumstance Testing on Meta Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Advertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertise Work with Pilothouse - https://www.pilothouse.co/?utm_source=AKNF633 Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletter Watch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
41 min
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Melissa Dusendang ran a summer contract at SheFit to "manage the chaos" for one marketing director. She never left. Years later she runs ecommerce and operations, and her actual job is stopping the company from lying to itself with its own data. If you own the P&L, the dashboard, or the customer experience, this one is for you. Melissa sits in the finance meeting thinking about how a tax decision hits checkout, and in the marketing meeting thinking about which numbers are secretly inflated. She calls it being a puzzle person. Eric calls her a silo obliterator. Why TikTok Shop can quietly wreck your new-versus-returning customer math. Masked and missing emails on marketplace orders mean Shopify can count repeat buyers as new, so "we 2x'd new customers" can really mean you gave existing customers a discount. The attribution question to ask before anyone reports a ROAS or MER number, so two teams aren't arguing about goals while measuring different things. How SheFit found its best-selling ad hooks inside customer reviews and comments, and why phrases like "my boobs don't move" outperform copy the team writes. The Emerge Sports Bra story: how customer comments drove a custom-strap design (skinny straps on smaller sizes, wider straps on larger sizes) that sold out on launch. Why real women feeling the "aha moment" when they lift the straps is SheFit's top new-customer acquisition move, run through micro-influencers and ambassadors instead of a gym-only ad. Her honest read on TikTok Shop: better customer control than Amazon, but a margin eroder that can turn a premium brand into a "always on sale" brand. Who this is for: Ecommerce and ops leaders, founders wearing five hats, CX and community managers, and anyone trying to get finance, marketing, and product to agree on what the numbers mean. What to steal: Pull your own review and comment language and use it as ad copy verbatim. Before your next growth review, write down which attribution model each number is using. And check whether your marketplace orders are inflating your new-customer count. Timestamps: 0:00 Why TikTok Shop metrics can be misleading 5:18 Breaking down silos across ecommerce teams 10:01 Why customer language beats marketing copy 15:09 Building products from customer feedback 23:21 Using AI and social listening for better decisions Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Advertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertise Work with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouse Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletter Watch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
28 min
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup AppLovin just opened to everyone, and most DTC operators still do not know how it actually works. Jacob runs Meta at Pilothouse, which has spent on AppLovin for nearly two years, back when it was invite only. He breaks down what he sees in real client accounts: the product price points that work, the creative volume it takes to scale, and the end card, a full-screen animated step between the ad and the product page that has no equivalent on Meta. What you get: The $50 rule. Why products in the $30 to $150 range win, why below $20 gets tough on margin, and why $1,000 products are a bad fit for someone mid-game. The end card. What it is, why it acts like a second landing page, and the basketball-into-the-hoop trick for matching the ad to the app. Creative volume. Start with about 10 videos, add 10 to 20 a week, and what the ramp looks like at $50k/day. First-hour buying. Around 80% of purchases land in the first hour, and the other 20% almost always convert on a different video. The learning phase. Why you confirm tracking, then leave it alone for a week, sometimes two. Who this is for: DTC operators and media buyers weighing AppLovin as a third channel next to Meta and Google. What to steal: the creative-volume cadence, the end-card structure, and the measurement discipline to prove new-customer CPA instead of trusting platform ROAS. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 02:00 AppLovin vs Meta Performance 05:20 Best Products & Creative Strategy 11:10 Measuring Incrementality & New Customers 17:10 Scaling with Creative Volume 23:00 Halo Effect & Campaign Best Practices Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Advertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertise Work with Pilothouse - https://www.pilothouse.co/?utm_source=AKNF631 Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletter Watch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
37 min
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Most brands treat unauthorized sellers and copycats as a cost of doing business. Mario Simonyan treats them as your biggest untapped revenue source. Mario is a former Amazon seller turned brand protection attorney. He started selling kitchenware and artificial turf doormats out of his driveway during law school, got ripped off, and discovered that not a single attorney he called understood how marketplaces actually work. So he built the firm he wished he'd had. In this episode he breaks down how one eight-figure fitness brand walked away from 1.5M a year on Amazon after attorneys and enforcement agencies failed them, and how his team got them back to 95% control of their listings. He explains why cease and desist letters get burned in people's fireplaces, why sellers fear account suspension far more than lawsuits, and the three-pillar approach his firm uses to get marketplaces to do the enforcing. He also goes into the dark side: the seller who allegedly flew a duffel bag of cash to Costa Rica to bribe an Amazon employee, the competitor who planted the word cocaine in a rival's backend keywords to trigger an automatic ban, and the copycat running a cloned website doing a million dollars a month off someone else's brand. Request a 100% free, custom Brand Audit Report from ESQgo here: https://esqgo.submitrequests.com/brand-audit-report?utm_source=dtc_newsletter&utm_medium=newsletter_sponsorship What you'll learn: Why 15 to 25% of your revenue may be leaking to sellers you've never heard of The trademark material difference argument that removes sellers moving genuine product The three pillars: IP, marketplace policy, and regulatory compliance, and why using only one is why most enforcement fails Why an unauthorized seller priced higher than you is still an emergency How brand protection raises your multiple when you sell the business Who this is for: Brand owners and operators doing 5M or more who sell on Amazon, Walmart, or any marketplace with a shared buy box. What to steal: The 500% ROI framing, the material difference memorandum, and the free brand audit at esqgo.com to see what you're actually losing. Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 0:53 How unauthorized sellers steal 15–25% of revenue 4:09 The Amazon strategy that actually removes unauthorized sellers 11:56 Why brand protection is a revenue driver, not a cost 17:47 The 3-pillar framework for Amazon brand protection 31:02 How to find marketplace revenue leakage Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Advertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertise Work with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouse Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletter Watch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
40 min
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Ari Murray runs DTC, Amazon and customer experience at Salt & Stone. She came from Sharma Brands, and before that worked on influencer and celebrity brands including a Kardashian line and Halsey's beauty brand. She started as a customer service agent. In this episode she breaks down why the old brand-versus-performance argument is collapsing. Customers now shop with a chatbot in the loop. Those bots read your reviews, your Reddit threads, and your actual customer experience. You cannot hack that, which means product quality and brand protection have become growth levers. She also gets specific on creative: what "socially native" really means, why she is chasing ads that don't look like ads, and the protein powder ad where the product is the seventh ingredient in someone's recipe. For: DTC founders, growth leads, creative strategists, retention and CRO teams, brand marketers. In this episode: Why she left the agency side for Salt & Stone Why Salt & Stone has never acted like a deodorant brand AI visibility, Reddit indexing, and why you can't hide from real customer feedback The collapse of the middle of the funnel in agentic shopping Why she doesn't feel a desperate need to move spend out of Meta How they actually measure incrementality (holdouts, Status, Northbeam, Triple Whale, hunting for an MMM) Socially native creative, and why splitting a hook five ways is played out Why a brand with boundaries makes better ads What makes a brand feel cheap What makes a brand deserve to be iconic Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Advertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertise Work with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouse Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletter
21 min
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Jordan Gordon runs CRO and retention at Pilothouse and hosts TWBERP, The World's Best Email and Retention Podcast. He has audited somewhere in the range of 400 to 500 brands and been inside more Klaviyo accounts than almost anyone in DTC. In this All Killer No Filler episode he breaks down why most email programs are structurally backwards. 85% of campaign revenue comes from people who have visited your site recently, and yet most campaigns are sent to anyone who opened an email in the last 180 days. You are risking your entire sending reputation to chase the 15%. Then he gets to the good part: a flow he says he has basically never seen a brand run, and why it is the most valuable one you can build. For: ecommerce founders, retention leads, email marketers, CRO teams, agency operators. In this episode: Why free traffic is the "forever job" and paid is the spike Why small counts hide truths (nobody hits fold 10, but the people who do are your buyers) The 85/15 rule of campaign revenue How brands blow up a Klaviyo account: too many campaigns, too-broad segments, and the sunset flow that sends to ten years of dead addresses in one go Why recent repeat buyers are whales you should not over-message Campaigns are zero-intent messages, so they can only ever be about newness or offers The essentials core flow: triggered by site visit, not lifecycle, selling your hero SKU to people who came for something else Sending less in a margin-compressed Q4 Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Advertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertise Work with Pilothouse - https://www.pilothouse.co/?utm_source=AKNF629 Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletter
32 min
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Most DTC brands put the bulk of their paid budget where attention is thinnest. Viewers spend about 99 minutes per session on Connected TV and 8 minutes per session on social, yet only 9% of standard marketing budgets go to CTV. This episode is about closing that gap on CTV with the same measurement & targeting you get on social (starting at $7 CPMs!) Emily Huo built ad businesses at X (Twitter), Reddit, and Spotify, and now runs SMB advertising at Paramount. She walks through how a DTC brand actually gets onto Survivor, Landman, or RuPaul's Drag Race, what to spend, and how to know if it worked. Sign up for Paramount Ads Manager today. Get your brand on TV tomorrow. This episode, we get into: The seasonal play: build awareness over the summer, retarget in the fall, convert in Q4 Why you start broad on targeting and let the data tell you who is really watching, not the persona you imported from Meta The pixel setup that ties a TV impression to a site visit, a lead, or a purchase The geo holdout test for measuring halo effect with no third-party tools Why a 30-second unskippable spot changes how you tell a brand story when you are not a household name yet Budgeting: carve out 10% as experimental, expect a three-month ramp, scale from there Who this is for: DTC founders and growth marketers who have maxed out social, anyone planning Q4 now, and operators curious whether CTV is real or just a hot label. What to steal: the install-pixel-now, build-in-summer, convert-in-Q4 sequence, and the broad-then-narrow targeting approach. Timestamps: 0:00 Emily Huo's Journey to Paramount 3:10 Why CTV Is Growing So Fast 8:07 CTV Targeting vs Meta Ads 12:14 CTV Budget & Testing Strategy 23:18 Measuring the Halo Effect Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Advertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertise Work with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouse Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletter Watch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
43 min
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Dan bootstrapped Unbound Merino from a Reddit-fueled obsession with merino wool into a brand approaching nine figures in lifetime revenue, with a warehouse sale, a growing women's line, and zero outside funding. In his second appearance on the DTC Podcast, the Unbound co-founder gets specific about what actually moved the business over the last three years, why he almost lost 80% of his sales in a single day, and why he now cares more about the product and the friendships than any growth hack. What you'll learn: Why the ads Dan loves flop and the cringe ones scale, and how he made peace with it The creative volume system that unlocked Meta scaling in 2023, and why Meta stopped working the same way How word of mouth (15% of new customers) and a 50/50 women's line changed the growth model The de minimis and tariff shock that nearly ended the company, and the scramble to open a Dallas warehouse before Liberation Day How Unbound uses a custom AI wired into Shopify, its ERP, Asana, Slack, and Drive to triangulate why products get returned Why 5% of sales now come from ChatGPT and Claude, and what that means for discovery Who this is for: bootstrapped founders, DTC operators, and anyone selling a premium product who is tired of renting customers from Meta. What to steal: the reorder-first mindset, the creative iteration loop, and the tariff survival playbook. Timestamps: 00:00 Building a $90M travel apparel brand 02:12 Scaling Meta with creative volume 08:00 Why product quality beats acquisition tactics 16:00 How tariffs nearly killed the business 32:05 AI as a business advisor and data analyst Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Advertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertise Work with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouse Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletter Watch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
41 min
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup This week on All Killer No Filler, we're giving you a preview of Agency Confidential, the new podcast from our co-founder Jeff, and this episode's is a truly killer. Jeff sits down with Nick Shackelford, who's everywhere in DTC. Three agencies (Structured, Konstant, Lucid), an events business, and a decade of showing up on every feed, stage, and group chat. Jeff calls him the Coca-Cola of ecommerce. Eric calls him the Drake of DTC. But halfway through, Nick stops and shares something he says he's never told publicly. Last July, cash got tight and he had to bridge the gap on one of his companies. Not with a loan or a raise, but by getting paid as a public agency owner to talk about SaaS products. Ten years of being a face turned into a cash-flow lever almost no other owner has. Then it gets stranger. That same decade of posts and videos is now training data for every LLM on earth. Ask ChatGPT or Claude about DTC agencies and Nick, Structured, Konstant, and Geek Out all come up. A personal brand he built to win deal flow quietly became free distribution in a channel that didn't exist when he started. They get into the real cost of being the face, why building a faceless brand (like DTC and Pilothouse) trades built-in pull for durability, AI in the agency space, and why Nick thinks the market's about to splinter back into specialists. What they cover: The never-shared story of how Nick bridged a cash-flow gap in a rough month Why a personal brand is a lever most agency owners don't have How ten years of content became free distribution in AI search The real cost and risk of being the face of your agency Face vs. faceless: durability, transferability, and selling the business Where Nick thinks the agency market is heading in 2026 Who this is for: Agency owners, DTC operators, and founders weighing whether to build in public or build something that doesn't hinge on one person's face. Catch the preview here, and if you like it, go subscribe to Agency Confidential for the full episode. Timestamps: 00:00 Nick Shackelford on building agencies and personal brands 02:19 How Nick built three agencies and scaled operations 11:59 Why AI is changing agency work and client communication 27:56 How a personal brand became a business advantage 39:18 Why AI will bring back specialized agencies Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Advertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertise Work with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouse https://www.pilothouse.co/?utm_source=AKNF627 Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletter Watch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
36 min
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Gifting is one of the biggest reasons people buy online, and most brands never build for it on purpose. Matt Heckathorn runs digital marketing at Wolfe, the company behind Gift Card Granny, PerfectGift.com, and GiftYa. His ICP is close to everyone, which kills the usual narrow-audience playbook and forces a different approach to growth. What you will learn: How a bottom-of-funnel team moved into CTV, programmatic, and out-of-home without losing measurement Why CTV retargeting outperformed what Matt expected, and how scale made brand channels measurable How Wolfe uses second-tier DMAs to test incrementality before spending up How gift card fraud actually works at the physical retail level, and why it shapes the product Where Wolfe is drawing its AI line: creative and fulfillment yes, fully agentic media buying not yet The cost problem almost nobody is planning for as AI usage scales Who this is for: DTC operators and growth leads working top of funnel, anyone selling into gifting, and marketers thinking through where AI fits in a real team. What to steal: The second-tier DMA incrementality test, the recipient-first product framing, and the human checkpoint on agentic media buying. Timestamps: 00:00 The Future of AI in Marketing 02:12 Reinventing the Gift Card Industry 09:00 How Card-Linked Gifting Works 15:12 Top of Funnel Messaging That Converts 23:12 Building an AI-First Marketing Team Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Advertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertise Work with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouse Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletter Watch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
38 min
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Meta used to let you pick your customer in the backend. Those days are over. Post-Andromeda, the creative itself carries the targeting signal, which means the old spray-and-pray playbook now works against you. Rafael Gi spent a decade in traditional creative agencies, then led marketing at a nine-figure apparel brand, and now runs strategic growth and partnerships at Pilothouse. In this one he breaks down why the algorithm is forcing marketers to be good marketers again, and what that looks like in an ad account. What he gets into: Why "creative is targeting" is now literal, not a slogan, and how Meta reads your creative for who to serve it to Salience and memory structures: how brands like Volvo, Red Bull, and AG1 got remembered, and how to build the same The spend discrepancy that caps scaling brands: 80 percent of budget chasing 20 percent of revenue Why structuring an ad account by product instead of by persona burns money and buries your message The shift from "all revenue is good revenue" to winning the customer instead of selling the product How to evolve one message into new occasions without breaking the memory you have already built Who this is for: DTC founders and operators between eight and nine figures who are seeing diminishing returns on creative volume and cannot figure out why more ads are not buying more growth. What to steal: the "one tank of gas, twelve cars" test for whether your budget is spread too thin, and the account-structure fix that lines your media budget up with where your revenue comes from. Timestamps: 00:00 Why Meta's Andromeda Changed Marketing 02:34 Creative Is the New Targeting 05:55 Building Brand Salience That Lasts 14:32 How to Fix Creative Strategy at Scale 24:42 Applying Salience to Better Meta Ads Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Advertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertise Work with Pilothouse - https://www.pilothouse.co/?utm_source=AKNF625 Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletter Watch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
46 min
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Most list-growth advice assumes you have a website people visit. Cove Soda doesn't. They sell zero sugar soda in roughly 7,000 retail doors with no real DTC store, which means no site traffic, no purchase pop-ups, and no easy email capture. Zoe Kahn runs marketing for Cove as interim VP. In this episode she breaks down how a retail-first brand still builds a direct, owned channel, why she treats in-person events as the acquisition surface, and how she competes in a soda aisle that already has Olipop and Poppi running Super Bowl ads. What you'll get: The event tactic that grows an email and SMS list without DTC: trade a full can for an opt-in How to segment by geography so US news goes to US fans and Canadian news goes to Canadian fans How she picks which events to sample at, and why marketing assets in a state change the math Using Amazon attribution links to test creative and copy when you have no DTC A clear take on why an oversaturated category is not a reason to quit The early-career mistake that shipped roughly 700 wrong orders, and what it taught her Who this is for: retail-first and omnichannel operators, beverage and CPG founders, retention and lifecycle marketers, and anyone who has been told they can't build a list without DTC. What to steal: the can-for-email swap at events, geographic list segmentation, and an event-selection checklist built on demographic fit and asset location. 0:00 Intro 3:16 Building a Canadian Brand in the US 7:55 How Cove Soda Stands Out in a Crowded Market 10:09 Using QR Codes to Grow Email and SMS Lists 17:50 Practical AI Workflows for Marketing Teams Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Advertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertise Work with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouse Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletter Watch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
25 min
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Google search is changing under everyone's feet. AI overviews are eating the top of the funnel, exact match stopped being exact years ago, and shoppers now type full paragraphs instead of two keywords. Doug, who leads Google at Pilothouse, breaks down what actually came out of Google Marketing Live 2026 and what DTC operators should do about it. He runs the Google paid side for DTC brands at Pilothouse, so this is the operator read, not the press release. What you get: Why transactional shopping queries still convert while top-of-funnel search moves into AI overviews What AI Max for Shopping means for how your products get matched to conversational queries Why your Merchant Center feed is the most undervalued performance lever you control How far Claude or Gemini can get you on a feed audit, and where you still need a human Why "keywordless" is the direction, and what targeting intent looks like now The measurement gap on YouTube and demand generation, and what Google is testing to close it Who this is for: DTC founders and operators running or buying Google Ads, plus anyone trying to understand AI's effect on Shopping and search. What to steal: audit your product feed before you touch anything else. Most brands copy-paste their site into the feed or rely on an automated integration and leave half the attributes empty. That is the cheap win. Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 1:47 Google Ads and AI Search Changes 5:30 Biggest Google Marketing Live 2026 Announcements 7:50 Why Google Shopping Feed Optimization Matters 12:04 Why the Future of Search Is Keywordless 15:45 Measuring Demand Generation on YouTube Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Advertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertise Work with Pilothouse - https://www.pilothouse.co/?utm_source=AKNF623 Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletterWatch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
42 min
Most brands expand into the US and treat it like the same business with a different shipping label. Outway learned it is not. Taylor Fraser is the Chief Growth Officer at Outway, the Canadian performance sock brand. In this episode he breaks down why Outway now runs Canada and the US as two distinct businesses, why he dropped retargeting on Meta entirely, and why a sub eight-figure brand cannot optimize its website to growth. What you'll learn: Why Outway swapped the CMO role for a Chief Growth Officer and split growth into performance, retention, and e-commerce Why Canadian and US customers buy so differently, and how Outway split the two businesses on the backend and frontend Why the team runs no retargeting and lets the algorithm handle it Why simple store-wide discounts beat clever BOGO offers, and why the mystery pair became a "golden handcuffs" attach Why you cannot CRO your way to growth under a certain revenue line, and what to do instead Why Outway rides external moments like Mother's Day and Prime Day instead of manufacturing its own sales How the team uses AI daily for reporting, data pulls, and custom dashboards Who this is for: DTC operators, growth and performance marketers, and founders selling across more than one country. What to steal: the two-businesses framework for cross-border selling, and the decision to stop manufacturing fake sales and ride moments customers already care about. Timestamps: 00:00 Meta Doesn't Need Retargeting Campaigns 13:06 How Andromeda Changed Meta Ads 18:11 The Creative Volume Debate 21:08 Why Scaling in the U.S. Is Harder Than Canada 35:20 Why More Ads Beat CRO for Growth Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Advertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertise Work with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouse Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletter Watch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
17 min
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Braydon from Pilothouse joins for a fast AI check-in on what the team is actually shipping right now. Not theory. The exact tools, prompts, and workflows behind their current creative output. If you run growth or creative at a DTC brand or agency, this is a look at how one team is collapsing production time on landing pages, video ads, and founder content using AI. The sub-agent "council" prompt: rewrite a landing page eight ways, with each sub-agent playing a role (copywriter, CEO, customer, CRO expert), then have the council rate the versions and a final decision maker pick the winner. How to keep Claude fast on long projects: ask the chat to summarize itself into a markdown file, then carry that into a fresh chat instead of letting one thread balloon. Higgsfield as a model aggregator: one place to run VO3, Kling, ElevenLabs, and image models, with one-click image-to-video and multiple aspect ratios. The founder avatar workflow: build a 30-second explainer with B-roll and slow zooms, clone the founder's voice in ElevenLabs, and ship it the same afternoon. Why Braydon leans into obviously-AI creative (claymation, Pixar-style) instead of trying to pass synthetic people as real. How Meta's Andromeda rewards ads that improve the scroll, and why social boosting organic winners is finding new scale. Who this is for: DTC operators, growth marketers, and agency creative leads who want a current, practical AI workflow rather than a hype reel. What to steal: The sub-agent council prompt, the Higgsfield image-to-video and voice-clone pipeline, and the social boosting approach to finding ad winners. Timestamps: 00:29 Fable AI and One-Shot Development 06:54 Higgsfield for AI Creative Production 10:33 New AI Advertising Disclosure Rules 13:15 AI Search, SEO, and Answer Engines 14:33 How Andromeda Rewards Better Ad Experiences Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Advertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertise Work with Pilothouse - https://www.pilothouse.co/?utm_source=AKNF621 Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletter Watch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
31 min
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup This episode, Kemberly Gong, VP of Marketing at Contentful, joins Eric to walk through what some marketing leaders are calling “The Great Content Collapse”, and what marketers can actually do about it. The setup: 60% of Google searches now result in zero click-through, and replaced by GenAI models like AI overviews. LLMs already account for 5% of traffic and climbing. Marketing budgets are flat or shrinking. Companies are flooding consumers with AI slop to hit KPIs. And consumers can smell it. 50% lose trust in a brand when they think the content was written by AI. Explore Contentful: https://www.contentful.com/?utm_source=dtc&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=fy27-q2-global-tl_awareness&utm_content=gcc What you'll learn: What is the "great content collapse" and why traditional content strategy is breaking AEO vs SEO: where they overlap and where they diverge Why agentic agents prefer structured, query-aligned content with third-party validation How buyer behavior is changing and what marketing teams can do to stay ahead Where brands over-rely on AI and how to keep the human voice The 30-day content audit for the agentic web The Pets Deli case: 50% conversion lift from one personalization change The Ruggable BFCM case: 7x CTR and 25% conversion lift from personalized hero banners + homepages How Bossard scaled its content across 18 languages and 38 countries with AI workflows using personalization software What On Running does to drive 40% of sales online Plus: Kemberly Gong's 30-day content audit checklist for the agentic web. Timestamps: 00:00 The Great Content Collapse 05:38 AEO vs SEO Explained 10:08 Why Personalization Wins in 2026 13:27 Where AI Actually Helps Marketing Teams 22:23 Building Brand Trust Across Channels Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Advertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertise Work with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouse Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletter Watch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
43 min
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Origin owns its entire supply chain. The thread, the brass, the leather, the denim, all of it made or sourced in America, in their own factories. That sounds like a constraint. Justin Parker explains why it is actually the brand's biggest growth lever. Justin runs e-commerce at Origin, the American-made apparel brand born in jiu-jitsu gear and now backed in part by Jocko Willink. He sits at the intersection of marketing, ops, and manufacturing, and that vantage point is exactly what makes the AI stack so powerful for him. What you will learn: How owning manufacturing let Origin pull a planned-for-June product into the line overnight when a hoodie went viral in January Why Origin uploaded its 20-page production tech packs into Moby, and how that turned a marketing tool into something that diagnoses manufacturing defects How they run 100% internal media buying through an agentic media buyer, and the one question Justin asks it: "what in your context made you decide to pause this ad?" Why branded search spend got flagged as non-incremental, and how goal-setting changes what the AI does How the e-commerce team stopped hiring internally while the rest of the business keeps net hiring Where Justin thinks the role is going next: agent orchestration and one centralized goal pushed down to every business unit Who this is for: DTC founders and operators, e-commerce and growth leads, anyone figuring out how to actually deploy AI agents inside a real business. What to steal: Justin's approach to context loading. The output you get from any AI tool is capped by the context you feed it. He spent an afternoon uploading product blueprints one PDF at a time, and it changed what the tool could do. Timestamps: 0:00 Origin's Unexpected Maduro Viral Moment 2:01 Building an American-Made Supply Chain 7:00 Pricing Premium Products in a Competitive Market 15:02 How Vertical Integration Creates a Growth Advantage 22:18 Inside Moby AI and Agentic Media Buying Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Advertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertise Work with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouse Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletter Watch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
34 min
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Most brands are quietly killing themselves with growth hacks. Swapping button colors, chasing this week's ROI, discounting to hit the number. Duncan, Strategy Lead at Pilothouse, makes the case that this is the worst creative strategy there is, and walks through what actually builds a brand that lasts. Duncan runs strategy at Pilothouse, where brand and performance are treated as one system instead of warring departments. He explains why Meta's Andromeda shift is quietly ending the era of high-volume AI slop creative, and what replaces it. What you will learn: Why the growth-hack mentality leads to a discount death spiral and erodes brand value What Meta's Andromeda infrastructure changed, and why it forces advertisers toward thoughtful creative over high-frequency iteration How to integrate brand and performance instead of picking one Why siloed agencies fight over attribution while the customer journey falls through the cracks The one question to ask any agency before you hire them: "Where will growth come from this year?" Who this is for: DTC founders, brand and growth leads, and anyone choosing between agencies or trying to make brand and performance work together. What to steal: the agency-selection test. If a partner can only answer with optimizations, they are a vendor. If they can tell you where growth comes from this year, they are a strategist. Timestamps: 00:00 Why Growth Hacking Is Breaking Brands 03:00 Meta Andromeda Changed Creative Strategy 06:00 The Problem With Optimizing Only for ROAS 12:00 Building Customer Journeys Beyond Attribution 20:00 Measuring Channels by Their Actual Job Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Advertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertise Work with Pilothouse - https://www.pilothouse.co/?utm_source=AKNF619 Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletter Watch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
32 min
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Recorded live at The Whalies. Enterprise brands are past the prompt-and-generate phase of AI. The conversation has moved to connected data, agentic media buying, personalization, attribution, and the quiet operational wins that actually move the P&L. Eric Dyck sits down with Justin Parker (Origin), Ashley Kick (DÔEN), and Martha Ann Pavoni (Universal Ads) to unpack how leading ecommerce brands are embedding AI across the commerce stack — without losing trust, measurement, or human judgment. This episode is brought to you by Triple Whale. Much of the panel centers on Moby 2, Triple Whale's agentic operator for insights and media buying — Justin Parker runs all but three of his Meta campaigns through it and has been in the beta since the start. Learn more: Triple Whale In this episode: Why business context — not the model — is the missing ingredient in most AI implementations How DÔEN rolls out AI one workflow at a time to measure real incremental lift What happens when AI runs all but three of your Meta campaigns Why connected TV and incrementality are eclipsing the click The retargeting decision where AI flatly contradicted itself a week later Where human oversight still matters most — and how to size it to risk What to steal: Build a trusted source of truth before you layer AI on top Test AI one workflow at a time so you can actually attribute the lift Point AI at analysis and reporting first; hand it bigger decisions later Scale human-in-the-loop in proportion to dollars and customer exposure For DTC operators managing multi-channel growth who need more output without adding headcount. Timestamps: 0:00 AI Is Only As Good As The Data Behind It 2:03 How Enterprise Brands Roll Out AI Without Breaking Things 8:16 Why Some Brands Refuse To Use AI Creative 18:28 Inside Agentic Media Buying And AI-Powered Marketing Teams 30:03 The Biggest AI Opportunity Most Brands Are Missing Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Advertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertise Work with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouse Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletter Watch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
Keep the useful structure, then change the audience, point of view, and voice until the idea is unmistakably yours.
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