D2C Diaries

Loop Earplugs got to 100 million a year on Meta ads. The first thing their new CMO wrote down was that the business was wildly overreliant on it. Rob Weston is Chief Commercial and Marketing Officer at Loop Earplugs, three years in, with Unilever, McKinsey, John Lewis, M&S and Samsung behind him. He joined at around 100 million a year. This year the business is on track for 240 to 250. He spent those three years arguing for slower growth than his own CEO and CFO wanted. We got into everything. - A TV test run on a seven day attribution window. Set up to fail. - 10% of budget carved out of performance, planned as an insurance bet. - Leading indicators over breakeven ROAS: traffic, attributed brand search, brand lift. - Brand partnerships instead of TV. Tomorrowland, Coachella, Swarovski, Harry Styles, McLaren, Paris Hilton. - Minimum fee, then revenue share. Break even on units, everything after is a bonus. - A buyer spotted the product at Coachella. That retail listing paid back five times over. - The partnership he turned down: a football stadium isn't loud enough. - "I'm a buyer of the creator economy" — and the part he still can't measure. - 110dB at the O2 with his daughter, and the message he won't lead with. This podcast is proudly sponsored by Incard. If you're spending serious money on daily business expenses and getting nothing back on it right now, this dedicated offer gets you 2% Cashback for year 1 on Ads, SaaS, Travel and other everyday business expenses. Uncapped. Sign up for free and use the code SWU2K26 to unlock your cashback: https://incard.co?fpr=soarwithus&fp_sid=pod Get the full Loop Earplugs Funnel Breakdown here: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0zvPj_0 🚨🚀 If you're a brand spending £100K/month, we'll run your ads. Apply for your growth roadmap: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0wjzrY0 Follow Rob LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robweston1/ 00:00 100 million to 250 million in three years 04:56 The radically honest business case 12:18 There's an ad for everybody 15:03 The four pillars, and the retail team 17:51 The TV test set up to fail 19:35 Where YouTube ads showed signs of life 23:35 Stretching the seven day attribution window 26:36 Carving 10% out for experimentation 29:49 Why CEOs don't trust CMOs 33:41 The machine said do the opposite 35:17 The Cadbury purple problem 40:33 Chasing the apex predators 45:08 Minimum fee, then revenue share 50:29 The partnership he turned down 58:11 110dB at the O2 1:00:43 A buyer of the creator economy 1:06:02 Why physical retail still matters 1:08:11 What he'd tell any DTC brand Follow Olly: https://linktr.ee/ollyhudson Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joe_marston Follow Loukas: https://shorturl.at/TRI8B / https://x.com/LoukasHambi Follow Liam: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liam-dean-a11a43152/ Follow D2C Diaries: https://www.tiktok.com/@d2c.diaries / https://www.instagram.com/d2c_diaries/

Most brands walk into November with a discount and a hope. Six weeks out, that pattern is already forming. For the first-ever D2C Diaries panel, three operators take Black Friday apart: Laurence Booth from Internos Advisory, Frederica Watson from Revive Collagen and Nick Kane from Magic AI. What the episode focuses on is offer, media, creative, and the unpublished part: what operators actually do when day one lands 40% under forecast. Disagreement is the point. The panel does not agree that peak is a straight revenue win. One guest makes the case that the same revenue would have landed without Black Friday at all. Inside the episode: - Why BFCM becomes a trap for wellness and subscription brands, and what discounting really costs inside a repeat-purchase model - Offer architecture: what separates offers that scale from offers that burn margin, and why complexity kills most of them - Timing: when promotion should start, and whether an early launch avoids the CPM peak or discounts full-price demand - Creative and media: why the strongest Black Friday ad is often already live, Meta's incremental reach problem, and why partnership ads deserve closer to 30% of spend than 5% - Demand shift at peak, the £1,000 gift signal, and the Friday-morning fallback plan: what to change, what to leave alone This podcast is proudly sponsored by Incard. If you're spending serious money on daily business expenses and getting nothing back on it right now, this dedicated offer gets you 2% Cashback for year 1 on Ads, SaaS, Travel and other everyday business expenses. Uncapped. Sign up for free and use the code SWU2K26 to unlock your cashback: https://www.incard.com/?fpr=soarwithu... 0:00 The True Cost of Complexity 0:32 Quality Over Quantity in Ad Creative 1:08 Meet the Panel: Scaling Consumer Brands 4:06 Preparing for the Peak Season 7:40 Volatility and Market Shifts 14:05 The New Reach Challenge 24:27 Defining Your Peak Objectives 36:11 Learning from Past Mistakes 53:40 The Future of Creative Strategy 1:49:16 What to Do When You Miss Targets Follow our guests: Laurence Booth-Clibborn- https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurence-booth-clibborn/ Frederica Watson- https://www.linkedin.com/in/frederica-watson-a21bb4a4/ Nick Kane - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-kane-4b9a73102/ Hosted by Olly Hudson and Loukas Hambi - operators behind £200M+ in Meta, TikTok and Google spend across 250+ brands. D2C Diaries is a weekly podcast breaking down D2C growth, performance marketing and brand scaling. 🚨🚀 If you’re a brand spending £100K/month, we’ll run your ads. Apply for your growth roadmap: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0wjzrY0 Follow Olly: https://linktr.ee/ollyhudson Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joe_marston Follow Loukas: https://shorturl.at/TRI8B / https://x.com/LoukasHambi Follow D2C Diaries: https://www.tiktok.com/@d2c.diaries / https://www.instagram.com/d2c_diaries/

We managed over £32M in ad spend in November last year. This episode breaks down everything we learned what you need to prep now to hit the ground running going into Q4. We cover how to phase Q4 so October builds the audience you'll sell to in November, how to build offers around your margins and show the value clearly, what last year's creative audit showed about statics, urgency and reskinned winners, and why landing pages could be your quickest win. If you're planning peak for a DTC brand on Meta, this is your October prep list. This podcast is proudly sponsored by Incard. If you're spending serious money on daily business expenses and getting nothing back on it right now, this dedicated offer gets you 2% Cashback for year 1 on Ads, SaaS, Travel and other everyday business expenses. Uncapped. Sign up for free and use the code SWU2K26 to unlock your cashback: https://www.incard.com/?fpr=soarwithus&fp_sid=pod Get our BF/CM playbook for free here: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0yS4M30 06:05 Why creative can't be left late 09:06 October: build the audience before CPMs rise 15:22 Are brand awareness campaigns worth it? 18:06 November: from warm-up to peak week 20:10 Offer is more than a discount 28:12 Auditing last year's Black Friday creative 43:14 Setting strategy: swing types and funnel splits 51:47 What worked: high prod, factory UGC and satire 1:04:16 Statics that convert and daily iteration 1:07:33 Landing pages, post-click and gamification Follow Olly: https://linktr.ee/ollyhudson Follow Loukas: https://shorturl.at/TRI8B / https://x.com/LoukasHambi Follow D2C Diaries: https://www.tiktok.com/@d2c.diaries / https://www.instagram.com/d2c_diaries/

Before you spend more on ads, find out what's really capping your growth. Apply for a Growth Compass to unlock strategic clarity: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0yFr2w0 Omer Kaplan, co-founder of ironSource, joins Loukas to share how he's bringing the data and prediction playbook from mobile games into DTC, building agentic infrastructure to handle the work Shopify still leaves founders to do themselves. We cover predicting LTV, the margins you need before scaling, defensibility, inventory, fundraising, when to go all in, and why the best founders stay hands-on, so if you're building a consumer brand for an agentic world, this one's for you. Check out Zyg: https://www.zyg.com Timestamps: Follow Olly: https://linktr.ee/ollyhudson Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joe_marston Follow Loukas: https://www.linkedin.com/in/loukas-hambi-388067152/ Follow Liam: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liam-dean-a11a43152/

🚀 Claim 1 of 5 Spots: 6 Months Fospha + Free Audit: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0yvPGP0 It's crunch time. With BFCM just weeks out, Olly from Soar joins Fospha to break down what "ready for peak" actually looks like: the creative volume and diversity brands need, why the top 25% of performers run more campaigns in BAU than at peak itself, and how automation like Advantage+ and Smart+ is shifting the game back onto creative and offer quality. They cover forecasting creative output before Q4, scaling volume without losing intention, why upper-funnel spend keeps brands out of a reach hole, and the TikTok Shop halo effect most are underestimating. If you run paid media or creative strategy for a DTC brand, this is worth the watch. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:19 Introducing Phosphor and Soar 03:48 What "ready for peak" actually means 06:22 Forecasting creative volume for Q4 09:29 Building intentional creative diversity 12:58 Catching up when you're behind on volume 16:52 Peak Playbook data: preparation beats aggression 20:17 Full-funnel investment and the reach problem 23:33 Automation and the new creative requirements 28:06 Peak mistakes, and when to scale or pull back 30:41 Proving upper-funnel spend, and the TikTok Shop halo 36:08 Q&A: fatigue, measurement blind spots and iteration loops Follow Olly: https://linktr.ee/ollyhudson Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joe_marston Follow Loukas: https://www.linkedin.com/in/loukas-hambi-388067152/ Follow Liam: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liam-dean-a11a43152/

🚨🚀 Get your growth compass score: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0yhtSG0 Loukas and Olly go back to basics on creative research: the five-factor scoring system that finds your real binding constraint before you open a single tab, and the audience, competitor and social research techniques that get you there. If you run creative strategy for a DTC brand or agency and want a sharper process for finding what to test next, this is your refresher on the fundamentals. AI Prompt: https://soarwithus.notion.site/Indirect-Competitor-Discovery-Prompt-3d711884e3c9802d843ff7eb108045c6 Growth Compass "cheat sheet": https://www.notion.so/soarwithus/How-8-and-9-figure-D2C-brands-scale-spend-profitably-A-Complete-Framework-35711884e3c98073b830d1cbe90c2224?source=copy_link Timestamps: This podcast is proudly sponsored by Incard. If you're spending serious money on daily business expenses and getting nothing back on it right now, this dedicated offer gets you 2% Cashback for year 1 on Ads, SaaS, Travel and other everyday business expenses. Uncapped. Sign up for free and use the code SWU2K26 to unlock your cashback: https://www.incard.com/?fpr=soarwithus&fp_sid=pod Follow Olly: https://linktr.ee/ollyhudson Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joe_marston Follow Loukas: https://www.linkedin.com/in/loukas-hambi-388067152/ Follow Liam: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liam-dean-a11a43152/

🚨🚀 If you're a brand spending £100K/month, we'll run your ads. Apply for your growth roadmap: https://www.soarwithus.co/d2c-diaries-get-in-touch?utm_campaign=191661253-D2C%20Diaries&utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=podcast&utm_term=d2c_diaries&utm_content=ep_88 Mark Scott built Bella & Duke into one of the UK's biggest raw pet food brands - £40M+ revenue, 140+ employees, profitable since early on - then deliberately stepped down as CEO at £30M to get out of his own way. He breaks down how community (not audience) drove Bella & Duke's growth, why referral rate is the only way to beat the "death curve" on rising CAC, and the signals that tell a founder they've become the bottleneck. Plus: delegating KPIs not tasks, hiring people who aren't like you, and why he now spends his time doing breathwork instead of chasing another exit. Timestamps: 02:58 Chopping a tree, and finding raw dog food 07:51 Community vs audience, and why authenticity is uncomfortable 11:03 A clear mission makes every decision easy 17:34 Be more like a duck: expecting failure and letting it go 20:07 Redefining the category and getting raw into retail 22:31 The death curve and why referral rate is everything 29:02 From pet food to full pet wellness 39:32 Stepping down as CEO at £30m 41:15 Are you the bottleneck? Signals to watch for 46:18 Hiring people better than you, and delegating accountability 49:55 Building a business vs building yourself a job 51:24 Torus Tree, 9D breathwork and leading from the heart 57:35 The real goal: energy, not money Torus Tree: https://www.torustree.com/ Follow Mark Scott: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markscottperth/ This podcast is proudly sponsored by Incard. If you're spending serious money on daily business expenses and getting nothing back on it right now, this dedicated offer gets you 2% Cashback for year 1 on Ads, SaaS, Travel and other everyday business expenses. Uncapped. Sign up for free and use the code SWU2K26 to unlock your cashback: https://www.incard.com/?fpr=soarwithus&fp_sid=pod Follow Olly: https://linktr.ee/ollyhudson Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joe_marston Follow Loukas: https://www.linkedin.com/in/loukas-hambi-388067152/ Follow Liam: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liam-dean-a11a43152/

🚨🚀 If you're a brand spending £100K/month, we'll run your ads. Apply for your growth roadmap: https://www.soarwithus.co/d2c-diaries-get-in-touch?utm_campaign=191661253-D2C%20Diaries&utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=podcast&utm_term=d2c_diaries&utm_content=ep_87 Yapper ads have taken over Meta and TikTok this year, and the best ones are almost impossible for AI to write. We break down what actually makes the format work: the "Oracle" who introduces the product, mining Reddit for real stories instead of AI slop, building curiosity loops that pay off, and turning a winning script into native ad copy, all for anyone writing or briefing DTC creative right now. Creative Intelligence Report: We've helped 250+ DTC brands generate £600M+ by fixing the thing most teams get wrong: creative. In 4 weeks, our Creative Intelligence Report audits your ad accoun to find exactly where your creative is leaking money, and hands you a 180-day roadmap to fix it. No guesswork, just real customer research and a plan you can action. Apply for your Creative Intelligence Report here: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0xZP9d0 Resources : "Yapper" Ads Database: https://www.soarwithus.co/newsletter/yapper-ads-database Watch Harry Delme on Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zCLVmZCoQQ&t=2s Follow Harry: https://x.com/harrydelmege_ Timestamps: Follow Olly: https://linktr.ee/ollyhudson Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joe_marston Follow Loukas: https://www.linkedin.com/in/loukas-hambi-388067152/ Follow Liam: https:https://www.linkedin.com/in/liam-dean-a11a43152/

🚨🚀 If you're a brand spending £100K/month, we'll run your ads. Apply for your growth roadmap: https://www.soarwithus.co/d2c-diaries-get-in-touch?utm_campaign=191661253-D2C+Diaries&utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=podcast&utm_term=d2c_diaries&utm_content=ep_87 Olly and Loukas are back with a full round-up of what's working in paid social right now. They cover the AI tools turning any reference static into a new ad in minutes, why whiteboard and Miro style ads keep winning, how to audit an ad account in three steps, and the organic trends being turned into big swing formats. They close out on why landing pages are the next big skill gap for DTC brands, and how to prioritise what to build next. This podcast is proudly sponsored by Incard . If you're spending serious money on daily business expenses and getting nothing back on it right now, this dedicated offer gets you 2% Cashback for year 1 on Ads, SaaS, Travel and other everyday business expenses. Uncapped. Sign up for free and use the code SWU2K26 to unlock your cashback: https://www.incard.com/?fpr=soarwithus&fp_sid=pod Follow Olly: https://linktr.ee/ollyhudson Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joe_marston Follow Loukas: https://www.linkedin.com/in/loukas-hambi-388067152/ Follow Liam: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liam-dean-a11a43152/

🚨🚀 If you're a brand spending £100K/month, we'll run your ads. Apply for your growth roadmap: https://www.soarwithus.co/d2c-diaries-get-in-touch?utm_campaign=191661253-D2C+Diaries&utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=podcast&utm_term=d2c_diaries&utm_content=ep_85 Daniel McCarthy is the founder of Theta and an associate professor of marketing at the University of Maryland. Private equity firms bring him in to dig through the transaction data before they buy a DTC brand, and he's done it on over 450 companies, from McDonald's to some of the biggest names in ecommerce. He breaks down the "growth report card" that shows whether a brand's growth is real or just manufactured by spend, why discounting a customer's first order drags down what they're worth long after, and why most brands have no idea where they stand when someone asks ChatGPT which brand to buy. Harvard Business Review article: How to Value a Company by Analyzing Its Customers: https://hbr.org/2020/01/how-to-value-a-company-by-analyzing-its-customers This podcast is proudly sponsored by Incard. If you're spending serious money on daily business expenses and getting nothing back on it right now, this dedicated offer gets you 2% Cashback for year 1 on Ads, SaaS, Travel and other everyday business expenses. Uncapped. Sign up for free and use the code SWU2K26 to unlock your cashback: https://www.incard.com/?fpr=soarwithus Follow Daniel McCarthy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielmcc/ Follow Olly: https://linktr.ee/ollyhudson Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joe_marston Follow Loukas: https://shorturl.at/TRI8B / https://x.com/LoukasHambi Follow Liam: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liam-dean-a11a43152/ Follow D2C Diaries: https://www.tiktok.com/@d2c.diaries / https://www.instagram.com/d2c_diaries/

🚨🚀 If you're a brand spending £100K/month, we'll run your ads. Apply for your growth roadmap: https://www.soarwithus.co/d2c-diaries-get-in-touch?utm_campaign=191661253-D2C%20Diaries&utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=podcast&utm_term=d2c_diaries&utm_content=ep_84 Carl Weische, founder of Accelerated Agency, runs CRO for AG1, Huel, Vessi, The Oodie, Bioniq and IM8. He breaks down why postclick and "the fragmentation of the funnel" are becoming the next big lever as media buying gets more automated and more expensive, why one product page can't sell to every customer avatar, and how he reframes offers around perceived value instead of discounting. He also tells the inside story of building IM8 from zero to over $50m a month using a network of 50 congruent, persona-driven funnels, each built around a specific ad angle. Timestamps : 00:00 Intro 01:58 From Reselling Yeezys to founding Accelerated 05:09 Media buying isn't enough anymore 08:58 Postclick mistakes brands make 15:27 Perceived value over discounting 21:57 The IM8 story: $0 to $50m/month 30:44 When to build a dedicated funnel 33:42 The post-purchase upsell playbook 38:58 The research most brands skip 42:14 Where AI helps (and where it can't) 45:02 In-house software and Claude Code 48:09 The next competitive edge?... This podcast is proudly sponsored by Incard. If you're spending serious money on daily business expenses and getting nothing back on it right now, this dedicated offer gets you 2% Cashback for year 1 on Ads, SaaS, Travel and other everyday business expenses. Uncapped. Sign up for free and use the code SWU2K26 to unlock your cashback: https://www.incard.com/?fpr=soarwithus&fp_sid=pod Follow Olly: https://linktr.ee/ollyhudson Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joe_marston Follow Loukas: https://shorturl.at/TRI8B / https://x.com/LoukasHambi Follow Carl: https://www.youtube.com/@UCIgbiNZFqHZqIQ2Uoxxfu6w https://x.com/CarlWeische

🚨🚀 If you're a brand spending £100K/month , we'll run your ads. Apply for your growth roadmap: https://www.soarwithus.co/d2c-diaries-get-in-touch?utm_campaign=191661253-D2C%20Diaries&utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=podcast&utm_term=d2c_diaries&utm_content=ep_83 Matt, Director of Brand & Product at Lapland UK, took a 20-year live-only Christmas experience business and turned it into a DTC brand that sold 15,000 advent calendars in under 4 hours. He breaks down why Lapland builds every product from the story first, and how they cracked the US market from zero brand awareness, landing a $250 average order value from a completely cold audience. This podcast is proudly sponsored by SATHI SATHI is the affiliate platform built for Shopify brands that want the truth about their program. Cookieless multi-touch attribution shows you which affiliates drove the sale. AI-powered fraud engine catches leaked codes and self-referrals before your payout goes out. Ambassadors climb commission tiers, earn booster rewards, and see exactly what they need to unlock next. Payouts, invoices, and tax forms happen in one click. D2C Diaries listeners get 20% off, free migration from their current setup, and onboarding support from their team. Book a demo: https://www.mysathi.io/demo?utm_source=soarwithus&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=d2c_diaries Follow Olly: https://linktr.ee/ollyhudson Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joe_marston Follow Loukas: https://shorturl.at/TRI8B / https://x.com/LoukasHambi Follow Matt: https://www.instagram.com/mattbatts/

Paul Gedman has been in DTC longer than almost anyone we've had on the podcast - from joining The Hut Group in 2009 with 40 employees, and over nine years scaling it to £1 billion in revenue via ten acquisitions (including Look Fantastic), to now running eComplete, where he's building a model that competes directly with private equity for e-commerce acquisitions. Paul breaks down why every DTC era is defined by a different arbitrage opportunity, what actually happens once a founder takes on investment (his "5-a-side to 11-a-side" analogy is a good one), and the brutal real odds of a successful DTC exit - he puts it at 1 in 1,600 founders who get out with more than 50% of the value. We also get into why 80% of exit processes fail, the prep work founders skip that kills deals months later, and how eComplete is trying to build a hybrid model that gives founders a better shot. 🚨🚀 If you're a brand spending £100K/month, we'll run your ads. Apply for your growth roadmap: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0wQ_DM0 This podcast is proudly sponsored by Sathi. SATHI is the affiliate platform built for Shopify brands that want the truth about their program. Cookieless multi-touch attribution shows you which affiliates drove the sale. AI-powered fraud engine catches leaked codes and self-referrals before your payout goes out. Ambassadors climb commission tiers, earn booster rewards, and see exactly what they need to unlock next. Payouts, invoices, and tax forms happen in one click. D2C Diaries listeners get 20% off, free migration from their current setup, and onboarding support from their team. Book a demo: https://mysathi.io/demo?utm_source=soarwithus&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=d2c_diaries Follow Olly: https://linktr.ee/ollyhudson Follow Paul: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-gedman-626b0666/ Follow D2C Diaries https://www.tiktok.com/@d2c_diaries / https://www.instagram.com/d2c_diaries/

This podcast is proudly sponsored by Incard. If you're spending serious money on daily business expenses and getting nothing back on it right now, this dedicated offer gets you 2% Cashback for year 1 on Ads, SaaS, Travel and other everyday business expenses. Uncapped. Sign up for free and use the code SWU2K26 to unlock your cashback https://incard.co?fpr=soarwithus&fp_sid=pod Meta performance has been rough since March and if you're feeling it, you're not alone. Olly and Loukas are back for a solo episode breaking down exactly what's gone wrong on the platform and, more importantly, what's actually working across the 40+ audits they ran in Q2. They cover the five most common account errors they're seeing right now (most of which are quick fixes), why creative diversity has become the single biggest unlock for scaling spend, and how to run a proper gap analysis across persona, messaging, valence zones, emotional drivers, and vehicle type before you produce another asset. Krishna Rao, CFO of Anthropic, on Invest Like the Best https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEEZPpx8qow Brian Chesky on Invest Like the Best - AI Founder mode https://youtu.be/eURcW5_uS60 Creative Forecasting resource: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0wjPt20 00:00 Intro: news and what we've been watching 17:32 State of Meta: why Q2 has been tough across the board 20:18 5 common account errors (attribution, audiences, funnel coverage, concentration, landing pages) 28:09 What's working: The Hudson Method and creator flywheels 36:36 Creative volume, gap analysis and diversifying across personas, valence & vehicle 48:42 Hit rate case study: micro personas and psychological messaging in action 50:58 Iterations, borrowing frameworks from non-competing brands 55:24 Landing pages, quiz funnels and AOV engineering 🚨🚀 If you're a brand spending £100K/month, we'll run your ads. Apply for your growth roadmap: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0wjzrY0 Follow Olly: https://linktr.ee/ollyhudson Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joe_marston Follow Loukas: https://shorturl.at/TRI8B / https://x.com/LoukasHambi Follow Liam: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liam-dean-a11a43152/ Follow D2C Diaries: https://www.tiktok.com/@d2c.diaries / https://www.instagram.com/d2c_diaries/

This podcast is proudly sponsored by Incard. If you're spending serious money on daily business expenses and getting nothing back on it right now, this dedicated offer gets you 2% Cashback for year 1 on Ads, SaaS, Travel and other everyday business expenses. Uncapped. Sign up for free and use the code SWU2K26 to unlock your cashback https://incard.co?fpr=soarwithus&fp_sid=pod --- 12 months ago AI animation wasn't really a thing. Now it's a fourth creative format sitting alongside static, UGC and high production and the brands that figure it out first are going to have a significant edge. We got Alex Cooper back on D2C Diaries this week. And a lot has changed since he was last on. We got into everything. How we've built an AI videographer role into our production process and why you need a specialist not a generalist. Why winning ads right now are either hyper native or elite direct response and why everything in the middle is dying. How the pendulum has swung too far toward AI research and why the best strategists are going back to manual. Why iterations aren't dead post-Andromeda, they just need to mean something. And the brand that scaled from $1M to $45M off the back of one concept. Check out Parker AI here: https://heyparker.ai/ 🚨🚀 If you're a brand spending £100K/month, we'll run your ads. Apply for your growth roadmap: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0wjzrY0 Follow Alex https://x.com/alexgoughcooper https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexgoughcooper/ https://heyparker.ai/ 00:00 Alex Cooper returns 02:24 Our sponsor Incard 04:01 The biggest shifts in creative strategy in the last 12 months 05:54 How we built the AI videographer role 13:25 AI animations are here to stay 16:02 Meta's persona level delivery 20:04 Gap analysis, learnings and data 26:55 Manual research vs AI automated research 30:07 Our sponsor Incard 31:45 Manual research vs AI automated research 33:39 Iterations post-Andromeda 38:26 Ugly vs high prod 48:37 Positive framing 51:22 Complexity bias in ads 55:20 How Alex is using AI 1:02:17 Parker AI Follow Olly: https://linktr.ee/ollyhudson Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joe_marston Follow Loukas: https://shorturl.at/TRI8B / https://x.com/LoukasHambi Follow Liam: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liam-dean-a11a43152/ Follow D2C Diaries: https://www.tiktok.com/@d2c.diaries / https://www.instagram.com/d2c_diaries/

D2C Diaries is proudly sponsored by Commercive. If you're a ecommerce business owner doing a minimum of 10+ orders per day and looking for a smarter and cost-effective way to source and fulfill from china, go to https://www.commercive.co for a free quote and fulfillment audit today. --- Sunna van Kampen built 1.7M followers, generated half a billion views in 2025, and turned Tonic Health into one of the UK's fastest growing supplement brands. Without a single paid ad. What started as a Covid panic, a Boots listing that fell through and no DTC experience, forced Sunna to figure out how to reach customers from scratch. So he walked into a supermarket with a phone and started exposing what was actually in the products people were buying every week. That decision changed everything. In this episode we get into the full story. How Sunna built an organic content engine that runs on two days of filming a month, why he talks about bread more than vitamins, and how a single viral video gave him the insight behind Tonic's best selling product. We also get into the vitamin industry itself. Why the products on the shelves are underdosed by design, what Sunna found when he went into kids and baby nutrition, and why most supplement brands are built around margin rather than health. Plus the content philosophy that underpins all of it. Why Sunna's board kept pushing him to sell more, why he kept saying no, and why that decision is the reason Tonic is where it is today. --- 🚨🚀 If you're a brand spending £100K/month, we'll run your ads. Apply for your growth roadmap: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0w6mMv0 Follow Olly: https://linktr.ee/ollyhudson Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joe_marston Follow Loukas: https://shorturl.at/TRI8B / https://x.com/LoukasHambi Follow Liam: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liam-dean-a11a43152/ Follow D2C Diaries: https://www.tiktok.com/@d2c.diaries / https://www.instagram.com/d2c_diaries/

This podcast is proudly sponsored by SARAL. Find influencers, reach out, manage every relationship, all in one place, without any chaos. 200+ brands including Grüns, Solawave, Spacegoods are running their influencer programs on SARAL. If that sounds like what you've been looking for, go to https://tinyurl.com/3t4d4myx and book a demo with their team. Tell them we sent you to claim your $500 discount and whiteglove onboarding. ---- Chris joined Hambi Media as a creative strategist with no agency experience. One year later, he's been promoted to Senior Creative Strategist working across 7-9 figure DTC brands. In this episode, the guys break down exactly what separates good creative strategists from great ones - the research process, micro personas, messaging psychology, and how Chris 8x'd hit rate in 30 days by changing just two things. This episode is for you if: - You're a founder trying to understand what great creative strategy actually looks like inside an agency - You're a creative strategist who wants to know what top 1% performance really requires - You're trying to break into creative strategy and want the most honest breakdown of what the role demands What we cover: - Why manual research is the highest leverage activity in creative strategy - How micro personas unlock incremental reach without changing your frameworks - The messaging psychology shift that 8x'd hit rate in 30 days - Why AI creates the biggest opportunity in history to become a creative strategist - The deep work principle behind every great insight - What creative strategy looks like in 2 years Chris's Substack: https://substack.com/@christopherstavropoulos Chris's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisstav1/ 🚨🚀 If you're a brand spending £100K/month, we'll run your ads. Apply for your growth roadmap: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0v-BVd0 --- Follow Olly: https://linktr.ee/ollyhudson Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joe_marston Follow Loukas: https://shorturl.at/TRI8B / https://x.com/LoukasHambi Follow Liam: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liam-dean-a11a43152/ Follow D2C Diaries: https://www.tiktok.com/@d2c.diaries / https://www.instagram.com/d2c_diaries/

D2C Diaries is proudly sponsored by Commercive. If you're a ecommerce business owner doing a minimum of 10+ orders per day and looking for a smarter and cost-effective way to source and fulfill from china, go to https://www.commercive.co for a free quote and fulfillment audit today. ---- Most brands have a creative volume problem and don't know it. In this masterclass, Olly breaks down the Creative Forecasting model Soar Group uses across its client base (brands spending anywhere from £100K to £5M a month on Meta) to answer the one question that unlocks scale: how many new creatives do I need to produce each month to hit my spend target? You'll learn how to pull and classify your ad inventory, run cohort survival analysis to get your real churn rate, calculate your win rate and half-life, and plug those numbers into a demand equation that tells you exactly how many ads to launch each month, whether you're holding spend or scaling to a new target. Olly also covers why volume without diversity stalls accounts, how to map creative gaps across personas and angles, and the negative spiral most brands sleepwalk into when creative becomes a cost centre instead of a growth lever. By the end of this episode you'll have a repeatable forecasting process you can run on your own account today. The cheat sheet resource: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0vzzg60 🚨🚀 If you're a brand spending £100K/month, we'll run your ads. Apply for your growth roadmap: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0vzzJ60 00:00 Intro 01:00 Our sponsor: Commercive 02:20 The same trends we're seeing 04:06 The challenges brands are facing 05:20 Creative is the new targeting 06:50 What we're seeing in audits 08:45 How many creatives do we need each month? 19:18 Factors that may impact the data 21:33 What we're trying to avoid 22:33 Personas 25:57 How we help brands --- Follow Olly: https://linktr.ee/ollyhudson Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joe_marston Follow Loukas: https://shorturl.at/TRI8B / https://x.com/LoukasHambi Follow Liam: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liam-dean-a11a43152/ Follow D2C Diaries: https://www.tiktok.com/@d2c.diaries / https://www.instagram.com/d2c_diaries/

This podcast is proudly sponsored by Incard. Most founders building high-growth digital companies are stuck doing the same thing: toggling between apps, wrestling with spreadsheets, and manually reconciling expenses - all while trying to actually grow their business. There's a better way. Incard is the financial platform built for the way modern digital businesses actually operate. Multi-currency accounts, corporate cards with real rewards, and a fully connected banking experience - all in one place. This dedicated offer gets you: - 1 month free trial Incard Plus - All Incard Plus plan features included - 2% cashback on Ad Spend, Saas, Travel for year one ​ This time-limited offer is only valid until end of May. Take control of your finances with Incard today. T&Cs apply: https://incard.co?fpr=soarwithus&fp_sid=pod --- Loukas breaks down the full AI infrastructure he has built on top of Claude, from context engineering fundamentals through to a self-learning creative OS that compounds over time. In this mastermind he covers why context is the entire game right now and why your prompts matter less than you think, how Claude Skills work under the hood and how to build ones that actually compress your team's best thinking into repeatable systems, the exact 8-phase scriptwriting skill Hambi runs in production, the recursive script grader that scores every script against 10 criteria and rewrites until it ships, and the reasoning trace system that turns Claude from a tool into something that gets smarter the more you use it. Whether you're just getting started with Claude or you think you're advanced, this is the end-to-end session. Comment "Claude" below to get the reference files, CSOS template and PDFs referenced in this episode. Sarah Levinger's article on Valence Zones https://x.com/SarahLevinger/status/2021281038895546761?s=20 D2C Diaries Scriptwriting Masterclass https://youtu.be/dlH4acLpd_g --- 🚨🚀 If you're a brand spending £100K/month, we'll run your ads. Apply for your growth roadmap: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0vgMDy0 00:00 Intro 03:27 Incard sponsor 04:20 Why context is the entire game 08:08 Brand context vs domain context explained 10:16 How to build a context library database 14:14 Claude Skills vs Claude Code vs Claude Cowork 20:38 Claude skills 23:23 The CSOS - single source of truth setup on Notion 26:33 Framework database 29:50 Skill building workflow 31:00 Scriptwriting Skill 35:35 Incard sponsor 36:28 8 phases of scripting writing skill 50:22 Reporting skill 53:27 Script Grader 58:28 Building operating infrastructure Follow Olly: https://linktr.ee/ollyhudson Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joe_marston Follow Loukas: https://shorturl.at/TRI8B / https://x.com/LoukasHambi Follow Liam: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liam-dean-a11a43152/ Follow D2C Diaries: https://www.tiktok.com/@d2c.diaries / https://www.instagram.com/d2c_diaries/

This podcast is proudly sponsored by SARAL. Find influencers, reach out, manage every relationship, all in one place, without any chaos. 200+ brands including Grüns, Solawave, Spacegoods are running their influencer programs on SARAL. If that sounds like what you've been looking for, go to https://tinyurl.com/3t4d4myx and book a demo with their team. Tell them we sent you to claim your $500 discount and whiteglove onboarding. --- In this episode, Olly and Loukas go deep on the AI systems they've spent the last few months building inside Soar Group - the personal operating systems, the creative production infrastructure, and the internal tooling that's changing how the business runs. This isn't a conversation about AI tools. It's about the architecture underneath them.They cover: How Olly built a personal operating system based on Andrej Karpathy's LLM wiki pattern — using Obsidian connected to Claude Code. Call transcripts categorised automatically every day, Slack piped in, reasoning traces stored against every decision made in the business. How Loukas built his own version in VS Code connected to Claude Code with in-depth context on every brand, every direct report, and every specialism, plus a reinforcement learning loop built into the content pipeline. The Club Neuro AI operating system - a full web app built as a test case before rolling into the Control Room. Best performing frameworks dashboard, hooks database, one-click reporting, weekly Reddit scrape, and a UI designed to capture operator intuition at the moment it happens. The four learning loops: performance into hypothesis, hypothesis into correction, correction into rule, decision into outcome. How they hired an AI videographer targeting 60 unique concepts a month — the equivalent of 15 shoot days replaced by one person. A mass static generation system with 40-60 framework prompts, brand DNA and personas pre-loaded, ready to generate at scale. The principle that ties it all together: context compounds. Models don't. --- 00:00 Intro 02:05 Our sponsor: SARAL 03:00 Our personal operating systems we've built 21:00 AI as a feedback loop 24:14 Our sponsor: SARAL 25:10 Our foundational context and data engine 30:20 Club Neuro: creative intelligence operating system 35:00 Best in class forecasting process 39:50 Our internal creative processes 47:28 Business intelligence platform Follow Olly: https://linktr.ee/ollyhudson Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joe_marston Follow Loukas: https://shorturl.at/TRI8B / https://x.com/LoukasHambi Follow Liam: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liam-dean-a11a43152/ Follow D2C Diaries: https://www.tiktok.com/@d2c.diaries / https://www.instagram.com/d2c_diaries/