D2C Diaries

Before pet food was “DTC sexy,” Pure Pet Food was scaling with zero ad spend.In this episode, Matt and Joe unpack how they built early traction through scrappy tactics like event pitching, awards, and PR - not Meta. With just a £300 council grant and no industry experience, they grew the brand to £1M+ in revenue without touching paid media.They share how that foundation led to VC backing and how they leveraged Meta spend, a custom subscription stack, and retention-first thinking to push past 8 figures.If you’re early-stage and trying to scale without burning cash, or already spending and want to scale smarter, this one’s for you.🚨🚀 If you're a brand spending £100K/month, we'll run your ads. Apply for your free audit here: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0nkf8h000:00 Meet Pure Pet Food04:35 Early failures + finding purpose12:09 Early adoption into the pet food category14:30 The rise of subscription pet food16:50 How they were scouted for Dragons Den 19:20 Pitch experience 23:45 The impact post-air date25:40 Inflection point for the business28:03 Scrappy techniques29:30 Hiring proactive team members32:20 Raising investment36:50 Understanding the game of venture39:55 Overraising = pressure to 10x42:10 How they unlocked Meta49:15 In-house growth restructure 50:40 Scaling and testing 54:35 Retention & subscription flywheel56:55 Post-purchase flows & feedback1:02:20 Future vision for Pure Pet Food1:04:50 Will they exit?Follow Pure Pet Foodhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/mathew-cockroft-78bb2489/https://www.linkedin.com/in/joemitchellcreative/https://www.purepetfood.comFollow Loukas on socials:LinkedIn: https://shorturl.at/TRI8BTwitter: https://x.com/LoukasHambiFollow Olly on socials:LinkedIn: https://shorturl.at/kPrqOTwitter: https://x.com/oliverwhudsonFollow D2C Diaries on socialsTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@d2c.diariesInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/d2c_diaries/

D2C Diaries is proudly sponsored by WayflyerRunning an ecom brand and struggling with cash flow? Whether you're scaling ad spend or restocking bestsellers ahead of peak season, Wayflyer provides fast, non-dilutive funding tailored to e-commerce businesses. No equity. No months of waiting. Just the capital and insights you need to grow, on your terms.Check them out: https://tinyurl.com/4jfc8yejThis mission-first ecom brand has fortified 250 million meals without compromising scale.In this episode, Olly and Loukas sit down with Martyn Cook, founder of Noobru, the mission-first ecom brand that’s already fortified 250 million meals for malnourished children and is on track for 1 billion.But this isn’t charity for charity’s sake. It’s mission-led growth done right.They break down:- Mission-first growth (with real impact)- The unit of good concept and how to apply it- How mission affects AOV, retention, and partnerships- The downside of “fake” charity positioning- Tactical stuff: upsells, advertorials, and affiliate scaleIf you're a founder who wants to scale with purpose (and still keep control) this one's unmissable.0:00 Meet Martyn Cook: Founder of Noobru03:15 The brand background05:20 The whiteboard method06:50 Identifying malnutrition as the problem to solve09:10 What can you build that keeps your interest?10:45 Addressing the hot take14:10 The 'unit of good' framework20:05 Optimising everything by 1%26:40 Advertorials as a method for acquisition38:50 Dipping into founder style creatives40:05 Upsells and cross-sells unlocking 30–50% more AOV47:50 How super affiliates help you scale57:40 What's next for Noobru & the future of ecom in the AI eraFollow Martyn on socials:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martyn-cook/Podcast: https://smarterdestiny.com/series/podcast/https://noobru.com/Follow Loukas on socials:LinkedIn: https://shorturl.at/TRI8BTwitter: https://x.com/LoukasHambiFollow Olly on socials:LinkedIn: https://shorturl.at/kPrqOTwitter: https://x.com/oliverwhudsonFollow D2C Diaries on socialsTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@d2c.diariesInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/d2c_diaries/

Discover how to break through the limits of Meta advertising with insights on incremental reach, a key performance metric. Learn innovative strategies for measuring and improving reach, while exploring fresh customer personas and creative tactics. Dive into the importance of deep customer research and seasonal insights to tailor marketing efforts. Uncover effective media buying strategies that drive growth and the benefits of collaboration between creative teams and growth managers for successful campaigns.

D2C Diaries is proudly sponsored by WayflyerRunning an ecom brand and struggling with cash flow? Whether you're scaling ad spend or restocking bestsellers ahead of peak season, Wayflyer provides fast, non-dilutive funding tailored to e-commerce businesses. No equity. No months of waiting. Just the capital and insights you need to grow, on your terms.Check them out: partners.wayflyer.com/soarIn this episode, Olly sits down with Soar COO Sam to unpack the hard lessons from their early experiments with AI.After spending over £30K on tools, workflows, and automation frameworks that quickly became obsolete, the team realised they were solving the wrong problem.This episode dives into the strategic shift that followed, from prompt engineering to context engineering, from static workflows to scalable infrastructure.You’ll learn: – What context engineering actually looks like inside a creative team – The difference between business-level vs process-level context – How to build agentic systems that don’t collapse under real-world complexity – How Soar’s internal AI Committee drives bottom-up adoption across departmentsIf you're building with AI inside a fast-moving team, this is the blueprint we wish we had six months ago.Watch Andrej Karpathy’s LLM Breakdown Video: https://youtu.be/EWvNQjAaOHwComment on our Youtube "AI" to receive Sam's run-through on how to 10x creative strategy by using AI-powered context engineering00:00 Introducing Sam and his role with AI 07:10 Where our AI systems broke (and why)11:10 Business-level vs process-level context14:15 Codifying human judgment into systems15:30 Flashy tools vs infrastructure that scales17:45 Our internal AI committee28:50 Slope vs intercept thinking in AI builds32:30 Data warehousing39:35 Creating UGC briefs with MCP52:20 Setting brands up for the next 6 months1:00:00 The S-tier tools we're actually using

Dive into the intricacies of Black Friday with insights on achieving staggering sales from optimized strategies. Discover the key to setting achievable goals and the power of urgency and exclusivity in promotional tactics. Learn how to effectively utilize creative iteration over new assets and the importance of lead generation before Q4. Explore innovative gifting angles and TikTok Shop predictions that could redefine your sales approach. This is a comprehensive playbook to maximize your revenue potential!

CRO is the growth lever 99% of DTC brands are ignoring.In this episode, Olly is joined by Dylan Ander, ex-agency owner, 2x eCom founder, and now the creator of Heatmap.com, the CRO tool quietly powering some of the highest-performing brands online.They break down the post-click strategies the top 1% are using to scale profitably and why your landing page might matter more than your creative.You’ll learn:- Why CRO is the real 80/20 of DTC growth- What metrics actually matter (hint: not conversion rate)- Why you should stop sending traffic to over-engineered PDPs- How Dylan helped brands unlock 7 figures from simple CRO tweaks- Tactical wins around landing pages, AOV, revenue per session & moreThis is a must-listen for founders, creative strategists, and media buyers looking to scale beyond the click.0:00 - Why we’re talking CRO, not ads3:00 - Top 1% brands are doing these 3 things13:25 - Listicles, bundles, ugly pages that scale15:10 - Review mining + customer data19:18 - Quickest wins in CRO28:10 - Why conversion rate is a vanity metric31:45 - Offer testing = huge CRO lever37:29 - Dylan’s journey into SaaS41:20 - Why Dylan built Heatmap43:00 - Operating principles of SaaS 46:55 - How top users get value from Heatmap49:20 - Where AI + CRO are heading53:10 - Pricing

Most brands creatives live at the bottom of the funnel, battling over the same small pool of ready-to-buy customers.But 80% of our best-performing ads? They start much higher up.In this episode of D2C Diaries, Loukas shares the exact internal training we run with our creative strategists on the hardest skill in paid social: storytelling.You’ll see how we script for unaware and problem aware audiences (the stages most brands ignore) and why they’re the biggest unlock for scaling cold traffic.From building 15–40 second setups to weaving human desires into scripts, this is the framework we use to turn good ads into top performers.This session was too valuable to keep behind closed doors, so Loukas re-filmed the whole thing for our channel.Watch the training now and learn how to tell stories that sell.00:00 Storytelling as the hardest paid social skill02:53 Evolution of the funnel04:40 Funnel stages & messaging09:58 Hooking cold audiences without the product12:50 Pitfalls that kill storytelling18:55 Cutting fluff in scripts24:00 Ditching jargon28:12 Using human desires39:10 Messaging by market sophistication51:00 Curiosity loop techniques56: 45 Best-in-class examples1:01:30 Recap & key takeaways

In this engaging discussion, Alex Cooper, who runs the performance creative agency Ad Crate, dives deep into the fusion of AI and creative strategy. He reveals how AI is reshaping advertising, making performance-first storytelling crucial. Topics include the evolving role of creative strategists by 2025, the need for agencies to develop internal IP, and the potential of video ads. Alex emphasizes that 'briefing' will be key in the near future and discusses how agencies must adapt to stay competitive in a rapidly changing landscape.

What happens when you give Loukas two weeks, a cleared calendar, and unrestricted access to Google’s new Veo 3?You get a repeatable system for generating scroll-stopping ad hooks, without touching a camera.In this episode of D2C Diaries, Loukas breaks down the exact prompt structure we now use within the agency group to turn ChatGPT JSON prompts into Veo 3-generated ads. Whether you’re scaling a best-performing hook or building a fresh creative system from scratch, this workflow will save your team hours and unlock new angles faster.We cover: – How Loukas used JSON formatting to get better results from Veo 3 – The key components of creating a high-performing AI hook – Real examples of hooks we’ve built and scaled across Meta – Why realism often kills performance (and absurdity wins). – How to use Veo 3 + ChatGPT to 10X creative volume in your ad accountWe’re also giving away the exact JSON prompt template we now use in the agency.👉 Drop robot in the YouTube comments and we’ll send it to you.Watch the videos featured!Motion's baby podcast: https://x.com/rezakhadjavi/status/1935690909984665644Too short for Modeling Liquid Death Ad https://www.instagram.com/reel/DLkPcDmPchO/This episode is for founders, CMOs, and creative strategists ready to build faster and scale smarter.00:00 What is Veo 3 and why it matters for DTC creative06:40 Examples of scroll-stopping AI ads15:15 Examples of hook variations with VEO 318:30 How we use ChatGPT + Veo 3 together with JSON25:30 Constraints to VEO 329:10 How to use Flow within VEO 3 35:20 Product rendering + brand integration in AI videos39:10 Use cases of VEO 341:30 Legal, IP and content authenticity concerns49:40 Final thoughts + how to get the full prompt templateFollow Loukas on socials:LinkedIn: https://shorturl.at/TRI8BTwitter: https://x.com/LoukasHambiFollow Olly on socials:LinkedIn: https://shorturl.at/kPrqOTwitter: https://x.com/oliverwhudsonFollow D2C Diaries on socialsTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@d2c.diariesInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/d2c_diaries/

Matt Kelly is back on the podcast, 9 months after his first episode, and a lot has changed.In this brutally honest conversation, Matt opens up about what it really feels like to scale a wellness brand beyond 8 figures.We talk:– Space Goods has gone from £3.5M to a projected £18M.– Growing from 1 to 15 employees in 9 months– Losing his sense of purpose as the business outgrows him– Why the rebrand feels terrifying (even after 5 months of work)– The reality of copycats launching before he does– Getting quote tweeted by Andrew Tate– And how ChatGPT is basically his creative directorIf you’re a founder, operator, or builder navigating scale, you’ll feel this one.🎧 Full episode available now.🔔 Subscribe for more behind-the-scenes convos with the operators shaping the future of DTC.00:00 Matt Kelly is back02:40 Spacegoods 2.0: start up to scale up04:05 Losing founder identity10:55 Are you happy?14:50 Setting a long term vision20:00 Spacegoods rebrand21:50 TikTok shop zombie brands24:40 Product + SKU journey25:40 What's next in health + wellness?30:32 Product development35:40 ChatGPT as Matt’s co-founder39:40 VEO 342:30 Product roadmap44:20 Retail VS DTC49:30 Getting called out by Andrew Tate53:00 Being transparent 57:30 What's next for SpacegoodsFollow Matt: https://x.com/matthuciushttps://spacegoods.com/Follow Loukas on socials:LinkedIn: https://shorturl.at/TRI8BTwitter: https://x.com/LoukasHambiFollow Olly on socials:LinkedIn: https://shorturl.at/kPrqOTwitter: https://x.com/oliverwhudsonFollow D2C Diaries on socialsTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@d2c.diariesInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/d2c_diaries/