Joe Marston 🚀

Co-Founder

Scaling e-commerce brands to 7 and 8 figures 🚀 | LU Entrepreneur of The Year Award Winner | Founder of The Leading TikTok Marketing Agency and an Award Winning Full Service Ecom Growth Agency.

3x Agency Founder.

We scale brands to 7 and 8 figures with creative, paid traffic, retention and funnel optimisation.

In 2024, having a great product is one thing…

But scaling a brand to £10M is a another.

You need a simple roadmap for profitably attracting and converting customers, at scale.

Because when you get that right…

- You stand out from competitors in the market
- You build a community around your brand
- You acquire customers at will (profitably)
- You turn customers into raving fans 

Giving you complete control over your growth.

We help our clients do exactly that with our proven system that guarantees growth.

1. Initial diagnostic to identify bottlenecks in your business
2. Developing a bespoke growth strategy for your brand
3. Creative ideation and production 
4. Unique UGC collaborations
5. Targeted advertising (Meta, TikTok, Pinterest, Snapchat)
6. Email marketing 

And having generated over £100M+ in sales across 200+ brands, we’ve know the ecommerce game inside out.

🚀 Mystery Shirt In A Box grew from £5K to £2.6M in just one year with our help
🚀 The Essence Vault is hitting 7 figure months in its second year since launch
🚀 Vintage Threads tripled their revenue working with us with a 6x ROAS
🚀 AIRfreshh went from 0% to 52% of revenue from email in 2 months!
🚀 Bene Culture saw their revenue grow 6x in 6 months with our help
🚀 The Oodie generated £2M on TikTok alone in their first year
🚀 UN:IK’s first quarter of 2023 was up 88% on 2022
🚀Grew Liam and Co. 500% year on year

Don’t put up with unpredictable, unsustainable or underwhelming growth any more.

If you want to see how we could help scale your brand, send me a DM saying ‘SOAR’

If you're not ready yet, I post daily educational content to give you all the secrets.

Founder

E-commerce growth agency offering bespoke services to online businesses looking to increase their sales and scale their brand.

2026 is a new game entirely - so we’ve distilled what’s actually working for 8–9 figure DTC brands into one huge resource...

📖 THE 2026 D2C PLAYBOOK: The New Rules of Meta, TikTok, AI & Performance Creative

The scroll is now personal.

Every feed is a unique journey and most brands aren’t building for it.

In 2026, you’re not just running ads. You’re feeding machine learning systems with creative, copy, and context, at speed.

The brands winning are the ones who’ve built signal-rich creative systems and message frameworks that adapt to intent.

We’ve pulled together the exact strategies, formats, and frameworks we’re using right now.

- What’s working
- What’s out
- What’s next

Want the download?

→ Like this post
→ Comment “2026” and we’ll send it your way

Building DTC brands to 8 and 9 figures | Founder of Soar With Us & For You Advertising | Triple Whale's "Agency of The Year" Winner

For one last time, we’re releasing our most requested resource of 2025: a folder of the top-performing brand funnel breakdowns of the year.

Their full stack: Paid strategy > Organic > Landing pages > Google ads > Email > Offers

8 of the best brands of 2025.

Here’s who’s inside:
– rhode skin
– MESHKI
– Loop Earplugs
– ALO
– IM8 Health
– REFY
– BRĒZ
– WONDERSKIN

If you want the folder, you know what to do.

Like the post.
Drop “FUNNEL” below.
We’ll send it your way.

Make sure we're connected so I can DM you

TikTok Shop went from an “experiment” to a $15bn GMV channel in the US in under two years, while UK revenue grew 180% YoY.

The question isn’t whether it works anymore. It’s whether your brand is actually set up to capture it.

We’ve seen enough TikTok Shop launches now to spot a clear pattern:

- a strong first week
- inconsistent creator output
- messy LIVE execution
- offers that spike once, then fade
- no repeatable way to scale GMV

That gap is exactly what this resource is designed to close.

We’ve put together a practical, start-to-finish TikTok Shop guide for established e-commerce brands that want to treat the channel as a growth engine, not a side experiment.

It’s built for teams doing £5M+, where execution, structure, and control actually matter.

Inside the guide, we break down:

- How to set up TikTok Shop foundations that support scale (not short-term spikes)
- The LIVE structures and technical setup brands use to keep viewers engaged and buying
- How to choose hero products and offers that drive consistent GMV
- The affiliate playbook: recruiting, incentivising, and sustaining creator output
- How to use LIVE coupons and flash deals without eroding brand value
- What top-performing TikTok Shop content has in common (hooks, proof, CTAs)
- How to train hosts that can actually sell on camera
- The metrics that matter during LIVE — and what to do when performance drops
- How TikTok Shop can double as a creative engine for paid and organic growth

It’s a plug-and-play blueprint based on what’s working in real accounts right now.

If you’re responsible for growth, ecom, or creative, this guide is designed to save you months of trial and error.

Want it?
Like this post
Comment “tiktok shop” and I’ll send it your way
(Make sure we’re connected so I can DM you)

The most productive thing I did this week was stare at a wall for 30 minutes.

Dr Andrew Huberman explains that your ability to focus is driven by the inputs you received in the hours before you sit down to work.

If you scroll Twitter, watch YouTube, or listen to podcasts between work blocks, your brain is still processing that stimulation when you try to focus.

He calls it "dopamine residue."

The fix is simple: boring breaks.

No phone. No music. No input.

Just silence.

I tested it for 3 days. The clarity was immediate.

I now build 10-30 mins of nothing before any writing, strategy, or deep work.

It sounds lazy. It's the opposite.

The less stimulated your break, the sharper your next work block.

This is one of many systems that helped me scale past 8 figures before 28.

(Yes, that's me staring at a wall. I don't actually do this - I normally meditate or sit in silence away from my desk. But I did sit there for 4 minutes just to get this shot, which might be worse so you should give this a like for effort) 

Want the full list of protocols that I’ve tested to 3x my productivity? 

Comment "productivity" and I'll send you 10 protocols that actually moved the needle.

This is what it looks like when persona-led growth is baked into the product, not just the marketing.

Kind patches are selling solutions to 10+ highly specific problems and doing it through 3,000+ live ads at once.

Each product?
→ Positioned to a different pain point.

Each creative?
→ Tailored to a specific outcome.

Each angle?
→ Built for a defined persona.

We’re talking:
• “Sunday scaries” sleep anxiety
• “Skin and hair” glow-ups
• “On-the-go” energy boosts
• “Late-night scrolling” focus drops
• Even “support with weight goals” and “hormonal balance” for women

They’re building mini-funnels that slot into people’s lives. It’s why their paid system scales without fatiguing.

We just broke the funnel down.

Mapped the personas, analysed the creative, and pulled the patterns.

Want the full teardown?
Like this post
Drop “persona” below and I’ll send you the link
(Make sure we’re connected so I can DM you)

Meta just rebuilt the algorithm. And if you're uploading the same 6 statics… you're invisible.

In 2026, scale doesn’t come from more budget.

It comes from creative variety that matches algorithm complexity.

Here’s what’s powering Meta’s backend now:

🔹 Andromeda – learns preference patterns from creative complexity → +8% ad quality

🔹 GEM – ingests billions of data points to personalise delivery → +5% conversions on Reels

🔹 Lattice – connects outcomes across placements + formats → +6% in ad conversions

🔹 Sequence Learning – understands what happens before the click → +3% conversion lift

None of this matters if you're still uploading templated UGC with 3 hooks and a voiceover.

Meta’s system doesn’t need more content. It needs more context.

That means:
- Persona-led narratives, not just “creators”
- Varied format logic (statics, scripts, carousels, reviews)
- Diverse outcomes (AOV, pLTV, incrementality, not just ROAS)

We call this Soulmate Theory: The right creative, for the right user, at the right moment.

The algo can find the match. But only if you give it something worth matching with.

Our process in 2026:
- Creative trees by persona → not linear iterations
- Weekly contextual inputs to train the algo
- Measured by incremental reach and hit rate, not CTR

This is what makes every part of the system work harder.

So if your Meta performance is flat, it’s not fatigue. It’s signal starvation.

Your next growth unlock isn't more budget. It's creative intelligence.

“We could’ve raised at £100million. We didn’t and I’m glad” - Dan Murray🧠

🔥 Just dropped a monster episode with Dan, co-founder of Heights, one of the UK’s most trusted wellness brands (and a brand we’ve been proud to partner with on creative).

Dan gets brutally honest on:

- How insomnia, gut issues and startup burnout led to Heights
- Why he turned down a £100M valuation and raised at £60M instead
- The real impact of celebrity collabs (every one of them a paying customer first)
- How they broke through 2 years of flat growth to hit £25M
- Why he believes in building the best product in the category, not the trendiest
- And how “The Smart Supplement” became Vitals with messaging that finally converts

If you’re building through the mud, chasing profitable scale, or trying to unlock a better narrative for your brand…

This one’s a masterclass in founder clarity, creative strategy, and performance at scale.

🎧 Listen here: https://lnkd.in/eWii754p

We helped Mindful Chef lift conversions by 39% and reduce blended CPA by 26% in 90 days - while maintaining spend

Mindful Chef came to us on a mission to scale efficient new customer acquisition and modernise its paid channel strategy. We needed to ensure that rising platform competition didn’t translate into rising acquisition costs.

The brief was clear: refresh channel strategy, bring AI-assisted optimisation into the mix, and allow creative strategy to do more of the legwork.

‍
👉 Meta
On Meta, we moved from manually stacked interests to letting creative drive discovery, integrating Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns (ASC) as the backbone of the strategy. A tightly run testing pipeline meant that each new concept had a fast path: validate in a dedicated test environment, then promote winners into core campaigns.

We layered in whitelisting to introduce fresh audiences and add trust signals, expanding reach while maintaining quality.


👉 Google
We streamlined Brand to remove cross-competition between Performance Max and Branded Search. Our bid strategy moved from target impression share to a Max Conversions test (versus manual CPC), unlocking volume and efficiency.

With stronger signal density established, we shifted to a focused target CPA approach, reducing acquisition costs on Google by 49% within the first 4 months of our partnership.


👉 Creative execution
Our first wave of creative translated Mindful Chef’s values into native-feel storytelling, mapped to key personas. We balanced high-production, “sceptic-to-convert” formats to tackle common objections around recipe boxes with UGC-led concepts that play into everyday tension points like back-to-school routine resets.

The result is a modular foundation spanning Problem-Aware to Product-Aware messaging, anchored in Mindful Chef’s USPs: health, convenience, and premium quality.

The Results:
✅ 67% META CONVERSIONS UP
✅ 26% BLENDED CPA DOWN
✅ 49% GOOGLE CPA DOWN

It feels like we're just getting started here, and we're incredibly excited at what's next for our partnership.

In under a year, IM8 Health crossed a $100M+ annualised run-rate and the underlying metrics actually improved as they grew.

With Danny Yeung making an appearance on the podcast this week, it felt like the right time to reshare our funnel breakdown to show what’s actually driving the numbers:

A few numbers worth paying attention to:

- $100M+ ARR pace in ~11 months
- 76% QoQ growth in the latest quarter
- 80%+ of first-time buyers convert to subscription
- $150 AOV, up materially post product expansion
- EBITDA losses now ~$2M per quarter, with breakeven in sight

We mapped IM8’s entire growth system end-to-end in a teardown a few months back, covering:

- Performance media across Meta + Google
- High-converting lander architecture
- Subscription-first funnel design
- Email + retention doing real revenue work
- Ambassador-led distribution
- Strong organic + owned community
- Bundled offers that lift AOV
- Clear, science-backed positioning (without killing brand)

If you want the full breakdown:

1️⃣ Like the post
2️⃣ Comment “IM8”
3️⃣ Make sure we’re connected so I can send it over

Here’s why most entrepreneurs never build anything that lasts:

They chase what’s easy, cheap, and fast, which means it’s easy to copy, and impossible to protect.

From day one at Soar, we asked ourselves:

“What would the best agency in the UK look like in 5 years and what do we need to do today to build that?”

At the time, it was just me and Olly.

Fewer than 5 staff.

No office.

No profit.

But that one mindset shift shaped everything.

We:
- Reinvested every penny instead of paying ourselves
- Hired top-tier people before we could “afford” them
- Built IP, frameworks, and internal systems from scratch
- Never cut corners, even when no one was watching

That’s what built the moat.

We weren’t trying to grow fast.

We were trying to become undeniable in one of the most competitive agency markets in the world.

And we’ve been scaling like that ever since.

Because while most people play the same game, we learned to play asymmetric warfare:

Win by doing what others can’t… or won’t.

If you’re building a DTC brand or service company, make decisions your future self will thank you for.

Short-term advantage is sugar. Moats take longer, but they’re the only way to win long-term.

I consumed 10+ hours of neuroscience-backed productivity content so you don't have to.

Here's the one thing that actually moved the needle:

Boring breaks.

Dr. Huberman explains that your focus isn't decided when you sit down to work. 
It's decided by what you consumed in the hours before.

He calls it "dopamine residue."

If you scroll Twitter, watch YouTube, or listen to podcasts between work blocks, your brain is still processing that stimulation when you try to focus.

The fix: No phone. No music. No input. Just silence before deep work.

I tested it for 7 days. The clarity was immediate.

This is 1 of 10 protocols I pulled from the research.

I put all 10 into a free PDF with step-by-step actions for each.

Comment "focus" and I'll send it to you.

In 2026, the most expensive mistake in paid media is making ads that look familiar.

If your ad account is full of:

– The same UGC setup
– The same pacing
– The same “hook → proof → CTA” flow

Meta doesn’t see 30 assets. It sees one idea, repeated. And that’s why scale stalls.

Because format and vehicle determine how Meta classifies your ads, not how many versions you upload.

Quick example (supplement brand):

UGC video
Creator talking to camera
“Nothing worked for my bloating until this”
Raw, selfie-style
Problem → Solution → Transformation

Static carousel
Clean, Reddit-style slides
“4 reasons your gut health is killing your energy”
Pain points, proof, soft product CTA

Same product.
Same promise.
Different format.
Different vehicle.

Which means:
– Different entity IDs
– Fresh reach
– New audiences unlocked

Format = the structure (UGC, static, high-prod, etc.)

Vehicle = the lens the story travels through (testimonial, expert, founder, education)

We recently changed just two things (format and vehicle) and Meta delivered the ad to a completely new audience overnight.

Nothing else moved.

If you want to win now, you need to mix formats and vehicles intentionally, not accidentally.

That’s how you unlock:
– New demand
– Better CPMs
– Scale that compounds instead of decays

Most brands don’t have a media problem.

They have a creative sameness problem.

We’ve audited hundreds of 8-9 figure ad accounts and the same problem shows up every single time.

Most DTC ad accounts we audit are built backwards are ignoring 3 key stages of the buyer journey:
- Problem unaware
- Problem aware
- Solution aware

All the budget is pointed at people who are already ready to buy.
- Offer overlays
- Product carousels
- Feature dumps
- “X% off today only”

And sure, it works, until it doesn’t.

You can’t scale if you only sell to people who already know you.

What we’re seeing in 7–8 figure audits:
- No context-setting
- No objection handling
- No storytelling or teaching
- No emotional runway

What to build instead:

You need creative that earns attention before it asks for action:
- Explainers: “Why most X don’t work”
- Sceptical UGC: “I didn’t think this would work because…”
- Founder POVs and breakdowns
- Category education or side-by-sides
- Hooks that sell the problem before the product

When you focus only on the most aware, you’re just pitching.
When you build for all 5 stages, you’re telling a story and scaling with depth.

The fastest way to kill Meta performance in 2026? Treat organic and paid as separate systems.

2026 is shaping up to be the year organic makes a comeback, not as a brand nice-to-have, but as an input into how Meta decides which paid ads deserve scale.

Meta’s GEM update (Meta’s new paid ads foundation model) quietly flips the question.

It’s not: “How do we make better ads?”

It’s: “How do we create better signals for paid delivery?”

GEM is Meta’s most advanced ads recommendation model, built at LLM scale to rank and sequence ads across Facebook and Instagram. Instead of judging ads in isolation, it evaluates entire user journeys and decides whether a brand’s creative is worth expanding to new people.

GEM is designed to make sense of:

- what people do over time (their sequence of actions, not just one click)
- the context of those actions (format, placement, device, surface)
- signals coming from across Meta’s ecosystem, not just Ads Manager

So if you’re still treating creative as “new angles” inside Ads Manager only, you’re training GEM (paid) with half the picture.

👉 The practical shift: organic shapes the interest signals GEM uses to decide whether your ads scale.

If people engage with your organic content (views, comments, saves, profile taps), you’re creating clearer interest patterns. GEM learns from those patterns when it decides:

- who to show your ads to next
- how aggressively to expand reach
- and whether your brand deserves cheaper, broader delivery

That’s why organic performance now compounds paid performance.

What to do this week

1. Run one creative strategy across paid + organic.
Same personas. Same objections. Same “why now?” triggers.
   
2. Build signal-saturated assets, not endless ad variations.
  Your goal isn’t 30 ads.
  Your goal is 5–10 distinct concepts that clearly signal who the product is for.
   
3. Make your creative org chart more important than your campaign structure.
   
  If you don’t have:
  - someone briefing
  - someone producing
  - someone tagging + learning
you’re not a performance team anymore. You’re just buying impressions.
  
The winners won’t be the best media buyers.

They’ll be the teams who can produce distinct, high-quality signals at speed across organic and paid and let GEM (paid) do what it’s designed to do.

Curious: are you still treating organic as a brand channel or are you using it as an acquisition input that determines whether paid can scale?

Olly Hudson unpacks the mechanics behind this shift, including GEM and UTIS, in a longer piece for anyone wanting the full picture https://lnkd.in/ej7TqbDF

Meta’s 2025 Andromeda update made one thing clear:

Creative and creator identity are now the targeting.

Meta isn’t relying on interests or lookalikes anymore. It’s matching ads to individual-level preferences in the moment.

Two implications matter:

1️⃣ Meta can support far more creative volume and match assets more precisely.

2️⃣ The brands that win are the ones engineering the strongest signals: relevance, engagement, and clean conversion journeys.

For brands spending multi-6 figures/month, growth rarely stalls because CPAs spike.

It stalls because first-time impression ratio (FTI) drifts down.

You spend more.
You hit the same people.
Top-of-funnel quietly dries up.

As a benchmark, we aim for 10–20% of impressions to be truly incremental each month.

So why do partnership ads win under Andromeda?

Across our accounts, partnership ads are taking a larger share of spend because they:

✅ Drive stronger engagement signals

✅ Feel more human and credible than brand-only ads

✅ Unlock new reach via identity, not just new angles

Same angle. Same format.

Run it through a creator, founder, or third-party identity and you open new pockets of reach without rebuilding the concept.

But, Partnership ads don’t fail at the ad level. They fail post-click.

If the landing page, pre-sell, or CRM doesn’t continue the same voice and story, the signal collapses.

Consistency is the multiplier.

If you’re scaling on Meta and not tracking FTI or incremental reach, you’re flying blind.

And if partnership ads aren’t a default part of your system yet, you'll get lost in the algorithm.

We tore up our entire creative process and rebuilt it for AI-first performance.

These 7 changes are now non-negotiable for scaling 8-figure brands.

2024–25 was about testing with AI.
2026 is about building with it.

Here’s what we’re shifting in our creative ops to scale real reach and win Meta’s AI game:

1. Creative diversity becomes non-negotiable
Meta’s new entity grouping system means if your ads look the same, they deliver the same. No matter how different the copy is.

💡70% of brands we audit are flooding their accounts with 100+ iterations...
But Meta sees them as 5 unique ads.

What we’re doing:
- Visual first, not copy first
- Distinct scenes, styles, formats
- Strategic volume > cosmetic tweaks

2. The AI Videographer becomes essential
We’ve added a Visual Prompt Engineer to every pod. A production multiplier.

🎯 Their remit:
- 10–30 ad variants per brief
- VO hooks, metaphors, transitions, environments
- Studio-level output without studio-level cost
It’s how we hit Meta’s volume bar without burning creative teams out.

3. AI = a second studio
We now run parallel briefs for human and AI production.
Same input, different output.

💡Where AI is outperforming:
- Product in environment
- Visual metaphors
- Explainers and low-prod demos
- Fast iterations on hooks + B-roll

4. Systems > tools
AI makes asset generation cheap.
So your edge isn’t generation, it’s organisation.

What we’re building:
✅ Centralised creative warehouse (transcribed, tagged, promptable)
✅ Context libraries for every format
✅ Performance data piped into feedback models
✅ Automated creative routing to avoid the graveyard problem

5. Feedback loops go automated
AI’s not just replacing creators, it’s coaching them.

We’re using tools that:
- Auto-critique sales calls and 1:1s
- Coach UGC creators on delivery
- QA edits before they hit the ad account
- Provide VO tone, clarity, and brevity suggestions in real-time

6. Video Gen hits mass market
Sora 2, Gemini V3.1, Nano Banana, Runway, they’re levelling up fast.

We’re already seeing:
- Seamless B-roll
- Abstract metaphors (balloons for stress, fire for urgency)
- “AI but not obvious” animations
- Scripted face swaps and founder clones

7. New workflows = new risks
Expect legal firewalls around:
- Creator likeness + consent
- Deepfake disclosures
- Brand safety for AI assets
- Authenticity disclaimers in ATL creative

We’re helping clients pre-empt with consent protocols, asset tagging, and workflow rules.

Bottom line for DTC brands in 2026

The brands that win will:
✅ Build an AI-native production function
✅ Invest in strategic visual diversity
✅ Systemise asset tagging, routing, and prompts
✅ Use AI for creation and performance coaching
✅ Blend AI + human storytelling at scale

The brands that lose will:
❌ Rely on text swaps and tired recuts
❌ Let GenAI files rot in Google Drive
❌ Skip strategic iteration
❌ Ignore how fast video is changing

I spent years thinking I had to figure everything out alone.

That’s what founders do, right?

Then I read Ray Dalio’s approach.

He didn’t build Bridgewater by being the smartest.
He built it by being the most willing to be wrong.

Here’s what he did differently:

He worked for what he wanted.
Not for what others wanted him to do.

He came up with independent opinions.
Then found the smartest people to destroy them.

He stress-tested everything.
Not to prove he was right.
To improve his odds of being right.

He stayed wary about overconfidence.
Because in markets, bad opinions cost everything.

He wrestled with his realities.
Reflected on consequences.
Learned and improved from the process.

Most founders confuse independence with isolation.

They think if they’re truly leading,
they should trust their gut and move alone.

But the best founders I know
don’t just think independently.

They think independently, then test brutally.

They create systems to challenge their own logic.
They seek out people who will prove them wrong.
They remain paranoid about blind spots.

Because you can do a huge amount of work
and still be wrong.

The market doesn’t care how hard you worked.

Independent thinking isn’t about being alone.
It’s about being right when everyone else is wrong.

And the only way to get there
is to test your assumptions with people
smart enough to prove you’re not.

Founder lesson:
Work for yourself.
Come up with independent opinions.
Stress-test them with people who will destroy them if they’re weak.
Be wary about being overconfident.
Reflect on consequences and constantly improve.

That’s how you win.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Q5 is the most important quarter (that isn’t a quarter) and this is how not to waste it.

Most brands go too seasonal or default to evergreen messaging that totally ignores how people actually feel post-Christmas.

The sharpest operators?

They lead with problem-aware creative that taps into the “reset” mindset and they build it to last beyond Q5 with smart hook variation.

- 50% goes to problem-aware + unaware top-of-funnel content
→ Tap into the “reset” mindset but build in hook variations so these ads outlive Q5.

- 20–30% goes to mid-funnel trust-builders
→ Objection handling. Social proof. Clear transformations. Especially important in health & wellness, where everyone’s shouting at once.

We break this all down in the 2026 Ecommerce Playbook: why now’s the best time to reach your hardest to reach customers and the biggest mistakes brands make post-Christmas.

Catch up now: https://lnkd.in/eTdgnNRH

$0 to $120M run rate in 11 months. The fastest-growing supplement brand in the world.

Backed by David Beckham.

Built on science.

IM8 Health is setting the pace for a new wave of consumer health brands, and Olly sat down with CEO Danny Yeung to unpack exactly how they’ve done it.

One of the sharpest operators we’ve ever spoken to.

Watch the full episode → https://lnkd.in/ewauU5yT

We couldn’t hire enough great creative strategists. So we built a system to create them.

🚨 We’re opening applications for the first ever UK Creative Strategist Incubator.

Not a junior role. Not a course.

This is a 9-month, Meta-backed, in-person training ground to fast-track high-curiosity talent into elite creative strategy role, inside one of the UK’s most advanced DTC growth teams.

Here’s why we built it:
– Most brands are hiring this role for the first time
– They don’t know what “great” looks like
– And the A-players are either locked into top agencies or demanding £90k+ salaries

We’ve trained 30+ strategists from scratch over the past 3 years.

Now we’re turning that process into a formal programme and opening it to the public for the first time.

📍 Based in our new London HQ
£100m+ in Meta ad spend in 2025 to learn from
Backed by Meta, including in-person sessions at Meta HQ
Real brands, real feedback loops, and a clear path to promotion

This is the MBA for performance creative

Only 5 spots.

Apply below if you're early in your career, obsessed with how creative drives revenue, and ready to put in the reps.

👉 https://lnkd.in/eHYYPFvy 

📺 Watch the episode where Olly and Loukas reveal all https://lnkd.in/ethEgsKj

Founder | Premium & Luxury Brand Growth Specialists | Scale at the Intersection of Finance & Psychology

Scaling premium & luxury D2C brands at the intersection of AI Powered Advertising & Finance.

After working with 60+ luxury & premium brands we've developed a system to guide brands to their full potential.

Utilizing our psychology-based creative strategy and data science-founded financial forecasting, our partners to profitably grow from 7-8, and 8-9 figures.

As a performance-based partner, we act as shareholders rather than an agency.

Apply now, to partner with the best in premium & luxury brand growth.

odylicmedia.com

Peter Quadrel

Meta is Releasing 3 NEW Metrics: Creative Similarity (what this means for you)

Jason Yim from Meta just shared a new reporting suite rolling out. 

This isn't just another dashboard update.

This validates the hypothesis we've been pushing for months.

The 3 New Metrics:

1. Creative Fatigue:

Your audience has seen the same creative too many times. 

Engagement drops, performance tanks, CPMs rise.

Now you'll be able to track it.

2. Creative Similarity:

Meta's algorithm sees your ads as visually identical, even when you think they're different. 

Similar ads get treated as one data file. 

Performance of one similar ad gets assumed for all untested variants.

3. Top Creative Themes

Distribution of active ads and spend across creative themes: humor, nostalgia, savings, social proof.

This is the end of lazy creative iteration.

Changing copy or swapping background colors won't move the needle much anymore. 

Meta's similarity score will likely expose it.

The New Protocol:

→ Net new visuals + net new messaging

Every ad needs to be visually and narratively distinct. No shortcuts.

→ Micro-persona targeting 

Different audience segments demand different creative approaches. 

One creative theme across your entire funnel = creative similarity penalty.

→ Multiple creative partners 

Working with various creators and agencies ensures aesthetic differentiation.

One design team = one visual style = similarity clustering.

→ Wider brand guidelines 

Strict brand aesthetics are now a performance liability. 

Your guidelines need to expand to accommodate multiple styles that appeal to different personas.

Q4 Planning:

If you're still running 12 variants of the same ad with minor tweaks, your CPMs are about to get punished harder than ever.

Start building true creative diversity now. 

Different visuals, different messaging, different personas, different partners.

The brands that diversify their creative ecosystem early will dominate Q4. 

Everyone else will be scrambling with inflated costs.

Founder of Odylic Media | New Customer Growth for Premium & Luxury Brands

Most Brands Are Still Running Meta Ads Like It's 2024...

Sequential learning changed everything and nobody updated their creative strategy.

You're still testing random hooks hoping something sticks instead of building actual customer journeys that Meta's algorithm can learn from.

Here's what's different now:

Meta doesn't just optimize for conversions anymore. 

It optimizes for WHO converts and WHAT content moves them through the journey.

That means persona-specific creative sequences beat random creative testing every single time.

I'm giving away my complete 2026 Meta Creative Strategy White Paper.

This isn't a PDF with generic tips. 

This is the complete framework I use with 7-8 figure brands to build creative that actually works with Meta's algorithm:

What's inside:

- How to research and identify the actual personas worth building creative for
- Building complete customer journeys mapped to Meta's sequential learning
- Turning journeys into highly diverse creative briefs your team can execute
- The 4 types of creative you need to cover every stage properly
- How to ensure real creative diversity (not just hook variations)
- Organic-first creativ e approaches that work in feed without looking like ads
- Creative tracking and organization systems with proper naming conventions
- Breaking down what each persona needs to see at top, middle, and bottom of funnel to actually convert

This is the exact process I use to develop creative roadmaps for luxury and high-AOV brands running serious spend.

72 hour window. 

After that, it's gone.

To get it:

1. Make sure we're connected
2. Like this post
3. Comment "Creative"

Most consultants package this as a $2k+ course.

You're getting it free because I'd rather see brands actually leverage sequential learning correctly than keep watching the same tired strategies fail.

The Website Is Dead. Shopify Just Accelerated Its Funeral.

Shopify dropped their Universal Commerce Protocol yesterday, and most DTC brands are completely missing what this actually means:

Your website will be irrelevant within 5 years.

The New Buying Behavior:

Your future customer won't browse your site. 

They'll ask Gemini "find me a minimalist weekender bag under $300" and buy instantly without ever knowing your URL exists.

The point of discovery IS the point of purchase now.

What Shopify Just Enabled:

- Native checkout in ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity
- Open protocol (UCP) co-developed with Google 
- A new"Agentic plan" for ANY brand (even non-Shopify stores)

Your products syndicated across every AI platform from one integration.

Why This Changes Everything:

Amazon already lets users set price triggers for auto-purchase. 

That's just the beginning.

In 24 months, consumers will delegate purchasing decisions to AI entirely. 

"Restock my essentials when prices drop 15%." 

Done.

The brands that win? 

The ones building AI discoverability infrastructure TODAY.

How To Actually Get Started (The Tactical Breakdown):

→ Go to your Shopify Admin and enable Agentic Storefronts 
→ Install Knowledge Base app to control brand narrative and FAQs 
→ Toggle individual platforms on/off (ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity) 
→ Choose your checkout flow: embedded in-chat OR redirect to your store
→ One-time setup syndicates your products to all AI platforms via Shopify Catalog 

For Non-Shopify Brands:

→ You DON'T need a Shopify online store 
→ Plug your existing product catalog into Shopify's infrastructure 
→ You become discoverable across ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Shop app
→ Sign up for Shopify's "Agentic plan" waitlist (this is the game-changer) 
→ Shopify routes orders to your existing OMS, integrates with your PIM/tax systems 


Shopify Catalog uses specialized LLMs to categorize and enrich your data. 

Clean feeds = better AI discoverability.

Group products by standard attributes and metafields so AI accurately presents your offerings in searches.

Track FAQs, policies, brand voice. Control how AI answers customer questions about returns, shipping, product details.

onitor which AI platforms drive conversions. You get full visibility into search trends and customer questions.

This paves the way for AI ads and sponsored placements. 

Google's already testing "Direct Offers" pilot exclusive deals served directly in AI Mode.

Just like Google search ads disrupted Yellow Pages, AI recommendation ads will disrupt Meta/Google.

The brands investing in AI channel presence now will own category dominance when the inflection point hits.

Gen Alpha won't "go to a website." That phrase will sound as dated as "look it up in the encyclopedia."

The infrastructure for that future just went live. 

Most brands are still optimizing their homepage hero sections....

The Biggest Meta Advertising Mistake in 2026:

Brands still optimizing for individual ad performance instead of journey performance.

Here’s what changed:

Meta doesn’t care about your “best” ad anymore. 

They care about your best sequence.

Sequential Learning optimizes for entire customer journeys, not isolated conversions.

Your ads get intentionally sequenced to build conversion paths. 

Meta decides the order based on what actually converts over the full journey.

The mistake:

Killing high-spend, low-ROAS ads.

That awareness asset eating 15% of budget with a 1.2 ROAS? 

It’s probably the first touch making your 4x ROAS retargeting work.

Spend distribution = Meta’s confidence in an asset’s role in the journey.

Your top 10-20% spending cohort IS your customer journey.

How to map it:

→ Track CPMR + Frequency + customer breakdown to identify funnel position

→ Map average touches to conversion

→ Identify the gaps

Most brands have zero creative addressing mid-funnel objections.

The fix:

Pull your support tickets. Pull your reviews.

Common customer questions = missing journey steps.

→ Warranty concerns? Make an ad.

→ Sizing questions? Make an ad.

→ Comparison to competitors? Make an ad.

If it’s a question in support, it needs creative in your journey.

Think landing page ecosystem, not individual ads.

Every potential concern needs addressable creative.

Every persona needs their own journey built.

→ Technical buyers need specs and proof points

→ Social buyers need testimonials and social proof

→ Value buyers need guarantees and risk reversal

Going into 2026:

Stop optimizing for last-touch attribution.

Start mapping journey cohorts, build creative that fills the gaps, then let Meta sequence it.

The algorithm is smarter than your media buyer. 

Your job is giving it the right assets to work with.

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This is the biggest opportunity on Meta right now (almost no one is leveraging it yet)

Persona-based customer journeys...

And the ones that are implementing are seeing performance like it's 2016.

Here's the framework:

First, breakdown your customer file into 3-8 personas.

The two biggest variables that separate your personas:

1. Why do they actually buy?

For Utility products: What problem are they solving?
For Aesthetic products: What identity/emotion are they trying to achieve

Example, Utility: You sell a weight loss supplement to women.

(I'll be using this example for the remainder of the post)

Some buy it to look better to feel more confident to go on more dates.

Others buy to lose weight so they can play with their kids easier.

Same product. Different motivation. Different journey. Different persona.

2. What emotions is this persona most susceptible to?

Use Ocean personality framework (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism).

The mom wanting to play with her kids? 

Possibly higher agreeableness + conscientiousness.

She's relationship-focused. Feels responsible for being present.

Your ads therefore should leverage nurturance. Family bonds. Missing moments with her kids.

Match emotion to persona. That's conversion.

After you map out your personas (buying reasons, emotional triggers, demographics, behaviors), identify what they need to believe to BE TRUE to buy.

From a first principles standpoint: 

That weight loss supplement buyer who wants to play with her kids needs to believe:

1. Losing weight = playing with kids easier
2. Your product will help her lose weight
3. No side effects 
4. The value > the cost

If she believes all four, she buys.

Your creative strategy needs to build the beliefs through the susceptible emotions and allow Meta to sequence each touchpoint.

All while providing visual and messaging variety to appeal to the vast sub segments within each persona. 

Meaning creating different:

- Concepts
- Ad formats
- Mediums
- Production styles, etc.

All to reinforce the first principle beliefs that need to be held true to initiate a conversion. 

Why this works:

Sequential Learning optimizes for journey clusters, not individual ads.

Meta wants persona-specific creative across the funnel so it can sequence intelligently.

Most brands can't execute because it requires restructuring creative, measurement, and media buying.

That's the gap.

Map your personas → emphasize the "why" and emotional states → identify first principles beliefs to make the why true → build creative by persona and funnel position → test persona clusters by funnel postion → scale winners.

This is key to profitable scale on Meta in 2026.

How to Make VIRAL Persona Led Ads on Meta at Scale

(Leveraging Sequential Learning)

Meta's algorithm now optimizes for complete customer journeys across personas.

Meaning, you need a full funnel of creative for every persona, at every buying stage stage.

Writing 3-8 creative variations per persona while maintaining voice consistency?

That's where creative teams break down.

But there is a solution:

AI Persona Projects.

One Claude Project (or Gemini Gem or ChatGPT GPT) for each persona.

Load it with your brand intelligence. 

Then use it two ways:

1. Emulate the Persona for brainstorming angles and concepts. 

Ask your persona questions directly. 

"What would make you stop scrolling?" 
"How would you describe this to a friend?"

2. Write As Them for copy, text overlays, and video scripts calibrated to that persona's psychology and voice.

How It Actually Works:

You create a dedicated project for each persona.

When you need to make content for that persona, you open that specific project.

Building TOF low market sophistication ads for the self-purchasing millennial? 

Open her project. Chat with her and have her write the copy.

Switching to MOF ads for the luxury mom? 

Switch to her project.

This is your brainstorming partner for angles, your writer for scripts, your consistency engine for voice across your entire creative library and team.

What You Get in This Giveaway:

→ 4 Fill-in-the-Blank Templates (Persona Bible, Brand Foundation, Copy Framework)

→ Pre-Built AI Humanizer (eliminates generic AI-isms from output)

→ Complete Setup Tutorial (best questions to ask, troubleshooting when output is off)

→ Sample documents showing what "done" looks like

Why This Works:

We've tested this across premium brands in apparel, food, tech, and gear.

Results: 

Better ROAS. Lower CAC and higher creative output volume.

This is the difference between guessing what resonates and having a reference system that maintains voice consistency at scale.

It's one of the few AI use cases that's production-ready. 

As the outputs are 90% ready to go live...

Easy for anyone learn, use and keep using, (most use it daily). 

No special tools required.

Just create the files and you're running.

Ultimately solving the big question:

"How do I actually build persona-led creative for Meta's Sequential Learning?"

Here's how to get everything:

1. Like this post
2. Comment "Persona" below
3. Make sure we're connected, Peter Quadrel

You'll get all the templates, the humanizer, and the complete tutorial in your inbox.

This giveaway is only available for 72 hours.

20 Meta Hot Takes Few Media Buyers Admit...

1. High CPMs are good     

2. Hook rate has minimal impact on revenue     

3. Incrementality is the only truth  

4. Broad targeting will always outperform over the long run     

5. You have to choose between predictable volume or predictable efficiency (control vs. lowest)  

6. 3rd party attribution in ‘21 was a scam     

7. You need 70%+ margins or a 2-3X 12 month LTV to really scale     

8. Statics are the most efficient way to test new angles  

9. The majority of metrics on the platform are useless  

10. Spend is the greatest indicator of performance

11. Audience exclusions are just suggestions

12. Incremental attribution > 7DC

13. Test on lowest scale on cost control

14. Offer strategy > creative strategy

15. Low production usually beats high prod. 

16. Organic feeds outperform ad libraries for inspo

17. Partnership ads are the best way to get net new reach

18. Creative volume is a vanity metric/agenda pushed by Big Creative

19. Increasing TAM is the solution to an endemic rise in CPAs

20. Make it a gummy subscription and you'll win

Meta's CMO just said measurement doesn't matter.

(And he's right.)

But there's a lot more nuance...

Alex Schultz, CMO & VP of Analytics at Meta said in his new book:

"If you need a data scientist and a microscope to determine if your marketing had an impact, well then, it didn't."

Here's the full context:

Schultz literally ran both marketing AND analytics at Meta.

Self-described "numbers nerd" who championed measurement his entire career.

But when he took over as CMO, teams started measuring everything to impress him. 

One team tried to statistically measure the impact of a 100-person client event.

Impossible, but they tried anyway.

During Meta's 2022-2023 budget cuts, teams became obsessed with proving ROI to protect budgets. 

Result? 

Killed creativity and risk-taking.

They delivered on core jobs but missed upside.

His actual take:

"Not everything that matters can be measured, and not everything that can be measured matters. Don't let perfect measurement be the enemy of great impact."

He even says: 

"I don't trust a team that never fails in their goals. Either they're measuring wrong or the goals they set are far too easy to reach."

You try to measure everything. 

You're under pressure to make every dollar count.

But when you account for true lifetime value (~80 years), word-of-mouth runoff effects, all the touchpoints people need to become customers, and how to spread credit among channels...

You can do all the data science you want. 

All the holdout tests. 

All the incrementality studies.

But at the end of the day, we're doing billboard ads.

It's an image on a screen. 

People scroll past. 

Might influence the sale, might not.

Incrementality studies change month-to-month, quarter-to-quarter, seasonally. 

Holdout tests can miss long-tail LTV curves. 

Attribution models break with lengthy consideration cycles.

Schultz's actual approach:

→ Keep it simple. One North Star metric. Everything else is telemetry. 
→ Measure what can be measured really well 
→ Be clear when something can't be measured 
→ If you do the first well, you'll be trusted on the second

At the end of the day look at revenue. Look at spend.

The brands winning right now aren't the ones with the most complex attribution models.

They're the ones who launch fast enough to see obvious results, test creative aggressively where winners are unmistakable, scale channels where revenue impact is clear, and kill what's not working before needing 6 weeks of analysis.

If you need a PhD to explain your marketing ROI to your CFO, you probably don't have ROI.

Most Premium/Luxury Brand's Ads Fail Because They're Trying Too Hard to Sell...

Here's what actually works: black and white. 

No flashy colors. 

No aggressive CTAs. 

Just strategic creative that understands customer journey architecture.

Ad 1: The Monaco Association Play (Top of Funnel)

The blurred Rolex poster. 

The Monaco circuit. 

The aerospace-grade copy. All triggering association bias.

You're not selling a phone case. 

You're associating your product with a lifestyle, a persona, a world.

Meta's algorithm picks up on these visual cues. 

The F1 car, the Monaco setting, it knows. 

And it serves this to people already in that psychographic profile.

Notice what you don't see: the actual product. 

Just a glimpse of the case. 

That's intentional. 

A feed puller ad designed to spark curiosity, not close a sale. 

First-touch, not last-click.

Ad 2: The Visceral Simplicity Approach (Top of Funnel)

"No more cold feet."

One clear benefit. 

One striking visceral image you can literally feel. 

EU-made alpaca socks frozen in ice.

The visceral imagery principle: you don't just see the product, you experience it through the creative. 

The cold, the texture, the warmth you'd get from the solution.

Most brands would plaster this with feature callouts, guarantees, pricing. 

That's middle-funnel thinking in a top-funnel moment. 

You lose the organic feed presence that makes people actually engage.

Ad 3: The Investment Reframe (Bottom of Funnel)

"14k Solid Gold. Investment."

Price justification without being defensive about price. 

It reframes the purchase through multiple psychological mechanisms:

→ Anchoring: Gold's current market value creates inherent value perception 
→ Dual investment: Meaning plus material value
→ Temporal framing: "Becoming more personal with time" triggers endowment effect 

"Real luxury is in the details and the legacy it leaves behind."

Double meaning. Product craftsmanship plus relationship significance.

How fashion and jewelry brands actually create bottom-of-funnel content without resorting to discount codes and countdown timers.

The Pattern Most Brands Miss:

You can't build customer journeys with one ad type.

You need:

→ Top-of-funnel organic feed pullers (not sales pitches) 
→ Mid-funnel educational/social proof content
→ Bottom-of-funnel conversion optimization (without cheapening the brand)

Most premium brands I audit have 90% top-of-funnel lifestyle content and nothing to actually convert warm audiences.

Or worse: they try to sell in every ad and kill their organic reach.

The performance is found in the journey you build through a planned sequence of creatives.

9 Meta Truths Media Buyers Hate to Admit:

1. Spend is the MOST important metric.

Not ROAS. Not purchase value. 

Spend = Meta's confidence in your asset. 

It's the output of all their AI and data.

Most scaling mistakes happen because people ignore where Meta actually puts their money.

2. Run your own retargeting for $300+ products.

Don't let Meta handle it automatically. 

With proper setup, you get actual incremental value, not just pulled-forward sales.

3. 7-day click + incremental attribution wins on average.

Tested across dozens of accounts. 

Consistently outperforms other setups for most brands.

4. 90% of metrics are useless.

Hook rates, CTR, cost per click not even correlated with revenue.

Plot twist: Higher CPMs actually correlate with BETTER performance.

5. Your scaling problem is promotional content.

Your ads only appeal to people who already know your product. 

Top-funnel creative should blend into feeds organically.

Test: If your ads would work as organic posts, they're probably good ads.

6. Media buying = budget control.

CBO, ABO, cost controls are just different ways to control dollar flow per asset.

7. You don't need fancy tools until mid-eight figures.

CAPI + Meta attribution = enough data. 

Triple Whale att. will just confuse you.

8. Success is 80% product-market fit + offer + angle.

Everything else is optimization theatrics.

9. Most bad performance = you don't understand your market.

Not about design or production quality. 

You don't know what customers actually care about.

Talk to real people more. Read more reddit.

Tweak ads less.

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