Rory McLaughlan

Shirt in a Box

Founder of Shirt in a Box, the world's leading Mystery Football Shirt Retailer. 

In the space of 18 months, we grew from a bedroom start up to a hyper growth business, with over 2.7 million recorded in revenue and 70,000 in sales.

Founder

Numbers Game

Director

Rory's Football Shirts

Originally selling vintage football jerseys on online marketplaces, including Depop & Ebay, grew into a brand with 10,000 followers and a succesful website.

What initially started as a hobby way back in March 2020 when the UK entered a lockdown, would turn into over 2000 sales.

Business Owner

Hello! I’m Rory, the founder of Shirt in a Box and I’m on a mission to disrupt the football industry.

After setting up my first business at 17, I developed a huge passion for entrepreneurship, especially around what I live and breathe… Football. 

Fast forward to now, I have over over 70,000 sales & counting through two businesses, a team of 10 and collaborations with some major partners across the football industry. 

Shirt in a Box offers football fans a unique experience like no other. Once purchased, they are sent a high quality mystery football shirt. This allows customers to get a new shirt they may not have been aware of and clubs get their kit in to the hands of a different audience - it’s a win win! 

Through running 2 businesses, I have built a large entrepreneurial skillset including social media advertising (both organic & paid), management, supply chain and logistical management.

In my down time I’m a Web 3.0 enthusiast, a crypto investor and I play football semi-professionally, winning multiple Irish cups at youth level.

Feel free to send me a dm to chat all things business and football!

Founder of Shirt in a Box, the worlds leading Mystery Football Shirt Retailer. 

In the space of 18 months, we grew from a bedroom start up to a hyper growth business, with over 2.7 million recorded in revenue and 70,000 in sales.

A HUGE moment for Shirt in a Box!

Thanks to Gary and the Stick to Football team for a mention on this week's episode!⚽️

We loved hearing Jill Scott was a fan of her Bari top from us - clearly great taste! As for Roy...let's just say his reaction was a little less enthusiastic (no surprise there😅).

Either way, we'll take it!

Disrupting the Sport Industry / Founder of Shirt in a Box

It was great to catch up with Gary Neville yesterday & show him the progress we’ve made since we last met. 

10 months ago he took an interest in what we were building at Shirt in a Box & decided to share it with the world on Stick to Football - that kindness has helped open our eyes to what’s possible, and propelled us to greater heights. 

Congratulations on yesterday Gary Neville - a great occasion & fitting ceremony. Thank you to Queen's University Belfast for helping to facilitate this opportunity. 

The journey is still only getting started.

We're launching Shirt in a Box Turkey.
 
80 million people. Football mad. Jerseys retail for £90 (more expensive than UK).
 
The opportunity? They're deprived of authentic international shirts.
 
Will take 6 months to set up. Then Turkey becomes our gateway to Asia.
 
Sometimes the best business ideas come from travel, not just asking ChatGPT...

LinkedIn, I need your help.

Our box manufacturer has just burned us. Original timeline: delivery before Black Friday. New timeline: after Christmas.

We need 30,000 boxes urgently:

📦 Diecut

📦 Printed one colour

📦 330mm x 247mm x 19mm

📦 12mm DS tape rip seal

I know this is ridiculously late notice. But Black Friday is our biggest moment of the year and we can't let our customers down.

If you know a factory with capacity or have any connections in packaging/manufacturing, please DM me or comment below.

Any shares massively appreciated. There's got to be someone out there who can help.

We've worked too hard on this Black Friday to let boxes be the thing that stops us.

I love working at the Christmas Market, even if it's only a few hours once a week.
 
Why? It gives you a great insight into your customer & product that you can't get online...
 
I found out we were too cheap at the Christmas market last year.
 
We were charging £40 for mystery boxes when they're £45 online. We changed to match online prices on day 2, and finished 25% up on the previous year.
 
The market gives you real feedback you'd never get sitting online.

We purposely go 'late' with our Black Friday deal. We launch tomorrow, the Wednesday of Black Friday week.
 
Increasingly, I see brands going early, usual with the idea that if you don't, your potential customer will have spent all their money by the time Black Friday rolls around.
 
However, to make it work you have to run about 4 different offers across the promotion. Each one progressively getting better, and as a result decreasing your margin.
 
In my opinion, it's a lot of effort, for similar returns (according to those who can see the data across multiple brands like Stuart Worgan) as one mega offer on Black Friday week.

I posted about our box supplier crisis last week. 30+ shares, flooded with DMs. Fred Lill came through. Boxes arriving just after Black Friday.

Grateful for everyone who helped. A reminder of the power of building in public.

Other stuff I discussed in EP14 of Building the Box…

Christmas market opened with our best weekend ever.

Visited our first claw machine in Sheffield at Yardball (class venue - street football mini golf). 200 plays in week one.

Flew to Manchester to meet suppliers. The progress from one in-person meeting beats six months of emails.

Testing Australia/New Zealand markets. Early signs promising.

Black Friday strategy: Everyone goes early with 10 offers. We go late with 1 killer bundle. Similar results from what I’ve seen, less complexity.

Full episode now on

YouTube: https://lnkd.in/ed7iRrGC

Spotify: https://lnkd.in/e-Z5uNQE

Interested in how Shirt in a Box gets a shoutout on one of the UK’s biggest football podcasts?

In Episode 16, I break down how we featured on Stick to Football, chat about the whirlwind of Black Friday sales, and share why taking new staff out for lunch is our secret to building trust (and having a laugh).
 
Whether you’re a football fan, a startup enthusiast, or just love a good underdog story, this one’s for you.
 
Watch & listen now:
▶️ YouTube: https://lnkd.in/eRimwNMF
🎧 Spotify: https://lnkd.in/eFK5FVxT

Open video: EP16: How we got on Stick to Football, New Staff & Black Friday Madness on youtu.be

EP16: How we got on Stick to Football, New Staff & Black Friday Madness

Building DTC brands to 8 and 9 figures | Founder of Soar With Us & For You Advertising | CMO of JAQ Group

2x DTC Agency Founder 

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

In 2025, 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 88% on 2022
🚀 Liam and Co. increased their LTV by 22%


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.

Olly Hudson

This brand hit a $100M+ run rate in 11 months.

IM8 Health are scaling like no other DTC wellness brand we’ve seen.

- $100M+ run rate
- +74% QoQ growth (Q3)
- 80% subscription rate on new customers
- AOV jumped from $110 to $150 (driven by new product launch)
- Gross margin expanded from 52% to 60%
- EBITDA losses dropped from $40M → $8M

The strategy? Exceptional.

A few months ago, we broke down IM8’s entire growth machine. So with the new updated valuation, I thought I’d share it again for those who haven’t downloaded it yet:

- Paid ads (Meta + Google)
- Top 3 Lander pages
- Subscription funnel
- Email + retention strategy
- Ambassador programme
- Organic & community
- Bundle offer setup
- Scientific brand positioning

It’s one of the sharpest wellness brand builds we’ve seen.

Want the full teardown?

1. Like this post
2. Comment “IM8”
3. Make sure we’re connected so I can DM you the board

Reposts = bumped to the top of the list.

DTC Growth Expert For 8 & 9 Figure Brands | Founder of Soar With Us & For You Advertising

We’ve spent £32.6M on Meta in the last 30 days and now we’re giving away the exact creative intelligence system we use to stop brands wasting half their budget on grouped, suppressed ads Meta never delivers.

We still see DTC brands spend £50K–£200K testing creative that never stood a chance.

At that level of spend, scale doesn’t come from output. It comes from clarity and how well your creative matches how Meta actually thinks.

Under Andromeda, the algorithm doesn’t reward effort. It rewards signal density and creative distinction.

You can run 5,000 live ads in one account. But if they all feel the same in structure, tone, or pacing, they get grouped.

Grouped = suppressed.
Suppressed = wasted spend.

I’ve been testing a new AI-powered platform that helps DTC brands figure out what actually drives conversions in video content, turning creative guesswork into measurable sales growth.

It predicts pre-launch:
- Which videos will scale
- Which will cannibalise delivery
- And which Meta will deprioritise entirely

Real results so far:
→ 1.7x revenue without increasing spend
→ 45% sales lift from the same budget
→ 28% CTR uplift by aligning with Meta’s model

And that’s before launch.

What it’s really doing?

Replacing creative guesswork with predictive, signal-rich testing.

It scores 100+ signals per video (hook strength, scene order, voice tone, visual variation) to predict what’s most likely to convert.

It changed how we launch:
✅ We now kill weak variants pre-launch
✅ We iterate fast off live feedback loops
✅We align every creative to Andromeda’s scoring logic

More importantly, it’s how we help 7–8 figure brands escape the “launch and hope” cycle that burns £50K–£200K before signal even shows.

So we broke down the full system: competitor intelligence → creator briefs → pre-launch prediction → live optimisation, all into a new guide.

This is exactly how we're using Aggero to:
- Cut 40-50% of weak creative before launch
 -Scale faster with signal-led assets
- Lower CAC and increase predictability in every test cycle

If you want the guide to launch with more confidence and far less guesswork.

Like this post and drop “SCALE” in the comments and I’ll send it over.

We broke down the funnel of a brand that sells a product every 5 seconds on TikTok Shop.

WONDERSKIN is quietly building one of the most effective DTC machines on TikTok Shop.

- 670K+ units sold (UK only)
- >20,000+ affiliate creators
- 5,000+ creative variants tested
- Seamless affiliate + Shop integration
- TikTok-native product launches (built to demo)

The playbook? Omnipresence through creator scale.

This funnel breakdown shows you how they structured their content, affiliates and offers to drive real revenue, not just views. 

If you’re running an ecom brand, this is your shortcut to building a TikTok system that sells.

- Uncover top DTC TikTok Shop strategies.
- Understand where content should sit in your funnel.
- Learn from the best to convert more customers on TikTok

TikTok called it a “halo effect” – with spillover to Amazon and beyond.

It’s a masterclass in TikTok-first DTC.

Want the full teardown?

1. Like this post
2. Comment “Wonderskin”
3. Make sure we’re connected so I can DM you the board

Reposts = bumped to the top of the list.

This resource is going to help you stop wasting budget, escape creative fatigue, and finally scale with confidence in 2026.

Meta just quietly rewrote the rules of ad performance.

Audience targeting doesn’t move the needle like it used to. Creative tweaks don’t scale. And your best-performing ads are now hitting fatigue faster than ever.

That’s because Meta no longer asks:
Which audience should see this ad?”
It asks: “Which ad should this person see?”

And we've built you a guide to show you exactly how to adapt.

The same system we used to scale 8 and 9-figure DTC brands going in 2025.

Inside, you’ll get:
- The real reason creative fatigue is happening faster than ever
- How Meta’s Entity ID system works (and why tiny tweaks don’t cut it)
- The 8 ad formats we rotate weekly to keep performance high
- A complete 4-week roadmap for testing, iterating, and scaling creative
- Why brands that look the same are now being penalised, even if the message changes

If you’re heading into 2026 with the same strategy you used in 2024, you’re going to get left behind.

Want it?
Like this post
Drop “Meta” in the comments and I'll DM you it (make sure we're connected).

We’ve driven over £600M in revenue for our clients. Here’s how we plan to unlock the next £600M.

We’ve made a big step forward as we head into 2026.

We've hired a Client Success Director: a commercial operator focused on elevating and expanding the success of the clients who already trust us - creating outcomes that compound over time.

This role represents a long-term investment in focus, excellence, and meaningful client impact.

We’ve learned the hard way: chasing topline growth without operational maturity is a mistake.

This role helps fix that.

Nancy joins us to help unlock:

- Scalable service that evolves with client budgets
- A feedback loop that fuels performance
- Stronger infrastructure that supports both people and process
- Smarter forecasting, deeper partnerships, and clearer planning

For us, this marks an exciting shift to proactive growth and long-term success stories.

We’re focused on turning today’s brands into our strongest growth stories. 

This role is how we’ll do it.

Welcome to the team Nancy Rees!🚀

This is how we found a collagen ad framework that pulled £120k off £40k spend in 7 days.

If you want better ads? Stop studying the ads.

Start reverse-engineering what TikTok’s already delivering for free.

Most brands are looking in the wrong place for winning ad ideas.

Here’s a better strategy: instead of copying your competitor’s paid ads, reverse-engineer what’s already going viral organically.

Here’s how we do it (and how you can too):

👇

We start with TikTok - just manual scroll.

Search the core problem your product solves.

If it’s electrolytes? Type in “hydration” or “electrolyte hack”.

Then sort by:
- Views
- Comments
- Watch-through rate (check if people are duetting or stitching it too)

But here’s the part most skip:

👉 Don’t just copy what they’re saying. Study how they’re saying it.

Look for:
- First-person story?
- Supermarket breakdown?
- POV-style skit?
- Us vs Them comparison?

These formats are gold. They’ve been stress-tested by the algorithm, not just by an ad account.

Then we take the winning format and rebuild it from scratch (same bones, new skin) for our brand or client.

This is how we found a collagen ad framework that pulled £120k off £40k spend in 7 days.

And if you want to validate whether a viral organic video is worth repurposing?

We’ve been testing a new platform that analyses each video frame-by-frame across 100+ creative signals (hook strength, pacing, visual variety, tone of voice) and flags what’s likely to support delivery vs. what might hold it back.

If you want better ads 👆 this is how you turn ideas into winning frameworks.

Want access?
Like this post
Comment “viral” and I’ll send it over"

After BFCM, the brands that keep winning are the ones who shift their creative strategy… fast.

We’ve packaged the exact framework we use for 8-figure clients and we’re giving it away.

Most brands coast into December. But it's actually the second highest intent window of the year.

The catch? You can’t run Black Friday logic through a Christmas lens.

Our new playbook breaks down exactly how to pivot your strategy to keep performance high after the spike, built for scaling DTC brands running Meta at volume.

Inside:

✅ Gifting-focused hooks → think “For Her” not “50% Off”.

✅ How to reposition bestsellers as gifts 

✅ Building Christmas-specific product sets (e.g. Secret Santa, Limited Box Sets)

✅ Emotional gifting: campaigns that feel personal (e.g. “the gift they’ll remember”)

✅ The delivery deadline triggers that drive action and tactics for post-shipping-cutoff monetisation

✅ Creative testing tactics for Meta: why old tricks (like banner swaps) no longer work

✅ Screenshot gallery of best-in-class post-BFCM creative (from DTC brands across sectors)

We break it all down in our new resource:
→ Beyond Black Friday: The Creative Refresh

Want it?
Like this post
Comment “BF” and I’ll send it over!

👇 This is what it takes to build a successful agency and keep it growing.

Sometimes you look around a room and realise you’re building something bigger than the numbers, bigger than the campaigns, bigger than the output.

You’re building with people who inspire you to raise your standards, challenge your thinking, and show up sharper than you did the day before.

The kind of people who give more than they take.

Who treat the work like it matters.

Who bring energy when things are flat, and clarity when things get chaotic.

And when you find yourself surrounded by that, you don’t take it lightly.

This year, at our Black Friday social, we brought all four Soar Group agencies together to celebrate everything we’ve achieved.

Looking around a room of 80 people, I felt it more than ever.

And next year, we build on it.

Not just the output.
But the identity.
The team.
The us.

Ready to level up, together.

This is the clearest execution of proven conversion principles I’ve seen in a customisable Shopify theme.

Most brands don’t have an ad problem. They have a conversion problem.

No amount of strong creative or media buying can outperform a store that isn’t built to convert.

That’s why I’m backing this.

SURGE is a brand new Shopify theme, built on 13 years of CRO data and thousands of A/B test results.

It’s made by a team we trust.

I’ve known Oliver Kenyon for years. Founder of ConversionWise, the CRO agency we’ve worked alongside across dozens of mutual clients and campaigns.

These are the people behind:
- Hundreds of winning test frameworks
- Millions in additional revenue
- CRO strategies we’ve seen scale 6–9 figure brands

SURGE is the first theme we’ve seen that’s truly built for performance.

Proven layouts. Data-backed sections. Every component stress-tested in live campaigns.

We’ve seen what happens when you combine CRO and acquisition properly.

This is that - productised.

It’s the cleanest way to make your traffic convert better, your ROAS climb, and your entire funnel work harder.

Launches 5th December at 9am EST

Only 500 licenses available in the first drop.

👉 https://kntn.ly/054652d3

12+ Years of CRO and landing pages for Ecom brands | Clients include Portland Leather, GFUEL, BOOM! By Cindy Joseph, MOOD.

ConversionWise

Every ad account that “won’t spend” is telling you the same thing:

Your creative is too similar.

Because Meta GEM doesn’t optimise based on which ad performs best.

It optimises based on what each asset teaches the system.

And when your creative inputs lack differentiation across message, persona, or format, you limit the algorithm’s ability to find new buyers.

This is where most brands plateau - because their inputs no longer generate new signals.

Here’s what GEM actually is and how leading brands are adapting their setup to scale inside this new system:

1️⃣ Meta GEM is a foundational model for ads.
It’s built like an LLM, trained on trillions of interactions, across Facebook and Instagram.

It learns from:
– Every ad you run
– Every organic post
– Every signal users leave behind

The goal? Optimise every impression in real time.

2️⃣ Since rollout, GEM has quietly driven real lifts:
+5% in Instagram conversions
+3% in Facebook Feed
2x improvement in model scaling efficiency (Q3 2025)

But not every account benefits equally.
What you feed the model dictates how well it works for you.

3️⃣ Why this matters:
GEM changes how ads are selected, ranked, and delivered.

It doesn’t just look at a user’s past few clicks.

It analyses sequence-level behaviour over weeks and months, then makes delivery decisions across platforms and formats, not in silos.

4️⃣ What powers GEM:
If someone watches Reels on IG but clicks shopping ads on Facebook, GEM uses that to inform how and where your ad gets served.

Platform learning is now connected.

Creative needs to travel well across environments.

5️⃣ This brings us to the big unlock:
Your creative is now your strategy.
Campaign structure used to be the lever.
Today, the lever is creative signal density.
Every piece of content you publish teaches GEM what type of user buys and what doesn’t.

6️⃣ To scale, you need diversity across:
– Persona
– Format
– Funnel stage
– Message style

7️⃣ Organic content is now an asset, not a nice-to-have.
If you’re testing angles via Reels, UGC, or statics before you launch paid...

You’re giving GEM more data to work with.

If not? You’re flying blind, while the model waits for real engagement to learn from.

8️⃣ The most successful brands we work with now build their systems like this:
– Broad targeting only
– Weekly creative updates
– 10–15 radically different assets live at once
– Performance tracked via signal KPIs (scroll depth, hold rate, etc.)
– Organic > Paid flow embedded into the process

9️⃣ So if performance is soft or spend won’t scale...
It’s not because the algorithm “isn’t spending.”
It’s because the system doesn’t have enough differentiated signals to learn who your next buyer is.
That's the wall many brands are hitting.

🔟 Meta GEM is here.
The question is whether your setup is aligned with it.
Because in this new system:
→ The real media buyer is the model
→ And the best creative doesn’t just convert, it teaches

We ran a multi-cell Conversion Lift and A/B on test On Meta to confirm what we’d been seeing in the account for months.

Here's the data:

Creative diversity by persona is the biggest lever for scalable acquisition in 2026.

This year at Soar With Us, we’ve seen that brands delivering a high volume of distinct, persona-driven assets across all stages of the funnel achieve outsized returns on Meta. 

Partners adopting a diversified creative strategy see, on average, a 34% reduction in CPA.

We recently ran a multi-cell Conversion Lift + A/B test across our highest-volume accounts.

The goal was to prove what we’d already been seeing for months inside the ad account: that creative diversity (not spend) is the real scale lever in 2025.

We tested two core hypotheses:

1. More ad variants = better performance
2. Creator-led Partnership Ads outperform BAU creative

Here’s what we found:

🧪 Test 1: Creative Volume A/B
• 25 ad variants vs. 5 variants
• 171 more purchases despite 59,000 fewer impressions
• 15% cheaper cost per conversion
• Highest lift in 18–34s, Meta’s most competitive demo

🧪 Test 2: Partnership Ads vs BAU
• 800 incremental conversions vs 520
• Cost per incremental conversion: $25.63 vs $39.34
• ROAS >10x vs standard creative

Key learnings

1. Campaigns with more creative assets perform better than those with fewer.
2. Partnership Ads are a non-negotiable part of Meta campaigns for driving new customer acquisition.

As Meta leans into AI-driven delivery, brands that can produce sufficient persona-led creative variety will pull ahead. 

AI surfaces insights and refines targeting, but human creatives turn those signals into compelling narratives. 

🤝 Brands that combine AI and human creativity to scale persona-led messaging will define the next era of growth on Meta and beyond.

I’ll die on this hill: if you’re a founder, you need to be in your ads.

Nothing builds trust or stops the scroll faster, but it’s easy to get the execution wrong.

If you want founder-led ads that actually scale, you need more than just a “hey I’m the founder” story.

You need a narrative arc. You need emotional contrast. You need why, not just what.

👇Here are 10 questions we use to extract stories that build trust and convert cold audiences:

1️⃣ What’s your name and role in [BRAND/ PRODUCT]? 

2️⃣ What was the defining moment or personal experience that inspired you to start [BRAND/ PRODUCT]? Can you share the story behind it? 
> Was it a personal struggle, a gap in the market, or an "aha" moment? 

3️⃣Describe what the [market] was like before [BRAND/ PRODUCT], and the problems you experienced personally? 
>What challenges did you face in finding the right CBD solutions? Were there common frustrations that others also seemed to experience? What did you feel was missing from the industry?

4️⃣ Describe how this made you feel? 
>How did your experience with these CBD challenges impact your daily life, confidence, or overall well-being?

5️⃣ How did your early experiences with [PAIN POINT] and the lack of effective solutions affect you? 
>Did you feel frustrated, overlooked, or determined to find a solution? How did these emotions shape your decision to take action?

6️⃣ Can you describe the research and development process that went into formulating the unique ingredients of [BRAND/ PRODUCT]? 
>What challenges did you encounter along the way? What steps did you take to ensure the product was different and effective? Were there any roadblocks or surprising discoveries during the formulation process?

7️⃣ Can you describe the emotions you felt during the early stages of building the brand and creating your first product? 
>What were some of the challenges you faced? Think about the early days - were you excited, nervous, overwhelmed? What obstacles did you overcome to bring your vision to life?

8️⃣ Can you recall a specific moment or experience that validated your decision to start [BRAND/ PRODUCT]?
>How did it make you feel? Was there a breakthrough moment, a piece of customer feedback, or an achievement that reassured you that you were on the right path?

9️⃣ What sets [BRAND/ PRODUCT] apart from other brands in terms of the impact it has on customers' lives? How do you ensure that the product continues to meet and exceed their expectations? 

🔟 Were there any pivotal moments during the development phase when you realised the potential impact this product could have on people's lives? How did it make you feel? 
>Was there a specific test, review, or milestone that made you see the bigger picture of how [BRAND/ PRODUCT] could change lives?

We’ve used this exact structure to help founders unlock ads that scaled past 7 figures, without looking or sounding like ads.

If your founder content isn’t performing, it’s probably missing narrative.

If you run a DTC brand and performance has been inconsistent lately on Meta, you're not alone.

👨‍💻 Jason Yim announced on X that behind the scenes, Meta has quietly rolled out one of the biggest shifts to its ad delivery system since Andromeda earlier this year: a new AI model called GEM.

GEM = Generative Ads Recommendation Model

It powers how ads get shown across Facebook, Instagram, and Reels and it works very differently to the systems most creative teams are still building for.

At a high level, it learns from everything. Not just what people click, but what they scroll past. Watch time. Organic posts. Even how users behave across platforms.

This has huge implications for how brands brief, test, and structure creative.

Here's how you can adapt to GEM and unlock stronger delivery across Facebook + IG ↓

1️⃣ Build for signal quality, not just quantity.
GEM doesn’t just learn from clicks. It learns from scroll depth, watch time, post reactions, bounce rate, across both paid and organic.

That means every asset trains the algorithm. Not just the top performers.

2️⃣ Diversify for discovery.
The more varied the message, persona, and visual style, the more surface area GEM has to find new audiences.

We advise clients to think in terms of signal inputs:
→ Different angles
→ Distinct personas
→ Varied formats (carousel, UGC, statics, founder-led)

3️⃣ Think cross-platform.
Facebook and IG used to optimise separately.
Now GEM learns across both, so if a message performs well organically on IG, it could improve Feed delivery on Facebook.
Track performance per platform to inform where + how to scale.

4️⃣ Treat organic content as training data.
GEM pulls from both ads + organic.
We’re increasingly testing angles organically first and using that data to shape paid versions.

Story-led Reels, native statics, UGC with problem-aware hooks… these give GEM more useful signals before you spend big.

So when a brand says, “We’ve got loads of creatives. Meta just isn’t spending properly.”

We’re asking: “What signals are you feeding it?”

Because GEM doesn’t care about how good your creative looks.

It cares about whether your creative helps it make better predictions.

Client Solutions @ Meta | AI Solutions for Marketing

One of Thomas Phillips clients generated £175K from ChatGPT traffic at 19.7% CVR.

In the same 90 days, organic search brought in £13.9M.

Everyone’s talking about AI SEO. But the brands actually winning aren’t reinventing the wheel.

To rank in Google’s AI Overviews, you still need:

– Clear, consistent USPs across every touchpoint
– Credibility from sources
– Structured, in-depth content that answers real buyer questions

The interface is changing. The playbook isn’t.

🎙 Full episode with Tom Phillips just dropped - https://lnkd.in/euiG8uZb

Scaling Ecom Brands Through Search | DTCSEOAGENCY.COM

We swapped 2 elements in our creative and unlocked a completely new audience overnight.

All we did was change the format and vehicle. Meta delivered it to a brand new audience.

Here's an example of how you can do this for a supplement brand :

1. UGC video
→ A creator describing how the product “finally fixed their bloating”
→ Raw, selfie-style, shot at home
→ Classic Problem → Solution → Transformation arc

2. Static graphic
→ A clean, Reddit-style carousel breaking down
“4 reasons your gut health is wrecking your energy”
→ Clear pain points, reviews, subtle product CTA

Different formats. Different vehicles.
= Different entity IDs
= Fresh reach + better performance

Format = the structure of the ad (UGC, static, high-prod, etc.)
Vehicle = the way the story is told (testimonial, founder story, podcast, expert VSL, etc.)

If your ads are stalling, it’s because Meta thinks your “new” ad is the same as your last one.

To win now, start mixing formats and vehicles deliberately

That’s how you unlock new audiences, better CPMs, and scale that compounds.

We spent years obsessing over growth and not enough time building the systems to support it.

This week’s episode is a special one.

We sat down with Matt Lewis, Soar Group’s Managing Director - and the first person to ever join the business - to unpack the real operating system behind Soar.

The first conversation happened in a Costa in Tadcaster (the town we wrew up in) while we were both still at uni. I was trying to convince him not to take a grad scheme at PwC and to join me and Joe instead.

He said no. Then came back.

Since then, he’s been the single biggest lever in building Soar into a multi-brand agency group approaching 80 people.

Not just in growth, but in how we operate, plan, communicate, and scale culture across brands.

Behind the scenes, Matt has helped architect the structure that’s held all of this together.

Because the truth is: scaling is messy. It’s not about perfect playbooks, it’s about clarity, iteration, and staying relentlessly aligned.

If you run a team, an agency, or a brand... this one will land.

🎧 Full episode just dropped: https://lnkd.in/eUWKeZqi

Managing Director of Soar With Us | Building DTC Brands To 8 & 9 Figures | Co-Founder of Calm Collective

We’ve spent over £100M on Meta.

And if there’s one thing you need to takeaway, it’s this:

The old Meta rewarded targeting.
The new Meta rewards signals.

If your creative doesn’t match user behaviour in the first 3 seconds, it won’t scale.

Meta’s changed. Quietly, and completely.

Here’s how the last 10 years rewired the platform and what that means for scaling in 2025:

- 2007: Ads launched. You could scale profitably with a decent pixel.
- 2012–2016: Tools got smarter, tracking got sharper.
- 2018: CBO marked the start of automation.
- 2020: iOS14 hit. Signal loss flipped the game.
- 2021–2023: Targeting got broad. Performance shifted away from media buying.
- 2024: ASC took over. Every brand running the same structure.
- 2025: Andromeda launched. Meta knows what the user wants, if you give it the creative signals.

Creative is now the most important growth lever on platform.

But it’s not just about more creative.

→ It’s about diverse formats
→ Strategic volume
→ And content designed to match how users actually consume today.

The game hasn’t broken, it’s evolved.

Scaling now is less about exploiting targeting, and more about building systems that give the algorithm the right signals at speed.

This shift is why we re-engineered how we make and test creative, to match how Meta actually works in 2025.

How has your team actually adapted to creative-first scaling this year?

We spoke on our Monday huddle about one of the most important findings I’ve read in a while.

McKinsey’s latest “Arenas of Competition” report reframes something we’ve been seeing on the ground for months: 

eCommerce is set to be the biggest short-term benefactor of AI and potentially the most dynamic industry of the next decade.

Projected revenues: up to $20 trillion by 2040.

More investment. Faster cycles. Higher upside.

But also: more volatility, more competition, and a total redefinition of what scale looks like.

Here’s what stood out to me most: 

The brands that win won’t be the ones with the biggest budgets. They’ll be the ones with the sharpest systems.

We’re already seeing this play out across the work:

- Platforms like Meta are rewarding creative systems that feed their delivery engine
- Our internal tooling is evolving fast: faster feedback loops, more structured iteration, deeper signal tracking
- Even how we brief and build creative has shifted, we’re optimising for adaptability over volume

It’s clear: this next phase of growth isn’t about producing more.

It’s about building better systems that learn faster than the platforms evolve.

And it reaffirms the path we’re on at Soar:

→ We’re not diversifying into new verticals, we’re doubling down on eCommerce.

→ Our strategy is to serve more of the industry, and do it better, through sharper systems, deeper partnerships, and creative that adapts to platform change.

→ The brands scaling now don’t need more noise, they need an integrated growth partner who can help them move fast, test smart, and win consistently.

In a world where strategy windows are shrinking and platforms evolve weekly, long-term planning feels harder than ever.

But this article gave language to the one thing we’re betting on: being structurally ready to scale will beat short-term advantage every time.

We're in the arena now. And we know exactly where we’re playing.

Most DTC brands are still handcuffed to Meta and are ignoring the biggest arbitrage opportunity in DTC right now.

CPMs are up. Creative fatigue is real. And new customer revenue is getting harder to unlock.

But there’s a platform right now that’s wide open.

Underpriced. Underused. And driving millions in GMV.

TikTok Shop offers a completely different growth lever:

→ Net-new reach
→ New customer revenue
→ And a route to market that isn’t already saturated

Last week I hosted a webinar with Peter Nettesheim - a tactical session for brand operators scaling TikTok Shop.

I ran though what’s actually working right now. Across setup, creative, paid ads, and affiliate. 

This was the playbook we’re using to grow multi 7 and 8-figure shops.

Here’s a glimpse of what we covered (and what you’ll learn from the recording):

- TikTok Shop setup that drives revenue, not just visibility.
- What TikTok’s algo really looks for: AOV, margin, TAM, and more
- Creator affiliate strategies that scale beyond your DMs.
- The outreach process we use to find affiliates – with AI-enhanced workflows
- Funnel structure for profitable scaling, beyond just ‘boosting’ what works
- What defines a winning TikTok hook in 2026 (and how to build one weekly)

The full recording is now available, alongside our TikTok ecosystem resource.

If you’re operating or scaling a DTC brand and TikTok Shop is even on your radar, you’ll want this.

Like this post
Drop “TIKTOK” below and I’ll send it your way.

Scaling to 8 figures on TikTok Shop in 2026? This is your cheat code.

We’re breaking down the strategy behind $23M in TikTok spend, plus a full BFCM debrief.

I’ll be joining Peter Nettesheim for a webinar to uncover the key strategies on how to scale your brand from 7 to 8 figures on TikTok Shop.

📅 Date: December 9th

⏰ Time: 5:00 PM – 6:00 PM (UK time, GMT, UTC+0)

Webinar Content:

✅ Step-by-step TikTok Shop blueprint
✅ Insights behind $23M+ in TikTok ad spend
✅ The TikTok first creatives strategy to scale from 7 to 8 figures
✅ How to optimise for short-form high converting creatives on TikTok
✅ Key insights from BFCM 2025: what worked and how to position for 2026

Only 100 seats available - register now! www.shorturl.at/9KNJU

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