D2C Diaries

🚨🚀 Your creative strategy was built for an algorithm that doesn't exist. In 4 weeks, we'll identify exactly where your creative is leaking money and hand you a roadmap on how to fix it  using a persona-driven strategy that reduces CAC, beats creative fatigue, and scales spend profitably.

4 week sprint. 3 hours of your time. No retainer commitment: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0sDQ-p0

Most brands respond to reach problems by producing more creative. More hooks, more formats, more volume. But if you're speaking to the same emotional states in the same way, more output isn't going to move the needle.

The real unlock is persona diversity — and not just at a demographic level.

In this episode of D2C Diaries, Loukas breaks down the exact micro persona framework Hambi use across seven and eight figure DTC brands to drive incremental reach at scale on Meta. This is the internal process — from macro persona to micro persona mapping, through to how psychological diversity in your creative signals to Andromeda who to put your ads in front of.

If you're managing serious Meta spend and incremental reach is a constraint, this is the framework to fix it.

Download our persona breakdown board here: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0sDQTw0

Loukas published an article on micro personas, you can read that here: https://x.com/LoukasHambi/status/2028854922209374604

Follow Olly: https://linktr.ee/ollyhudson
Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joe_marston
Follow Loukas: https://shorturl.at/TRI8B / https://x.com/LoukasHambi
Follow Liam: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liam-dean-a11a43152/
Follow D2C Diaries: https://www.tiktok.com/@d2c.diaries / https://www.instagram.com/d2c_diaries/

🚨🚀 If you're a brand spending £100K/month, we'll run your ads. Apply for your growth roadmap: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0slb_f0

Most DTC founders have a number in their head. A valuation. An exit. A moment where the work pays off.

What nobody tells you is that the decisions killing that outcome are being made right now, long before you ever sit across from an acquirer.

In this episode, Olly and Loukas sit down with Paul Hanley from the Fortia Group, one of the UK's leading e-commerce M&A advisors, to pull back the curtain on what the exit process actually looks like from the other side of the table.

Paul and his team have seen hundreds of DTC businesses come through their doors — from £400K startups to £50M+ brands — and the same mistakes keep showing up. Paul breaks these down.

Plus Paul launches Beauty Value Labs — a new network built specifically for beauty founders who want to understand where their valuation stands today and what it could be.

About Beauty Value Lab: For beauty brands doing $10M+ in revenue, the most important exit decisions are already being made,  without you realising it. Years before a banker gets hired, through operating choices and reporting discipline.

Beauty Value Lab is a pre-exit value engineering platform built by career investment bankers at the Fortia Group, working with founders 12 to 36 months ahead of a transaction. Membership includes quarterly Buyer-Grade Valuation Memos, ongoing decision support grounded in buyer logic, and direct access to active beauty acquirers through closed-door sessions.

This is not a founder community. It sits upstream of advisors and bankers, engineering the conditions under which future transactions succeed.

If you're a beauty founder building toward an exit in the next 1 to 3 years, find out more at the link below: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DfEGtuaRTYMsFYeVoK3CBQf8GH0GJ1dV/view

https://thefortiagroup.com/

Follow Paul: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-hanley-4ab64592/
Follow Olly: https://linktr.ee/ollyhudson
Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joe_marston
Follow Loukas: https://shorturl.at/TRI8B / https://x.com/LoukasHambi
Follow Liam: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liam-dean-a11a43152/
Follow D2C Diaries: https://www.tiktok.com/@d2c.diaries / https://www.instagram.com/d2c_diaries/

🚨🚀 If you're a brand spending £100K/month, we'll run your ads. Apply for your growth roadmap: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0s7Jtp0

AI UGC has come on leaps and bounds. In this episode Loukas breaks down the exact workflow he's using right now to generate hyper-realistic UGC style ads, without booking a creator, running a shoot, or spending a fortune on production.

We cover the full tech stack: Claude for prompt writing, Sora 2 for hook footage, ElevenLabs for voice cloning, ChatGPT for subject consistency, Nano Banana for B-roll generation and Kling for bringing static images to life.

Then Olly and Loukas go deep on Claude skills, recursive self-improvement loops, and how they're using AI to grade scripts, review landing page congruency and build self-improving creative workflows across the agency.

Comment PROMPT below and we'll send you the Claude template we use to generate Sora 2 prompts.

Read Sarah's article here: https://x.com/SarahLevinger/status/2021281038895546761

Recursive self improvement loop: https://x.com/vibemarketer_/status/2019435524532904205?s=46 

Follow Olly: https://linktr.ee/ollyhudson
Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joe_marston
Follow Loukas: https://shorturl.at/TRI8B / https://x.com/LoukasHambi
Follow Liam: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liam-dean-a11a43152/
Follow D2C Diaries: https://www.tiktok.com/@d2c.diaries / https://www.instagram.com/d2c_diaries/

🚨🚀 If you're a brand spending £100K/month, we'll run your ads. Apply for your growth roadmap: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0rNf_N0

For this episode, we’re joined by a Meta Creative Strategist working directly with some of the most disruptive brands on the platform. This is someone inside the system, helping fast-scaling brands rethink how they approach creative, performance, and growth.

We unpack how the algorithm actually works in 2026 and why so many brands are still optimising for an outdated version of Meta. From the shift away from interrupting attention toward earning it, to Andromeda acting like a “super intelligent librarian” that reads the entire book rather than judging the cover, this conversation reframes how creative is interpreted at scale.

We dive into why small iterative tweaks stop unlocking growth, how creative diversity fuels learning, and what really separates the top 1% of brands from everyone else. We also explore the real role of partnership ads, why identity changes how the algorithm understands your message, and where brands are over-relying on AI instead of strengthening creative judgment.

If you run Meta ads, lead a DTC brand, or oversee creative strategy, this episode will likely challenge a few assumptions you didn’t realise you were making.

You can download our 2026 Partnership Ads Guide here: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0rNfZb0

Read our Meta campaign study here: https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/creative-customers/1942172

This episode is sponsored by Foreplay. Start your free trial here: https://tinyurl.com/msm5ak8c

Follow Maxime: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxime-menant/
Follow Olly: https://linktr.ee/ollyhudson
Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joe_marston
Follow Loukas: https://shorturl.at/TRI8B / https://x.com/LoukasHambi
Follow Liam: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liam-dean-a11a43152/
Follow D2C Diaries: https://www.tiktok.com/@d2c.diaries / https://www.instagram.com/d2c_diaries/

🚨🚀 If you're a brand spending £100K/month, we'll run your ads. Apply for your growth roadmap: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0rw0Jc0

From the team behind Soar With Us and Hambi Media: http://www.soarwithus.co/

In this episode, we break down Meta’s latest algorithm updates — including UTIs and the next phase of Andromeda and what they actually mean for reach, creative strategy, and performance.

We explore why Meta is moving away from engagement-led optimisation toward interest alignment, how organic content is increasingly training paid delivery, and why generic, broad hooks are losing effectiveness. The conversation digs into creative diversity, persona depth, and how brands should rethink both organic and paid as part of the same system.

We also share how we’re experimenting with Claude Skills, Co-worker, and Claude Code inside our creative strategy team, moving from prompt engineering to codified inputs, context-driven workflows, and structured delegation.

This is a practical, operator-level discussion on how platforms are changing, how strategy needs to evolve, and where AI genuinely creates leverage without the hype.

Read Olly's Meta GEM article here: https://x.com/oliverwhudson/status/2016142894504047008

You can download Olly's Partnership ads guide here: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0rw5St0

Follow Olly: https://linktr.ee/ollyhudson
Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joe_marston
Follow Loukas: https://shorturl.at/TRI8B / https://x.com/LoukasHambi
Follow Liam: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liam-dean-a11a43152/
Follow D2C Diaries: https://www.tiktok.com/@d2c.diaries / https://www.instagram.com/d2c_diaries/

In this episode, we break down what’s actually driving Meta performance right now and why the brands scaling in 2026 aren’t chasing more creative, but building smarter systems around personas and AI.

We go deep into how top-performing accounts are reusing existing assets, structuring creative by persona, and using AI to unlock speed, diversity, and incremental reach... without burning teams out or inflating creative costs.

We also cover what’s next for high-production creative, why emotional authenticity still beats AI in key moments, and how founders and teams should be thinking about context, not prompts, as AI becomes embedded in everyday work.

If you’re a founder, head of growth, or creative leader trying to scale Meta in a world where targeting is gone and AI is everywhere, this episode will reset how you think about creative strategy.

Deep research AI guide here: https://kylepoyar.substack.com/p/deep-research-for-gtm?r=10j51v&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true

From the team behind Soar With Us and Hambi Media: http://www.soarwithus.co/

🚨🚀 If you're a brand spending £100K/month, we'll run your ads. Apply for your growth roadmap: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0rls0q0

00:00 Intro
01:15 Creative formats we're using right now
11:20 Next evolution of AI generated content
15:30 Creative testing strategy (ABO vs. CBO vs. ASC)
17:40 Criteria for deeming a scalable ad
19:40 ASC by persona scaling campaigns
22:40 The "Bidcap Graveyard" hack
24:20 Exclusions in ad setup
25:50 Intentional persona mapping
30:50 Post-purchase surveys for purchase triggers
34:10 AI-powered customer interviews 
35:20 Do not turn off winning ads
36:50 Importance of AI experimentation
39:00 Claude Skills and Co-worker
42:15 Context engineering over prompt engineering
44:20 Building a Claude Skill for script writing
51:45 The rise of vibe coding

Follow Olly: https://linktr.ee/ollyhudson
Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joe_marston
Follow Loukas: https://shorturl.at/TRI8B / https://x.com/LoukasHambi
Follow Liam: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liam-dean-a11a43152/
Follow D2C Diaries: https://www.tiktok.com/@d2c.diaries / https://www.instagram.com/d2c_diaries/

How we’re solving the biggest hiring bottleneck in DTC (and why Meta’s backing it). There’s a shortage of world-class creative strategists and it’s slowing down growth for agencies and brands alike.

You can apply for the incubator here: Apply here: https://apply.workable.com/soar-with-us/j/F587A37B6F/

You can find more information on the opportunity here: https://www.notion.so/soarwithus/Are-you-ready-to-launch-your-career-in-performance-marketing-2e611884e3c980589a44cb0d73c6bfb8

In this episode, Olly and Loukas break down how Soar/Hambi are solving the problem from the inside out… by launching the UK’s first Creative Strategist Incubator.

Whether you're hiring for this role or trying to be the hire, this episode covers:

— Why great creative strategists are so hard to find (and even harder to train)
— The exact soft skills to screen for if you're hiring
— How we built a system to turn generalists into high-performance strategists fast
— What Meta told us about upcoming creative similarity changes and why they're backing this programme
— Who this is for, how to apply, and what’s actually included

Applications for the first 5-person cohort are now open.This is not a junior marketing role.

This is the MBA for creative strategy. 

Apply here: https://apply.workable.com/soar-with-us/j/F587A37B6F/

Chris’s newsletter (featured in the episode): https://copychris.substack.com/

Timestamps: 
00:00 Intro
01:16 The shortage of great creative strategists
03:50 What makes a great CS: baseline traits + transferable skills
07:53 Incubator announcement
12:01 9–12 month pathway to Creative Strategist role
14:51 Why CS is hard to train
15:56 Training method + modules
21:48 Scriptwriting focus: train hardest first
27:58 Gold Standard scorecard
34:18 Why people leave companies: managers, progression, culture
45:24 What’s next: course content + apply link
From the team behind Soar With Us and Hambi Media: www.soarwithus.co

Follow Loukas on socials: 
LinkedIn: https://shorturl.at/TRI8B 
Twitter: https://x.com/LoukasHambi

Follow Olly on socials: 
LinkedIn: https://shorturl.at/kPrqO 
Twitter: https://x.com/oliverwhudson
Follow D2C Diaries on socials 
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@d2c.diaries 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/d2c_diaries/

IM8 went from $0 to a $120M run rate in just 11 months and they’re targeting $300M by the end of 2026.

In this episode of D2C Diaries, Olly sits down with Danny Yeung, CEO and co-founder of IM8 Health, to unpack how he built one of the fastest-growing supplement brands in the world.

From bringing on David Beckham as co-founder, to replacing 16 supplements with one clinically-backed daily drink, to assembling a scientific board with experts from NASA, UFC and Mayo Clinic, Danny shares the full playbook behind IM8’s explosive growth.

You can watch our IM8 breakdown here: https://youtu.be/FSO_kiGOVu8

Download the IM8 funnel resource here: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0q_2-h0

🚨🚀 If you're a brand spending £100K/month, we'll run your ads. Apply for your growth roadmap: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0qMvq60

What does it take to scale a wellness brand to £25M+ after your first startup crashes, your health collapses, and you’re told sleeping pills are the only way out?

In this episode, Dan Murray-Serter, co-founder of Heights, breaks down the unfiltered journey of building one of the UK’s fastest-growing brain health brands. From startup failure and burnout-induced insomnia to founding a category-defining company used by real celebrity customers, Dan shares the mindset shifts, health breakdowns, and bold brand decisions that fuelled Heights’ rise.

We talk:

• How burnout and gut issues led to a £25M brand
• Why Heights rejected nootropics hype and built around boring fundamentals
• How they landed celebrity endorsements 
• Why real customer obsession beats clever marketing

This one’s part growth playbook, part founder therapy. Raw, honest, and genuinely useful for any DTC operator or founder building through the pain.

Follow Dan on socials:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danmurrays/
X: https://x.com/danmurrays

Follow Olly on socials:
LinkedIn: https://shorturl.at/kPrqO
X: https://x.com/oliverwhudson

Follow Loukas on socials:
LinkedIn: https://shorturl.at/TRI8B
X: https://x.com/LoukasHambi

Follow D2C Diaries on socials
TikTok: / d2c.diaries
Instagram: / d2c_diaries

If you're a brand spending £100K/month, we'll run your ads. Apply for your growth roadmap: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0qBQFh0

In this episode of D2C Diaries, Olly and Loukas break down the biggest lessons from 2025 and what they believe will be the single biggest changes shaping e-commerce in 2026.

They recap a huge Black Friday (nearly $40M spent on Meta in November), explain why Q5 (Boxing Day → early January) is the most underutilised growth window of the year, and share a clear creative framework for capturing short-lived New Year motivation without defaulting to lazy discounting.

The conversation also goes deep on leadership and operating lessons from scaling Soar - feedback loops, urgency, prioritisation, process mistakes - before closing with the D2C Diaries Awards, standout brands and campaigns, and predictions for where channels, creative, and acquisitions are heading next.

If you’re a founder, operator, or marketer planning for January and beyond, this episode is essential listening.

00:00 Intro
01:48 Black Friday recap: $40M spend & what actually worked
04:18 Why brands forget to analyse BFCM cohorts
06:17 What this episode covers
07:15 What is Q5 (and why it matters)?
08:10 Why CPMs drop after Christmas
09:17 The “flash in the pan” New Year motivation window
10:25 Q5 creative framework: TOF vs BOF mistakes
13:05 Why brands go too bottom-of-funnel
14:00 Creative mix for Q5 (TOF / MOF / BOF)
16:03 Outcome-led offers that outperform discounts
17:14 What was happening in Jan 2025
19:12 Biggest leadership lessons from 2025
23:42 Prioritisation, planning & time-blocking
27:45 Process rollouts & buy-in mistakes
29:41 Why urgency compounds growth
32:01 D2C Diaries Awards
40:11 New brand of the year: IM8
41:24 DTC dominator of the year
48:31 Most viral campaign of 2025
56:11 Predictions for e-commerce in 2026
1:02:47 Brands to watch in 2026
1:04:03 Outro

Follow Olly on socials: 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/olly-hudson/
Twitter: https://x.com/oliverwhudson 

Follow Loukas on socials:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/loukas-hambi-388067152/
Twitter: https://x.com/LoukasHambi

Follow D2C Diaries on socials
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@d2c_diaries
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/d2c_diaries/