D2C Diaries – Détails, épisodes et analyse

🚨🚀 If you're a brand spending £100K/month, we'll run your ads. Apply for your free audit here: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0pzLCJ0

Creative costs are climbing fast.
Meta’s changed how ads learn.
And AI is completely redefining what “creative strategy” means in 2026.

In this episode, Olly and Loukas dive into how brands can adapt to Meta’s creative similarity update, scale creative diversity without burning resources, and build systems that use AI as part of the production line — not a side tool.

They unpack what happens when 70% of your iterations get grouped under the same entity ID, why the role of an AI videographer is about to become one of the most important hires in performance marketing, and how tools like Sora, VEO 3.1, Nano Banana, and Gemini are reshaping the creative process.

From creative operations to prompt engineering, this episode breaks down what the next wave of performance marketing really looks like and why the future belongs to the brands who move fast and systemise smarter.

Watch Andrej Karpathy's podcast episode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXUZvyajciY

---

We're excited to share that we are hiring creative strategists to join the UK's number one independent meta-agency, as recognised by Meta. Our team is known for being curious, innovative, and fast-growing, and we work with leading D2C brands like Heights, Mindful Chef, and Spacegoods and 47 Skin. If you're interested in being part of our dynamic team, please send me an email loukas@hambimedia.co.uk

---

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

0:00 - Intro
01:08 - Club Neuro community event
03:10 - Film recommendation: “I swear”
04:40 - Creative diversity revisited
07:18 - The new iteration strategy
15:15 - Rise of AI production
19:40 - Andrej Karpathy podcast episode
23:35 - New AI drops
27:45 - Building our AI data warehouse
36:66 - How we're using VEO 3
45:20 - The future of creative operations + predictions

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

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

Follow D2C Diaries on socials
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@d2c.diaries
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/d2c_diaries/

🚨🚀 If you're a brand spending £100K/month, we'll run your ads. Apply for your free audit here: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0ppm8t0

Meta’s Creative Similarity Penalty just changed the rules - here’s how to protect your performance in 2026

In one of the biggest creative updates since Andromeda, Meta has changed the way your ads are evaluated and most brands are getting silently penalised.

This episode of D2C Diaries is a deep dive into Meta’s new Creative Similarity Algorithm, powered by Entity ID and Creative ID tracking.

We tested 20 ads for a top-spending brand. Meta flagged 15 of them as identical, even though they featured different creators, different hooks, and different formats.

Why? Because they looked visually similar and that now triggers Meta’s Entity ID grouping, which kills:
- Incremental reach
- Fresh delivery
- Performance learning
- CPM efficiency
This changes everything about how DTC brands should approach ad iteration, creative testing, and campaign planning in 2026.

This is the most comprehensive breakdown of Meta’s creative diversity update you’ll find, packed with examples, agency-tested frameworks, and tactical steps you can implement immediately.

---

D2C Diaries is proudly sponsored by Wayflyer
They’re offering $25,000 in upfront capital for just $1,800 to help you ramp up your efforts leading into Black Friday and Cyber Monday. This funding can be crucial for covering unexpected costs and ensuring you can double down on your best-performing ads while staying stocked. Timing is everything, so don’t miss out! https://kntn.ly/55cfeeff

---

We're excited to share that we are hiring creative strategists to join the UK's number one independent meta-agency, as recognised by Meta. Our team is known for being curious, innovative, and fast-growing, and we work with leading D2C brands like Heights, Mindful Chef, and Space Good 47 Skin. If you're interested in being part of our dynamic team, please send me an email loukas@hambimedia.co.uk

---

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

00:00 Introduction to creative update
01:35 Wayflyer's Black Friday offer
03:10 What's changed on Meta
05:40 We're hiring
06:35 The creative diversity scale
08:10 Entity ID vs creative ID
09:25 Visual examples
12:07 Why does Entity ID matter?
13:43 How our testing has changed
15:07 The building blocks of creative differentiation
17:50 How to test
21:40 Creative vehicles we're leaning into
23:45 Iterating with visual differentiation + hooks
30:20 Static iteration examples
37:00 How we're adjusting our approach

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

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

Follow D2C Diaries on socials
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@d2c.diaries
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/d2c_diaries/

D2C Diaries is proudly sponsored by Wayflyer

Running an ecom brand and struggling with cash flow? Whether you're scaling ad spend or restocking bestsellers ahead of peak season, Wayflyer provides fast, non-dilutive funding tailored to e-commerce businesses. No equity. No months of waiting. Just the capital and insights you need to grow, on your terms.

Check them out: partners.wayflyer.com/soar


In this episode, Olly sits down with Soar COO Sam to unpack the hard lessons from their early experiments with AI.

After spending over £30K on tools, workflows, and automation frameworks that quickly became obsolete, the team realised they were solving the wrong problem.

This episode dives into the strategic shift that followed, from prompt engineering to context engineering, from static workflows to scalable infrastructure.

You’ll learn:
 – What context engineering actually looks like inside a creative team
 – The difference between business-level vs process-level context
 – How to build agentic systems that don’t collapse under real-world complexity
 – How Soar’s internal AI Committee drives bottom-up adoption across departments

If you're building with AI inside a fast-moving team, this is the blueprint we wish we had six months ago.

Watch Andrej Karpathy’s LLM Breakdown Video: https://youtu.be/EWvNQjAaOHw
Comment on our Youtube "AI" to receive Sam's run-through on how to 10x creative strategy by using AI-powered context engineering

00:00 Introducing Sam and his role with AI 
07:10 Where our AI systems broke (and why)
11:10 Business-level vs process-level context
14:15 Codifying human judgment into systems
15:30 Flashy tools vs infrastructure that scales
17:45 Our internal AI committee
28:50 Slope vs intercept thinking in AI builds
32:30 Data warehousing
39:35 Creating UGC briefs with MCP
52:20 Setting brands up for the next 6 months
1:00:00 The S-tier tools we're actually using

Black Friday isn’t just another sales weekend,  for some DTC brands, it makes up 90% of yearly revenue.

In this episode of D2C Diaries, Olly and Loukas break down the exact playbook that drove £45M in sales from £11.5M in Meta ad spend during Black Friday 2024 and reveal how they’ve evolved the strategy for 2025.

You’ll learn:
- The proven goal-setting framework to anchor your BFCM strategy
- Offer strategies that actually convert without overcomplicating
- Why creative iteration beats “net new” assets every time
- Lead generation tactics to fill your funnel before Q4
- How gifting angles and TikTok Shop are reshaping 2025 BFCM

🔥 Exclusive Giveaways:

Comment “peak” to get Week 1 of our Ultimate BFCM Series, including the Black Friday Master Sheet to set your goals and targets.

Comment “offer designs” to unlock 30 Canva templates for static ad creatives you can plug straight into your campaigns.

This is your 2025 Black Friday playbook. Don’t leave 90% of your revenue to chance.

0:00 Sharing our learnings from £45M in BFCM revenue
03:30 Unit economics with our master sheet
9:30 Crafting a great Black Friday offer
14:20 Forecasting, pacing, and daily revenue tracking
16:00 Lead generation in Q4 success
19:30 How to execute top-of-funnel lead gen campaigns
21:30 Lead gen case studies
22:30 Urgency, exclusivity & scarcity as lead gen drivers
25:00 Gamification & referral mechanics that work
27:30 Looking at past data
30:30 Funnel splits for creative and reusing top performers
34:00 Static vs video performance in BFCM
36:30 Obscure hooks 
37:50 Q4 consumer psychology
42:00 Middle and bottom of funnel
48:10 Hook frameworks
54:25 How to scale creative volume without burning out
57:20 TikTok Shop predictions for Q4 2025
59:30 Reactive CRM plays 
1:00:30 Wrap-up + future deep dives

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/

CRO is the growth lever 99% of DTC brands are ignoring.

In this episode, Olly is joined by Dylan Ander, ex-agency owner, 2x eCom founder, and now the creator of Heatmap.com, the CRO tool quietly powering some of the highest-performing brands online.

They break down the post-click strategies the top 1% are using to scale profitably and why your landing page might matter more than your creative.
You’ll learn:
- Why CRO is the real 80/20 of DTC growth
- What metrics actually matter (hint: not conversion rate)
- Why you should stop sending traffic to over-engineered PDPs
- How Dylan helped brands unlock 7 figures from simple CRO tweaks
- Tactical wins around landing pages, AOV, revenue per session & more

This is a must-listen for founders, creative strategists, and media buyers looking to scale beyond the click.

0:00 - Why we’re talking CRO, not ads
3:00 - Top 1% brands are doing these 3 things
13:25 - Listicles, bundles, ugly pages that scale
15:10 - Review mining + customer data
19:18 - Quickest wins in CRO
28:10 - Why conversion rate is a vanity metric
31:45 - Offer testing = huge CRO lever
37:29 - Dylan’s journey into SaaS
41:20 - Why Dylan built Heatmap
43:00 - Operating principles of SaaS 
46:55 - How top users get value from Heatmap
49:20 - Where AI + CRO are heading
53:10 - Pricing

Most brands creatives live at the bottom of the funnel, battling over the same small pool of ready-to-buy customers.

But 80% of our best-performing ads? They start much higher up.

In this episode of D2C Diaries, Loukas shares the exact internal training we run with our creative strategists on the hardest skill in paid social: storytelling.

You’ll see how we script for unaware and problem aware audiences (the stages most brands ignore) and why they’re the biggest unlock for scaling cold traffic.

From building 15–40 second setups to weaving human desires into scripts, this is the framework we use to turn good ads into top performers.

This session was too valuable to keep behind closed doors, so Loukas re-filmed the whole thing for our channel.

Watch the training now and learn how to tell stories that sell.

00:00 Storytelling as the hardest paid social skill
02:53 Evolution of the funnel
04:40 Funnel stages & messaging
09:58 Hooking cold audiences without the product
12:50 Pitfalls that kill storytelling
18:55 Cutting fluff in scripts
24:00 Ditching jargon
28:12 Using human desires
39:10 Messaging by market sophistication
51:00 Curiosity loop techniques
56: 45 Best-in-class examples
1:01:30 Recap & key takeaways

Creative strategy is evolving, fast. And Alex Cooper is one of the sharpest minds pushing the industry forward.

In this episode, we dig into the intersection of AI and creativity: how brands can scale content that actually converts, why performance-first storytelling matters now more than ever, and what the strategist’s role really looks like in 2025.

Alex shares:
- How AI is changing the business model of creative agencies
- How AI is already reshaping the creative strategists role
- What it takes to scale content in 2025 with AI
- Why Alex believes "briefing will be the most valuable skill in the next 12 months"
- Why agencies that don’t build internal IP will lose to ones that do
- And why the next wave of winning agencies will look nothing like the old ones

Whether you're deep in the weeds of performance creative or rethinking your workflow post-ChatGPT, this conversation is a roadmap for the next chapter of creative strategy.

0:00 Who is Alex Cooper? His positioning in AI + creative strategy
3:12 Meta + TikTok creative formats working now 
8:00 Why video gen is worth investing in + use cases
14:45 Ugly ads with AI
19:15 Longform ads
20:30 Unaware + problem aware ads
27:07 Why best practices often don’t apply
29:17 Other timeless tactics
32:15 Formats that are declining
35:00  High prod vs low prod
37:20 Why many creative problems are research problems
43:00 Training creative strategy teams + internal ops
47:00 Studying the TikTok organic feed
48:45 Incentivise framework for teams
50:35 Hardest skill to train for creative strategists
57:20 Alex’s favourite AI use cases
1:04:45 Tools to enhance workflow
1:08:00 The role of creative strategists in 12-24 months
1:10:25 AI creative vs authenticity 
1:13:20 The future of creative agencies

Follow Alex on socials:
Twitter: https://x.com/alexgoughcooper
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@UC_M813lRmlnrqHDs5COWRGA 

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/

What happens when you give Loukas two weeks, a cleared calendar, and unrestricted access to Google’s new Veo 3?

You get a repeatable system for generating scroll-stopping ad hooks, without touching a camera.

In this episode of D2C Diaries, Loukas breaks down the exact prompt structure we now use within the agency group to turn ChatGPT JSON prompts into Veo 3-generated ads. Whether you’re scaling a best-performing hook or building a fresh creative system from scratch, this workflow will save your team hours and unlock new angles faster.

We cover:
 – How Loukas used JSON formatting to get better results from Veo 3
 – The key components of creating a high-performing AI hook
 – Real examples of hooks we’ve built and scaled across Meta
 – Why realism often kills performance (and absurdity wins).
 – How to use Veo 3 + ChatGPT to 10X creative volume in your ad account

We’re also giving away the exact JSON prompt template we now use in the agency.

👉 Drop robot in the YouTube comments and we’ll send it to you.

Watch the videos featured!
Motion's baby podcast: https://x.com/rezakhadjavi/status/1935690909984665644
Too short for Modeling Liquid Death Ad https://www.instagram.com/reel/DLkPcDmPchO/

This episode is for founders, CMOs, and creative strategists ready to build faster and scale smarter.

00:00 What is Veo 3 and why it matters for DTC creative
06:40 Examples of scroll-stopping AI ads
15:15 Examples of hook variations with VEO 3
18:30 How we use ChatGPT + Veo 3 together with JSON
25:30 Constraints to VEO 3
29:10 How to use Flow within VEO 3 
35:20 Product rendering + brand integration in AI videos
39:10 Use cases of VEO 3
41:30 Legal, IP and content authenticity concerns
49:40 Final thoughts + how to get the full prompt template

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/

Matt Kelly is back on the podcast, 9 months after his first episode, and a lot has changed.

In this brutally honest conversation, Matt opens up about what it really feels like to scale a wellness brand beyond 8 figures.

We talk:
– Space Goods has gone from £3.5M to a projected £18M.
– Growing from 1 to 15 employees in 9 months
– Losing his sense of purpose as the business outgrows him
– Why the rebrand feels terrifying (even after 5 months of work)
– The reality of copycats launching before he does
– Getting quote tweeted by Andrew Tate
– And how ChatGPT is basically his creative director

If you’re a founder, operator, or builder navigating scale, you’ll feel this one.

🎧 Full episode available now.
🔔 Subscribe for more behind-the-scenes convos with the operators shaping the future of DTC.


00:00 Matt Kelly is back
02:40 Spacegoods 2.0: start up to scale up
04:05 Losing founder identity
10:55 Are you happy?
14:50 Setting a long term vision
20:00 Spacegoods rebrand
21:50 TikTok shop zombie brands
24:40 Product + SKU journey
25:40 What's next in health + wellness?
30:32 Product development
35:40 ChatGPT as Matt’s co-founder
39:40 VEO 3
42:30 Product roadmap
44:20 Retail VS DTC
49:30 Getting called out by Andrew Tate
53:00 Being transparent 
57:30 What's next for Spacegoods

Follow Matt: https://x.com/matthucius
https://spacegoods.com/

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/

Back by popular demand, this solo episode is loaded with behind-the-scenes insights on what’s working right now in the DTC performance space.

Olly and Loukas get brutally honest about what it actually takes to scale creative, fix performance plateaus, and build a winning system inside a high-growth agency. From a UGC format that’s driving £1M+ in spend, to the playbooks reshaping TikTok Shop and Meta, this one’s a deep dive into what’s moving the needle.

They also unpack what’s really going on with platform policy changes, the biggest brand power moves in CPG, and how Soar is levelling up systems, team, and strategy to hit new scale.

If you're a founder, operator, or growth marketer looking for clarity on what works now, this is your edge.

🚨 Download our Whitelisting guide here: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0lNw9l0

0:00 We're so back
1:10 Congratulations are in order...
3:20 UGC deep dive: what's working
10:10 Which static ads are converting
14:00 High-performing high-prod ads
17:40 Onomatopoeia in ads
18:42 Whitelisting quick wins
22:45 David Protein lawsuit
30:28 Creatine scandal 2.0
38:55 High AOV brands on TikTok Shop
46:05 Agency group operations
51:25 Our creative framework database
54:00 Hiring for drive
57:47 What's coming next

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

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

Follow D2C Diaries on socials
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@d2c.diaries
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/d2c_diaries/