D2C Diaries

Loop Earplugs got to 100 million a year on Meta ads. The first thing their new CMO wrote down was that the business was wildly overreliant on it.

Rob Weston is Chief Commercial and Marketing Officer at Loop Earplugs, three years in, with Unilever, McKinsey, John Lewis, M&S and Samsung behind him. He joined at around 100 million a year. This year the business is on track for 240 to 250.

He spent those three years arguing for slower growth than his own CEO and CFO wanted.

We got into everything.

- A TV test run on a seven day attribution window. Set up to fail.
- 10% of budget carved out of performance, planned as an insurance bet.
- Leading indicators over breakeven ROAS: traffic, attributed brand search, brand lift.
- Brand partnerships instead of TV. Tomorrowland, Coachella, Swarovski, Harry Styles, McLaren, Paris Hilton.
- Minimum fee, then revenue share. Break even on units, everything after is a bonus.
- A buyer spotted the product at Coachella. That retail listing paid back five times over.
- The partnership he turned down: a football stadium isn't loud enough.
- "I'm a buyer of the creator economy" — and the part he still can't measure.
- 110dB at the O2 with his daughter, and the message he won't lead with.

This podcast is proudly sponsored by Incard.

If you're spending serious money on daily business expenses and getting nothing back on it right now, this dedicated offer gets you 2% Cashback for year 1 on Ads, SaaS, Travel and other everyday business expenses. Uncapped.

Sign up for free and use the code SWU2K26 to unlock your cashback: https://incard.co?fpr=soarwithus&fp_sid=pod

Get the full Loop Earplugs Funnel Breakdown here: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0zvPj_0

🚨🚀 If you're a brand spending £100K/month, we'll run your ads. Apply for your growth roadmap: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0wjzrY0

Follow Rob
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robweston1/

00:00 100 million to 250 million in three years
04:56 The radically honest business case
12:18 There's an ad for everybody
15:03 The four pillars, and the retail team
17:51 The TV test set up to fail
19:35 Where YouTube ads showed signs of life
23:35 Stretching the seven day attribution window
26:36 Carving 10% out for experimentation
29:49 Why CEOs don't trust CMOs
33:41 The machine said do the opposite
35:17 The Cadbury purple problem
40:33 Chasing the apex predators
45:08 Minimum fee, then revenue share
50:29 The partnership he turned down
58:11 110dB at the O2
1:00:43 A buyer of the creator economy
1:06:02 Why physical retail still matters
1:08:11 What he'd tell any DTC brand

Follow Olly: https://linktr.ee/ollyhudson
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Follow Loukas: https://shorturl.at/TRI8B / https://x.com/LoukasHambi
Follow Liam: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liam-dean-a11a43152/
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Most brands walk into November with a discount and a hope. Six weeks out, that pattern is already forming.

For the first-ever D2C Diaries panel, three operators take Black Friday apart: Laurence Booth from Internos Advisory, Frederica Watson from Revive Collagen and Nick Kane from Magic AI. What the episode focuses on is offer, media, creative, and the unpublished part: what operators actually do when day one lands 40% under forecast.

Disagreement is the point. The panel does not agree that peak is a straight revenue win. One guest makes the case that the same revenue would have landed without Black Friday at all.

Inside the episode:

- Why BFCM becomes a trap for wellness and subscription brands, and what discounting really costs inside a repeat-purchase model
- Offer architecture: what separates offers that scale from offers that burn margin, and why complexity kills most of them
- Timing: when promotion should start, and whether an early launch avoids the CPM peak or discounts full-price demand
- Creative and media: why the strongest Black Friday ad is often already live, Meta's incremental reach problem, and why partnership ads deserve closer to 30% of spend than 5%
- Demand shift at peak, the £1,000 gift signal, and the Friday-morning fallback plan: what to change, what to leave alone

This podcast is proudly sponsored by Incard.

If you're spending serious money on daily business expenses and getting nothing back on it right now, this dedicated offer gets you 2% Cashback for year 1 on Ads, SaaS, Travel and other everyday business expenses. Uncapped.

Sign up for free and use the code SWU2K26 to unlock your cashback: https://www.incard.com/?fpr=soarwithu...

0:00 The True Cost of Complexity
0:32 Quality Over Quantity in Ad Creative
1:08 Meet the Panel: Scaling Consumer Brands
4:06 Preparing for the Peak Season
7:40 Volatility and Market Shifts
14:05 The New Reach Challenge
24:27 Defining Your Peak Objectives
36:11 Learning from Past Mistakes
53:40 The Future of Creative Strategy
1:49:16 What to Do When You Miss Targets

Follow our guests:

Laurence Booth-Clibborn- https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurence-booth-clibborn/ 

Frederica Watson- https://www.linkedin.com/in/frederica-watson-a21bb4a4/

Nick Kane - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-kane-4b9a73102/

Hosted by Olly Hudson and Loukas Hambi - operators behind £200M+ in Meta, TikTok and Google spend across 250+ brands.

D2C Diaries is a weekly podcast breaking down D2C growth, performance marketing and brand scaling.

🚨🚀 If you’re a brand spending £100K/month, we’ll run your ads. Apply for your growth roadmap: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0wjzrY0

Follow Olly: https://linktr.ee/ollyhudson

Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joe_marston

Follow Loukas: https://shorturl.at/TRI8B / https://x.com/LoukasHambi

Follow D2C Diaries: https://www.tiktok.com/@d2c.diaries / https://www.instagram.com/d2c_diaries/

We managed over £32M in ad spend in November last year. This episode breaks down everything we learned what you need to prep now to hit the ground running going into Q4. 

We cover how to phase Q4 so October builds the audience you'll sell to in November, how to build offers around your margins and show the value clearly, what last year's creative audit showed about statics, urgency and reskinned winners, and why landing pages could be your quickest win. If you're planning peak for a DTC brand on Meta, this is your October prep list.

This podcast is proudly sponsored by Incard.

If you're spending serious money on daily business expenses and getting nothing back on it right now, this dedicated offer gets you 2% Cashback for year 1 on Ads, SaaS, Travel and other everyday business expenses. Uncapped.

Sign up for free and use the code SWU2K26 to unlock your cashback: https://www.incard.com/?fpr=soarwithus&fp_sid=pod

Get our BF/CM playbook for free here: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0yS4M30

06:05 Why creative can't be left late
09:06 October: build the audience before CPMs rise
15:22 Are brand awareness campaigns worth it?
18:06 November: from warm-up to peak week
20:10 Offer is more than a discount
28:12 Auditing last year's Black Friday creative
43:14 Setting strategy: swing types and funnel splits
51:47 What worked: high prod, factory UGC and satire
1:04:16 Statics that convert and daily iteration
1:07:33 Landing pages, post-click and gamification

Follow Olly: https://linktr.ee/ollyhudson
Follow Loukas: https://shorturl.at/TRI8B / https://x.com/LoukasHambi
Follow D2C Diaries: https://www.tiktok.com/@d2c.diaries / https://www.instagram.com/d2c_diaries/

Before you spend more on ads, find out what's really capping your growth. Apply for a Growth Compass to unlock strategic clarity: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0yFr2w0

Omer Kaplan, co-founder of ironSource, joins Loukas to share how he's bringing the data and prediction playbook from mobile games into DTC, building agentic infrastructure to handle the work Shopify still leaves founders to do themselves. We cover predicting LTV, the margins you need before scaling, defensibility, inventory, fundraising, when to go all in, and why the best founders stay hands-on, so if you're building a consumer brand for an agentic world, this one's for you.

Check out Zyg: https://www.zyg.com

Timestamps:

Follow Olly: https://linktr.ee/ollyhudson
Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joe_marston
Follow Loukas: https://www.linkedin.com/in/loukas-hambi-388067152/
Follow Liam: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liam-dean-a11a43152/

🚀 Claim 1 of 5 Spots: 6 Months Fospha + Free Audit: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0yvPGP0

It's crunch time. With BFCM just weeks out, Olly from Soar joins Fospha to break down what "ready for peak" actually looks like: the creative volume and diversity brands need, why the top 25% of performers run more campaigns in BAU than at peak itself, and how automation like Advantage+ and Smart+ is shifting the game back onto creative and offer quality.

They cover forecasting creative output before Q4, scaling volume without losing intention, why upper-funnel spend keeps brands out of a reach hole, and the TikTok Shop halo effect most are underestimating. If you run paid media or creative strategy for a DTC brand, this is worth the watch.

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
01:19 Introducing Phosphor and Soar
03:48 What "ready for peak" actually means
06:22 Forecasting creative volume for Q4
09:29 Building intentional creative diversity
12:58 Catching up when you're behind on volume
16:52 Peak Playbook data: preparation beats aggression
20:17 Full-funnel investment and the reach problem
23:33 Automation and the new creative requirements
28:06 Peak mistakes, and when to scale or pull back
30:41 Proving upper-funnel spend, and the TikTok Shop halo
36:08 Q&A: fatigue, measurement blind spots and iteration loops

Follow Olly: https://linktr.ee/ollyhudson
Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joe_marston
Follow Loukas: https://www.linkedin.com/in/loukas-hambi-388067152/
Follow Liam: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liam-dean-a11a43152/