DTC Podcast

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pilothouse.co

Meta has been up and down since the outage a few weeks back, and the timeline is full of advertisers feeling it. So Eric pulled three of Pilothouse's most senior people onto the after-hours couch: Abby and Aves from the creative and strategy side, and Taylor from the Meta side, for a live conversation about what to do when the platform wobbles.

If you buy media on Meta, or you're a founder whose revenue leans on it, this is the difference between a bad two weeks and a bad quarter.

What you get:
The tactical spin cycle. Performance dips, panic sets in, and buyers ship 15 more ads built off the ones already dying. That amplifies poor delivery and raises CPMs. "Amplification of what's not working is never the route forward."
The full list of panic moves to skip: un-strategic ad volume, rushed channel expansion, rescue promos that train customers (and Meta) to expect discounts, account rebuilds, the "fresh pixel" request, and firing your agency.
The diagnosis question: Meta crumbled, so what part of the business fell through? No new customers points one direction. No conversions points at email and retention first. The gap picks the channel.
Stocking the pond. Why every brand should already know its next channel, and how to tell a reach problem (Pinterest) from a conversion problem (TikTok Shop) before you spend a dollar.
The iOS 14.5 precedent: partial blindness, no drastic changes, better measurement on the other side.
Pausing ads without tanking the account. Fractional touchpoints, checking median customer-journey length in your MTA before making the swing, and why Meta usually has a reason for pushing spend where it does.
Creative is the targeting. Millennial moms who look identical on paper but speak completely different visual languages by region. Butter yellow instead of white. A luxury brand that sells milestone moments instead of USPs.
"This is an ad and it's so stupid." Why absurdist, self-aware ads are out-earning earnest millennial branding with marketing-aware customers.
Where AI belongs (reporting, automation, surfacing phrases from your own data) and where it doesn't (creative direction, insights, your next steps). Plus the term for what happens when you outsource the thinking: cognitive debt.

Who this is for: media buyers, creative strategists, and founders running meaningful spend on Meta right now.

What to steal: the diagnosis question, the pause-decision checklist, and the competitor-review mining tactic for finding customer language.

Timestamps:
00:00 Meta Volatility and Common Mistakes
08:56 Building a More Resilient Growth Strategy
17:45 Should You Pause Underperforming Ads?
21:53 How to Research Customers Better with AI
35:40 AI, Creative Strategy & Content Volume

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Bar Bruhis spent ten years building SaaS for Shopify brands. He helped start one of the first email capture tools in 2015, then co-founded KnoCommerce, the post-purchase survey tool 6,500 brands use. In December he finally took his own leap: Boostcous (boostcous.com), the first protein couscous. Six months later he's about to cross 10,000 orders, bootstrapped, with a team of two.

Try it: boostcous.com. The tagline says it all: "Finally a carb that pulls its weight." (An AI copywriting agent wrote that. More on this below.)

If you're sitting on a product idea you haven't launched, or you're a CPG founder trying to turn DTC numbers into retail meetings, this episode is the working playbook.

What's inside:
Why couscous: protein pasta has Banza, Brami, and Goodles. Couscous had nobody. Chickpea, lentil, and pea flour, gluten free, protein and fiber naturally derived from the legumes themselves.
The launch: a front-page story in the local Carbondale paper and free pickup from his garage. The first 400 to 500 orders were handed over face to face, and he asked every customer why they bought.
First-order profitable on Meta with a product almost nobody has ever bought online. "That doesn't really happen" in CPG.
The KnoCommerce lessons applied to his own brand: "what almost prevented you from buying today" for CRO, and "which retail stores would you like to see Boostcous in" as ammo for buyer meetings. The pitch: in the last 30 days, this many of our customers asked for your store by name.
The first one-star review, after 155 five-stars. He emailed her, got on a call, learned she was cooking it wrong, and updated the packaging. She rewrote the review herself as a five-star essay.
Where AI actually helps a two-person brand (product seeding draft orders, static ads, most of the website photos, sell sheets built from survey and review data) and his warning: "we swung the pendulum a little too far at first." Calling customers stays human.
Expo West on a $0 badge. He got the ticket by pitching his podcast, and the Gelson's deal came from walking the floor.
His read on the protein trend: protein soda and protein sprinkles exist now. Naturally derived protein in foods you already eat is the part that lasts.

Who this is for: founders sitting on a long-gestating idea, CPG operators heading into retail, and SaaS people wondering what their skills are worth on the brand side.

What to steal: add two questions to your post-purchase survey today. "What almost prevented you from buying?" fixes your site. "Which retail stores would you like to see us in?" fills your retail pipeline with proof buyers can't ignore.

Try Boostcous: boostcous.com

Timestamps:
00:00 Building a First-Order Profitable CPG Brand
07:24 Launch Strategy That Validated Product-Market Fit
11:50 Using Post-Purchase Surveys to Drive Growth
18:08 Turning DTC Success Into Retail Expansion
31:12 Advice for Launching Your First Ecommerce Brand

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Liam Robinson and Nate Vankoughnet were two of Pilothouse's first employees and spent years scaling some of its biggest accounts on Meta. Now they've spun out Marlbank Digital (website coming soon), a Meta-only agency built for the brands Pilothouse moved past as it went upmarket: pre-launch up to $100K/month.

Want them in your ad account? Email nate@marlbank.co or liam@marlbank.co. No website yet. They've been busy in client accounts.

If you're a founder running your own Meta ads, or the one marketer at a brand doing under $100K a month, this episode is a working session on why your account structure is probably answering the wrong question.

What's inside:
The Meta hierarchy of needs: unit economics at the base ("you'd be surprised how many people need a 3.5 ROAS to barely break even"), marketing strategy in the middle, creative at the top. Most brands skip the middle.
Circumstance testing, their replacement for jumping straight to creative: articulate your product's real distinction, find the cultural currents it's relevant to, then map the specific moments it fits into someone's life. Each moment becomes a campaign.
A full anonymized case study: the ceramic to-go cup brand that couldn't scale on pretty product shots or the eco angle, and unlocked the account with one question: "Would you use a metal mug at home?" Selling an upgrade to existing to-go cup users beat converting the single-use crowd, and the commute became the winning niche.
What this looks like in the account: open audiences, existing customers excluded, CBO single ad set, 4 to 6 ads per set, creative held constant so circumstance is the variable.
Why one ad usually takes 80% of an ad set's spend, and how to structure launches around that.
The four foundations they ask for before a brand spends a dollar: a decent website, email flows, some social presence, and Meta.
Plus the origin story: the agency is named after the small Ontario town where they spent a summer hand-building tree stands for a bow-hunting brand.

Who this is for: ecom founders and marketers between pre-launch and $100K/month, and anyone whose Meta account is a graveyard of creative tests that never compounded.

What to steal: before your next creative batch, write down your product's distinctions, then list every circumstance where it slots into a customer's day. Test those against each other first.

Work with Liam and Nate: nate@marlbank.co / liam@marlbank.co | marlbank.co

Timestamps:
00:00 Why Meta Marketing Has Changed
02:01 The Story Behind Marlbank Digital
08:14 Why Foundational Marketing Beats Meta Tactics
13:15 The Ceramic Cup Case Study
20:10 How to Structure Circumstance Testing on Meta

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Melissa Dusendang ran a summer contract at SheFit to "manage the chaos" for one marketing director. She never left. Years later she runs ecommerce and operations, and her actual job is stopping the company from lying to itself with its own data.

If you own the P&L, the dashboard, or the customer experience, this one is for you. Melissa sits in the finance meeting thinking about how a tax decision hits checkout, and in the marketing meeting thinking about which numbers are secretly inflated. She calls it being a puzzle person. Eric calls her a silo obliterator.

Why TikTok Shop can quietly wreck your new-versus-returning customer math. Masked and missing emails on marketplace orders mean Shopify can count repeat buyers as new, so "we 2x'd new customers" can really mean you gave existing customers a discount.
The attribution question to ask before anyone reports a ROAS or MER number, so two teams aren't arguing about goals while measuring different things.
How SheFit found its best-selling ad hooks inside customer reviews and comments, and why phrases like "my boobs don't move" outperform copy the team writes.
The Emerge Sports Bra story: how customer comments drove a custom-strap design (skinny straps on smaller sizes, wider straps on larger sizes) that sold out on launch.
Why real women feeling the "aha moment" when they lift the straps is SheFit's top new-customer acquisition move, run through micro-influencers and ambassadors instead of a gym-only ad.
Her honest read on TikTok Shop: better customer control than Amazon, but a margin eroder that can turn a premium brand into a "always on sale" brand.

Who this is for: Ecommerce and ops leaders, founders wearing five hats, CX and community managers, and anyone trying to get finance, marketing, and product to agree on what the numbers mean.

What to steal: Pull your own review and comment language and use it as ad copy verbatim. Before your next growth review, write down which attribution model each number is using. And check whether your marketplace orders are inflating your new-customer count.

Timestamps:
0:00 Why TikTok Shop metrics can be misleading
5:18 Breaking down silos across ecommerce teams
10:01 Why customer language beats marketing copy
15:09 Building products from customer feedback
23:21 Using AI and social listening for better decisions

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AppLovin just opened to everyone, and most DTC operators still do not know how it actually works. Jacob runs Meta at Pilothouse, which has spent on AppLovin for nearly two years, back when it was invite only.

He breaks down what he sees in real client accounts: the product price points that work, the creative volume it takes to scale, and the end card, a full-screen animated step between the ad and the product page that has no equivalent on Meta.

What you get:
The $50 rule. Why products in the $30 to $150 range win, why below $20 gets tough on margin, and why $1,000 products are a bad fit for someone mid-game.
The end card. What it is, why it acts like a second landing page, and the basketball-into-the-hoop trick for matching the ad to the app.
Creative volume. Start with about 10 videos, add 10 to 20 a week, and what the ramp looks like at $50k/day.
First-hour buying. Around 80% of purchases land in the first hour, and the other 20% almost always convert on a different video.
The learning phase. Why you confirm tracking, then leave it alone for a week, sometimes two.

Who this is for: DTC operators and media buyers weighing AppLovin as a third channel next to Meta and Google.

What to steal: the creative-volume cadence, the end-card structure, and the measurement discipline to prove new-customer CPA instead of trusting platform ROAS.

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
02:00 AppLovin vs Meta Performance
05:20 Best Products & Creative Strategy
11:10 Measuring Incrementality & New Customers
17:10 Scaling with Creative Volume
23:00 Halo Effect & Campaign Best Practices

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