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

The rules of DTC growth changed in 2025. In 2026, they're set to change again.

The playbook that got you to £10-30M - broad Meta campaigns, a handful of hero SKUs, one creative style across every touchpoint, is now actively working against you. 

Algorithms reward creative diversity. Attention spans demand psychological precision. 
And TikTok Shop has emerged as a genuine high-volume demand creation channel, not just another place to run ads.

The brands winning today are producing high volumes of distinctly different assets across every awareness stage (problem, solution, product), each built on messaging frameworks that actually drive people to buy. 

Not more creative. Better creative, deployed smarter.

I've spent 7 years in this problem space. My agencies have generated £600M+ in revenue across 250+ DTC brands. 

More importantly, we've built systems that compound, so you're not starting from scratch every creative cycle. Data from 70+ brands and over 4,000+ ads per month. 

A few recent wins we've delivered for our clients:
→ Ekster: 40% increase in profit, 75% YoY growth
→ Spacegoods: New customer orders up 86%, NCPA down 33%
→ AKT London: Tripled new customers and cut CPA by 59% in 6 months
→ Nutrition Geeks: 2,200% growth in 12 months

What makes us different: we build context databases that capture your brand DNA, winning angles, and performance learnings across every campaign. 

When the algorithm shifts or a creative fatigues, we're already three steps ahead, not scrambling to figure out what worked.

If you're a CMO or founder at an 8-figure brand feeling the scaling friction, happy to talk through what's working right now. Connect here or email olly@soarwithus.co

Olly Hudson

I'm giving away our most in-demand strategic resource, the same frameworks behind £600m+ in revenue generated for the DTC brands we work with.

(This will be the last chance to download for free).

The year is 2026, and every consumer now lives inside a personal algorithmic bubble.

Every feed, every search result, every shopping journey is uniquely shaped by micro-behaviours, emotional signals, and past engagement.

Meta, Google and TikTok aren’t matching ads to audiences anymore. They’re orchestrating hyper-personalised experiences at the individual level.

At the same time, consumers are craving something algorithms can’t manufacture: real connection.

For brands, this changes everything. Winning in 2026 won’t come from targeting hacks.

It will come from:
– Creative built around individual triggers
 – AI-powered signal analysis and rapid iteration
 – Systems that compound incrementality
 – And content that still feels deeply human

This playbook breaks down the exact structures we use across Meta, TikTok, AI and Creative to drive compounding growth in this new era.

Like this post and comment "2026" and I'll send it over.

The Creative-Led Paid Acquisition Partner Behind £600M+ in DTC Revenue | Meta & TikTok for 8-9 Figure Brands.

We've broken down the funnel of a brand doing £20M a year in DTC revenue, and we're giving it away.

Ancient + Brave went from £1M annual revenue to £1M a month almost overnight in late 2022.

By 2023 they'd hit £10M. 2024 they doubled to £20M. They're forecasting £40M+ this year.

90% of that revenue comes from DTC. No aggressive VC pressure. Profitable throughout.

But the numbers aren't the interesting part.

Ancient + Brave built their growth on a framework most supplement brands can't replicate; transitioning health-conscious consumers from "supplements as pills" to a permanent lifestyle of Bio-Optimal Rituals.

That means their entire creative system, their media strategy, their retention model, all of it is built around identity shift, not product features.

They sell through authority, aesthetic ritual, and scientific credibility. B-Corp certified. Clinical trials in-feed. Persona-segmented Meta ads that speak to high-performance professionals and graceful agers in completely different languages.

And we've broken down the funnel to show what that actually looks like in practice when a premium D2C wellness brand commits fully to persona-led growth and creative scale.

Inside this breakdown, we unpack:

- How creative volume and diversity feed Meta's Andromeda system with high-density signals
- Why scaling a luxury wellness product requires a fundamentally different creative strategy than a commodity supplement
- How to maintain premium brand perception while producing the creative variation Meta's algorithm demands
- The role of UGC, high-production, and partnership ads in a sustained performance ecosystem that never compromises on quality
- Why persona-led creative is the only sustainable way to grow a high-ticket D2C product without racing to the bottom on price
- What this approach teaches us about scaling a luxury supplement brand in an increasingly saturated wellness market

If you're responsible for growth, creative, or paid media, this breakdown shows how the winning brands are already operating. 

Want it? 
Like this post
Comment “2026” and I’ll send it over

undefined undefined

BFCM Guide

This is just one page from our 127-page ultimate guide to BFCM. 

If you’d like 126 more pages of ecom gold, join 500+ brands and check this out: https://bit.ly/3RlTHZ4


Plug 1

Newsletter Tease

Ps. Head here if you want to be the first to receive our 2024 ads blueprint this week: https://bit.ly/3YR6HaD


12/03

5 more critical errors to fix: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/olly-hudson_use-data-to-fix-your-brands-creatives-and-activity-7168154221719056384-Yn5A?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

13/03

Motion plug

We recommend Motion because it simplifies comprehensive insights.

• Eliminates the guesswork
• Brings quick clarity to your ads process
• Converts your ad data into digestible reports
• Keeps your teams aligned toward a common goal

Get 10% off your first 3 months using our code: SWU10
https://motionapp.com/

We mapped the full persona-led creative system we run for 8 and 9-figure DTC brands and it's yours.

Persona-led creative strategy has been the single biggest topic of conversation in our world over the last 6 months - across our client work, our podcast, our Meta partnership, and the broader DTC community we're part of.

The problem is that the conversation has been scattered.

So we built this.

Everything on this board reflects what we are actively doing right now for the 8 and 9-figure DTC brands we work with - from the AI research stack we use to build personas, to the brief structure, to the testing tiers and optimisation rules we run in accounts every day.

It's informed by our own data, our official Meta partnership research, and the conversations we've had with people like Maxime - Meta's Creative Strategist for Disruptor brands - who gave us a rare look at how Andromeda actually works from the inside.

A single, chronological walk-through of the full persona-led engine - so you can see not just what to do, but why each step feeds the next.

Want it? Like this post and comment "persona" and I'll send it over!

🚨 We're giving away our free UGC 2.0 playbook, built with Insense | TikTok & Meta Partner. Everything we know about scaling creative across Meta and TikTok in 2026, in one free resource.

Meta's Andromeda doesn't care about your targeting settings. It cares about creative signals. And if you're still producing 3-5 assets a month hoping one becomes a hero ad, you're not giving the algorithm enough to work with.

CPA doesn't spike randomly. It spikes because Meta has found everyone it can reach with the signals you've already given it, and your production system can't keep up.

The playbook covers:

- The reason the hero ad is dead and what the algorithm actually needs from you now
- How to mine your own funnel data to identify micro-personas before you brief a single creator
- Full-funnel architecture across UGC, high-production, static, and partnership ads
- Hook, body, and CTA structures working right now
- The feedback loop habits that separate brands compounding at 8-figures from everyone else

You can download our free playbook here: https://lnkd.in/esPS2rns

We've pulled everything we know about incremental reach into one guide. Here's how to diagnose it, measure it, and fix it.

Your CPA doesn't spike randomly. It spikes because your account ran out of new people to show ads to. 

Incremental reach is the one Meta metric that predicts problems before they show up in your CPA. Most brands aren't tracking it. They find out they have a saturation problem when costs have already risen and scaling has already stalled.

It covers how Meta's AI (Andromeda, GEM, and Lattice) creates saturation at scale without you realising, the three ways to actually measure your incremental reach today, and the six levers we use with 8 and 9-figure brands to grow it - in the right order.

If your CPAs are creeping up, your new creative is fatiguing faster than it used to, or scaling spend just isn't moving the needle - this is where to start.

Want it? 
Like this post
Comment “incremental reach” and I’ll send it over

Seven years ago, we walked out of a meeting with our first real e-comm client.

Ten minutes later, sat in the car, reality hit: we'd just agreed to do three months for free.

That drive back to Tadcaster was chaos in my head.

Half of me was buzzing. We'd actually done it. Walked into a room, pitched our vision for how we could scale their football shirt brand on Meta, and they'd said yes.

The other half was terrified.

Because talking about what you can do and actually having to deliver it are two completely different things.

No safety net. No second chances. Just me and Joe and a brand that had zero reason to trust two lads in their early twenties with no track record.

That night, I called my family.
"We got our first proper client today."
"That's brilliant! What are they paying?"
"...Well, nothing. Yet. But if we hit their numbers, they'll introduce us to other brands."

Silence.

Then: "Right. So... when does the money start coming in?"

I could hear it in their voice. The same concern I'd been hearing from them for months. This agency thing... is it actually going to work?

And honestly? I didn't know.

But I knew this was the moment. Either we'd become another "I told you so" story, or we'd prove we could actually do this.

Week one was brutal. Just manual bidding, a Google Sheet where we'd split out every single audience by hand, and me refreshing the ads manager every hour like my life depended on it.

Week two: 2.9x ROAS on cold traffic.

I remember seeing those numbers and thinking: Holy shit. This might actually work.

By week three, I'd stopped checking the dashboard compulsively. Not because I was relaxed, I was still bricking it, but because something had shifted.

The doubt was still there. But underneath it, there was something new.

Belief.

Not the “fake it till you make it kind”. The real kind. The kind you can only get by actually doing the thing you said you'd do.

That football shirt brand never became our biggest client. The case study didn't change our business overnight. And looking back, the ROAS wasn't even that impressive.

But none of that mattered. Because proving it once, to yourself, to the people who love you but quietly wonder if you've lost the plot, that's the moment everything changes.

The next pitch we took, I wasn't trying to convince myself anymore. I just knew. That free trial gave us something more valuable than revenue. It gave us conviction.

And seven years later, that conviction is what's carried us through every campaign, every scale, every moment of doubt since.

You can't fake that. You have to earn it.

P.S. For the founders reading this, what was your moment? The one where doubt started turning into belief?

Meta just changed how click attribution works. Here's what it actually means for your campaigns.

Click-through attribution will now only count link clicks, not likes, shares, comments, or saves.

Those non-link interactions are moving into a renamed bucket: "engage-through attribution" (formerly engaged-view). Worth noting, unlike engaged-view which only applied to video, engage-through now applies to all ad formats.

Two other changes:
The engaged-view threshold for video drops from 10 seconds to 5 seconds. Meta's own data shows 46% of Reels purchase conversions happen within the first 2 seconds, that window was already overdue.

Northbeam and Triple Whale are being brought into the fold to incorporate both clicks and views into their attribution models.

For most accounts, the practical impact is minimal short-term. Your click-through numbers will drop slightly and engage-through will absorb the difference. If you want to see exactly where conversions are moving, you can break it out using the Compare Attribution Settings feature or the Breakdown by Attribution Setting in Ads Manager.

This closes the gap between Ads Manager and third-party tools like GA4. That discrepancy has been used to dismiss Meta's numbers for years. Less ammunition for sceptics, more confidence in the data.

The accounts that should pay attention are those who manually switched off engaged-view attribution. You may see a drop in reported totals. Worth reviewing your settings before this rolls out fully.

Attribution is still imperfect. But this is a cleaner signal than we had yesterday.

Meta invited me to tell their product and marketing team how we approach Facebook differently.

The answer surprised even the agencies 10x our size.

Agencies running massive brand budgets. And there we were, a bootstrapped DTC agency from Yorkshire, obsessed with conversion, testing 100+ creatives a month, and ignoring most of the conventional playbook.

That's exactly why they wanted us there.

The gap between how large brand advertisers think about Meta and how DTC operators use it is significant. Not better or worse, genuinely different orientations.

Most large advertisers still think in terms of:
→ Brand campaigns
→ Funnel splits
→ Top-of-funnel reach
→ Media planning cycles

The 250+ DTC brands we work with think like this:
→ Creative as infrastructure
→ Conversion as the north star
→ Testing velocity as competitive advantage
→ Profitability over vanity ROAS

A few things came out of the discussion that stuck with me:

Creative is the new targeting. As Broad and ASC become the default, the question has shifted from "what audience do we buy?" to "what creative system do we build?" Testing 50 to 100+ assets a month isn't excessive at our scale, it's the mechanism.

Profitability is replacing vanity ROAS. The founders we work with are pushing back on surface metrics. The real conversations are about contribution margin, blended CAC, and whether growth is actually incremental.

Meta has earned its way up the funnel. Reels, broad delivery, and AI-driven placement are doing legitimate brand-building work now, whether brands planned for it or not.

Meta creates demand. Google captures it. They're complementary, not competing.

AI-enabled creative infrastructure is becoming the moat. Agencies and brands building proprietary systems for creative intelligence will compound an advantage that spend alone can't close.

Grateful to be part of the discussion and to see how seriously Meta is thinking about creative, measurement and signal quality. Thanks to the panel Amelia Ensell, Lucia Magadan, Caroline Reynolds

Partner, Digital at OMD UK | Media Week 30 Under 30 2022

Entertainment, Media and Tech Marketing - Strategy, Leadership, Execution, and Commercial

Partner | Global Chief Performance Officer

We’re moving into a persona-driven era of paid growth, and I don’t think enough teams have internalised what that actually means.

As Meta’s delivery has improved, the constraint inside ad accounts has shifted. The question is no longer, “How do we find the right audience?” but “How many distinct, meaningful personas can we give the algorithm to work with?”

We built a Creative OS around: persona → micro-persona 

At the time, it felt like a strong creative framework. Now it feels like the operating system for scale. As delivery has become more probabilistic and creative-led, we’ve been able to unlock more personas per brand, but only when the research and messaging are strong enough.

What started as macro personas (e.g. “menopause”) is fragmenting into increasingly nuanced segments, moving toward a “soulmate theory” end state where each user sees the version that feels built for them.

You can see this in the strongest accounts. The best brands are mapping the full chain:

Persona → Creative angle → Landing page → Offer framing

They’re not just launching ads. They’re asking, “are we systematically covering the opportunity landscape?”. Which raises a bigger question. Should we start reporting by persona? Spend per persona. CAC per persona. New customer volume per persona. Contribution margin per persona.

If persona is the real growth lever, it arguably needs to become a reporting dimension, not just a creative one.

Most accounts still report by campaign type or funnel stage. But if creative is the new targeting mechanism and persona is the core creative variable, then persona becomes a performance variable. And that changes prioritisation.

Not every persona is equal. They differ in TAM, competitive density, ease of conviction, LTV potential and creative scalability. Some are “easy money.” Others are strategically important but structurally harder.

The real skill becomes answering,“which personas deserve scale capital?”

There’s also an account structure implication. We’ve seen persona-mapped campaign structures work at scale. The question is whether fragmentation intensifies as budgets increase.

Does one macro persona split into three, then seven, then fifteen micro-cohorts? If so, creative strategy, campaign structure, reporting and landing page architecture all need to reflect that.

The upside is that this makes scaling more deliberate. Instead of random angle testing, you’re building structured coverage across defined intent clusters.

But it requires growth teams to move beyond concept testing and think in terms of:
- Persona coverage audits
- Persona saturation
- Persona-level incrementality
- Persona lifecycle value

Which likely means persona should show up in reporting, not just in the brief.

If you're spending serious money on Meta and want to pressure-test how your persona coverage maps to your account structure, that's exactly the kind of work we do at Soar With Us https://lnkd.in/e8Tkwe4q

We built an AI UGC ad and we're giving away the prompt that made it possible.

Most people waste time trying to engineer the perfect video generation prompt from scratch. Getting the cinematography right, the character description, the dialogue format, the camera motion. Sora 2 is incredibly specific about what it needs to produce consistent, hyper-realistic output. Get the prompt wrong and the footage looks off.

This template removes that entirely.

The Claude prompt takes that basic information and structures it into the exact format Sora 2 needs: character description, cinematography, camera motion, lighting, dialogue, audio, authenticity keywords. Everything.

It sits at step one of our AI UGC workflow. And it matters because everything downstream depends on it.

Get this right and your Sora 2 output is hyper-realistic UGC style footage with good camera shake and audio that sounds like it was actually shot on an iPhone. From there you take that output into ElevenLabs to clone the voice. Then into ChatGPT to create a JSON prompt for subject consistency. Then Nano Banana to place your subject into new scenes. Then Kling to bring those scenes to life as B-roll.

The whole workflow starts here.

We gave this away on this week's D2C Diaries episode. Dropping it here too.

Like this post and comment PROMPT below and we'll send it across.

Excited to share that on March 9th I’ll be speaking at The eCommerce Acquiror Conference 2026. 

📍1 Liberty Street, NYC.

The event is the leading global event for investors and acquirors focused on eCommerce-led consumer brands.

It’s a unique opportunity to gain insights from top dealmakers, founders, and strategics driving M&A in the lower middle market.

The event is completely free to join for acquirors in the space. Don’t miss out on connecting with industry peers and uncovering new opportunities.

Reserve your spot today: https://lnkd.in/eqUzy_VH

Looking forward to an incredible lineup of sessions and discussions. See you there!

We’ve put together a playbook of proven Meta strategies that are working right now for 8 and 9 figure DTC brands.

Meta advertising has changed more in the last two years than in the five before it. The algorithm is smarter, the competition is heavier, and the old playbook (stack your targeting, run your best creative, scale what works) doesn’t cut it anymore.

The brands pulling away from the pack aren't spending more. They're thinking differently.

They've shifted from audience-first to persona-first, from volume to variety, from optimising individual ads to building creative systems. They're feeding the algorithm better signals and getting better results in return.

This is a comprehensive guide of what those brands are actually doing right now - the strategies, structures, and thinking that are moving the needle on Meta right now. 

Here’s what you can expect:
1️⃣ Understand how Meta actually works in 2026 - learn how Andromeda's individual-level ad matching has changed the rules of creative strategy, and what it means for how you build, structure, and scale your account.
2️⃣ Build a persona framework that drives real incremental reach - go beyond demographics into the psychological fears, desires, and cognitive biases that tell Meta exactly who to find, and stop wasting spend reaching the same people repeatedly.
3️⃣ Create ads that stop the scroll - discover the creative principles, narrative structures, and emotional frameworks behind the highest-performing Meta ads right now, with real case studies and measurable results.
4️⃣ Scale without starting from scratch - learn the systems, hierarchies, and portfolio thinking that the fastest-growing DTC brands use to keep creative output fresh, efficient, and compounding over time.

Get a full-funnel playbook you can apply immediately - from account structure and partnership ads to AI tools, organic strategy, and multi-channel thinking, every chapter is built around what's working right now.

Want it? 
Like this post
Comment "meta guide" and I'll send it over

Loukas just dropped one of our most requested masterminds.

A full mastermind on micro personas, a live demo of a persona build, how it maps into scripting, and why most brands are leaving incremental reach on the table without even knowing it.

This is the internal Hambi Media framework. What we use across our 7 and 8 figure brands. Awareness levels, cognitive biases, valence zones, soulmate theory in practice, all of it. With a live walkthrough of how it feeds directly into creative concepts and scripts.

If you're spending seriously on Meta and your reach has plateaued, this is the session to watch https://lnkd.in/epyhGaXA

Inside every macro persona are 3 completely different buyers. Most creative speaks to all of them at once. Here's how to map them.

(Busy Dad is not a persona. It's three completely different buyers wearing the same label).

Macro personas tell you who to reach. Micro personas tell you why they actually buy. Most brands never make it to the second step.

Allocating spend at the persona level is powerful, but the real advantage comes from signal precision within each persona. If persona is the growth lever, micro persona is the efficiency lever.

Most teams are allocating spend by WHO. Modern delivery systems optimise around WHY. That gap is where performance gets diluted.

Macro personas are still necessary, they're how you structure spend buckets and organise coverage. But inside every macro persona are multiple psychological tensions, and those tensions behave very differently in-feed. 

That's where the real leverage sits.

Take "The Busy Dad." Time-poor. Career driven. Wants energy. Wants to be present with his kids.

But inside that single persona are very different psychological tensions:
- The Control Seeker: wants predictability and measurable safety 
- The Skeptical Analyst: wants proof and transparency 
- The Quiet Normaliser: wants dignity and normalcy

Same life-stage, same product, but completely different emotional drivers. And those drivers behave differently in-feed.

When you speak to "Busy Dads," you blend those signals. When you isolate the dominant tension, you create clarity.

Cleaner tension → clearer engagement pattern → stronger delivery → more stable scale.

If persona is the growth lever, micro persona is the precision instrument and that's where the real optimisation happens.

Most brands stop at WHO. But modern delivery systems respond to WHY.

We do this for DTC brands every day. Get in touch and we'll show you how we'd map your brand https://lnkd.in/eqqDp-xu

Meta just said it publicly. Insight diversification over creative diversification.

We've been running this exact framework for the past year, and now we have the data to prove it works.

Working directly with Meta, we tested what actually happens when you build creative around persona-driven insights rather than production volume, 
25 variants vs 5 variants, same spend: 
171 more purchases 
59,000 fewer people reached 
15% lower cost per conversion

Partnership Ads vs BAU only: 
800 incremental conversions vs 520 
Cost per incremental conversion: $25.63 vs $39.34

The mechanism isn't surprising once you understand Andromeda. The algorithm isn't rewarding volume. It's rewarding signal diversity. Different insights unlock different audience clusters. Different motivators reach people BAU creative never touches.

What most brands are doing wrong: producing more ads anchored to the same insight. Louder, not different.

What the top 1% are doing: building a systematic process to surface new insights first, then activating creative from those.

We wrote up the full methodology and results with Campaign UK   https://lnkd.in/gyFcQ-Fs

Forget creative diversification. Think insight diversification.

The industry has been obsessed with volume.
More ads. More variants. More creative.
The logic: more creative = more chances to win.

But if 1,000 ads are built on the same insight, you're not diversifying.
You're just saying the same thing a thousand times.

Here's the shift that actually matters:
Creative diversification asks: how many ads can we make?
Insight diversification asks: how many insights can we test?

One is a production problem. The other is a strategy problem.

The best operators are flipping the ratio. 
80% finding the right insight. 20% activating it. 
Insight is becoming the job.

The algorithm handles volume now.
Dynamic creative. AI. Automated variants.
Execution is becoming automated.

The insight isn't.
The pain points. The motivators. The barriers.
The exact words people use to describe their wants, needs, problems.

The brands winning aren't the ones with the most ads.
They're the ones with the most angles.

The gap between what people post about Meta and what actually works inside the accounts is massive. D2C Diaries exists to close it.

When Loukas and I started the podcast, the pitch was simple: two agency founders talking about what's actually working in accounts.

4,000 subs and 18 months later, we're sitting across from Maxime. A creative strategist at Meta whose job is to work with the most disruptive brands on the platform. The top 1%.

That conversation wouldn't have happened without the platform D2C Diaries has become.

Here are the four biggest lessons from that episode:

1️⃣ Meta is no longer about interrupting attention. It's about earning it.
Maxime's framing: Meta has moved from disturbing attention to curating a feed people actually want to be in.
His analogy for Andromeda: "Think of it as a super intelligent librarian. The old system judged ads by the cover. Andromeda goes inside the book."
The algorithm isn't reacting to formats or surface-level edits. It's interpreting sentiment, narrative, context. That's why small iterative tweaks stop working. If the story hasn't changed, the system hasn't learned anything new.

2️⃣ Creative diversity is how the system learns.
If all your ads tell the same story, from the same perspective, in the same structure, you're starving the algorithm of information.
Diversity isn't volume. It's giving the system new meaning to work with. Different angles, different voices, different framings all expand Meta's ability to match creative to individuals.
One winning ad no longer scales the way it used to.

3️⃣ Partnership ads work because they change how the algorithm understands the creative. Not because the creator has a big audience or because it feels more native. Because identity and perspective shift the meaning of the creative.
Where brands go wrong: same script, same message, different face. To Andromeda, that's not new information. It's the same book, reprinted.

4️⃣ AI isn't the advantage, creative judgment still is.
Maxime's warning: AI becomes a problem when brands use it as a replacement for thinking. If everyone uses the same tools in the same way, everything starts to look the same. And when everything looks the same, the algorithm has nothing new to learn from.
The brands winning with AI aren't asking "how do we automate creative?" They're asking "how do we use AI to amplify strong creative judgment?"
That distinction matters more than most brands realise.

Everything Maxime described requires a strategy layer most brands don't have.

We built the Creative Intelligence Report to build it for you.

A full audit of your creative performance, persona and messaging frameworks built from research, and a ROI-ranked roadmap of exactly what to fix and in what order. 

4 weeks.  One-time fee. No retainer commitment.

Get in touch to find out more: https://lnkd.in/eHGwf6e8

CEO of Hambi Media | Co-Founder of For You Advertising | CCO of Soar Hold Co | your DTC brand’s one stop destination for Performance Creative

Creative Strategist @ Meta | Ex-TikTok | Brand & Creative Strategy Director

We're going through a full brand and positioning project at Soar Group and looking for the right agency or freelancer to bring it to life.

We've put together an RFP so if you're a branding agency or freelancer who fancies taking a look, drop me a message with your portfolio and I'll send it over.

Or if you know someone who'd be perfect for this, give them a tag below - would really appreciate it.

Rory Sutherland said something at MAD//FEST that most D2C founders in the room probably glossed over.

Guinness, he argued, has crossed a threshold almost no brand ever reaches.

It no longer needs to explain itself. The herd has decided. The social norm is set. And once you're there, individual persuasion becomes largely irrelevant. The culture does the selling for you.

That should reframe how you think about growth.

We spend our time obsessing over ROAS, conversion rates, perfect targeting. Those things matter. But they're not what separates the brands that break through from the ones that plateau.

The brands that genuinely win aren't just outperforming on performance metrics. They've made buying them feel socially normal. Safe. Obvious.

Because people don't buy on logic. They buy on social reinforcement. We aren't loyal to products, we're loyal to our networks. And underneath almost every purchase decision, however rational it feels, is one quiet question: how does this make me look?

That's why community isn't a nice-to-have for D2C brands. It's structural.

UGC isn't just content. It's proof that the herd has already decided. Influencer and partnership ads don't work because of reach. They work because of perceived similarity and trust.

The brands that win the next five years won't just have the best product. They'll be the ones that engineer the conditions for collective momentum, and make choosing them feel like the most obvious thing in the world.

Cheers, Rory. 🍺

Vice Chairman at Ogilvy UK | TED Global speaker | Author of Alchemy: The Surprising Power Of Ideas That Don't Make Sense

MAD//FEST

Here’s how we helped Nuovva scale from zero to five figures in monthly spend within a few months.

We onboarded Nuovva in August 2025. Zero paid advertising history. No pixel data, no audience insights, no creative learnings. They had a strong Amazon presence, but their DTC arm was starting from scratch.

Here's what we did.

Foundations
- Before a single ad went live, we built the data infrastructure: conversion tracking configured between Shopify and Google Ads, Triple Whale onboarded for clean cross-channel attribution, and Meta Pixel, CAPI, and catalogues all set up and verified to ensure reliable data flow from day one.

Meta
- Launched a structured Creative Testing campaign that isolated individual creative variants and copy combinations simultaneously, generating signal fast rather than testing sequentially and wasting early spend.
- Top performers were identified within weeks and pushed into a dedicated scaling campaign, giving us proven assets to put budget behind rather than running broad from the start.
- Remarketing opened two weeks later, targeting mid and bottom-funnel audiences with messaging tailored to where they sat in the consideration journey.

Google
- We began with an optimised product feed to maximise match rates and search visibility before layering in campaign types.
- Launched Brand Search to capture the awareness being generated by paid social activity, alongside a Performance Max campaign structured around Nuovva's core product collections.
- Dedicated Standard Shopping campaigns for Knives, Utensils, and Storage pushed into additional revenue streams, with a DSA campaign running in parallel to mine keyword data and inform longer-term search strategy.

Creative
- Starting from zero meant assumptions weren't an option. Our AI-assisted research process guided the first round of creatives, building personas and identifying pain points and purchase motivations before briefing a single asset.
- Early output leaned towards upper-funnel content to build a strong signal base, before scaling into high-production, UGC, and static formats.
- Three angles proved consistent performance drivers across the funnel: savings and value framing, aspirational aesthetic messaging, and the versatility proposition of replacing your entire kitchen setup with one pan.

Results
- DTC revenue 10x in 180 days, growing from almost nothing to consistent 6-figure months.
- On Google, purchases grew by 111%, revenue by 171.5%, and profit by 666% comparing the first two months to the following two, with ROAS improving 32.6% as the account matured and spend scaled.
- On Meta, ROAS improved every single month from launch, growing over 100% from September to January, with remarketing delivering a 2.5x ROAS uplift over top-of-funnel activity alone.

Nuovva is now targeting a further doubling of monthly revenue. If you want us to do the same for your brand, get in touch here: https://lnkd.in/eRcbUZ8q

We tripled new customer orders for AKT London in under 6 months. CPA dropped 59%.

Not through bid optimisation. Not through budget reallocation. Through creative volume and signal diversity.

The full breakdown is inside the new "How to Move the Needle in 2026" playbook, put together by Customers Who Click alongside some of the best operators in ecommerce right now.

Our contribution walks through the exact creative-first growth architecture we built for AKT: AI-driven customer research, high-velocity testing across UGC, high-production and graphic-led formats, geo-split account structures, and full-funnel diversification onto Google Demand Gen.

The result was a 74% increase in Meta spend with a 3.5% CTR and 40% overall ROAS uplift.

If you want to see how creative diversity actually moves the numbers at scale, this is worth reading. Great insights from some brilliant partners including:

OctaneAI, PostPilot, Littledata, Rebuy Engine, Flare - Scheduled Delivery, Videowise, Growthub, Zigpoll, Intelligems, KnoCommerce, Soar With Us, Sweet Analytics, Leaf Signal, Nosto, Order Editing

🚨 Copy of the playbook here: https://lnkd.in/eDYPXzEp

Shayne Williams

🚀 Scaling Businesses | Acquiring & Exiting Profitably | Growth & M&A Strategy

I help founders and business owners scale, acquire, and exit strategically, leveraging omnichannel marketing, brand positioning, and M&A expertise to maximise business value and drive high-ticket growth.

Who I Am & What I Do?

As the Founder of SugarNova and Owner of Glossy PR, I specialise in scaling high-end brands and startups through strategic marketing, PR, and digital growth solutions. I’ve spent years mastering paid ads, PR, SEO, CRO, and revenue optimisation, helping businesses dominate their industries and become high-value assets.

Beyond marketing, I have extensive experience in mergers & acquisitions (M&A) and business investing, where I help companies increase market share, optimise operations, and prepare for high-value exits or investment opportunities.

What We Do at SugarNova & Glossy PR
✅ Omnichannel Digital Marketing & Paid Ads
We build high-converting ad campaigns across Google, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, maximizing ROI and revenue growth.

✅ SEO & Content Marketing
We help brands dominate search engines and generate organic traffic that converts, positioning them as industry leaders.

✅ Public Relations (PR) & Brand Authority
At Glossy PR, we secure premium media coverage, ensuring your brand is seen in top publications and positioned as an authority in your space.

✅ Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) & Customer Journey Mapping
We turn traffic into paying customers by optimizing user experience and sales funnels for higher conversion rates.

✅ Social Media Strategy & Influencer Partnerships
We craft engagement-driven social media campaigns and partner with top influencers to amplify your brand’s reach.

✅ Brand Development & Market Expansion
We help brands launch, scale, and enter new markets, ensuring sustainable, long-term growth.

✅ M&A & Business Investing
I assist business owners in:

Acquiring, optimizing, and scaling companies.
Preparing businesses for high-ticket exits or investment opportunities.
Investing in scalable ventures and aligning growth strategies for maximum valuation.

Why Work With Me?

I combine marketing, revenue growth, and M&A strategies to create scalable, high-value businesses. Whether you want to scale, acquire, or exit, my approach ensures your business is positioned for maximum success.

💡 Let’s Connect → If you're a founder, investor, or business owner looking to scale fast, acquire companies, or prepare for a high-value exit, let’s talk.

Founder

Your competitor just got recommended by ChatGPT.

You’re still sitting at #1 on Google.

Only one of you is getting picked in the new buying journey.

Search and AI recommendations are now two different contests:

Google cares about indexing and ranking pages
LLMs care about trusted facts, sources and entities

If you’re not feeding good data into that second system, you simply don’t exist there.

Here’s what we’re seeing move the needle when brands want AI systems (ChatGPT, Perplexity, SGE/AIO, voice assistants) to recommend them instead of whoever shouts loudest:


1. Facts over adjectives

Models look for clear, machine-usable facts, not mood boards.

“Mesh back, aluminium frame, 135kg capacity, 12-year warranty”
beats
“luxury ergonomic chair with premium materials”.

If the spec isn’t explicit, the model can’t confidently recommend you.


2. Third-party proof

One strong mention in a credible publication or comparison guide often outweighs 50 of your own blog posts.

Authoritative sources = higher chance you’re surfaced in:

AI Overviews
“Best X for Y” responses
Assistant-style product recommendations

This is where PR + digital PR is now doing double duty: human trust and LLM trust.


3. Consistency across the stack

If your price, size, ingredients, claims or guarantees are different on:

your site
Amazon / marketplaces
retailer listings
review sites

…models will default to a safer, more consistent competitor.

Treat every listing as a single source of truth, not separate experiments.


4. Fresh, timestamped information

LLMs and AI search surfaces are biasing to recent, dated information – especially in categories where things change fast (regulation, ingredients, formulations, offers).

If your last meaningful update was in 2022, you’re easy to skip.


5. Structured data and entity clarity

Schema markup, clean product feeds and clear entity relationships make you machine-readable:

Product, Offer, Review schema
Brand, organisation, founder entities aligned across site, Wikidata, social, press
Clear category language that matches how people search

This is what lets models “understand” your brand as the answer for a specific problem, not just another URL.

When an AI system recommends your product, it lands as trusted advice, not an advert.

That’s why at SugarNova we don’t treat PR, SEO and paid as separate hobbies:

PR builds the sources that models' trust
SEO structures the facts they can read
Paid pushes live demand through that trust layer

If your media coverage, content and product data aren’t feeding into how LLMs see your brand in 2026, you’re handing recommendations to your competitors for free.

We can fix that Glossy PR & SugarNova | Scaling Brands with Omnichannel Ads, PR, SEO, CRO & Strategic Acquisitions for Growth 🚀

PR That Earns Trust and Credibility, SEO That Ranks, Paid That Scales, CRO That Converts 📈 Helping Brands Lower CAC, Increase ROAS & LTV While Strengthening Valuation | Omnichannel Marketing Specialist and M&A Investor

Search has changed more than most brands realise

Most brands are still optimising for “10 blue links”.

Users aren’t.

They type full questions into:
	•	Google (AI Overviews)
	•	ChatGPT / Perplexity
	•	TikTok search
…and expect one clear answer, not a list.

Those systems don’t just scan keywords. They build a picture of entities:
	•	your brand
	•	your founder
	•	your products
	•	your location
	•	the topics you talk about

Then they decide who they trust to answer.

If your brand is barely mentioned in credible places, you’ll be missing from those answers even if your SEO looks “fine” on paper.

From 2026 onwards, the question isn’t just:

“What do we rank for?”
It’s:
“When someone asks an AI about our category, do we get mentioned at all?”

That’s where PR-led, entity-led SEO starts to matter.

If you want to walk through what this looks like for your brand, connect with us at Glossy PR or send me a DM.

Reposting this from the team at Glossy PR because it captures a really important shift.

Trends like “looksmaxxing” are not just social media buzzwords. They are shaping how young people see themselves, how they relate to their bodies and what they think they need to “fix” to be accepted.

That is why we put clients like Dr Candice O’Neil into these conversations.

From a growth and positioning point of view, expert comment like this does three big things:
	•	It anchors you to real, live issues your audience already cares about, rather than abstract theory
	•	It builds deep trust fast, because readers see you framed as the calm, evidence based voice in a noisy space
	•	It creates assets you can plug into your site, enquiry flows, workshops and speaking pitches long after the headline has moved on

For psychologists, coaches and specialist clinicians, this is what good PR looks like in 2026. You are not chasing vanity logos. You are becoming the expert editors and producers rely on when the topic actually matters.

If you want that level of authority for your practice or brand this year, I am happy to map out what a sensible PR and SEO plan could look like for you.

Looksmaxxing is everywhere right now.

From viral TikToks to long-form YouTube breakdowns, young people are being told to optimise every inch of their appearance, often without any real discussion of the psychological cost.

After @androgenic’s video took off, our client Dr Candice O’Neil stepped in to unpack the social media frenzy around looksmaxxing and what it is doing to young people’s self esteem and identity 🧠

Why this kind of coverage matters for psychologists and experts:
	•	It puts you at the centre of a live cultural conversation, not just evergreen topics
	•	It lets you translate complex psychology into clear, accessible guidance for a mainstream audience
	•	It positions you as the trusted voice that editors and journalists turn to when a trend turns harmful

This is how we think about expert-led PR at Glossy PR. Not noise for the sake of it, but timely comment that protects audiences, builds authority and can be reused across your website, funnels and talks.

If you are a psychologist, therapist or specialist who wants your work to show up in the titles your clients already read, let us talk about your 2026 PR plan.

How we’re treating SEO, PR and AEO at SugarNova

At SugarNova we’ve stopped treating SEO and PR as separate lanes.

For clients spending serious money on growth, our model now looks like this:

1️⃣ Define the commercial questions that matter
	•	The ones your board cares about: 
“Who do people see as the leader in [category]?” 
“Where do they get advice before buying?”

2️⃣ Aim PR and SEO at the same themes
	•	PR: expert commentary and stories placed in titles AI already trusts.
	•	SEO: entity-led site structure, content and schema built around those themes.

3️⃣ Monitor AEO & GEO, not just rankings
	•	Regular checks across AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity and TikTok search.
	•	Track how often you’re mentioned and how you’re described.
	•	Adjust angles and content when competitors start to dominate the answers.

4️⃣ Measure it in board language
	•	Share of Answer
	•	Authority / DR and Top-3 share on money terms
	•	Branded + category search growth
	•	Assisted revenue from organic and PR-led traffic.

If you’re using separate agencies for PR and SEO, this is very hard to coordinate.

If you want one operating system that treats PR, SEO and AEO as parts of the same engine, that’s what our group is built for.

Happy to share how we’re structuring this in practice if you’re running £100k+/month through your channels and want a cleaner way to measure it.

SugarNova | Scaling Brands with Omnichannel Ads, PR, SEO, CRO & Strategic Acquisitions for Growth 🚀

If your brand is invisible to ChatGPT, it is slowly becoming invisible to your customers, too.

LLMs are not thinking. They are pattern matching!

They look at:
	•	Which brands show up in credible articles
	•	Which experts are consistently quoted on the same topics
	•	Which sites have clean, structured answers and strong backlinks
	•	Which names appear again and again in trusted sources

That is exactly what good PR and smart SEO are built to do.

At Glossy PR we now treat PR as:
	•	An AI visibility strategy
	•	An AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) lever
	•	A way to train algorithms to recognise you as the authority in your niche

For beauty, wellness and DTC brands, that means:
	•	Your products appear in the round ups buyers and bots both pull from
	•	Your founders are quoted as experts on the questions people actually ask
	•	Your site structure and content make it easy for LLMs to lift and surface you in answers

PR is no longer just “nice logos on a deck”. It is how you teach AI and humans what you should be trusted for.

If you want 2026 to be the year LLMs actually say your brand name when people ask for recommendations, I am happy to map out what that looks like for you.

Drop me a message here to book a strategy call.

HOW TO MAKE YOUR BRAND SHOW UP IN LLM SEARCHES 👆

AI is quickly becoming a primary discovery tool in beauty and wellness.
When consumers search through LLM platforms, results are pulled from patterns across the internet...media coverage, expert commentary, educational content, and consistent niche positioning.

PR today isn’t just about press.

It’s about building authority that algorithms recognise and surface.

Save this for your 2026 visibility strategy and follow for smarter beauty & wellness PR insights.

Google isn’t guessing anymore.
It’s rewarding pages that make both users and AI systems look smart.

Here are 20 on-page + on-SERP signals we’re seeing move the needle for clients in 2026:
	1.	Search intent match – page actually answers the query, not just repeats the keyword.
	2.	Topic depth – covers the full task the user is trying to complete, not a 600-word skim.
	3.	EEAT signals – clear author/about info, real brand, real proof.
	4.	Primary keyword + variants – used naturally in title, intro, H1 and body.
	5.	Entity optimisation – products, people, places and categories expressed in the way Google/LLMs understand.
	6.	Internal linking – clean hub → spoke structure with descriptive anchor text.
	7.	Structured data – FAQ, Product, Article, Organisation, Review schema to power rich results and AI overviews.
	8.	Page experience / Core Web Vitals – especially LCP & CLS on mobile.
	9.	Mobile-first layouts – built for thumb-scroll, not desktop shrunk down.
	10.	Fast load – actual TTFB and real-user speed, not just lab scores.
	11.	Image alt text – descriptive, accessible, non-spammy.
	12.	Media compression – images and video optimised so pages don’t crawl.
	13.	Logical URL structure – short, human readable, reflects the site architecture.
	14.	H1/H2/H3 structure – scannable, reflects the way a human would ask follow-up questions.
	15.	Freshness – regular updates where the topic demands it (prices, regulations, trends).
	16.	Readability – clear language, short sections, real examples.
	17.	Helpful FAQ – based on actual search queries and support tickets, not filler.
	18.	AI suitability check – content answers the type of follow-up questions LLMs surface in AEO (clarifications, comparisons, “what next?”).
	19.	Genuine click-worthy title – promise is clear and honest, no clickbait.
	20.	Compelling meta description – written for humans to choose you in a crowded SERP.

These aren’t “nice-to-haves”.

They’re the signals Google and LLMs use to decide:
	•	whose answer appears in AI Overviews / Search Generative Experience
	•	whose brand gets cited when people ask assistants for recommendations
	•	whose product pages still get clicked when comparison sites and marketplaces crowd the SERPs

Skip a handful of these and:
	•	You might still index
	•	but you’ll struggle to win traffic, clicks and assisted revenue in 2026.

What we’re seeing across SugarNova’s clients:
	•	Simple on-page fixes + entity clean-up
	•	Mapped directly to real search demand and PR coverage

…often outperform “more content” or “more links”.

Start with intent and entities.
End with a title and meta that deserve the click.

If your SEO still looks like a 2019 checklist, it’s leaving money (and AEO visibility) on the table.

💬 If you want your PR, SEO and paid search working off the same list of queries and entities, not three different playbooks... That’s exactly how we build it at SugarNova | Scaling Brands with Omnichannel Ads, PR, SEO, CRO & Strategic Acquisitions for Growth 🚀

When major policy shifts hit the news, most people get noise.
The right experts bring clarity.

Our client, educational psychologist Dr Ahmar Ferguson, was featured in The Daily Mirror discussing how proposed SEND reforms could affect children, parents and teachers.

From my side as an agency owner, this is exactly what I mean by strategic PR.

Not chasing headlines for the sake of it.
But placing credible expertise into a live national conversation at the moment people are paying attention.

Coverage like this does three things that matter for expert-led practices:
	•	It turns complexity into clarity
Families and educators need grounded explanations, not hot takes. This is how you build trust at scale.
	•	It positions you as the go-to voice
When journalists are covering a serious topic, they do not want opinion. They want authority. The experts who show up here become the ones they call again.
	•	It creates reusable proof
One Mirror feature becomes:
• a trust signal on your website and enquiry flows
• content you can share with schools, parents and partners
• a credential that supports talks, tenders and future media

This is why PR for psychologists, consultants and specialist practitioners is not about vanity.
It is about being visible in the right place, at the right time, with something meaningful to say.

If you are building an expert-led practice and want your work to show up in the titles your clients already read in 2026, drop me a message and I will walk you through what that could look like with Glossy PR.

When major education policy shifts, expert voices matter.

Our client, educational psychologist Dr Ahmar Ferguson, spoke to The Daily Mirror about how proposed SEND reforms could affect children, parents and teachers.

This is exactly what strategic PR should do:
• connect expert insight to a live national conversation
• make complex issues easier for the public to understand
• position the right expert as a trusted voice when the story matters most

For psychologists, consultants and specialist practitioners, this is how PR moves beyond “visibility” and into real authority.

A strong example of turning industry news into timely, credible media coverage.

How PR actually feeds AI answers and SEO

A lot of brands still think PR is just “nice coverage” and a logo strip.

Here’s what it does under the surface:
	•	Editorial PR puts your brand and founder on high-authority domains that LLMs already crawl and reference.
	•	Repeated expert quotes help these systems decide who sounds like a credible source on a topic.
	•	Those same articles give you:
	◦	stronger backlink profile
	◦	better Authority / DR
	◦	more branded and category search over time

So the sequence looks like this:
PR win → trusted citation → stronger authority → more presence in AI answers and organic search.

That’s why we don’t run PR and SEO as separate jobs. 
We decide which topics you want to “own”, then aim both PR and SEO at those themes.

The result isn’t just a nice press page. 
It’s a brand that keeps showing up in the short answers AI tools generate.

You cannot smell a room spray through a screen.
That is why proof matters.

One of the hardest things about building a home fragrance brand is simple.
Online, people cannot experience the product the way you wish they could.

That is exactly why I push so hard for the right kind of PR for brands like ROSARD PARFUM

Their Amber Dunes Room Spray was recently featured in wearemotherplus weekly picks. On the surface, it is one more lifestyle mention. In reality, it gives Rosard three big advantages:

1. Credibility you cannot claim on your own
When a trusted platform curates your product, it stops being “we are special, trust us” and becomes “this is worth your attention” from a voice your customer already respects.

That external validation is what moves someone from interest to intent.

2. Editorial proof you can plug in everywhere
One small feature becomes:

“As seen in wearemotherplus” on product pages
A social proof tile in email flows
A line in paid creative and UGC
A screenshot for social content

All doing the silent job of answering the question:

“Is this actually any good?”

Before people reach for their card.

3. Search and AI visibility that compounds
Another mention. Another quality link. Another signal to Google and AI tools that Rosard is a real, trusted brand in the home fragrance category.

That is how you slowly win:

Higher organic rankings
Stronger branded search
Better odds of being surfaced in AI-generated answers

For early-stage beauty, home and wellness brands, this is why I will always argue that smart PR and SEO should sit in place before you start throwing a heavy budget at ads.

Paid traffic should not be dragging a cold, unproven brand up a hill.
It should amplify something that already looks credible and feels trustworthy.

If you want this level of proof working alongside your paid and retention channels in 2026, I am happy to walk you through how we approach it at Glossy PR and SugarNova | Scaling Brands with Omnichannel Ads, PR, SEO, CRO & Strategic Acquisitions for Growth 🚀.

You cannot smell a room spray through a screen. That is why proof matters.

One of the challenges with building a home fragrance brand is simple: online, people cannot experience the product the way you wish they could.

That is exactly why I push so hard for the right kind of PR for brands like Rosard Parfum.

Their Amber Dunes Room Spray has just been featured in wearemotherplus weekly picks. On paper, it is one more lifestyle mention. In practice, it gives Rosard three serious advantages:

𝗖𝗿𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗰𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗰𝗹𝗮𝗶𝗺 𝗮𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗲
When a trusted platform curates your product, it is no longer just you saying “we are special.” It is someone your customer respects backing up that story.

𝗘𝗱𝗶𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗼𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗽𝗹𝘂𝗴 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲
That one pick can sit on product pages, in email flows, in paid creative and across social tiles. It quietly does the heavy lifting of “is this worth it?” for new customers.

𝗦𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗔𝗜 𝗯𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗳𝗶𝘁𝘀
Another mention, another link, another signal that Rosard is a real, trusted brand in the home fragrance space. That feeds Google, AI search and long-term discoverability.

For early-stage DTC brands, this is why I will always argue that smart PR and SEO should sit in place before you throw a heavy budget at paid. You need something for your ads to lean on.

If you are building a beauty, home or wellness brand and want this level of proof working alongside your paid and retention channels in 2026, I am happy to talk through what we do at Glossy PR and SugarNova.

This is exactly why I always say the right PR is not a “nice to have”. It is leverage.

Our client Rachel Solway has just landed a 4-page editorial feature in Women’s Fitness, one of the most respected fitness titles in the world.

And let’s be honest, if you tried to buy that level of space advertorially, it would cost a small fortune.

The difference is this:
Editorial carries weight that money alone cannot buy.

Because when a title like Women’s Fitness gives you four pages, it is not just giving you visibility. It is giving you:
	•	Credibility 
You are no longer “another coach on Instagram”. 
You are the coach a major editorial team has chosen to spotlight.

	•	Depth 
A four-page spread gives space to explain your philosophy, methods and results properly. 
Not just a soundbite, but substance.

	•	Longevity 
This is now an asset Rachel can use across:
	◦	her website
	◦	sales funnels
	◦	email marketing
	◦	social proof
	◦	future podcast and media pitches

That is what great PR does. It takes your expertise and puts it in front of the right audience, in the right context, with the kind of third-party authority that changes how people see you.

It is also why working with an agency that already has strong editorial relationships matters so much. Trust is built over time. 

Journalists come back to the people and agencies that bring them the right voices, at the right moment, in the right format.

Huge congratulations to Rachel. This is a serious win and exactly the kind of coverage that compounds for years.

If you are a coach, expert or founder and want this level of credibility working for your brand in 2026, let’s talk.

This one is huge, so let’s treat it that way 👇

@rachelsolwaylevelup has landed a 4-page feature in Women’s Fitness – one of the most respected fitness magazines in the world. 💪✨

Inside, Rachel walks readers through her approach to training, nutrition and sustainable transformation, the exact methods she uses with her clients every day.

A moment like this does more than “look good in press”:
	•	Puts her coaching philosophy in front of a global, health-conscious audience
	•	Builds instant authority in one of the most competitive industries online
	•	Becomes an asset she can use across her website, funnels and socials for years

Huge thank you to @loulou_nutrition and the Women’s Fitness team for spotlighting Rachel and her work. 🙌

This is what strategic PR looks like when it really lands.

Hot take from the other side of the table: getting press is the easy part.

Being ready for it is what separates brands that scale from brands that scramble.

I get messages every week that say: 
“We want Vogue.” 
“We want GQ.” 
“We want The Telegraph.”

My answer is always the same:
Yes. But what if you are featured?

Because press is not just a logo you stick on your homepage. It is a stress test.

The moment a big piece lands, it exposes the truth of the business:
 • Can you ship fast and reliably if demand spikes overnight?
 • Are your assets actually press-ready (clean PNGs, pack shots, lifestyle)?
 • Are your claims compliant and defensible if a journalist questions them?
 • Does your website convert cold traffic, or does it leak sales?
 • Are stock, customer service and returns built to handle attention?
 • Is the founder story and positioning strong enough to make sense to an editor?

PR does not create a great brand. It amplifies what is already there.

So yes, we can get you featured. The real question is: will you be ready when it lands?

If you want an honest “press readiness” audit and a plan to turn coverage into SEO lift and sales, book a strategy call Glossy PR.

Hot take: getting press is the easy part.

Being ready for it is what separates brands that grow from brands that panic.

Everyone wants Vogue.
Very few brands are ready for Vogue.

Because press is not just a logo. It is a stress test.

Before we pitch you, we need to know you can handle what comes with it:
	•	Can you ship fast and reliably if demand spikes?
	•	Are your product images actually press-ready (clean PNGs, pack shots, lifestyle)?
	•	Are your claims compliant and defensible?
	•	Do you have a site that converts once the traffic hits?
	•	Do you have stock, customer service and a returns process that will not collapse under attention?
	•	Do you have a founder story and positioning that makes sense to an editor?

PR does not create a great brand. It amplifies what is already there.

So yes, we can get you featured. The real question is: will you be ready when it lands?

Want us to tell you the gaps? Book a strategy call.

AI does not care how many times your website calls you “trusted”.
It cares whether the internet agrees.

When buyers ask ChatGPT things like:
	•	“Best collagen brand in the UK?”
	•	“Most credible electrolyte brand?”
	•	“Skincare brands worth the money?”

LLMs pull patterns from the web. The brands that show up have signals, not slogans:
	•	Credible media mentions
	•	Expert quotes that define what they are known for
	•	Consistent niche positioning across multiple sources
	•	Trusted backlinks
	•	Clear, helpful answers on their site

This is why I keep saying PR has changed.

It is no longer just about getting you press. It is about building an authoritative footprint that makes:
	•	SEO stronger
	•	paid conversion cheaper
	•	first-time buyers trust faster
	•	AI tools more likely to name you in recommendations

At Glossy PR, we build PR with the end in mind: business outcomes.

If you are a DTC beauty, health or wellness brand and want to know what your “authority footprint” looks like right now, message me, and I will tell you the gaps to fix first.

AI does not care how many times you call your brand “trusted”.

It cares about evidence.

When buyers ask ChatGPT or other AI tools: 
“Best collagen brand?” 
“Most credible electrolyte brand?” 
“Which skincare brand is actually worth it?”

The answers are pulled from patterns across the internet, not your tagline.

Here is what those systems lean on:
	•	Media mentions in reputable publications
	•	Expert quotes that clarify what you stand for
	•	Clear niche positioning repeated consistently
	•	Trusted backlinks that signal authority
	•	Useful answers on your site that make you easy to cite

This is why PR has changed.

It is no longer just about “getting you press”. It is about building an authority footprint that helps you:
	•	convert more first-time buyers
	•	lower CAC by warming traffic before it hits your site
	•	improve SEO and AI visibility
	•	make paid, email and landing pages perform harder

At Glossy PR, we build PR with the end in mind: commercial outcomes. 

The goal is not a logo on a slide. 
The goal is a brand that the market and machines recognise.

If you are a UK DTC beauty, health or wellness brand doing £20k+ MRR and want to build authority that compounds into SEO and sales, book a strategy call, and we will map the gaps and the plan.

book.glossypr.com

Mother’s Day is not just a sales moment.

It’s an authority moment.

Most DTC brands treat key dates like short-term spikes.
The smarter brands treat them like long-term SEO assets.

Because when your brand shows up in Mother’s Day edits, gift guides and seasonal coverage, you do not just get a nice logo.

You earn compounding signals that keep paying you back:
	•	High-authority backlinks that lift rankings
	•	Branded search growth as people look you up by name
	•	Category association in Google and AI search (“best gifts for mum”, “self-care gifts”, “skin health”)
	•	Trust assets you can plug into PDPs, landing pages, email flows and paid ads

This is the flywheel we build at Glossy PR × SugarNova:

PR earns trust → SEO keeps you discoverable → CRO converts cold traffic → Paid scales what works

And in 2026, it is not just about Google.

AI search tools and LLMs pull from the same patterns:
credible media mentions, expert quotes, clear positioning and useful answers on your site.

If you are a beauty, health or wellness brand, Mother’s Day is a chance to build visibility that lasts long after the date passes.

If you want a key-date plan that turns seasonal moments into year-round authority and stronger unit economics, drop me a message and I’ll show you what we would do.

Glossy PR SugarNova | Scaling Brands with Omnichannel Ads, PR, SEO, CRO & Strategic Acquisitions for Growth 🚀

SugarNova | Scaling Brands with Omnichannel Ads, PR, SEO, CRO & Strategic Acquisitions for Growth 🚀

View company: SugarNova | Scaling Brands with Omnichannel Ads, PR, SEO, CRO & Strategic Acquisitions for Growth 🚀

Mother’s Day is not just a sales moment.
It is an authority moment.

Most brands treat seasonal dates like short-term campaigns. The smarter brands treat them like long-term SEO assets.

Because every Mother’s Day feature, gift guide mention and editorial round-up can create:
	•	high-authority backlinks
	•	branded search lift
	•	category association (“best gifts for mum”, “self-care gifts”, “skin health”)
	•	content that ranks year after year
	•	proof that boosts conversion when paid traffic lands

This is the omnichannel flywheel we build at SugarNova × Glossy PR:

PR earns the trust → SEO keeps it discoverable → CRO converts it → Paid scales it

And in 2026, this goes beyond Google.

AI search tools and LLMs lean on the same signals:
credible mentions, consistent positioning, trusted sources and clean answers on your site.

If you are a DTC beauty, health or wellness brand, Mother’s Day is a chance to build visibility that lasts long after the date passes.

If you want us to map the angles, content and press calendar that turns key dates into compounding SEO, drop a message.

Ads can get the click.
PR helps close the sale.

I see this constantly with DTC brands.

Founders and CMOs assume the answer to rising CAC is:
more creative, more spend, more testing.

Sometimes it is.

But more often the real issue is simpler:

You can buy attention.
You cannot buy belief.

When someone lands on your site from Meta, TikTok or Google, they are not thinking:
“Is this ad good?”

They are thinking:
	•	Is this brand legit?
	•	Why should I trust it over the other 10 options?
	•	Is it worth the price?
	•	Has anyone credible validated it?

PR is how you answer those questions at scale.

Because it gives you a proof stack your paid traffic can lean on:
	•	“As seen in” trust markers that reduce hesitation
	•	Awards and third-party endorsements that justify premium pricing
	•	Authority backlinks that lift SEO and branded search
	•	Better PDP and landing page conversion
	•	Lower acquisition cost because trust does the heavy lifting, not discounts

The best brands do not choose between PR and performance marketing.

They build the flywheel:

PR earns trust → SEO compounds it → CRO converts it → paid scales it.

If your CAC is creeping up, your ads might not be the problem.
Your proof stack is.

If you want us to implement this properly inside your brand in 2026, book a strategy call and we will map the gaps and the plan.

Ads can get the click.
PR helps close the sale.

If paid is your main growth lever right now, here’s the blind spot most brands miss:

You can buy attention.
You cannot buy belief.

When someone lands on your site from Meta, TikTok or Google, they are not asking: “Is this ad good?”

They are asking:
• Is this brand legit?
• Why should I trust it over the other 10 options?
• Is it worth the price?
• Has anyone credible validated it?

PR is how you answer those questions at scale.

It gives you:
• “As seen in” proof that reduces hesitation
• Awards and third-party endorsements that justify premium pricing
• Authority backlinks that lift SEO and brand search
• Stronger conversion on PDPs and landing pages
• Cheaper acquisition because trust does the heavy lifting, not discounts

The best brands do not choose between PR and paid.

They build the flywheel:
PR earns trust → SEO compounds it → CRO converts it → paid scales it.

If your CAC is creeping up, your ads might not be the problem.
Your proof stack is.

Want your ads to convert better? Build authority first!

If you want us to implement this within your brand, book a strategy call with us. 🖥️

Most brands still think PR is a “nice to have”.

I see it as one of the cleanest SEO and AI visibility plays you can make.

This is what SEO from PR actually looks like:

Not generic backlinks.
Not guest posts.
Real mentions and links from high-authority publications Google already trusts.

When your brand is featured in places like The Evening Standard, The Independent, Marie Claire and other tier-one titles, you earn two types of authority at the same time:
	1.	Authority with customers
Third-party validation that makes people trust you faster and hesitate less.
	2.	Authority with algorithms
Backlinks and brand mentions from domains with serious weight, which strengthens your whole site over time.

That matters in the short term because it can:
	•	lift rankings for key product and category terms
	•	increase branded search
	•	improve conversion because visitors arrive warmer

It matters in the medium term because:
	•	your domain becomes stronger
	•	you rely less on paid to stay visible
	•	your content starts ranking faster and sticking longer

And it matters in the long term because search is changing.

AI-led discovery is becoming the front door.

LLMs and answer engines learn what to recommend from patterns across the internet:
	•	repeated media mentions
	•	consistent niche association
	•	trusted sources
	•	clear onsite answers they can cite

So PR is no longer just press.
It’s a compounding authority strategy for Google, AI search and consumer trust.

If you want to build a brand that ranks, converts and gets recommended, this is the game now.

One credible mention at a time.

This is what “SEO from PR” actually looks like.

Not generic backlinks.
 Not guest posts.
 Real links from high-authority publications that Google already trusts.

When your brand is featured in places like the Evening Standard, The Independent, Marie Claire (and other tier-one titles), you earn two powerful things at once:
	1	Authority in the eyes of customers Third-party validation that makes people trust you faster.
	2	Authority in the eyes of algorithms High-quality backlinks and brand mentions from domains with serious weight.

That matters in the short term because it can:
	•	lift rankings for key product and category terms
	•	increase branded search
	•	improve conversion because visitors arrive pre-sold

It matters in the medium term because:
	•	your domain becomes stronger
	•	your site becomes more competitive without relying purely on paid spend
	•	your content starts ranking faster and sticking longer

And it matters in the long term because search is changing.
AI-led discovery is becoming the front door.

LLMs and answer engines learn what to recommend from patterns across the internet:
	•	consistent media mentions
	•	repeated niche association
	•	trusted sources
	•	clear onsite answers they can cite

PR is no longer just press. It is a compounding authority strategy for Google, AI search, and consumer trust.

If you want to build a brand that ranks, converts and gets recommended, this is how you do it.

One credible mention at a time.

Looksmaxxing is not just another TikTok trend.
It is quietly rewiring how young people measure their own value. 🧠

That is why I am so proud to see our client, Dr Candice O’Neil, featured in Patient breaking this down properly… Not with panic, but with evidence and context.

She covers:
	•	What looksmaxxing actually is (beyond the viral sound bites)
	•	How it can chip away at self-esteem, relationships and identity
	•	The warning signs parents, partners and friends should be paying attention to

From my side, this is a perfect example of what good PR looks like for experts and clinicians:
	•	Right topic – culturally relevant, emotionally charged, genuinely useful
	•	Right title – a trusted health platform where readers are looking for guidance, not gossip
	•	Right positioning – you become the calm, credible voice in the middle of the noise

For psychologists, therapists and specialists, this kind of coverage does three things at once:
1️⃣ Protects the public with clear, accessible education
2️⃣ Builds authority in the titles your ideal clients already trust
3️⃣ Creates assets you can plug into your website, funnels, talks and workshops

If you want 2026 to be the year your expertise shows up in places like Patient, not just on your own socials, that is exactly what we do at Glossy PR.

📩 Drop me a message or visit book.glossypr.com and we can map out what an expert-led PR strategy would look like for your practice or brand.

Looksmaxxing is not just another TikTok buzzword.
It is changing how young people see their faces and their worth. 🧠

Our client, Dr Candice O’Neil (@ontic.psychology), has been featured in Patient, unpacking:
✨ What looksmaxxing really is
✨ Why it can be harmful for self-esteem and relationships
✨ The red flags to watch for if you are a parent, partner or friend

Coverage like this matters because it takes a viral trend and provides people with clear, evidence-based guidance rather than adding more pressure to “fix” themselves.

We are proud to see Candice leading this conversation in a trusted health title.

PREDICTION: Gartner says that PR and earned media budgets will DOUBLE by 2027... and the reason why should matter to every marketer still pouring money into paid channels.

Their latest report lays it out: mass adoption of AI as a replacement for traditional search is going to force a fundamental reallocation of marketing spend away from paid, toward earned.

THE EVIDENCE:
Between the first half of 2024 and the first half of 2025, ChatGPT traffic grew 608%, while Google and Bing both declined.

Muck Rack's research shows that more than 95% of links cited in AI-generated answers come from non-paid sources, with half of all AI citations coming from content published in the last 11 months. And per Semrush, AI search visitors convert at 4.4x the rate of traditional organic search.

We've been watching this play out with our own clients... one saw 38% of their leads this year come directly from earned media surfacing in ChatGPT queries (we got them in the NYT, WSJ, Wired, Forbes, TechCrunch, and others).

WHAT THIS MEANS:
Gartner is essentially telling CMOs: the channel your customers use to find you is changing to AI, and earned media is what AI trusts.

Brands still treating PR as a "nice to have" line item below paid media and SEO are in store for an awakening (I was going to say “rude awakening”, but that would be… rude).

For PR teams already doing the work, every placement you secure isn't just building credibility with human readers anymore; it’s informing the AI systems that are increasingly deciding which brands get recommended and which ones don't exist.

And for marketers who spent the last decade buying their way into "earned-looking" content... native ads, sponsored posts, advertorials pretending to be editorial... AI is seeing right through it.

THE NEW REALITY:
We're watching a once-in-a-generation shift in how people discover brands.

The companies investing in real earned media (that is, true third-party validation) are the ones building a moat.

Every month without it?

Good luck catching up.

Mother’s Day content is usually either sentimental or salesy.

This was neither.

Our client Dr Candice O’Neil has been featured by Bloom & Wild sharing genuinely useful guidance on strengthening your bond with your mum, built around one line I love:

“It’s your parents’ first time living too.”

It reframes the whole conversation.

Instead of defaulting to flowers and a card once a year, Candice talks about simple, practical ways to deepen the relationship in real life:
	•	setting boundaries with love rather than resentment
	•	saying what you appreciate while you still can
	•	navigating family dynamics with more compassion and less performance

From a PR perspective, this is exactly the kind of placement that matters for psychologists and therapists.

Not just because it is a lovely feature, but because it:
	•	puts emotional wellbeing at the centre of a cultural moment people already care about
	•	makes therapy feel warm, human and accessible
	•	positions Candice as the trusted voice a household brand chooses to publish

This is how expert PR works when it is done well.
High fit platform, high relevance topic, and advice that people actually want to save and share.

Huge thanks to Bloom & Wild for spotlighting Candice’s work so thoughtfully.

If you are a psychologist, therapist or specialist and you want your expertise showing up in places your clients already read and trust in 2026, drop me a message and I will talk you through what that could look like with Glossy PR.

“It’s your parents’ first time living too.” 💐

Dr Candice O’Neil @ontic.psychology has shared her tips on how to strengthen your bond with Mum ahead of Mother’s Day, in a beautiful feature with @bloomandwild.

From setting boundaries with love, to actually telling her what you appreciate, Candice offers simple, practical ways to deepen the relationship rather than just defaulting to flowers and a card once a year.

A lovely piece that:
	•	Puts emotional wellbeing at the heart of Mother’s Day
	•	Helps readers navigate real-life family dynamics
	•	Shows therapy as something warm, human and accessible

Huge thank you to Bloom & Wild for spotlighting Candice’s work in such a thoughtful way. 💐✨

Horror, psychology and why the stories we tell ourselves matter.

One of the reasons I love working with experts is that good PR can take a “niche” topic and show how deeply it sits inside culture.

Our client, Dr Candice O’Neil, has just been featured in Glamour, unpacking Stephen King’s idea that:

“We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.”

On the surface, it is a piece about horror and why we are drawn to dark stories.

In reality, it is doing three very important things for Candice and her practice:

1. It places her in the middle of a live cultural conversation
This is not theory in a vacuum.
Candice is talking about fear, anxiety and coping through the lens of horror, true crime and the content people are actually consuming. That is where authority is built now.

2. It turns complex psychology into something everyone can feel
Readers walk away understanding why they are drawn to certain stories and how that might be helping them process real world emotions.
No jargon, no gatekeeping. Just clear explanation and grounded insight.

3. It builds authority that is commercially useful
One well placed Glamour feature becomes:

A trust signal on her website and enquiry flows
A resource she can share with clients and followers
A credential that makes it easier to land future press, podcasts and speaking work

This is exactly how we think about expert PR at Glossy PR.
Not random quotes for the sake of a logo, but high fit stories that:

Educate the public
Build long term authority
Feed SEO, AI visibility and demand

If you are a psychologist, therapist or specialist and you want 2026 to be the year your visibility finally matches your expertise, I am happy to walk you through what this could look like for your practice.

Horror, psychology and why the stories we tell ourselves matter.

Our client, psychologist Dr Candice O’Neil, has been featured in Glamour, exploring Stephen King’s idea that:

“We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.”

For psychologists and mental health professionals, a placement like this does three important things:

• Connects your work to culture
Candice is not speaking from an academic bubble. She is bringing grounded psychological insight into a conversation readers are already having about horror, true crime and anxiety.

• Translates theory into everyday language
The piece helps readers understand why they are drawn to dark stories and how that can be a way of processing real world fears. No jargon, just clear, accessible thinking.

• Builds authority you can actually use
One Glamour feature becomes:
– A trust signal on your website and enquiry flows
– A resource you can share with clients and followers
– A stepping stone to further media, podcast and speaking opportunities

This is how we approach PR for experts at Glossy PR. Not random quotes, but high-fit stories that build both public understanding and long-term authority.

If you are a psychologist, therapist or specialist and want 2026 to be the year your visibility matches your expertise, we would be happy to map out what that could look like.

A simple “Share of Answer” audit you can run this week

If you want to know how visible your brand really is in 2026, don’t start in an SEO tool.

Start where your buyers are.

Pick 5–10 questions that matter in your category:
	•	“best [category] for sensitive skin”
	•	“UK [niche] subscription with free returns”
	•	“[city] solicitor for wills and probate”
	•	“non-sweet home fragrance under £50”

Then:
	1	Google them and check the AI Overview.
	2	Ask them in ChatGPT and Perplexity.
	3	Type them into TikTok search.

Score what you see:
	•	Are you mentioned?
	•	Are your competitors mentioned?
	•	Which publications and sites get pulled into the answers?
	•	What language is used to describe the “winning” brands?

That’s your starting Share of Answer.

From there, you can:
	•	aim PR at the titles that keep showing up
	•	build content that matches the phrasing users and answers actually use
	•	tighten your entity signals (brand, products, benefits) across your site and your press.

We run this kind of audit before we touch a single blog brief. 
Otherwise you’re guessing.

taplio

The Battle

Olly Hudson

Shayne Williams

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreOlly Hudson's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreShayne Williams's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Olly Hudson

Shayne Williams

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Olly Hudson's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreShayne Williams's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreOlly Hudson's LinkedIn Performance