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Good morning!
In today’s newsletter,
Start 2026 with a stronger retention strategy
How DTC brands play Super Bowl without the $7M budget
Our all-new curated list of DTC tools
How food brands use insights to differentiate
Do funny ads perform better than serious ones?
The AI Agent Shopify Brands Trust for Q4
This issue takes 2 minutes to read.
Let’s dive into it👇
Retention
Start 2026 with a stronger retention strategy
To help you start 2026 with a stronger retention strategy, we’ve teamed up with Flowium to give our readers a free 30-minute lifecycle consultation.
You’ll get an expert review of your email and SMS flows, insights into your customer journey, and clear recommendations to drive higher conversion and lifetime value.
Holiday Playbook - Super Bowl
How DTC brands play Super Bowl without the $7M budget
A 30-second Super Bowl ad costs $7 million.
For mid-sized DTC brands, that's your entire year's marketing budget (or revenue).
But that doesn't mean you can't participate in one of the biggest cultural moments of the year.
Dog food brand Ollie figured out how.
They ran the "Supper Bowl Extravaganza."
Here's what they did:
Partnered with dog adoption shelters
Ran social media giveaways tied to adoptions
Created content around "game day" (can't legally say "Super Bowl" - NFL owns the trademark)
Generated awareness through a cause people actually care about
The scrappy Super Bowl playbook:
Find your angle. Match your product to game day naturally. Ollie = dogs = watch parties with dogs = dog adoptions. UrbanStems (flower delivery) ran game day bouquet promos.
Use the legal workaround. You can't say "Super Bowl" in your marketing. Use "big game," "game day," or "championship Sunday."
Go social-first. You don't need TV airtime. Most people are scrolling their phones during commercials anyway. Create thumb-stopping content that ties to the moment.
Add a give-back component. Ollie partnered with shelters. You could donate a percentage of sales, sponsor a local watch party, or support a cause that aligns with your brand.
Super Bowl Sunday is on February 8th. That's about a month away.
If you want to participate, start planning your "big game" activation now.
Source: Modern Retail
DTC Tool Stack
We’re introducing our very own curated ecom tool stack, one every DTC team should have.
👉 Includes tools for almost anything you’re struggling with.
Brands That Stick
How food brands use insights to differentiate
Mewe Nut Butter didn't just make "better peanut butter."
They found a positioning no other peanut butter brand owned: "Introduces peanuts to your lil' peanut."
Here's why that's brilliant:
Parents used to be told to avoid giving kids peanut butter before age 1 (allergy fears). Now research says early introduction prevents allergies - the landmark LEAP study showed it reduced peanut allergy risk by 81%.
Mewe positioned itself as THE brand solving this exact tension for nervous parents.
That's called differentiated positioning.
Three ways brands found their unique positioning:
Cultural insight: Scraps Pizza uses imperfect produce as toppings, aligning the brand with the food-waste movement to stand out in a crowded pizza market.
Product insight: Mewe Nut Butter directly addressed parents’ fears around peanut allergies, owning a conversation most peanut butter brands avoided.
Usage insight: Yolele positioned fonio as a cous cous alternative for keto and grain-free diets by tapping into an existing, familiar use case and adapting it to restrictive eating habits.
The lesson: Your differentiation can be about owning a specific space in your customer's mind that competitors haven't claimed.
Ask yourself: What insight about my product, my customer's culture, or how they use my category can I own that no one else is talking about?
Ad Vault
Do funny ads perform better than serious ones?
For years, performance marketers swore by serious, benefit-driven ads.
But Motion's analysis of $100M+ in ad spend found something surprising: 25% of ads spending over $1M used humor. Yet only 33% of all ads even attempted it.
The data
Kantar found that while just 1 in 3 ads use humor, 50% of top-performing ads are funny.
HexClad's Director of Paid Media Creative, Joanna Wallace, put it simply: "Being funny works. When I'm scrolling and see a company puts out a funny ad, I think… they get it… not every ad needs to make a hard sell."
Motion’s Report
Why humor wins
They realize humor converts without feeling like an ad.
When you make someone laugh, they remember you. When they remember you, they buy.
The takeaway
If 25% of million-dollar ad spends are funny, but only 33% of brands even try humor, there's a gap you can take advantage of.
Test one funny ad this week. Self-deprecating works. Absurdist works. Relatable works.
Just make sure it connects to your product, and don't be funny for funny's sake.
P.S.: To check out the funny ads from their report, you’ll need to log in to Motion.
The AI Agent Shopify Brands Trust for Q4
Generic chatbots don’t work in ecommerce. They frustrate shoppers, waste traffic, and fail to drive real revenue.
Zipchat.ai is the AI Sales Agent built for Shopify brands like Police, TropicFeel, and Jackery — designed to sell, Zipchat can also.
Answers product questions instantly and recommends upsells
Converts hesitant shoppers into buyers before they bounce
Recovers abandoned carts automatically across web and WhatsApp
Automates support 24/7 at scale, cutting tickets and saving money
From 10,000 visitors/month to millions, Zipchat scales with your store — boosting sales and margins while reducing costs. That’s why fast-growing DTC brands and established enterprises alike trust it to handle their busiest season and fully embrace Agentic Commerce.
Setup takes less than 20 minutes with our success manager. And you’re fully covered with 37 days risk-free (7-day free trial + 30-day money-back guarantee).
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Have questions or feedback? You can write to [email protected]