Is your brand buying shortcuts?

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In this newsletter, you’ll find:

🤳 Is your brand buying shortcuts?

🎯 Meta Is Tightening the Full Creator + AI Growth Loop

🏆 Ad of the Day

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Together with Grapevine

📲 Whitelisting That Actually Scales (Creators + Publishers)

Most brands know whitelisting works to lower CPAs and find new audiences. Few can make it repeatable at scale.

Grapevine gives you both creator and publisher networks in one managed service:

Creator Whitelisting - They source, vet, and negotiate with verified creators (doctors, coaches, finance experts, beauty insiders), managing and handling access and production. Authentic social proof without operational chaos.

Publisher Whitelisting - Their network of 14+ niche publishers (including My Subscription Addiction) provides advertorial landing pages and established handles. You get third-party trust plus storytelling space that bridges discovery to conversion.

Whitelisted content outperforms branded ads by 20-30%. Creator + publisher handles deliver signal diversity and testing volume that's hard to replicate independently.

Mapping Q1 creative strategy? Now's the time to test.

👉 Book a strategy call by February 27th for $500 off your first campaign.

🎯 Is your brand buying shortcuts?

Paid media is no longer your distribution strategy, it’s the amplifier. The real work starts earlier.

The Problem: Every Brand’s running after the same shortcuts, chasing growth with:

• More UGC
• More influencers
• More top-of-funnel spend
• More hook variations

But if your entire distribution strategy lives inside Meta or TikTok, you’ve already capped your potential.

Platforms are getting noisier. What’s missing for most brands is a foundational distribution layer that creates traction before money is spent.

From Ad Accounts to Brand Engines

Here’s what underused, high-leverage distribution looks like in 2026:

1. Founder-Led Media Channels

Not just personal brands, but founder voices embedded into the business. A weekly note, podcast, or short video series that explores the journey, product development, worldview, or philosophy behind the brand. This builds depth, not just reach.

2. Long-Form Story Assets

Mini-docs, visual essays, behind-the-scenes product origin stories. This isn’t about cinematic production, t’s about creating assets that buyers watch and share, not just scroll past.

3. The “Owned Experience” Layer

Most DTCs rely on passively earned media (press, reposts). But the upside lies in creating moments worth talking about: IRL activations, ambassador events, community challenges, or even founder pop-ins on customer calls.

4. Channel-First Content That’s Platform-Agnostic

Instead of filming for one channel and reposting everywhere, build stories that travel in different formats: a product launch becomes a Twitter thread, an email story, a BTS video, and a TikTok myth-buster, each tailored to the medium, not duplicated across it.

Too many brands try to buy their way into relevance before they’ve earned their way into conversation. Ads should amplify what’s already resonating, not compensate for what isn’t.

The new brand distribution stack is built upstream: 

Owned voices, unique stories, and intentional moments.Then you run ads. And that’s when growth starts to compound.

One brand doing this exceptionally well? Apothékary. Their founder-led newsletter (The Wellth Report), immersive community experiences (including global trips), and full-length documentaries have built a level of earned awareness that no ad account could buy.

Their success in retail, Ulta, Whole Foods, Sprouts, and now 700+ new doors, isn’t just from clever targeting. It’s because they built brand gravity first.

🎯 Meta Is Tightening the Full Creator + AI Growth Loop

Meta is upgrading both sides of its platform engine at once, from creator discovery to AI-powered feed performance. And now, Creator Marketplace is also expanding beyond the initial 19 countries to become available to all businesses globally.

The Breakdown:

1) Creator discovery is getting smarter - Meta will now recommend creators who already tagged your brand or showed interest in working with you, making partnerships feel more natural instead of cold outreach.

2) Marketplace matchmaking is becoming performance-driven - Brands can now search “Similar Creators” based on past top partners, while new badges highlight creators predicted to deliver strong ad results and campaign synergy.

3) AI ranking is pushing more video and originality - Meta says Q4 feed improvements drove a 7% lift in Facebook organic views, more same-day Reels exposure, and Instagram recommendations shifting heavily toward original content.

4) Monetization is moving deeper into AI ads + messaging - Meta claims its video gen tools hit a $10B run-rate, attribution upgrades lifted incremental conversions by 24%, and click-to-message plus Business AI usage is scaling globally.

Meta is building an end-to-end system where creators drive stronger ads, AI boosts relevance, and messaging turns engagement into action. The platform is aligning discovery, content, and conversion into one machine. 

Together with The Shift

Turn AI from “Interesting” to “Impactful”

If you’ve ever thought, “That’s cool, but how would I actually use it?”  

The Shift is for you. Here’s what you’ll get:

• Easy-to-follow breakdowns of even the most complex AI concepts.
• Real strategies you can apply in minutes, no tech degree required.
• Bonus access to 3,000+ AI tools, free courses, and prompt libraries.

Every edition is built for action, so you can improve campaigns, speed up workflows, or launch ideas faster than ever before.

You don’t just “learn AI” here. You make it work for you.

Subscribe now!

🏆 Ad of the Day

What Works:

The Product Looks Like Dessert - Cinnamon rolls in the frame is genius. It anchors the experience in craving first, nutrition second, which is how most people actually buy.

Proof Is Stacked Like a Checkout Page - Protein, calories, price per meal, customer count, reviews. It’s all the decision math done for you in one glance.

It’s a Conversion-Ready Creative - There’s no education here. It assumes you’re already shopping and just need reassurance that it tastes good and other people love it.

When your product is functional, sell pleasure first. Then pile on simple proof so the indulgence feels justified, not guilty.

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