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Issue 209
What if you could sit in the same room with some of the smartest and most dedicated marketers in the DTC space? No more 'what ifs', DTC's putting it into action.
C-Suite Mastermind is a 3-day, one-of-a-kind learning and relationship-building experience for founders, brand CEOs, and executives that can help you grow your business and personal potential.
Join us in Victoria on Sept 21–23, 2022, and get ready to broaden your views and beliefs about what’s possible for your brand – all while you radically expand your toolkit and playbook to accomplish your goals.
🚨 Only fifty seats available, so act fast! 🚨
If you’re new to DTC, welcome! You’re in good company with fellow newcomers from Released From Love, Act + Acre, Skinlycious, The Hydro Jug, and Earth Rated. 🐶
In this newsletter, you’ll find: 👇
📦 Is the future of DTC free? Dive deep with FreeWater's Josh Cliffords
📦 Close those tabs and streamline your creator campaigns with #paid
📦 How to QA your number ranges (the right way)
📦 Rethinking your content strategy with UGC campaigns from minisocial
Read till the end to access exclusive DTC swag. 😎
👉 If a pal forwarded this to you, subscribe , so you never miss out.
🎧 On this episode of the DTC pod, we’re asking the question: will advertising save the world? 🌎🤔
Josh Cliffords thinks so. Josh is the founder of FreeWater, an innovative advertising platform that promotes philanthropy and sustainability by using premium spring water as a new type of advertising medium.
Selling ad space on the water bottles themselves renders the water to be completely free while donating ten cents from each beverage to be donated to charity for building water wells for people in need.
In today’s pod, you’ll learn about how changing the perception of advertising has the potential to change consumer behavior, and how FreeWater is wielding advertising to end the global water crisis permanently.
The Takeaways 👇
🌤️ A new perception
Most consumers would agree that ads are more than likely to be thought of as an interruptive experience than anything else. Watching your favorite show that just got to the good part? Cue the ad. On the edge of your seat in the last five minutes of a big game? Another ad. This experience leads consumers to associate those ads and brands with negative feelings they tend to carry with them and let these feelings inform their actions upon future impressions.
But what if there was an ad experience that makes consumers associate those ads with feelings of happiness, fulfillment, or even inspiration? That’s what Josh and his team at FreeWater strive for with their unique ad platform and what they believe is the future of advertising as a whole.
“What’s most unique about [FreeWater] is we’re saving them money and we’re making them happy. And from that feeling of saving money, being happy, helping the environment, and donating to charity… That’s when you want them to [see the ad and] absorb that message.”
This lets the consumer connect the ad and the brand with those positive feelings that they will carry, and potentially influence their actions upon future impressions.
Talk about a win, win… Win. 😏
💧Tackling the global water crisis
Josh and his team’s research has shown that they only need 10% of Americans to choose FreeWater to solve the global water crisis permanently. 🤯 That nets out to approximately 5 to 7 billion dollars in selling ad placements on water bottles.
Even though ending the global water crisis is no easy feat, FreeWater is paving the way for companies and consumers alike to participate in this philanthropic journey with as little effort and as much gain as possible.
“The goal behind FreeWater was to make saving a life as easy as drinking water. [There’s] no need to go to a website, hit a ‘Donate Now’ button, or swipe your credit card… Just drink water like you do every day and you’re saving lives.”
💰 What Josh would do with an extra $50K:
“We would get roughly 40,000 half-liter boxes of water… And we would distribute them, most likely in New York City, as that’s the next market we want to break into. And then on top of that, all of those ten cents per beverage donations to charity would finance its own small water project in rural Kenya.”
So essentially… Giving out free water 🤝 Saving lives.
👉 Listen to the full episode with Josh Cliffords here !
Ready to tackle creator marketing on TikTok? Good plan. 👍
What’s not such a good plan is using a bunch of separate apps, DMs, and email chains just to get the ball rolling.
Confusing much? #paid agrees. That’s why #paid lets you:
You’ll even get access to key first-party data and creator stats, like average views, cost per engagement, and more.
With #paid, you can say toodle-oo to the days of hopping from platform to platform to connect scattered data on your own. Instead, see your progress and feedback all in one place.
Yep, closing those 14 tabs is gonna feel so good.
👉 Streamline your creator campaigns today.
A great headline promises that you’ll solve a problem. ✅
All headlines should include your company’s value props.
Try using the “4 Us” to create a compelling headline:
Determine the most important “U” for your brand and make that the headline.
Fit the rest of the “Us” in your subheader or body copy.
🚀 The five types of headlines:
Landing pages are CRUCIAL, so make sure you're doing everything in your power to optimize them!
It's time to rethink your content strategy with UGC campaigns from minisocial.
They combine micro-influencer amplification with UGC creation from creators across 🇺🇸 🇨🇦 🇬🇧
What can UGC do for your brand?
👉 Boost ad performance and increase ROI with stronger ad creative. Get a library of fully-licensed photo or video assets to support ad testing and iteration.
👉 Slash content creation costs, a minisocial campaign starts at just 1.7k (thanks to your DTC discount 😉) and produces over 25 unique, fully-licensed assets.
👉 Build your community, spread the word organically. Leverage their creator's engaged followings to build a powerful audience of new, super fans.
Your next winning UGC is waiting for you…
👉 Learn more by scheduling a time to chat with their founder here.
If you’ve been holding your breath for a quick QA tip, you can breathe now. 😅
NUMBER RANGES 💘
Common? Extremely.
Exciting…? Don’t answer that. 💔
All right, if you want examples, we’ll give them to you straight:
Ranges aren’t necessarily common in ad creatives, but I see a lot of funky ranges in ad copy, landing pages, newsletters, or just communications out in the wild. It’s not like everyone would notice a bad range – but if you want to look like a real pro, getting the details right is paramount!
Thanks to the Pilothouse QA team for the tip! 🚀
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🍔 Uber Eats, DoorDash offer new deals to court customers as growth cools.
📺 Disney Plus is finally fixing one of its key drawbacks by adding R-rated movies — here's what the move means for subscribers.
📉 Snap shares plunge 25% on disappointing second-quarter results and plans to slow hiring.
❌ Amazon targets 10,000 fake review Facebook groups.
*Sponsored
💧 Is the future of DTC free? Dive deep with FreeWater's Josh Cliffords.
🥣 How General Mills is Going Direct To Consumer with Carter Jensen, Global Lead for DTC.
🍫 Tabs Sex Chocolate: Engineering Virality from Day One.
💸 Ridge Wallet CEO Sean Frank's Hot Takes After $100 Million+ in Sales.
☕️ Death Wish Coffee's Will Critcher Spills the Beans.
Don’t forget to rate the DTC Podcast on Apple (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
DTC Newsletter is written by Rebecca Knight, Kate Gullett, and Jordan Gillis. Edited by Eric Dyck.
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