Liquid Death CEO Mike Cessario has said that this stunt-led content has been far more effective for building brand awareness than traditional advertising: “People will literally pay to get rid of ads, and they definitely don’t share ads with their friends on social media for free.”
Facilitate conversations
Sometimes, your customers might not be who you thought. When we started the tattoo care brand Stories & Ink, for instance, we hadn’t foreseen what our audience would become. More traditional tattoo-centric brands all too often align themselves with a rather old-fashioned, very heterosexual, stereotypically masculine, heavy-metal approach; but our community turned out to be primarily non-male. It makes sense: The majority of new tattoo artists, and those currently training, are female. But no one was catering for them before.
Conversations go two ways, and the best D2C brands answer a very real need for people and keep that conversation going, listening as much as telling (or selling) people what they need.
Alongside its smart online tactics, Gymshark created its loyal following IRL by meeting customers through fitness expos, pop-up stores and two world tours (all documented online, creating evergreen content from temporary activations). Face-to-face interactions meant Gymshark could gain real customer insights, which in turn helps them build products and evolve the brand around what people actually want.
The future is consumer-first
The likes of Liquid Death, Stories & Ink and Gymshark—all started as D2C—have never solely relied on social. These very different brands have used well-targeted, properly budgeted influencer or celebrity partnerships, fostered engaged communities and weaved brilliant stories. They listen to their audiences online and IRL, working hard to understand them inside out as part of an ongoing dialogue. They don’t advertise to people, per se—they bring them useful content they actually want.
Brands can only evolve with robust marketing models that merge data-led and real-life community insights. It’s a lot more nuanced and complex than throwing money at paid advertising, but it’s the only way to build true brand loyalty and, in turn, a brand with longevity.
Today, we’re all wise to ads—hence the ad blockers and cookie laws—and we’re sick of waiting five seconds to skip through them. But we’ll never be fed up with the useful content we actually want. Whether brands sell in physical retail spaces, through traditional ecommerce or through social-led D2C, today, they have to be robustly singular, instantly recognizable, community-centric and flexible.