Good morning DTC readers! Happy Friday.
A small, meaningful tattoo idea for the operators in the room:
Let’s get into it.
đźš› Oil closed above $100, adding more risk to Q4 shipping costs
Brent and U.S. crude both climbed more than 6% on September 10 as attacks on shipping intensified around the Strait of Hormuz and Red Sea. Brent settled at $107.63 a barrel, while U.S. crude reached $102.48, the highest closing prices for both since May.
Carriers were already adding fuel charges before this latest jump. If your holiday shipping model still uses summer rates, it needs another pass.
🛍️ Amazon DSP can now buy ChatGPT ads, but nobody knows what a good result costs
Amazon is piloting ChatGPT ad buying through Amazon DSP for select U.S. advertisers, with its team setting up and optimizing the campaigns. Delta Vacations is first through the door.
There is still no reliable benchmark waiting on the other side. Public ChatGPT ad results range from CPCs below $3 to more than $22, and OpenAI offers no impression share, auction insights, or competitive reporting to explain the difference. Common Thread Collective reported a $4.41 CPC and estimated ROAS between 3.3x and 6.8x for one ecommerce advertiser, while another test found that only five of 146 identifiable visitors matched the intended customer.
If Amazon offers you access, decide what would earn a second month before approving the first.
🎯 Stop testing one creative variation per ad set
@nicktheriot_ has a fix for accounts that can't get a real read on creative. Stop launching one variation per ad set.
Test in threes, three videos with the same text hook and different visual hooks, three images with the same headline and different backgrounds, three variations per ad set instead of one.
Each ad set carries a single text hook, and that hook gets three shots to prove itself before you move on from it. If you're only running one version per concept right now, that's a guess with a budget attached.
đź“Š New report: What happens to your Q4 customers after the discount?
Beyond the Discount combines responses from 575+ DTC operators and 700+ shoppers to show how brands are approaching Q4 acquisition and what gets those customers to buy again.
One finding should make it into your retention plan: 36% of shoppers who make a discounted first purchase say they primarily come back when another discount appears.
Additional data from Smile.io shows the upside of giving them another reason. Across 10,766 active loyalty programs, customers who redeem rewards have 3.1x the value and purchase 154% more frequently than those who never redeem.
Q4 customers are coming. Download the report and build the plan for what happens after their first order.
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🎒 How Mia Tui can pack more of its product smarts into its creative
Mia Tui has spent 16 years solving a problem familiar to anyone who has emptied an entire bag looking for one tiny thing.
Founder Charlotte Jamme was a working mother of two who couldn’t find a bag that looked good, stayed organized, and spared her from conducting a full excavation every time something disappeared. While living in Vietnam, she designed the first Mia Tui prototype and partnered with a friend’s factory to produce it. That manufacturing relationship continues today.
The practical thinking runs through the entire product line. Bright interior linings prevent belongings from vanishing into the usual black hole, while newer designs add useful features like RFID protection. Mia Tui has since brought the same approach to travel accessories, footwear, and jewelry.
With a strong founder story and plenty of smart product details to work with, Mia Tui already has the ingredients for compelling creative. The Pilothouse Meta team reviewed its ad library and found a few ways to bring even more of those strengths forward.
🔎 Give the Mia Tui name more room
This creative gets the big thing right: it communicates the bag’s main selling point quickly. The copy is concise, the promise is clear, and shoppers can immediately see that a compact bag still holds an impressive amount.
The next opportunity is making sure Mia Tui gets more credit for it. Pilothouse recommends making the brand name more prominent, with the product name taking a supporting position in the hierarchy. Increasing the logo size would also help Mia Tui build recognition as more shoppers encounter its ads.
A little more breathing room would finish the job. Adding padding around the model and negative space on either side would give the product more room to pop without changing the concept that already works.
🪄 Show every stage of the transformation
This bag has a good party trick: it transforms. The creative captures each stage, giving Mia Tui plenty of product story to work with in a single image.
A few extra cues would make that transformation easier to follow at a scroll. Because the bag appears without a person or familiar reference point, its size takes an extra beat to understand. Pilothouse recommends adding a short text overlay to each stage so shoppers immediately know what they’re looking at and how the product changes.
Centering the graphic, reducing the size of the first two stages, and letting the full version take up more space at the bottom would create a clearer payoff. A headline and short feature labels could add more product education without overcrowding the creative.
Mia Tui could also test background colors that complement each bag, including monochromatic versions that let the product own the frame.
📹 Give Charlotte’s enthusiasm a stronger opening line
The camera likes Charlotte, and Charlotte clearly likes this bag. Her excitement comes through immediately, giving the video the kind of founder energy that’s hard to manufacture.
She also gives shoppers two strong reasons to keep watching: the Maya backpack has been a bestseller for 12 years, and it’s finally back in stock. That brings social proof and urgency into the same video.
Mia Tui could build on that opening without shooting a single new frame. The captions already make the video easy to follow, while a text hook at the top could tease the payoff before Charlotte gets into the product details.
Pilothouse recommends testing hooks such as “See why Maya has been a bestseller for 12 years.” For cold traffic, that extra context in the first three to five seconds can give shoppers a reason to stop and hear the rest.
🎬 Give each video one clear job
This video takes Mia Tui out into the real world, using multiple locations to show how the bag fits into different parts of the day. That gives the brand plenty of useful footage to build from.
The ad copy also includes a free bag strap with purchase. Bringing that offer into the video would make sure viewers catch it, especially when the creative runs without the accompanying copy.
Pilothouse sees several distinct concepts hiding inside this one asset. The current video already covers Mia Tui’s core benefits well, and Emma, the brand’s Operations Manager, could turn those details into a series of focused product videos. Give each feature its own moment, from the compartments to the interchangeable straps.
Charlotte could lead a separate video introducing herself and walking through the feature-benefit story behind the product. Her founder connection makes that concept a strong fit for warmer middle and bottom-of-funnel audiences.
For top-of-funnel creative, Pilothouse recommends putting the interchangeable straps and free-strap promotion front and center. A quick look at the compartments would establish the function, while the styling options and offer do the heavier lifting for new audiences.
Planning each storyboard around one audience and one job would help Mia Tui turn the same people, products, and locations into a much fuller set of funnel-ready creative.
🧳 Conclusion
Mia Tui’s creative has unusually good raw material: a founder who connects naturally on camera, products packed with demonstrable features, and a bestseller with 12 years of proof behind it.
The Pilothouse Meta team’s recommendations all move in the same direction. Give the Mia Tui name more space, make each product transformation easy to follow, open videos with the strongest reason to watch, and plan each asset around a clear stage of the funnel.
These are focused changes that can help shoppers understand the product faster while preserving the warmth and personality already coming through. For bags designed to carry more than expected, the creative has an opportunity to carry more of the story too.
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