DTC918: Sora 2, Black Friday Email Sends, and Fake AI Reviews

Good morning,

Here’s what you’ll find in today’s DTC:

🫵 Protect Your Sender Rep!
Avoid this mistake on Black Friday.

🎞️ OpenAI’s New AI Video App
What Sora 2 means for DTC.

❗ Don’t Get Sued
The dangers of using fake AI reviews.

You’re reading this newsletter along with new subscribers from: Dr. Martens, Certas Energy, and Ulrich Lifestyle. 👋

🤔 Your Agency Says They’re Ready. Are You Sure?

Black Friday is less than 50 days away.

This is your time to double down with your agency partner… but every hour spent with the wrong one costs you.

Misalignment = missed revenue. 💸

If your agency isn’t fully aligned with your goals, their “readiness” means nothing.

Pilothouse, DTC’s sister company, is helping brands win now with omnichannel strategies built for impact across Meta, Google/YouTube, Amazon, Email and Retention, CRO, and more.

This is what alignment looks like in action:

• 💎 A 7-figure jewelry brand turned a -20% YoY slide into +17% growth
• ☕ A CPG brand achieved +114% monthly gross profit
• 📸 A service brand drove +33% CVR while cutting CPA -22%

The brands that win Black Friday aren’t hoping their partners are ready. They’re working with one that already is.

Make a change now to be fully onboarded before the peak of Q4.

👉 Book a conversation with the Pilothouse team today - no obligation.

🎧 How To Win Black Friday (And Keep Your Sender Reputation Intact)

Every year, brands rush to “double-tap” their Black Friday sends, blasting a follow-up email to non-openers, thinking that’s the best path to improving performance.

In reality? They’re ruining their sender reputation at the most important time of year.

Jordan from Pilothouse shares how to do it right in the latest episode of TWBERP.

1️⃣ Stop Resending to Non-Openers

When you only resend to people who didn’t open, you’re signaling to inbox providers that you’re desperate for engagement.

Those disengaged addresses drag down your sender score and increase the chance that your next campaign lands in spam.

👉 Instead, resend to your most engaged subscribers: clickers and recent openers.

2️⃣ Treat Every Black Friday Email Like It’s the Only One They’ll Open

Pilothouse research shows that the majority of Black Friday buyers open one email before they purchase.

That means every message needs to clearly communicate your main offer, not a teaser or side deal.

👉 Keep your subject lines consistent, your copy clear, and your offer unmistakable.

3️⃣ Find Excitement in the Design, Not the Cadence

Your inbox strategy should be predictable, not clever.

👉 Repeat the offer, change up the visuals. Let beautiful design and strong merchandising carry your message, not risky segmentation or oversending.

4️⃣ Start Early and Segment Smart

Start early to target engaged audiences as early as November.

👉 Use post-purchase offers to turn Black Friday buyers into repeat customers before January.

👉 Listen to the full episode with Jordan here.

🎞️ The Launch of Sora 2: Marketers Are Becoming Directors

For years, the grind of DTC content marketing has been the same: shoot, edit, repeat.

If you didn’t have a studio or a reliable pipeline of creators, you were always scrambling for the next piece of content.

Now OpenAI’s new Sora 2 flips that script.

You’re no longer just a marketer. You’re the director.

With Sora 2, your camera is a text box. Instead of renting equipment, you’re writing prompts.

Instead of waiting weeks for edits, you’re iterating in minutes. The production bottleneck moves from logistics to imagination.

What makes this different from last year’s AI hype?

• Realism is here. Movements, facial expressions, and voices all look and sound natural.
• Sound is baked in. No stock libraries needed, even music is generated!
• Style is controllable. It can create UGC-style handheld or glossy ad creative, Sora 2 follows direction more closely than before.

What this means for DTC brands

• Creative speed. Test ten ad ideas before lunch and pick the winner before EOD.
• Lower production pressure. You don’t need a shoot for every campaign. You need a clear concept.
• New skillsets. The edge comes from sharp prompts and smart storytelling, not the fanciest gear.

At Pilothouse, we’re using Sora 2 as a creative accelerator. That means:

• Leaning into humor where it's obviously AI
• Filling in gaps when client assets are missing
• Generating quick examples to spark new ad ideas

Sora 2 isn't a replacement for shoots just yet, but a way to move faster and explore more directions.

The takeaway?

The arrival of Sora 2 doesn’t mean human creativity disappears.

If anything, it matters more. The marketers who thrive in the Sora era will be the ones who can think like directors.

The bottom line? Sora 2 doesn’t replace marketers. It recasts them. Your script is now your set. Your imagination is your production budget.

Kyle Hitchcox, Founding Partner at Pilothouse, shares a concerning trend:

Some AI UGC companies are creating hundreds of fake testimonials and video reviews for brands by using AI-generated influencers.

However, this is a terrible way to scale reviews.

The FTC requires clear disclosure, and legal teams are already quietly building cases and encouraging customers to take action.

Protect your brand rep before this becomes a legal liability.

📥 Got a B2B Biz?

Join dozens of B2B companies finding demand-gen success through our niche community of 150k brand leaders and founders this year. Talk to our team to learn more.

Have you heard our latest podcasts?

• 🧠 The Future of Unified Commerce with Shopify’s Head of Retail
• 🏌️ AKNF 548: Strategic Levers to Build Meta Momentum in Q4
• 📐 Ad-venturous 22: The Try-Angle Method for Smarter Brands
• 👚 TWBERP 53: Examining Urban Outfitters’ Email Machine
• 🚀 Highland’s $10M Playbook and CAC Payback
• 💡 AKNF 546: Pilothouse’s Strategy Team Transforms Ad Accounts

Don’t forget to rate the DTC Podcast on Apple (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)

DTC Newsletter is written by Rebecca Knight and Frances Du. Edited by Eric Dyck.

Please note that items in this newsletter marked with * contain sponsored content.