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Good morning, it's Eric. I'm back from hosting DTC Dines in Austin and I'm still sweaty. Full debrief on the EPIC event later this week, but holler at me now and tell me where we should show up next.
Speaking of parties worth throwing, your brand has a birthday too. If you had to check the date, you're sitting on a free sales holiday. Today we're tearing down two Beck's Broth ads that turned theirs into a sitewide sale, and exactly what to steal from each.
First, a little housekeeping on the news you need to know todayâŚ
đ¤ Your AI product photos just became a âŹ15M liability in the EU
New transparency rules under the EU AI Act are enforceable starting this week, no grace period so donât drag your feet on this.
Any AI-generated or AI-edited product shots, video, or voiceovers need a visible label now, and any chatbot or AI assistant on your site has to tell EU customers up front that it's not human.
The cutoff runs on publish date, not creation date, which is easy to miss. Content you generated weeks ago and just scheduled counts as new if it goes live on or after August 2. Anything published before that date is grandfathered in, anything after isn't, even if you built it back in June.
Fines run up to âŹ15 million or 3% of global revenue, whichever is bigger, enforced by the EU's AI Office and national regulators together. There's also now a formal complaint tool, meaning a customer, a competitor, or even someone on your own team can flag a violation directly. If you sell into the EU and use AI anywhere in customer-facing creative or support, audit your publish queue this week, specifically anything scheduled to go live from here on out.
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đą Reels ate half your Instagram ad inventory
Sensor Tower's Q2 data shows Reels driving 51% of user time on Instagram, with ad inventory inside video clearing half of all Instagram placements after a 10-point jump year over year.
Facebook and Instagram downloads fell 5% in the same quarter, so this growth came from existing users watching more, not new ones showing up.
Ads per session on Instagram rose 8% year over year, which Sensor Tower partly credits to Meta's newer ranking model.
If your creative library is still square and static, you're competing for a shrinking share of the placements Meta actually wants to sell. Static assets built for Feed need a 9:16 video cut.
đŻ You might be measuring retention and calling it growth
Someone clicks your Meta ad, subscribes, renews a month later, renews again the month after that. Meta's default All Conversions count treats that as three conversions. It's one customer. @rokhladnik has seen accounts where a "strong" CPA turned out to include a real chunk of repeat buyers, not new ones.
First Conversion counts only the first time each customer converts, which is the actual new customer number.
The same blind spot hits retargeting campaigns. Warm audiences convert easier, so CPA drops and ROAS climbs inside Ads Manager. None of that means you're acquiring anyone new.
Pull up your results table in Ads Manager this week, switch the attribution setting from All Conversions to First Conversion, and check the gap before you brief next month's budget off the wrong number.
đ 25 states band together and sue Trump over new tariffs
Twenty-five states filed a lawsuit, arguing the tariffs Trump slapped on 60 countries last month are illegal, again.
The administration used Section 301 forced labor claims to reimpose the same 10-12.5% rates on nearly every country you import from, four months after the Supreme Court killed the last version.
New York Attorney General Letitia James and a coalition led by California, Arizona, and Oregon want a judge to block collection and force refunds.
The last version of this fight ended in refunds. Keep your import records clean in case this one does too.
đĄ Turn your brand birthday into a selling opportunity
Your brand has a birthday, and you know what that is? Another opportunity to get a sale going.
Thatâs exactly what Beck's Broth did last month. Hereâs two we spotted:
Founder Focused Overlay with Product Renders
This is a clean layout that works especially well for consumables.
The logo sits at the top, the text hierarchy is easy to scan, and the color contrast badge does the job of signaling urgency without cluttering the design.
Small product renders surrounding the founder show the product in multiple forms, and the candles nail the celebratory angle without leaning on generic birthday clip art.
How to make this work:
Product Focused Overlay with Product Renders
Another simple, clear execution that leans on strong product photography.
The sparkly cowboy boots tie directly into the cheeky headline, which is the kind of detail that makes an ad feel intentional instead of templated.
Including the packaging here helps with shelf recall, and pairing it with a ready-to-drink shot gives the viewer both the product they'd recognize and the product they'd actually want.
How to make this work:
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đ§ 10,000 Orders in 6 Months Selling Protein Couscous: Bar Bruhis on Launching Boostcous
Bar Bruhis spent ten years building SaaS for Shopify brands. He helped start one of the first email capture tools in 2015, then co-founded KnoCommerce, the post-purchase survey tool 6,500 brands use.
Last year he joined the protein craze and started Boostcous, the first protein couscous. Six months later, he's about to cross 10,000 orders, bootstrapped, with a team of two.
He shares why he focused on creating a healthy gluten-free version of couscous, how he got a customer to update their one-star review to a five-star review, and the one question all brands need to add to their post-purchase survey.
âśď¸ Watch here | đ§ Listen on Spotify
âđ¸ You're missing sales if you're not auditing your store. Uncover high-impact growth opportunities across your Shopify store and turn them into measurable revenue growth. Start your free trial with Gentoo. *
đ P&G is buying supplement brand Thorne for $3.8 billion, adding it to a health portfolio that already includes Metamucil, Align, and New Chapter. The wellness M&A wave keeps rolling. Read more here.
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