We’re returning to Gran Canaria!
4 days designed to help you step back from the everyday, refocus your strategy, and reconnect with what really drives your brand.
What to expect…
☕ Slow mornings with coffee, mountain views and optional wellness sessions
💬 Open roundtables, small-group workshops and honest conversations about what’s working (and what’s not)
🤝 Collaborative afternoons for sharing ideas and building on each other’s plans
🍷 Long dinners, relaxed chats and the kind of connections that turn into real friendships
☀️ 27-30 Jan 2026 | Gran Canaria | Founders and senior decision makers ☀️
Spaces are limited so we can keep it small, open and focused.
Register your interest here.
Now, everyone’s got that one secret growth move that just works maybe it’s a campaign that always converts or a retention trick that quietly drives repeat orders we want to hear yours 👀
We’re putting together the next issue of DTC Live Magazine and collecting insider tactics from across the DTC world the ideas that are genuinely driving growth right now
Got one? Fill in this quick 2 min form, with the chance to be featured!
If there’s one audience that keeps brands on their toes, it’s teens. They change trends faster than you can plan a campaign, they can smell inauthenticity from a mile off, and they’ve got a sixth sense for brands that try too hard.
But that hasn’t scared off Indu.
At DTC Live London, Sophie Bryant, Head of Marketing at Indu Skincare, joined us to talk about what it really takes to build a brand for the next generation. And rather than chasing trends or copying what works for others, Indu’s entire approach starts with one simple thing.. listening.
“From the very beginning we built a committee of teens and we listen to everything they say. That influences the decisions we make on the brand.”
Their audience shapes how the brand talks, what it makes, and how it shows up. Sophie says it’s not always easy (in her words, she’s “going grey” because of it) but it’s what keeps the brand grounded in what teens actually want, not what adults think they want.
What’s really clever about Indu is how it mixes real life with digital.
When Taylor Swift played to 90,000 fans, the team spotted an opportunity.
“We knew most of the audience would be teens, so we did out of home there. Then we found out Swifty fans trade bracelets, so we made our own Indu bracelets and joined in.”
They showed up in a way that made sense to their audience.
Check out the bracelets here.
That same thinking runs through everything they do. Indu hosts shoots with Brit School students, invites athletes to join, and creates moments that go far beyond content.
“We do a lot of in real life activations. It’s not just a tick in the box, it’s actually about creating connections.”
At one of their events, teens from across their community came together for a photoshoot. By the end of the day, they’d made friends, started group chats, and kept in touch.
Then there’s the delicate balance between speaking to teens and their parents.
“We try and keep it quite separate,” Sophie explained. “For parents, it’s informative and reassuring, we’re on Facebook, we work with Mumsnet. For teens, it’s fun, it’s creative, it’s TikTok.”
Parents get trust and transparency, teens get freedom and self-expression. The brand manages to talk to both without losing its tone in the middle.
And behind it all is a team who really understand the world they’re building for.
“We have a really young team which definitely helps. One of them has just turned 20, she understands the language, the trends, the content teens love.”
Their social media manager lives on TikTok,she knows what’s trending before it even makes it to a brand deck. That’s what keeps Indu’s content feeling natural, not forced.
“Our engagement rate has been really consistent since launch,” Sophie said, “which is really encouraging.”
The biggest takeaway from the conversation was that Indu doesn’t treat community like a marketing channel. They treat it like a relationship.
As Sophie put it,
“It’s not about pushing product. It’s about giving them something to do and showing the love from the brand.”
And that really sums it up.
The strongest communities are the ones that don’t need to be sold to they just need to be heard.
Everywhere you look, brands are shouting about being “AI-powered.” From product descriptions to investor decks, it’s the new badge of innovation. But here’s the truth: no customer wakes up thinking, “I need something with AI in it.” They wake up thinking, “I need something that saves me time, makes my life easier, or gets me results.”
And that’s the problem when “AI” becomes your pitch, you’ve already lost attention. Because people don’t buy AI. They buy outcomes.
Your value proposition should clearly answer one question: “What’s in it for me?”
That’s what users care about the tangible benefit your product delivers. “AI” on its own doesn’t do that. It’s the “how,” not the “why.”
When brands confuse the two, they lose focus. The product roadmap becomes about features, not outcomes. The marketing shifts from storytelling to jargon. And the result? Another “AI-powered” widget nobody remembers.
Let’s be honest, slapping “AI” on your product name doesn’t make it innovative. Consumers are smarter than that. Studies show people actually trust products lesswhen they’re marketed as “AI-powered.” It sounds abstract. It sounds like hype.
To customers, “AI” isn’t value, it’s uncertainty.
They wonder: “Is this actually helpful? Or just a fancy buzzword?”
It’s like a skincare brand saying, “Our products are made with smart machines.” That’s cool but does my skin look better?
The best DTC brands use AI quietly to make things faster, smarter, and more personal without making it the story.
That’s the lesson. AI should enhance your product’s value proposition, not replace it.
Customers don’t care about your technology stack, they care about how your brand improves their life.
Lead with clarity, not complexity.
AI can be your sous chef, prepping, assisting, and elevating the experience but your brand’s promise should always be the head chef.
Meta confirmed what a lot of media buyers already suspected 👀
If your ads look too similar, the algorithm now treats them as the same ad, even if the copy, hook or CTA is different
❌ Same creator + same setting = same ad
❌ Tiny tweaks don’t count anymore
Why? Because Meta’s new AI doesn’t want more ads, it wants better signals ⚡
That means variety, different people, setups, tones and messages built for different audiences
💡 One brand went from £54K → £622K/week in Meta spend in a year by switching to persona-led creative that fed the algorithm genuinely new signals
Meta’s also rolling out:
Meta’s AI is getting smarter every day, and by next year, it’ll be able to create and target ads for you. So if you’re still recycling the same UGC in the same kitchen… the algorithm already moved on.
