Welcome to The (Human) Advantage, the first edition of our newsletter from The Starters.

In a world racing to embrace AI tooling for everything, the brands winning aren’t the ones with just the best AI stack. They’re the ones with the best minds behind them.

This newsletter exists to showcase exactly that — the operators, strategists, and executives behind some of DTC’s most compelling brands. Every issue, we’re bringing you their thinking, their experience, their brilliance.

We’re joined in this issue by Liz Ahern, former CMO of Chamberlain Coffee, who shares her experiences in building enduring brands in today’s era.

Human brilliance is your ultimate advantage. We’re here to showcase it.

Quince has announced a $500 million Series E, bringing the company to a $10.1 Billion valuation. The “manufacturer-to-consumer” tag line from Quince originally known for their affordable cashmere sweaters has grown across a vast number of category expansions.

Meta has signed a 10 year lease on a flagship in New York. Extending its Meta Lab locations to New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Honolulu. Creative Director and VP of wearables states: “Our people-first approach to experiential retail is rooted in culture, creativity, and self-expression, and it’s driving meaningful sales and awareness of our AI wearables”

A new survey by LogicBroker shows that 96% of e-commerce leaders have invested in AI capabilities. With 47% planning to invest $1 million or more into agentic commerce over the next 12 months.

Live Shopping has been the subject on everyone’s mind in 2025, but to almost cement the rising sales medium, Skims has joined the foray with a 45 minute TikTok livestream, Jens Grede, co-founder and CEO of Skims, said in a statement. “Livestreaming allows us to meet our community where they already are — in real time”.

Walmart customers who use the brand’s AI shopping assistant, Sparky, build 35% bigger baskets, according to the company CEO John Furner

Liz Ahern has worked as Chief Marketing Officer at Chamberlain Coffee and Sr Brand Director at Red Bull. Her expertise in building breakthrough marketing strategies, as well as celebrity and creator led brands is second to none. Liz is one of The Starters and you can hire her through the platform.

We caught up with Liz to take us through her thoughts on marketing, retail expansion and AI in e-commerce:

From a brand perspective, as AI and automation increase, where is your focus in creative and campaigns to differentiate brand?

I think at the end of the day, the brands that win are the ones that are really able to drive that emotional connection and that really requires human touch and human understanding. So I think that's why you see a lot of these AI campaigns fall flat.

AI can be helpful as a starting point for copy. It's helpful as a starting point of mocking things up creatively. There's even cool visuals that you can do with AI but I don't think it can always understand true human desires, motivations, pain points, and create meaningful campaigns around those.

I think that's where human understanding, good marketers and strong creative really come into play.

As CMO of Chamberlain Coffee you’ve been at the front row for celebrity-built brands. In your view, what is the biggest misconception brands have about celebrity-endorsed DTC success?

I think that awareness is everything, and I think awareness without product relevance is where a lot of brands can miss the mark. Not only from a storytelling perspective—does that product have to be relatable and relevant for the celebrity who's backing it?—It has to feel like it's an authentic tie in of why they decided to comp this brand or why they're promoting it.

But the product is more important, whether it's solving a pain point functionally or emotionally there has to be connection and resonance there.

Where you see a lot of celebrity brands fall by the wayside is that they think that any celebrity partner is enough to create that awareness, but the strength of the product experience is what is going to drive that repeat, awareness will maybe get you some initial trial and buzz, but great businesses are built on having true community and having strong repeat of the product.

That's where the importance of the product comes into play, having something that's a very strong experience.

What would be your three biggest takeaways for brands looking to build out their influencer strategy in today’s social media climate? 

It used to be that you could do these one-off paid partnerships and do a “one and done” partnership and it would go off the charts and perform super well. If I’m honest, those days are kind of over.

The smartest thing for brands to do to start out with is have a really robust gifting and seeding program. Just get your brands in the hands of as many creators, potential collaborators, and partners as possible so they can try the product. Then, from there you see who actually really loves your product and is resonating with it. You can then use that as a jumping off point to build out either a paid partnership or something else.

Then I think the top tier of all of that is brands that are actually co-creating with some sort of influencer. So whether it's a specific flavor in collaboration with them, whether it's some sort of licensed product or a creator at the face of a massive campaign.

Deepening that relationship and having that sort of tie in, especially if there's that authentic story of where this specific creator has been a fan of the brand for a really long time. I've seen that be really successful at helping move the needle, especially if that creator is really able to galvanize their audience. 

There are some creators that post about brands and immediately that brand can sell out. So you have to figure out who that creator is for your category in particular.

To read the full interview from Liz Ahern, click below

Social Snowball helps to scale your affiliate revenue through creators and ambassadors. Working with brands such as Grüns, True Classic and G Fuel. Automating word-of-mouth programs and giving you simplified influencer & creator management.

Want to learn how to get started with seeding? Check out this guide to product seeding put together by Social Snowball themselves.

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It’s now reported that 30% of shoppers are purchasing through ChatGPT and Claude searches, moving away from traditional search. Whilst the behemoth that is the AI shopping industry is being spun up is now the time to get a headstart on AEO (Answer engine optimization)?

The simple headline here is Agents retrieve by crawling. So many of the traditional SEO techniques are still relevant, they just need to be reworked, to think in a different way. Remember digital-first? Well, now it’s time to think ‘machine-first’.

Each week we feature recent hires, showcasing top brands partnering with human brilliance to build their brand. This week’s hires include:

In the 1940s McDonald's wanted to serve food dramatically faster.
What unusual method did they use to redesign their kitchen?

Answer:
They drew the kitchen layout with chalk on a tennis court and had employees walk through the process.

Lesson:
Prototypes reveal better systems.