Macro Environment

📉 The Great DTC Reset: Chaos, Opportunity, and the New Playing Field

You can feel the tension breaking through the numbers.

Consumer wallets are closing. Tariffs are tightening. Supply chains are buckling under pressure.

But beneath the chaos, something else is happening:
For the first time in years, the DTC playing field is tilting back toward real operators.

It won’t be painless, but if you survive, you won’t just recover. You’ll dominate.

Here’s where we are…

💥 Consumer Confidence Is Breaking (Bad News)

Gallup just recorded the worst financial sentiment in 23 years:

Optimism about the stock market, the economy, and the job market has collapsed since January.

Even Andrew Foxwell is telling brands: when clients ask why results are down, the answer is macro.

Translation: flat is the new up.

🔥 Tariffs Are Permanent — But Some Relief Is Possible (Mixed News)

Trump’s team hinted tariffs might fall from their insane 100–145% levels — but they’re not returning to zero. (Source: DD Geopolitics)

The silver lining? The Section 321 loophole — the "free pass" Chinese sellers exploited for years — officially closes May 1.

As Aaron Rubin breaks down:

• About ⅓ of Amazon sellers were Chinese entities dodging tariffs.

• Section 321 elimination will crush this hidden advantage.

• Over time, higher margins and fairer competition will return for U.S. brands.

Short-term pain (stockouts, price volatility) is real. But long-term? The field is finally being leveled.

🚀 Strong Brands Should Play Offense (Good News)

Taylor Lagace lays out the clearest strategy for strong brands:
If you have cash flow, low debt, and minimal China exposure, lean in — hard.

Market share is on sale because weaker brands are pulling back.
Higher CACs today are a down payment on dominance tomorrow.

🧨 The 'Made in USA' Mirage (Sober News)

Patriotic marketing sounds great. Reality bites.

Ramon Van Meer ran a clean A/B test:

• $129 China-made product vs. $239 U.S.-made version.

• Zero buyers chose the U.S. version.

The premium consumers are willing to pay for domestically produced goods is probably not 100%+, so keep that in mind when evaluating this test.

In addition, you can likely ask for a premium when paired with a superior product or experience (as a result of your local production).

Think: better customer service, clarity on sourcing of materials/ingredients, stronger tie to a brand/founder story.

In short, you can’t just increase the price say “made in America” and expect consumers to respond. You need to stack brand halos to justify the premium.

📌 Takeaway: Play Smart, Play Aggressive, or Get Played

• Consumer demand is shrinking — but so is fraudulent competition.

• Tariffs are here to stay — but selective relief is possible.

• Market share is cheap right now — if you have the strength to buy it.

• Sentiment doesn’t pay the bills — only execution does.

👉 This is a survival phase. But it might also be a once-in-a-cycle land grab.

Special Webinar: How to battle back in the trade war

The tariff war is here, and brands are scrambling to survive.

Many brands will not survive. Those that do are already drafting comprehensive tariff survival playbooks.

Join Alex Burdge (Shyft Global), Noah Silverman (Plufl), and Ron Shah (Obvi) for a one-hour tactical briefing on how to:

• Audit your exposure (before your margins disappear)

• Adjust sourcing, pricing, and shipping strategies fast

• Position your brand for survival

🗓️ When: Monday, May 5, 12:00 PM MDT
🔗 Save your spot (limited to 500 seats): The New Cost War: Navigating Tariffs & Surviving the Margin Squeeze →

If you operate in DTC, CPG, or e-commerce and your P&L relies on imports, you cannot afford to miss this.

Tactics

🛠️ Scrappy Growth: What’s Actually Working for Brands Right Now

Brands aren’t winning by cutting spend. They’re winning by changing how they earn attention and trust.

Short, flashy creative? Out. Longer, scrappier, story-first content? In.

Here’s what’s actually working:

🎥 1. Longer, Narrative-Driven Ads Are Crushing TOFU

Longer-form storytelling is taking over top of funnel.

Alex Cooper reviewed 40+ ad accounts and found that 1–5 minute ads — built around deeper narratives — are now outperforming short clips.

Key tactics:

• Stacking top clips into mini-documentaries.

• Podcast-style ads to build trust.

• Controversial and comment-response hooks to trigger emotional reactions.

🔗 Alex’s full breakdown here →

🧱 2. Ugly Ads and Upper Funnel Campaigns Are Scaling Cheaper

Speaking of top of funnel, Phil Kiel found that lo-fi, native-feeling creative is driving incremental performance via awareness and engagement optimized campaigns, instead of the ubiquitous “conversion optimization”.

Winning moves:

• Awareness and Google referral campaigns to diversify reach.

• Remixing winners into new formats instead of starting from scratch.

• Benchmark with conversion lift tests and then repeat monthly to ensure you’re moving the needle

🔗 Full case study here →

📜 3. Advertorial-Style Landing Pages Are Quietly Dominating

The more “in-depth” creative trend identified by Alex Cooper above extends to landing pages too.

Ash Melwani shared that advertorial-style LPs are beating Obvi’s traditional product pages by 10%+.

Winning elements:

• Emotional headlines

• Pain-first storytelling

• Third-party discovery framing

• Deep educational content

Consumers seem to be looking for more/deeper information while in the consideration phase. Advertorials are a great way to deliver education while establishing trust.

🔗 See Ash’s breakdown here →

📌 Takeaway: Scrappy Isn’t Just Faster — It’s Deeper

Longer ads. Lo-fi assets. Story-first LPs.

👉 In 2025, the brands that win won’t shout louder.
👉 They’ll connect deeper — with less polish, more story, and faster action.

Trends

🧠 Trend Watch: Commerce Is Moving Inside the Conversation

For the past two decades, DTC brands fought for attention, battling across ads, search results, and landing pages.

That era isn’t over. But it’s about to be overshadowed by something bigger — and faster.

Commerce is moving inside the conversation itself.

🛒 Shopify x ChatGPT Integration Is Just the Start

The rumors are confirmed: Shopify checkout is being integrated directly into ChatGPT’s public browsing experience.

Here’s why this matters:

Until now, ecommerce operated on a 3-step assumption:

That world is about to get compressed — or in some cases, skipped entirely.

Inside ChatGPT, users will be able to:

• Ask for product recommendations (“Best running shoes for flat feet?”)

• Browse real, in-stock Shopify listings inside the chat interface

• Compare products, read reviews, and select a favorite

• Checkout instantly without ever visiting a separate website

No ad click.
No website load time.
No landing page optimizations needed mid-funnel.

The AI becomes the discovery platform and the checkout flow.

This is the beginning of a new architecture for online shopping:

• Discovery, trust-building, and purchase decision happen simultaneously.

• The platform, not the brand, owns the interface.

• Friction is reduced to almost zero, but brand control over messaging shrinks too.

Brands that rely on long purchase funnels or complicated onboarding flows may suffer under this paradigm. On the other hand, clean product feeds, high-trust assets, and seamless checkout experiences should thrive.

And Shopify isn’t alone. Other commerce platforms are already exploring similar LLM integrations.

This is the first domino. It won’t be the last.

🤖 LLMs Will Become the Next Great Ad Networks

As IsaacMed put it:

And according to Foxwell Digital, this moment feels a lot like Google Ads 2001 — before the auction wars started.

• Chat interfaces like ChatGPT already recommend real Shopify products.

• Paid placement inside these chat answers is coming soon.

• Discovery is shifting from search to suggestion, with brands needing to win recommendation slots, not just search rankings.

🥇 Winners vs. Losers

Winners:

• LLM-native commerce infrastructure (OpenAI x Shopify)

• API-first DTC brands

• Conversationally integrated ad networks

Losers:

• Cookie-based display networks

• Affiliate publishers

• Walled gardens with brittle UX

🔗 Check out the full article from Foxwell here.

📋 Five Things Advertisers Should Do Now

1. Start thinking about LLM SEO — structure product feeds, FAQs, and content for chat-based discovery.

2. Audit your product feed quality — clean titles, complete attributes, readable descriptions.

3. Experiment with LLM tools as a user — ask ChatGPT to recommend products and study what surfaces.

4. Prepare for branded LLM agents — your future sales rep may be an AI model trained on your brand.

5. Follow the money — watch how OpenAI, Shopify, Perplexity, Meta, and Google evolve.

📌 Takeaway: Own Intent, Not Just Attention

• Commerce is shifting from websites to conversations.

• Structured, API-driven brands will win.

• The frictionless future belongs to operators who can guide the buy without ever needing a landing page.