Hey there, coming at you with another weekly update. Just a quick reminder—I switched from sending these on Sundays to Tuesdays to give my schedule more flexibility. Hopefully, it’s a better day for you as well. But this week, I'm coming to you with a special Wednesday send.
It’s been a crazy week with AI updates, and we’re doing a lot at JRB, so I wanted to talk about a few things we’re implementing or testing, along with some general thoughts.
Before we get into it, I want to thank today’s sponsor, Loop. Retail continues to transform in unprecedented ways—$103 billion was lost due to fraudulent orders in 2024, and that number is growing every year.
Additionally, 30% of shoppers avoid cross-border purchases due to shipping time concerns, and return-to-stock rates fell 24% in 2024. However, not all retailers are struggling. Those that use Loop are thriving, with double-digit growth across key metrics: order volume is up 12%, AOV is up 14%, and GMV is up 16%.
So, what separates the winners from the rest? Discover what drives results in a comprehensive new report featuring collaborative insights from industry leaders at Loop, Two Boxes, and Happy Returns. Topics include evolving customer expectations, logistics cost management, and cutting-edge fraud prevention techniques with demonstrable results. Download the report.
AI is Heating Up
I’m not the first person to say it, and I won’t be the last. One of my predictions for this year is that AI will make a meaningful difference in DTC brands’ workflows—and it’s already happening in a big way.
Obviously, everyone's probably using ChatGPT as part of their daily workflow, but there are also a lot of vertical solutions emerging that should make a huge impact. Here are some of them, along with my thoughts:
- By now we’ve all seen the ChatGPT image generation. I’ve seen a bunch of very different takes. Some people think it's the greatest thing in the world, while others are bearish and are criticizing the quality of the images generated. My take is somewhat in the middle. I don’t think it’s there just yet to pump statics into your ad account; but it’s exciting because it’s so close.
And with the rate of progress in AI, it’s hard not to get super excited about it.
Especially for a non-creative marketer like me, I can prompt it and get a concept that is 80% of the way there and hand that off to a designer to finalize. It’s only gonna get more photorealistic, and I think there will be vertical solutions like ICON that can build on the model but ingest performance data, brand and customer research, and input brand fonts.
Right now this is mostly possible, but you have to take customer reviews from your site, upload them into ChatGPT, and hack things together. It will be all in one place soon enough.
- Research is where AI is already most impactful. Design might only be 20% of the way there, but research is probably already 200% better than humans can do. First of all, it’s way faster.
Second, it can already do a much better job than we can. I really think all teams should be using AI for the vast majority of their research. Deep research is amazing, Gigabrain is really cool, and there are a bunch of tools that can now do sentiment analysis on customer reviews, ad comments, social, NPS surveys, etc.
- Customer service is going to be completely automated soon. Right now it’s probably 30% automated for most innovative companies. I'm sure some are leaning into it a lot harder. We use Richpanel and they are building some really cool stuff. Most of our tickets are written with some type of AI prompt, and then it gets finished by a human. It's constantly learning, so it’s only going to get better and be able to automate more.
We’re using something that is in stealth for our social moderation, and right now 76% of comments are written with AI autopilot; and we’re in the process of completely automating a lot of it, starting with the easier ones.
- There are so many manual tasks that AI can take off your plate. Over the next year or two, your team won’t need to do most of them.
- I’m really excited about Motion’s AI agents. We’re gonna give it a shot and try to automate our workflows. They’re building some really cool stuff and opening it to brands soon who want to “clone” their creative strategists. More to come.
- We’re launching with a new, in stealth, influencer/community tool that is completely powered by AI. A proper influencer/affiliate program is super time intensive and requires a bunch of bodies; so its actually not that scalable.
Theoretically A LOT of it can be automated from sourcing, outreach, follow up, and fulfillment. More to come, but we’re planning to go from sending out a few hundred new boxes a month to thousands with this. Fingers crossed.
- Alex Cooper has been putting out some sick content with AI creative strategy. I really enjoyed this video from him and Jimmy Slagle on a bunch of AI tools and workflows.
- Don’t forget that AI is behind Meta’s algorithm. Meta has announced Andromeda which is their new model/update that is improving ad delivery and personalization. It definitely impacts how we need to be thinking about creating ads. Watch this really good video with Taylor Holiday to learn how you should be thinking about your updating ad account strategy.
Final Thoughts
Overall, I'm very bullish on AI. There are some things that are cool but not there yet like ChatGPT image generation, but there are others that are super close to making a huge impact.
Partner of The Week
Exciting news! Statiq just launched email designs and landing pages as part of their subscription service. If you’ve been following along, you know I’ve raved about their static ad designs before (they work with us, Hexclad, and AG1). The same quality, speed, and creativity they bring to static ads is now available for your emails and landing pages too.
If you book a demo this week, they’re offering $500 off your first month. But you have to book this week to get it. Book a call here to learn more about Statiq’s expanded offerings and see for yourself.
-Cody