😎 Matt Bertulli shares his 7-brand swipe file + how to build one

🤩 Connor MacDonald shows how brands arrive already famous

🤑 Connor Rolain reveals how creators can drive Amazon sales

Ads can buy attention. They can’t buy belief.

Connor MacDonald CMO, Ridge

Why Did Unilever Pay $1.2B for a Gummy?

Grüns went from launch to a massive exit in just three years.

This isn’t a one-off, either. Every few months, a brand seems to arrive already famous, like:

• Rhode
• Liquid Death
• Owala

Each became a media story before it became a revenue story.

You can’t buy your way into a Reddit thread. These brands build belief first, through founders, creators, community, and products people want to show off. The ad budget comes after.

Those same integrations now go for $75,000 to $100,000.

We’ve since sponsored more than 5,000 creators. Why? Nobody says “Thank you, Ridge” for an ad in their feed. But they do say thank you for supporting a creator.

Vaan spent months studying how these brands do it, including an interview with me. The result is Already Famous, their newest report on the DTC darlings + the shifts that made them possible.

A look inside:

• Five shifts behind the new darlings
• What gummification did for Grüns
• How Reale + Lemme built trust
• Who sold, who’s in play, who lost
• Why your next shopper is an AI

Plus Ridge + Tumble interviews, a Homestead feature, and creator Ashi Bhat on what brands owe their first thousand fans.

In my opinion, it’s the sharpest breakdown of brand building I’ve read this year.

If you plan to launch anything over the next few months, read it now before the secret’s out.

Matt Bertulli CEO, Pela + Lomi

7 Brands I’m Studying + 3 Steps to Build Your Own Swipe File

Everyone in DTC is building a copy machine. Scrape an ad library, pull the concepts, clone the ad. AI makes it faster than ever.

It’s always the same brands getting copied …

• RYZE
• Resilia
• Javvy
• Grüns
• IM8

Now everybody looks, talks, and walks the same.

The bigger problem is you don’t know what’s working.

You can see an ad has been running for months. You can’t see the cohorts behind it, the stage of awareness it’s built for, or the job it does in the business.

On the latest Operators Build, Cody and I each picked three brands we’re watching while we build Winks (plus a bonus).

You’ll meet all seven below.

But borrowing our list is just another way of copying.

So first, let me show you how I find brands worth studying and exactly what I’m trying to learn.

 Step 1  Find “Different” Brands

I don’t want the same swipe file as everyone else. Instead, I study brands taking different approaches.

Four filters:

1️⃣ Different Funnels

My three picks show three paths from ad to checkout.

Nutrition Geeks sends ads straight to product pages.

Elavate Collagen uses long-form landers.

SpoiledChild has a quiz funnel.

The variety gives me new ways to think about selling Winks.

Can we send shoppers straight to an offer, do they need more convincing, or could a quiz help them understand how the product fits their needs?

2️⃣ Different Countries

Two of my three picks are British.

Looking abroad expands our swipe file without taking us outside our category. We’re still studying how to sell supplements, but we’re more likely to find an approach we haven’t considered.

3️⃣ Different Stages

Elavate has 2,300 ads.

Boostcous, one of Cody’s picks, has 170.

The best operators look both ways. Ahead, at brands bigger than you. Behind, at brands smaller than you.

Boostcous is running founder content and whitelisted creators with a fraction of the ads.

4️⃣ Different Industries

Cody’s bonus pick was Wispr Flow, an AI voice app. ~3,000 ads, partnership content, and comment funnels.

If they’re selling to a person, you can learn from them. Because good marketing is good marketing.

To find brands you’ve never heard of, search Meta’s Ad Library by your customer’s problem (“sleep,” “acne,” “energy”), not your product name, and switch the country to the UK or Australia.

Here’s our list, and why we chose them:

1. Nutrition Geeks: UK, straight to PDPs

2. Elavate Collagen: UK, long landers

3. SpoiledChild: Oddity, quiz funnels

4. Norse Organics: Small, strong DR

5. Mars Men: Trend setter, copies no one

6. Boostcous: ~170 ads, not supplement

7. Wispr Flow: AI voice app, not CPG

Four of these are supplements like us. Two are one step away: skincare and food. Wispr Flow is the wild card. Aim for that mix.

 Step 2  Build a Spend Map

Nutrition Geeks has ~860 ads in its library. I’m not clicking through 860 ads!

I had Apify, a platform with ready-made scrapers for Meta’s Ad Library, do the heavy lifting for me. Here’s the workflow:

1️⃣ Give Claude a brand’s Ad Library

2️⃣ Apify pulls ads, links, and landers

3️⃣ Claude Code groups ads by lander

The result?

A ranked list of every landing page + how many ads point to it.

This is the closest thing you’ll get to a spend map.

Nutrition Geeks’ top two landers had 247 and 206 ads pointing at them, mostly magnesium and creatine. Those are not mere side projects.

At the same time, seeing SpoiledChild send 169 ads to a single quiz funnel makes me want to give ours another test.

Ad count won’t tell you what’s profitable. But it gives you a list of pages worth pulling apart.

 Step 3  Study “Why?” it Works

There’s a pretty simple reason copy + pasting someone else’s funnel doesn’t work. Because it doesn’t account for your customers and your product.

For example, Nutrition Geeks sends people straight from an ad to a PDP. I couldn’t find a single top-of-funnel lander. I was surprised … until it clicked.

Everyone knows what creatine and apple cider vinegar are. They’re using Meta for what it’s good at — scooping up demand that already exists.

Elavate and Norse Organics do the opposite.

Their landers go on forever, because collagen and acne are crowded markets full of buyers who have tried everything.

Three questions to ask:

1️⃣ Who Are They Selling To?

Norse sells acne treatments, but some of its ads speak directly to parents: “It breaks my heart watching my son struggle with severe acne.”

The person buying isn’t always the person using the product. That can (and should) change the message.

2️⃣ What Are They Promising?

“Get their confidence back in 9 days” gives that parent a reason to care beyond clearer skin.

That made me question Winks. We’ve put so much emphasis on the formula. That’s great for capturing existing demand. Not so great for problem-aware buyers.

3️⃣ Why Do People Believe Them?

Before-and-after photos. Screenshots of Facebook comments. Customers’ lab results.

You’ll find those across Norse, Elavate, and Mars Men. Each gives the buyer something more concrete than the brand saying, “Trust us.”

What is Winks’ version of that? Could we collect customers’ sleep scores alongside their reviews?

That’s what I’m looking for. A clear picture of:

• Who they’re persuading
• What they’re promising
• How they’re backing it up

 What Should You Test First? 

Pick the idea that addresses the biggest gap in your own funnel.

If it’s hard to tell who your ad is for, test a more specific customer and problem. If your page leads with the mechanism, try leading with the outcome. If you’re making a big promise, showcase stronger proof.

For each idea, write down what you’d change, why it might help your customer buy, and how you’ll measure results.

Don’t copy the funnel.

Copy what makes the funnel work.

Connor Rolain Head of Growth, HexClad

How to Turn Creators Into Your #1 Channel + Free Lunch

On a recent 9 Operators episode, Mike Beckham revealed Amazon beats every other channel Simple Modern sells through in terms of contribution profit. Social ad costs have tripled, while Amazon fees are up maybe 10%.

The hard part is getting shoppers to your listing. Creators are the answer. But which ones actually drive sales?

That’s the roadblock JLab, an electronics brand, hit firsthand.

• Good creators
• Great products
• Terrible results

More influencers meant more posts, not more buyers. So they stopped chasing reach and doubled down on high-intent creators and affiliates.

Using Levanta, they swapped a fragmented, manual workflow for one place to manage every partner and track what converted.

The impact …

• 64% of Amazon sales: affiliates
• Affiliate sales 3x in < 1 year
• 364K qualified clicks from creators

Now JLab runs one repeatable partnership engine across Amazon, Shopify, and Walmart.

Black Friday is three weeks out. Double down on the creators already selling before the rush.

Book a demo to see how 3,000+ brands find, track, and pay creators on Levanta.

Plus, lunch is on them!

$100 Uber Eats or DoorDash gift card.

FULL EPISODE

​6 CPG Funnels to Study: What We’d Steal Vs What We’d Fix​

With thanks and anticipation,
Aaron Orendorff
🤓 Chief Executive Officer

P.S. (Disclaimer): Special thanks to Vaan and Levanta for sponsoring today’s newsletter.

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