Daddy, what did YOU do in the great mattress war?

Illustration by the fabulous Richard Morgan

Direct-to-consumer brands are “shaking up retail”. They are “disrupting CPG”. They are “killing the big brands” and, in the words of Terry Kawaja of LUMA Partners, they are the reason you need to “Fire your CMO”.

The headlines are alarmingly impressive for a +20-year-old channel where no one can agree on the name.

DTC, d2c, DNVBs (Digitally-native vertical brands), Instabrands, digital-private-label…the explosion of terms is on a par with the proliferation of products and brands in the brave new dis-intermediated marketplace.

Whenever someone claims that [X] is going to kill [Y], or [A] is going to disrupt the entire [B] category or [C] industry, the answer is often “maybe but not in the way you think”. Video did not kill the radio star or else I wouldn’t be sitting on nagging recommendations to listen to several hundred Podcasts.

What is exciting is that the collision forges both parties into something new.

I’ve been exploring “The evolving dynamics of the direct-to-consumer market” in an article for in January’s AdMap on WARC (that’s the SEO friendly title BTW).

Channelling George Box’s “All Models are wrong, some are useful” mantra I believe:

The full article is on WARC here.

The future of DTC?

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Strategy Director. ex-CD, Planning Director & Head of UX @ Digitas, DIG, Publicis, Chemistry & JWT. APG Gold & Google Planning Innovator of Year.

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David J Carr

Strategy Director. ex-CD, Planning Director & Head of UX @ Digitas, DIG, Publicis, Chemistry & JWT. APG Gold & Google Planning Innovator of Year.