The Nebulab Newsletter - Issue #15

Hello, and happy Monday!

This is issue no. 15 of the Nebulab newsletter, your favorite bi-weekly reflection about retail, DTC, and eCommerce technology.

Last week, Liquid Death launched Greatest Hates, Vol. 3, a full-length album produced entirely out of hater comments. The tunes are available on streaming services and vinyl and, for one song in particular, the Liquid Death team went so far as producing a music video. Some of our team have been listening to the songs on repeat for a whole week now.

Greatest Hates isn't just a marketing stunt: it doesn't take an audiophile to tell that the music is actually pretty damn good. Greatest Hates is a media operation, and a complex one too. For a CPG brand to produce this kind of content (and to do it consistently over time, as in the case of Liquid Death), it requires a non-negligible amount of effort.

This left us wondering: is Liquid Death a water brand that happens to produce media, or is it a media brand that happens to sell water? One may argue that it depends on how they make revenue, but it's highly unlikely that Liquid Death would see its current success without the media piece of its marketing machine, so where does that leave us? Let's try to find out.

One of the very first and most successful DTC stories to date, Glossier, was born from founder Emily Weiss' Into the Gloss, a blog where Emily interviewed celebrities about their makeup and skincare habits. But the roots of the media x commerce alliance can be traced even further back: the Michelin Guide—yes, that Michelin Guide—was originally designed to generate demand for fine dining, and hence for travel, and hence for cars, and hence for car tires.

For decades, consumer brands have been using media to escape the boundaries of retail, and media brands have been using commerce to make ends meet in what's widely recognized as a cutthroat category to operate in—see Wirecutter or, more recently, the Netflix Merch Shop.

When you go one step further and offer both media and commerce in a fully integrated machine—one that doesn't just create demand, but uniquely positions your brand and transcends definition—you're rewriting your relationship with the customer to go beyond mere utility, and creating a potent marketing flywheel in the process.

What most of the commenters featured in Liquid Death's lyrics don't realize is that the brand's customers are not paying top dollar for just water: they're paying for the privilege of identifying themselves with LD's mischievous and playful nature. As a result, Liquid Death only competes with Liquid Death.

So what, you might be wondering at this point—and frankly, we're asking ourselves the same question. Is a media x commerce play something you do, or something you are? While we're not sure, it's most likely a mix of both: some brands are well-positioned, like Liquid Death and Mr. Beast's Feastables; others are just great at timing and execution, like Michelin.

What we do know is that the blending of media and commerce is inevitable as consumers look for brands that offer both convenience and cultural belonging. Now is a good time to decide whether that's a shift you're willing and able to participate in.

In today's outsights, we feature stories about the purpose and power of media in building modern consumer brands.

Member Brief No. 314: On Linear Commerce. This essay first landed in our inbox a few years ago. We'll see whether accurately Smith's predictions will unfold over the next years, but so far, there's nothing to indicate they won't: in the age of DTC sameness, brands with a media moat thrive and outperform those that rely on pure-play commerce.

Why Content Is King. This essay puts it beautifully: “Each new unit of content is a new unit of culture. The more popular the unit becomes, the more it gets woven into the basic fabric of society, the harder it becomes to avoid knowing it.” Also, make sure not to miss point #5, branding.

Here Magazine case study. Here was a print magazine published quarterly by Away from 2017 to 2020. The magazine is now digital—possibly for broader and cheaper distribution—but its spirit lives on: look at Here's website and what you'll see is an independent, delightfully non-transactional media operation.

Peloton relaunches its workout app with new free and pricier subscription tiers. A few issues back, we talked about Peloton's rebranding from brand to platform. It's interesting how it can also be analyzed from a media standpoint: Peloton is now completely independent of its hardware and entirely dependent on its content. In doing so, they're strengthening their brand, diversifying their revenue, and creating affinity with new consumer segments.

We are so excited to unveil Sprout, Nebulab's latest product! Sprout is an influencer gifting toolkit designed to streamline your influencer outreach.

By integrating directly with your Shopify store, Sprout allows you to send product samples to influencers through a beautiful, fully-branded gifting experience, all while leveraging your existing eCommerce stack.

Sprout also integrates with all your post-purchase automations and tags gift orders so they don't pollute your revenue reports. Plus, if you’re a large brand, Sprout's multi-level permissions, budget controls, and scheduled gift expiration will give you the peace of mind you need.

Sprout is currently available for beta testing. Early birds get unlimited access to the entire product at a price locked forever, plus a beautiful redemption page crafted by our amazingly talented design team.

Give Sprout a try! Life's too short for spreadsheets.

Founded in 2017, Maisonette offers high-quality, affordable products from independent brands worldwide.

We've been working with Maisonette's team for over five years. Together, we streamlined their marketplace's vendor onboarding flow, implemented a lightning-fast search and filtering experience, and empowered marketing to run promotions on a catalog of 65,000+ products.

Curious to learn how? Read the full case study below!

That's it for today!

If you have any questions, comments, or brand-sponsored albums you dig, send the Spotify links to [email protected].

See you in two weeks! 👋

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