Demand Generation vs Capture: Rethinking Paid Social

Coterie structures their entire paid media approach around the principle that channels like Meta, TV, and influencer should generate demand, not just capture it. The trap most brands fall into is turning these channels into demand capture vehicles through promotional, response-driven creative. Instead, Coterie's creative is designed to make someone who has never heard of them think "whoa, this exists and I need to check this out" in one or two touchpoints. This approach drove their 15x growth while maintaining profitability, as they focused on creating genuine interest rather than chasing last-touch conversions.

Rather than workshop brand messaging in conference rooms, Ankur's team mined their reviews and customer service conversations to discover their breakthrough campaign angle: parents organically talking about how Coterie's performance-focused diapers resulted in better sleep for babies and parents. This connection between functional product benefit (absorbency) and emotional outcome (sleep) became their core messaging framework. The lesson: your customers are already articulating your value proposition in their own words—systematically analyze support tickets, reviews, and feedback to find these patterns.

Coterie created "Size Assist," a dynamic notification system that tells parents exactly when to size up their diapers based on predictive modeling of their customer base. This isn't a product feature—it's a digital experience layer that solves a real customer problem (leaks from wrong sizing) while creating retention and preventing churn. Legacy CPG brands selling through retail have no mechanism to build these experiences. The strategic insight: identify friction points in your category that require direct customer relationships to solve, then build solutions that become de facto competitive moats.

Ankur makes a critical operational distinction: ad creative and brand/packaging creative require completely different processes and mindsets. Ad creative demands rapid iteration, testing, and fast feedback loops—you need to see what works and pivot quickly. Brand creative (packaging, identity, campaigns) requires deliberation, consistency, and longevity. Mixing these workflows leads to being too precious about ads and too iterative about brand elements. Coterie structures separate pods for "growth creative" versus other creative functions, allowing each to operate at its optimal cadence.

Coterie's AI implementation focuses on removing constraints rather than just efficiency gains. Their CX team uses AI to handle simple inquiries (order changes, tracking), but more importantly, uses natural language processing to automatically tag sentiment, topics, and extract customer data that previously required manual work. In lifecycle marketing, AI-driven segmentation enables them to create 50+ customer segments where they previously could only manage 10-15, because AI also handles the personalization of messaging. The unlock isn't the technology—it's identifying where manual processes were limiting your strategic ambition.

Coterie charges more than legacy competitors and explicitly positions as a premium product. This isn't just margin optimization—the premium pricing creates economic headroom to invest in the digital experiences, AI infrastructure, and customer service quality that justify the price premium. They're not apologizing for higher prices; they're using them to fund demonstrably better experiences. For marketers in competitive categories: don't race to match incumbents on price. Instead, use premium positioning to fund the experiences that make your brand materially different.

When Coterie sends a product launch email to customers who specifically requested that product in support conversations, or when they personalize communication based on where someone is in their diaper sizing journey, they're executing tactics that would require massive data purchases and CRM infrastructure for traditional CPG brands. These aren't sophisticated tactics—they're table stakes for DTC. But executing them consistently over four years creates a "very big gulf" between you and competitors who lack direct customer relationships. The compounding effect of these small advantages, executed weekly for years, becomes an insurmountable lead.