Social is where discovery happens now, but it is rented land. You can build an audience of hundreds of thousands and still not own the relationship, because the algorithm decides who sees you and the landlord keeps raising the rent.

Recorded live at K:LDN 2026 in London, this conversation is about turning borrowed reach into something a brand actually owns. It pairs the person building the tooling with the person living the problem every day.

Brett Bernstein, who came to Klaviyo through its acquisition of Gatsby and now leads its new social product, sits down with Kathleen Loftus, Marketing Director at Sculpted by Aimee, an Irish cosmetics brand with a 350,000-strong Instagram following. Kathleen runs brand, creative, PR, influencer, CRM, and paid under one roof, which is exactly why she can trace a viral moment all the way to revenue.

She walks through a campaign built on a piece of theater: teasing the discontinuation of a beloved cream blush. The stunt ran as a closed loop, from Instagram to the brand's broadcast channel to a website waitlist, and it sold roughly eight weeks of forecast stock in under a week. Brett and Kathleen then dig into the unglamorous problem underneath the fun: attribution, why the brand rebuilt its entire UTM structure this year, and how so many of the people engaging with a brand never actually hit follow.

The payoff is a practical view of what it means to own the social moment: spotting the commenters and lurkers who signal intent, and giving them a reason to move into channels the brand controls.

Why Rent Platforms When You Can Own Relationships?

What you'll learn

Why keeping social, CRM, and paid on one team is what lets social activity connect to revenue
How a brand decides what to post when every post has to earn its place, not just chase reach
The mechanics of a closed-loop campaign that turned a discontinuation stunt into a sold-out waitlist
Why social attribution starts with unglamorous plumbing, and what rebuilding a UTM structure buys you
Why most people engaging with a brand on social never follow it, and why following is the wrong metric to chase
How to move commenters and lurkers off rented platforms into email and SMS

Pull quotes

"Not everything needs a million likes or a million views, but it has to have a purpose to be on our channels." — Kathleen Loftus, Marketing Director, Sculpted by Aimee [~7:05]

"We sold out eight weeks' worth of our forecasted product in less than a week." — Kathleen Loftus [~9:15]

"Instagram is the landlord that keeps raising the rent every month." — Kathleen Loftus [13:23]

"You might think they're no longer an active customer, but then you notice their comments on your content. Those are signals we can now unlock." — Brett Bernstein, Klaviyo [14:36]

Chapters

0:00 Cold open and introductions
3:18 Meet Sculpted by Aimee, one team across all of marketing
5:46 Showing up on Instagram, posting with purpose
7:12 Reading the data, what social signals actually tell you
7:57 The Cream Luxe discontinuation stunt, a sold-out waitlist
10:15 From social to revenue, rebuilding attribution and UTMs
12:28 Rented land, why following is the wrong metric
14:36 Turning engaged non-followers into owned relationships
15:26 A campaign that nailed it, the Sculpted Society pop-up

In-Show Mentions:

Associated Links:

Check out Future Commerce on YouTube
Check out Future Commerce Plus for exclusive content and save on merch and print
Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world
Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce

Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Owning the Social Moment

Future Commerce

Owning the Social Moment