Pete Dick of Grant Digital
“You need to show up in a way that's actually true to your brand, not just because it worked really well for someone else.”
Pete Dick (Peter Grant Dick) is a British e-commerce strategist, digital innovator, and the Founder and CEO of Grant Digital. With over a decade of high-level industry experience, he previously managed digital and e-commerce campaigns for prestigious global luxury brands, including Burberry, Tom Ford Beauty, and Estée Lauder.
He is widely recognized for his tenure as a TikTok insider, where he served as a pioneer and internal strategist instrumental in launching and building the TikTok Shop ecosystem within the United Kingdom.
What's the biggest current cliché that frustrates you in the social commerce world?
I get quite frustrated when people present information as fact when it's actually opinion.
A lot of people will say something like, "My brand isn't right for social commerce," or "My brand isn't right for this channel." Those are assumptions without data, which we're all guilty of making sometimes.
But when I hear that from UK-based brands, the reality is that half the population of the UK is on TikTok. Unless you can show me the data points that prove exactly what you're saying, I'm afraid that doesn't work for me.
Everyone's desperate for the secret sauce and the blueprint. I try to say to brands, "Stop trying to show up that way, because that way has already been done."
Consumers get desensitized to behavior pretty quickly. You need to think disruptively. You need to show up in a way that's actually true to your brand, not just because it worked really well for someone else.
Everyone's desperate for efficiency, so they think there's a secret formula that works for every single brand. You don't become successful thinking that way. The people who are really successful aren't paying attention to what everyone else is doing.
Look at the most successful brands on TikTok right now in different countries—Made by Mitchell in the UK, or the heavy-hitting Korean brands that have come through, like Dr. Melaxin and Medicube. They didn't show up and follow a playbook. They behaved in a way that was relevant for them, not for everyone else.
If you could permanently change one belief every CMO has about social media right now, snap your fingers, what would disappear tomorrow?
Patience.
The concept of virality is infectious, and a lot of brands chase it, especially in the beauty industry. Because of virality, the expectation in social is that you're going from zero to hero in a day.
A lot of the brands building strong, sustainable businesses are doing it quietly and patiently. They're not chasing virality. They're staying true to who they are. They're building advocacy and creating a nucleus that's strong and has a lot of integrity.
Right now, it's easier than ever to start a brand. I was in South Korea not long ago, and someone I was with said, "Pete, if you've got a thousand bucks here, you can start a brand."
It's that easy. There are still a lot of people willing to cut checks for CPG brands and take a bet. There are also a lot of creators who have become very good at building brands, or at least putting their name on one.
But the faster you chase scale, the faster you risk losing your integrity if you're not careful.
Slow down. Stop chasing it.
What do you see as the next step for TTS? How do you think it's going to evolve?
I think one of the biggest shifts we're seeing now is more premium brands taking the platform seriously.
As that shift continues, trust will continue to grow, consumer behavior will follow, and I think the intent to shop on the platform will continue to increase.
We're already starting to see people buying a bit more... consciously, let's call it. We're past the moment of people buying without really thinking it through. When TikTok Shop first came along, there was a lot of excitement. There were loads of vouchers, and TikTok was heavily subsidizing everything. A lot of accelerated consumerism happened as a result.
Consumer trust and behavior on the platform continue to trend upward, but what will be really interesting over the next six to twelve months is the impact LLMs and AI will have on purchasing behavior.
A typical pattern over the last 24 months has been this: a customer sees a product on TikTok, they either buy it there, or they go to Amazon to check it out. In many cases they end up buying on Amazon because it's a trusted channel, or because it has a better price or next-day delivery.
What will be interesting over the next 12 to 24 months is how that behavior changes. Someone sees a product on TikTok, but then do they ask an LLM for advice on the product, the brand, or the category? Brands need to be ready for the LLM to pull back the right information when those questions are asked.
“You need to build brand awareness and take people on a journey before they're willing to part with their cash. I think the brands paying attention to that are the ones winning over the long term, not just creating a flash-in-the-pan viral moment.”
What is capturing your attention today that everyone else seems to be overlooking? A trend in the industry that's a little bit sneaky.
Because TikTok Shop is the most exciting place right now, people go there immediately. They're overlooking two things.
First, they're forgetting about the full customer journey. They're jumping straight to the bottom of the funnel, straight to conversion.
You need to build brand awareness and take people on a journey before they're willing to part with their cash. I think the brands paying attention to that are the ones winning over the long term, not just creating a flash-in-the-pan viral moment.
The second piece is everything happening on the other platforms customers use every day, whether that's Snapchat, WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitch, Reddit, or increasingly AI.
As a brand, you don't always need to show up everywhere. I think brands get a little nervous and think, "We need to be on Twitch. Wait, how do we get on Twitch?"
Sometimes it isn't about having a presence on the platform. It's about paying attention to what's happening there.
Again, in this chase for virality, brands need to spend more time thinking about what their customer's actual journey looks like. After someone sees you on TikTok, do they ask their friends? Do they go to Reddit? Do they ask an LLM? What happens next?
Don't obsess over a single channel because your customer isn't just on TikTok, and their journey doesn't begin and end there.
What do you think is the most positive impact AI is having on commerce?
It's already made parts of social commerce dramatically more efficient.
Take creator discovery or analyzing performance data at scale. Social commerce produces an enormous amount of information, and manually analyzing all those data points takes time. AI can identify patterns and opportunities in seconds that would previously have taken days.
But I actually think the bigger opportunity is on the consumer side. One of TikTok's biggest strengths is that everyone's experience is unique. Your feed is effectively a fingerprint. The algorithm quickly learns what interests you, what you engage with, how quickly you consume content, and what you're likely to care about next.
That creates an incredibly effective discovery experience because you're constantly being shown products that genuinely feel relevant. The next step is seeing brands apply that same level of intelligence throughout the rest of the shopping journey.
Take CRM as an example. Most customer journeys today are still based on assumptions: It's been a week, send another email. They clicked once, maybe they're interested. That's a very blunt strategy.
AI has the potential to replace those assumptions with actual behavior. It can understand intent much more quickly and surface genuinely useful content, products, or recommendations at exactly the right moment.
For consumers, shopping becomes less about searching and more about discovery. For brands, it means creating experiences that feel genuinely helpful rather than simply automated.