Rick Hasselbeck, chief commercial officer at GE Appliances, told our Brand Insider Summit D2C, how his team is bringing good pizza to consumers.

Using texting and radio, Francis Ford Coppola Winery told brand's local loyalists the winery was open despite Sonoma County's wildfires.

There it was, a small tech store in the Big Apple, a store no one had heard of. And then it discovered podcasting, and Policygenius was on a lot of people's lips.

When D2C brands look to develop new products, how do they use the data they have to help them go forward -- or not?

In the beginning -- 2015 -- Brett Podolsky was doing all the cooking and delivering with his co-founder of The Farmer's Dog.

Eric Bandholz, the founder of Beardbrand, came up with a very cool idea one day while flying over the Grand Canyon on his way to who knows where.

"There is no more linear process to reaching the consumer. We have to blend traditional fundamentals with today's realities. We have to be scrappy, flexible and in constant test-and-learn mode."

Kelsey Cohen, Director of Growth for Bloomscape, a 20-month-old D2C startup selling plants online out of Detroit, detailed ways to strike up a conversation with your potential customers by creating content. She calls it "content mapping."

Attendees at our Brand Insider Summit D2C perked up when they heard from Mark Wynohradnyk, brand director of Gravity Products, which markets blankets.

"What was cool is no longer cool anymore," said the former CMO of Boxed, offering virtual reality as an example.