Duel, a pioneering Brand Advocacy platform, has secured $16 million in a Series A funding round. This significant investment is set to further its mission of helping prominent retail brands, including well-known names such as Lush, ELEMIS, Victoria’s Secret, and Abercrombie & Fitch, cultivate growth by tapping into their loyal fan bases and creator communities, rather than relying on traditional advertising methods. The funding round was led by co-leadership from Molten Ventures and Bright Pixel, with continued support from existing investor Peter Bauer, who founded Mimecast.
The core philosophy behind Duel is to empower brands to achieve sustainable expansion by leveraging their most potent marketing tool: their existing devoted fans. Duel offers a comprehensive solution that enables brands to identify, engage with, and nurture wholly owned networks of creators. These creators encompass a broad spectrum of talent, from seasoned professionals to passionate amateurs and emerging individuals, all drawn from the brands’ everyday customer base. These creators then become instrumental in generating authentic content, influencing purchasing decisions, and driving referrals across various social media platforms, often through personalized storefronts. The outcome is the establishment of a measurable, continuously active advocacy engine that effectively transforms ordinary customers into a scalable and robust channel for growth.
This fresh injection of capital is earmarked to fuel Duel’s expansion efforts across the United States, building upon its recent entry into the New York market. Furthermore, the funding will be dedicated to enhancing its Enterprise AI-driven capabilities, making its platform even more robust and intelligent. A key objective is also to firmly establish Brand Advocacy as the preferred and most effective strategy for constructing today’s most successful retail brands.
At the heart of Duel’s innovative solution lies its Advocate Relationship Management platform. This serves as a singular, comprehensive system for managing every advocate a brand might have, ranging from valued customers and creative talent to dedicated ambassadors and even internal employees. The platform enables brands to meticulously track, actively engage with, and appropriately reward various advocacy behaviors within a single, integrated system. This streamlined approach allows brands to execute advocacy programs on a grand scale, efficiently managing tens of thousands of advocates with the same operational resources that were previously required to support only a few hundred.
Duel’s overarching and ambitious long-term vision extends beyond the retail sector. The company aims to position Brand Advocacy as the universal standard and guiding principle for building successful companies across a diverse array of industries. This includes a broad spectrum from business-to-business (B2B) enterprises and the music industry to hospitality, professional services, and the entertainment sector.
With the successful completion of this Series A funding round, Duel’s total funding accumulated to date now surpasses $21 million, underscoring the strong investor confidence in its transformative approach to brand growth.
KEY QUOTES:
“In today’s hyper connected world in which social media is now twice the size of all other media channels combined and entirely user-generated, the most successful brands are the ones investing in people and in community, not in ads.”
“Because the truth is, a brand’s best marketers aren’t on their payroll – they’re the customers already out there sharing and recommending the products they love.
“We know from our own data that between a fifth and a third of a brand’s customers are already active creators, so at Duel, we help brands recruit, activate, and scale these authentic voices, turning everyday customers into powerful advocates who fuel measurable growth.”
“Many companies still think they control their brand, when in reality it lives in the conversations happening every day among millions of customers on social media. The brands winning today are the ones that earn it – they loosen their grip, humanise themselves, and empower fans to carry the brand forward. Those that don’t do this won’t survive the decade.
“We give ambitious brands the system and expertise to turn that everyday advocacy into their most powerful growth channel – and with this investment, we’re only just getting started.”
Paul Archer, CEO and co-founder of Duel
“Duel is rewriting the playbook for how brands grow in the modern world. Performance marketing has become expensive, impersonal, and often ineffective. Duel provides an alternative that is better aligned to how consumers discover and engage with brands, and can transform the way that brands are built and marketed. We’re thrilled to support Duel as they build a new category and reshape how modern brands grow.”
Nicola McClafferty, Partner at Molten Ventures
“What we see within our retailers and brand partners today is clear: the old model of short-term, transactional campaigns is losing effectiveness. The brands driving the strongest growth are those building durable communities and creating long-term value through their customers. Duel is championing this shift, turning advocacy into a systematic, scalable strategy. We believe Brand Advocacy will become one of the defining growth drivers of the next decade, not just in retail but across every sector and Bright Pixel is proud to back Paul and the Duel team as they lead this transformation.”
Miguel Bagulho, Investment Director at Bright Pixel Capital, the tech investment arm of Sonae Group
