Duel, the leading Brand Advocacy platform helping leading retail brands including Lush, ELEMIS, Victoria’s Secret and Abercrombie & Fitch grow through their own fan and creator communities instead of traditional advertising, has raised £12m in a Series A round. The funding was co-led by Molten Ventures and Bright Pixel, alongside existing investor Peter Bauer, founder of Mimecast.
Duel empowers brands to drive sustainable growth by activating their most powerful marketing asset: their existing brand fans. It enables brands to recruit, activate, and grow fully owned networks of creators - including professionals, amateurs and emerging talent - from their everyday customers who then generate authentic content, influence purchasing behaviour, and drive referrals across every social platform with personalised storefronts. The result is a measurable, always-on advocacy engine that turns real customers into a scalable growth channel.
The funding will fuel Duel’s growth across the US following its recent expansion to New York, expand its Enterprise AI-driven capabilities, and cement Brand Advocacy as the go-to philosophy for building today’s most successful retail brands.
At the core of Duel’s solution is its Advocate Relationship Management platform - the single system of record for every type of advocate, from customers and creators to ambassadors and employees. It enables brands to track, engage, and reward advocacy behaviours in one unified platform and to run programs at scale, managing tens of thousands of advocates with the same resources that once supported only a few hundred.
Duel’s long-term vision extends beyond retail, aiming to make Brand Advocacy the standard philosophy for building companies across all industries, from B2B to music, hospitality, professional services, and entertainment.
