About
Agency founder. AI builder. Two-time Ironman.
I’m Dom Carter. Fifteen years growing luxury fashion and sports brands, most of it from the founder’s chair. I built and sold the agency that did it, and I now spend my time working out where AI actually earns its place in brands and agencies.
Fashion and sport
I’ve had the honour of working with some of the most exciting brands I could have hoped for, from launching sportswear on Premier League football shirts to growing a global cycling brand worn on the bib shorts of Tour de France teams.
That brand is ASSOS of Switzerland, and I’ve worked with them for 7 years, through their biggest period of growth and their push into the US. The cycling industry is where I know the most people: Swiss Side, SWI and British Cycling are clients, and I spend most of my spare time on a bike anyway.
In fashion, the brands have been old and new. New & Lingwood, who have outfitted Eton since 1865. Private White V.C., Manchester born and bred and handmade 10 minutes from my desk. Belier, Sease, Blakemill, and a luxury house I can describe but not name. Every one of them is a high-consideration purchase from a brand with a point of view, which is the work I’m best at.
The brands, with a line on what I did for each, are on the brands page.
The agency
I co-founded Serotonin in 2019 with Clair Heaviside. We started as two people in a Northern Quarter co-working space and grew it to 30 people and £5m turnover by the end of 2025, with a team of performance marketers and creative strategists. In 2026 we rolled it into Embryo, one of the UK’s largest independent marketing agencies. Clair is now Chief Commercial Officer there. I’m Chief Strategy Officer.
The role sits across the things I’m most useful at: helping clients find incremental ways to grow, integrating AI into how the agency works from top to bottom, developing new business across the UK and EMEA, and working with the Board to build an agency people want to work at. We’re working towards one shared ambition, which is to be the business people point to when they talk about a marketing agency from Manchester.
Away from fashion and sport, Serotonin worked heavily in property alongside national PLCs such as Grainger and Legal & General, launching new schemes end to end, from the website and the conversion journey to the lease-up forecasts that fill a building once it opens.
AI
I build things rather than write about building things, and then I write about what happened. Two agents so far. An audit engine that takes Google Ads and Meta exports and runs 120 checks by code before a model writes a word, scoring the account A to F with a 90-day plan. And a Slack agent that reads the platforms’ release notes every week so the team doesn’t have to. The IP is mine; the paid media team I work with runs them.
In September 2026 I researched 20 agencies building AI agents and labelled every claim by who made it. The honest finding was that half of agencies say they use agents and almost none can prove it. That became a 3-part playbook: the evidence, what works and what I built.
I have a BSc in Geology from the University of Plymouth, which is not the obvious route into any of this and probably explains why I look at most of it slightly sideways.
Off the desk
I’m an Ironman twice over, both in 2025: Klagenfurt in June in 12 hours 8 minutes, then Copenhagen in August in 11 hours 4 minutes. I’ve ridden London to Cannes with Club Peloton and Milan to Rome with Ride25, both for charity. I’m a qualified RYA Coastal Skipper and happiest sailing the Ionian or the Aegean. Most of what I write about sport starts somewhere on one of those.
Career
- 2026 to present
- Chief Strategy Officer, Embryo. Client growth strategy, AI integration across the agency, new business in the UK and EMEA, and Board work on culture.
- 2019 to 2026
- CEO and co-founder, Serotonin. Grew the agency from 2 people to 30 and £5m turnover with Clair Heaviside. Rolled into Embryo in 2026.
- Education
- BSc Geology, University of Plymouth.
What I speak and write about
- Marketing that works
Brand dissections, campaign failures and the commercial mechanics behind marketing that works and marketing that embarrasses everyone..
Recent talks include Reaching the Unreachable at Dagorà in September 2025 and a session on agile creative analytics at Dagorà Lifestyle Innovation Day in May 2025. The thinking from both is written up in the playbooks.
Press
- Embryo continues growth with acquisition of Manchester agency Serotonin
- More than miles: Serotonin’s Dom Carter on the mindset of a runner