Case study · Paid creative · Summer 2026

Strategy. Creative. Testing. One system.

Recent work for Aera, a premium home-fragrance device. The category is incidental. The approach transfers to any brand: ideas sourced from data, creative produced fast across every surface, and everything built to be tested.

SurfacesPaid social · Video · Landing pages · Email
FunnelFull, prospecting through retention
CadenceWeekly: data → creative → live tests
01

Ideation

Three inputs. One written test plan: iterate the winners, attack the gaps, retire the fatigued.

01 · Account data

What's performing

  • Seasonal campaigns drove the strongest purchase efficiency.
  • Product education bought the cheapest traffic.
  • Simple, benefit-led statics beat polished brand-only creative.
  • The blocker wasn't interest. It was price justification.
02 · Competitive research

What the category runs

  • Prestige positioning · "the 5-star hotel scent"
  • Comparison ads · "like X, for less"
  • Limited-edition seasonal drops
  • Education · how-it-works, category myths
  • Offers, GWP, sale events

The gap analysis writes the brief: what we run, what they own, what we could own better.

03 · Aspirational

Where the bar is

Swipe boards from outside the category: premium skincare, devices, editorial. They set the visual standard. Borrow the structure, keep our style.

Lifestyle
Product hero
Promos & offers
Gifting & seasonal
02

The funnel map

Every asset gets a job before it gets a headline.

Top of funnel
Brand · Seasonal campaigns
Sell the outcome and the world. Ask for nothing yet.
Mid funnel
Education · Differentiation
Answer the unspoken objection. Here: "why not just buy a candle?"
Bottom of funnel
Social proof · Guarantee · Offers
Reassure and time-box for people who are convinced but haven't acted.
03

Ads

Curated selects. Proven = validated by the account. Testing = built to find the next winner. A healthy account always runs both.

ProvenTOF

Seasonal campaign

Limited-edition drops, run like fashion campaigns. Iterated every season: new world, same winning structure.

Campaign hero
Identity headline
Nostalgia hook
Product detail
ProvenTOF

Brand / lifestyle

Atmosphere sells the outcome before any spec appears. One consistent visual world across every frame.

Sensory headline
Aspiration
Buyer's language
Curiosity hook
TestingMOF

Product education

Built from the data: education got attention but needed to sell. Each ad answers "why is this worth more."

Category reframe
Authority
Feature demo
Durability claim
TestingMOF

Trend

Meeting a cultural moment without chasing it. Testing whether momentum beats atmosphere for cold traffic.

Trend framing
The refined take
ProvenBOF

Social proof · Guarantee · Offer

Simple, readable closers. Even the discount creative stays premium.

Reviews
Guarantee
Welcome offer
Sale event
04

Video

9 selects from 33 assets, one per format. All 9:16 paid units, cut for vertical placements and direct response.

Product intro · TOF13 seconds, unboxing to understanding.
Problem / solution · TOFThe reframe in the first three seconds.
Brand film · TOFThe maker story, long-form.
Product demo · MOFFeatures, in motion.
Expert / founder · MOFAuthority, on camera.
Product launch · MOFNew collection, science-led.
FAQ · BOFThe top objection, answered.
Testimonial · BOFA five-star review, staged simply.
Offer · BOFTrial terms, nothing else.
05

Landing pages

Each ad theme gets a matched page. At the bottom of the funnel, three closes run head-to-head: trust, price, urgency. The data says which objection actually blocks purchase.

Click any page to read it full-size.

TOF
Quiz / router

Splits cold traffic by motivation.

TOF
Advertorial

Reads like editorial, sells like a product page.

MOF
Product story

Turns single-product interest into the full purchase.

BOF · Test A
Trust close

Reviews, credentials, comparison.

BOF · Test B
Value close

The difference table, line by line.

BOF · Test C
Offer close

Clean and time-boxed.

06

Email

Same design system in the inbox. Every flow is labeled by the metric it's optimized for. That's also how variants get judged.

Click any page to read it full-size.

Welcome flow · CTR
Brand welcome

Built to earn the click into the catalog.

Welcome flow · CVR
Product welcome

One product, one action. Judged on purchases.

Browse abandonment · CTR
Proof recovery

Reviews for shoppers who looked and left.

Post-purchase · CVR
Replenishment

Reorder timed to real product life.

Post-purchase · CVR
Subscription upsell

Framed around rhythm and savings.

Campaign · CTR
Product launch

A research-backed story for a new line.

Campaign · Seasonal
Seasonal edit

Catalog depth as an invitation, not a clearance.

07

The loop

Nothing above is finished work. Every asset ships as a hypothesis, and what comes back decides what gets made next.

Launch
Everything ships as a test
Concepts go live in small batches with clear jobs: a theme, a funnel stage, a persona. Small spend first. Nothing scales on opinion.
Read
Weekly, at the theme level
The question is never a single ad. It's whether the theme worked, for whom, and at which funnel stage. Winners get iterated, losers get killed, and the fatigue curve says when a proven theme needs a new world.
Iterate
The data writes the next brief
This page is the loop running. Education bought the cheapest traffic but didn't sell, so the next batch rebuilt it to answer "why is this worth more." The blocker was price justification, so three closes went head-to-head on the landing pages. Last month's read is this month's brief.
08

The agents behind it

What you can't see on this page: a stack of agents, built in Claude Code, running underneath everything above. Built once, they work for any brand in any category.

/weekly-brief
The account never goes unread
Reads the ad account, competitor libraries, call transcripts, and the project calendar every week, and turns it into a brief before Monday starts: what's winning, what's fatiguing, what's worth testing next. Pulled live via the Meta Ads API and Ad Library, no exporting or copy-pasting.
/score-copy
Copy earns its way out
Every line is scored against persona fit, angle, emotion, brand voice, craft, and format. Anything under the bar rewrites itself and runs again, brand book and style guide loaded in, until it clears. Six separate judging passes, not one model grading its own homework.
/render-batch
One product, one visual world
Generates statics from a locked, quality-controlled product reference, so a hundred renders show the same object with no hallucinations. A parallel agent holds the same line for lifestyle photography. The product is 3D-modeled once and locked; the model only generates the world around it.
/handoff
Humans finish, not start
Approved layouts build themselves into Figma, fonts loaded and the image library linked. Video hands off as an edit-ready timeline instead of raw footage. Both push over MCP, straight into the tools the team already works in. People spend their time on taste, not grunt work.