CASE STUDY · dtc performance creative

SOLID

I concepted, briefed, and produced four UGC videos on location in Kauai — two pre-workout, two electrolyte, each split between a demo concept and a narrative concept. Each came with production-ready briefs: shot lists, scripts, hook/tension/payoff structure, and dual-flavor capture to pull two assets from one shoot. The environment did the selling — mixing a powder on a jungle trail is absurd, so the voiceover argument added to the convenience narrative. All four were delivered and put into paid rotation and whitelisting.

Creative concepting & production

Paid Meta creative strategy

Designed + native testing

AI-assisted production workflow

Next: Dynamic Wax

Building a DTC performance creative engine from zero — for a genuinely novel product with no acquisition infrastructure.

the situation

SOLID sells dissolvable pre-workout and electrolyte "rounds" that absorb buccally instead of through the gut — a real first-mover product in a category drowning in identical powder scoops. But the brand had a sharp product and no acquisition engine: very few active Meta ads, a light paid creative infrastructure, organic alive but underpowered, and a narrowing competitive window. The brief wasn't "make better ads." It was "build the machine that turns a great product into a scaled brand."

strategy - diagnose before touching creative

I ran a full DTC performance teardown: website conversion audit, competitive landscape mapping, organic assessment, and creative-gap analysis. It surfaced the real constraints — conversion gaps that would crater any paid spend, and overreaching product claims that needed reformulating to a defensible, speed-led angle before scaling. That repositioning protected the brand and became the spine of the creative.

From there I built a Creative Strategy System: a Pain × Persona × Awareness-Stage matrix — four pain buckets, five personas, all five awareness stages that turned ad-hoc concepting into a repeatable engine and exposed 14+ untouched messaging angles where the brand had been clustering in a single quadrant.

production - first round of ugc

paid - a scalable concept library

I developed eight full ad concept briefs mapped across the matrix — every awareness stage, all four pain buckets, all five personas built to test along two parallel paths: designed/editorial executions that carry the absorption math, and native/organic-mimicking creative that carries the brand's irreverent voice. Each brief carries the full stack: strategic intersection, messaging angle, creative mechanic, hook tactic, opening line, format, and production notes — handoff-ready.

The throughline

The work moved as one connected pipeline, not three disconnected projects. Strategy defined what was true and defensible → production proved it with footage competitors couldn't match → paid scaled it into a system any creator or designer could execute against. The matrix is the asset: the brand isn't buying one-off concepts that expire — it's getting a framework that keeps generating on-strategy angles long after handoff.

capabilities demonstrated

Competitive & conversion teardown

Creative strategy systems

Audience segmentation

Awareness-stage mapping

Shot-list & brief writing

Hook development