Four times the spend, twice the creative

The landscape

The landscape

Original art is a trust purchase. Buyers need to believe in the artist, artists need to believe in the platform, and a commodity retail playbook serves neither side. The brand needed sharper positioning, a voice, and a visual system worthy of the work, while the media budget had to quadruple into the holiday peak without efficiency giving way. The team was six in-house plus five agency members across two agencies, and the martech bill had grown comfortable.

The approach

The approach

I ran it as a full transformation. New positioning and messaging, value props, brand voice guidelines, and a visual refresh: creative system, photography, and design language. Australian artist storytelling campaigns carried trust and differentiation. On the performance side I went AI-forward: personalized 1:1 product-feed graphics generated at scale, millions of images, governed by human-in-the-loop content review, brand-voice prompt frameworks, and privacy protocols. Spend scaled 4x, and martech licensing got 25% cheaper along the way.

• Scaled the full marketing P&L from $100K to $400K a month through the Q4 holiday peak.
• Rebuilt positioning, messaging, value props, and brand voice, with a visual refresh across creative system, photography, and design language.
• Shipped AI-generated, personalized 1:1 product-feed graphics at scale, millions of images, for about a 20% conversion lift over standard creative.
• Roughly doubled creative output velocity with no performance degradation, under human-in-the-loop review and privacy protocols.
• Consolidated four messaging tools into Klaviyo and cut martech licensing costs about 25%, leading six in-house marketers and five agency members across two agencies.

The eras

The eras

1. 2023 → 2025 VP Marketing
2. 2025 → Present Interim CMO fractional

The projects

The projects

1. 01

   Scaling the P&L into the holiday peak

   Interim CMO

   Monthly marketing spend went from $100K to $400K through Q4 with efficiency held, across shopping, social, and lifecycle.

   • Owned the full marketing P&L and the quarterly forecast behind it.
   • Quadrupled monthly spend into the holiday peak without letting efficiency give way.

   • 4x monthly spend $100K to $400K through the Q4 peak

   1. Exhibit I The Q4 spend and efficiency dashboard Exhibit pending: The Q4 spend and efficiency dashboard

2. 02

   Millions of personalized product graphics

   VP Marketing

   AI-generated 1:1 product-feed graphics, millions of images, lifted conversion about 20% over standard creative and doubled output velocity, with a human in the loop.

   • Built the generation pipeline over a 500K+ SKU product feed.
   • Wrote the brand-voice prompt frameworks and the content review protocol that every image passed through.
   • Measured against standard creative: about 20% conversion lift, about 2x velocity, no performance degradation.

   • ~20% conversion lift against standard creative
   • ~2x creative velocity with no performance degradation

   • AI image generation
   • Brand-voice prompt frameworks
   • Human-in-the-loop review

   1. Exhibit II: video The AI creative pipeline, start to finish Exhibit pending: The AI creative pipeline, start to finish

   2. Exhibit III Generated product-feed creative, before and after Exhibit pending: Generated product-feed creative, before and after

3. 03

   Positioning, voice, and a visual refresh

   VP Marketing

   New positioning, messaging, value props, and brand voice guidelines, with a visual refresh across the creative system, photography, and design language, carried by Australian artist storytelling.

   • Rewrote positioning and value props for both sides of the marketplace.
   • Published brand voice guidelines and the prompt rules that keep AI output inside them.
   • Ran Australian artist storytelling campaigns for trust and differentiation.

   1. Exhibit IV Visual refresh: photography and design language Exhibit pending: Visual refresh: photography and design language

4. 04

   Four tools into one

   VP Marketing

   SMSGlobal, Postmark, Smartrmail, and Intercom collapsed into Klaviyo, cutting martech licensing about 25% and simplifying the lifecycle program.

   • Mapped every message type to one platform and migrated the flows.
   • Cut licensing costs about 25% by retiring redundant vendors.

   • 25% martech licensing cut four tools consolidated into Klaviyo

   • Klaviyo
5. 05

   CDP, ETL, and server-side tracking

   VP Marketing

   A customer data platform, ETL pipelines, and server-side tracking so campaign optimization and reporting run on one set of numbers.

   • Implemented the CDP and the ETL pipelines feeding it.
   • Moved tracking server-side and unified reporting across channels.
6. 06

   Bringing feed management in-house

   VP Marketing

   Product feed management came in from an outside vendor, which made merchandising changes faster and improved shopping and social ad efficiency.

   • Took feed management in-house and retired the vendor fee.
   • Introduced OKRs on Jira so quarterly objectives and sprints line up.

The results

The results

• 4x monthly marketing spend scaled from $100K to $400K through the Q4 holiday peak
• ~20% conversion lift AI-personalized product-feed graphics against standard creative
• ~2x creative output velocity with no performance degradation and human-in-the-loop review
• 25% martech licensing costs cut four tools consolidated into Klaviyo, with a team of six in-house and five agency members

The apparatus

The apparatus

• AI image generation for 1:1 product-feed creative
• Brand-voice prompt frameworks
• Human-in-the-loop content review and privacy protocols
• Product-feed pipelines across 500K+ SKUs
• Klaviyo
• Customer data platform and server-side tracking