The challenge
Kalder made technical outdoor equipment and produced genuinely excellent brand films — one had won an award. They shipped roughly four assets a month, each expensive and highly produced, and their Meta account had been declining for five quarters. The team's read was creative fatigue, which was correct, and their response was to make the next film better, which was not. At four assets a month and a realistic hit rate, they were producing one winner per quarter while fatigue was removing one every three weeks.
What we did
Put the arithmetic in front of the brand team
Not an opinion about their creative. The replacement rate maths: at their hit rate and fatigue window, four assets a month sustains roughly one concurrent winner and they wanted six. That conversation changed the discussion from taste to throughput.
Split the budget into brand and performance
The award-winning films kept running — they were doing a real job at the top of the funnel. We ring-fenced that and built a separate performance pipeline with completely different production standards.
Built a creator roster for volume
Fourteen creators shooting product in real conditions — wet, cold, muddy — with 48-hour edit turnaround. Native and unpolished outperformed studio work in-feed by a wide margin, which took the brand team a quarter to accept.
Tested hooks independently of bodies
Every asset shipped with five alternate openers, so a strong concept behind a weak first two seconds wasn't discarded. That roughly doubled the effective test surface at marginal cost.
The result
Cost per acquisition fell 49% and new customers per month grew 167% on 1.9x the spend. They now sustain six concurrent winners against the one their previous rate supported. The brand films still run — the change was adding a second pipeline, not replacing the first.
“I spent the first two months defending our production values. Nobody was attacking them — they were pointing out that four assets a month is a maths problem you cannot solve by making each one better. That distinction took me too long to hear.”