What It Takes To Test 50+ New Ads Per Week & Scale Past $10K/Day In Ad Spend Without Losing Your Mind Last week I outlined a real life example to illustrate why “just run some Meta ads” is not a plug and play solution to your brand’s growth issues. This week I’m going to outline the people, processes and technology playbook that fashion brands need to scale Meta effectively. If you want to make Meta ads a meaningful growth channel for your brand, it truly does take a cross-functional effort....
8 days ago • 6 min read
Case Study: What Most Brands Get Wrong About Meta Ads That Makes It Almost Impossible To Turn A Profit One of the biggest, most harmful myths about Meta ads: that Meta ads are a plug and play cure-all for every brand’s growth issues. Most of the content you’ll read about Meta ads focuses on two things: account structure (bid types, campaign structure) and creative strategy (how many and what kind of ads). Today, we're going to focus on another, often neglected, aspect of scaling ads. But...
15 days ago • 6 min read
Year In Review, And Why You Should Consider Becoming A Member Typically, this would be a members-only issue of the newsletter. But it's New Year's Eve–I'm sure there is minimal appetite for hard-hitting tactical content right now. So I'm sending this out to everyone. I started DTC (fashion) Decoded in back April because, after more than a decade working in eCom and digital marketing, I still couldn't find tactical content written for fashion brands. I'm pretty active in the online DTC...
22 days ago • 1 min read
10 Books That Will Make You A Better Fashion Brand Strategist & Marketer Every year I try to take time off between Christmas and New Year’s Day. I use this time to relax, spend time with family, and (usually) read a lot. In this issue I’m sharing a reading list of books that have helped me grow my understanding of brand positioning, the luxury industry, and consumer behavior. First, I want to thank this week's sponsor: Inventory Planner by Sage. If you're still doing planning in a...
29 days ago • 3 min read
3 Things Every Fashion Brand Should Do To Thrive In 2025 It feels like we’ve been in “uncertain times” for close to a decade now. Personally, I think that is simply because marketers realized that “uncertain times” is a great hook for selling people stuff but…I digress. In this issue I’m putting on my thought leadership hat and outlining three things I think every fashion brand should focus on in 2025. This advice applies to fashion brands of every size, with every positioning, in every...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
Revisiting The Brand Case Study That Broke The Internet (Kind Of) In the first days of 2020 I published a case study covering the rise and fall of Mansur Gavriel. TL;DR–they kind of bungled their initial success and had to sell the business sideways to a private equity firm. This was the piece that probably “put me on the map” in terms of my social media presence and ~thought leadership~. I wanted to revisit it here and update it to cover what has transpired with the brand since 2020. First,...
about 1 month ago • 8 min read
Read My Influencer Playbook Before You Pay That Fashion Girlie $10K For An IG Story Influencer marketing is a hot topic in the DTC community, but does that advice apply to fashion? What do you think? If it did, would I be writing this newsletter? I’m going to share everything you need to know to develop an effective influencer strategy for your fashion brand, no matter your stage of growth. Influencer & Affiliate Marketing 101 The mechanics of affiliate marketing: you incentivize people to...
about 2 months ago • 8 min read
Direct Response, Product & Brand Marketing: How To Set The Right Priorities For Your Growth Stage One of the most common issues I see in my consulting work–for all brands, not just fashion brands–is a lack of focus in marketing strategy. Brands have a list of core marketing activities and new initiatives to test. The list is too long for the brand’s lean team. And as a result, none of the marketing is executed particularly well, and no one understands what is actually contributing to growth....
about 2 months ago • 5 min read
Improve Your Product "Hit Rate" With These 5 Reports & Analyses We’ve talked a lot about the power of merchandising. I can’t overstate how the growth of a fashion brand hinges on a good merchandising strategy. A “good” strategy is one that serves the needs of your key customer acquisition channel. And for many folks reading this, that channel is Meta advertising. I covered the pillars of a strong Meta product assortment strategy here. When fashion brands work with me on a marketing audit...
2 months ago • 6 min read