creative director
The Best Ads We Ever Ran
How three creatives scaled past seven figures on a single idea.
As Creative Director at Calming Co, I was the strategist behind three of the highest-performing ads in the brand's history on Meta. Each was built around a single idea — positioning Ü Relax as an alcohol alternative you can feel — and the goal was to make that idea land in the first second and hold up as spend scaled. The approach worked: across the set, thumbstop rates ranged from 32% to 52%, and each ad scaled efficiently — from six figures to over $2.6 million in spend per creative — while keeping new-customer CAC low. I iterated on the winners, rebuilding them version after version, with each iteration outperforming the last. Below is a closer look at how each one performed and why
An Alcohol Alternative You Can Feel.
$2.61M spend | 34.59% Avg thumbstop | $124.92 new CAC
This is the highest-spend creative in the brand's history — and it's the clearest example of how I work, because it isn't really one ad. It's the latest version of a concept I created and kept compounding. I built the original, then iterated on it with intent: first I reworked it into a voiceover-driven cut carried by B-roll, and then, for this version, I added a new scroll-stopping opening. All three versions scaled — and each iteration outperformed the one before it. That's the part I'm proudest of: not a single lucky winner, but an idea I could sharpen and grow at scale, version after version.
The lever that took this final version higher was the opening. I filmed a new first shot with a team member: a candid reaction of someone who'd just had the drink and was, in the moment, already feeling it It's a small change with an outsized effect, because it sells the entire promise of the ad — an alcohol alternative you can feel — not as a claim but as a reaction. The viewer isn't being told it works; they're watching someone experience it in real time.
The reaction-shot opening wasn't a one-off — it was a learning. We applied the same principle across more creatives in the account, and it kept proving out, turning a single strong cut into a repeatable hook framework. That's why Meta scaled over $2.6M behind this ad while new-customer CAC held at $125: not just a winning creative, but a winning idea I could rebuild and grow again and again.
Vision
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