Scaling a D2C jewellery brand through persona-led creative

The challenge

The brand had a strong product range, but broad targeting was limiting efficiency. Jewellery buyers split into two distinct motivations: buying for themselves, and buying for a specific moment, a wedding, an anniversary, a celebration. Running one generic audience against both groups meant creative and messaging that didn't land cleanly with either.

What we changed

• Persona segmentation. Audiences were rebuilt around self-purchase intent versus occasion-driven intent, rather than generic demographic or interest targeting, so messaging could speak to the actual reason someone was buying.
• Founder-led creative. The founder was brought into ad creative directly, using the brand's founder-led identity as a trust signal rather than running product-only ads.
• Social proof. Existing celebrity-worn moments of the product were used in ad creative, adding visible social proof alongside founder trust.
• Occasion timing. Occasion-specific creative was tied to wedding season, anniversaries and parties, matching timing to actual purchase triggers rather than running always-on generic ads.
• Spend split. Roughly 70% of spend stayed on proven bestsellers, with a fixed 30% pool for testing new SKUs and releases, so testing new products didn't dilute performance on what already worked.

The result

Separating the two buyer groups improved both return on ad spend and order value.

What we measured

ROAS is revenue divided by ad spend, and AOV is average order value. Both improvements are measured against the account's performance before these changes.