Hey legends 👋

This one took a while, but we got there! Covering an aggressive scale-up brand in the supplement niche today.

I've never seen a DTC brand rise as quickly as IM8. Their growth showed me three things:

These three areas helped them scale fast in an incredibly saturated supplement category. And it was almost entirely done on Meta. A tough platform to scale profitably when you're in supplements.

Here’s the TL;DR of what I’ll cover today:

-Dev

IM8’s creative system is built like a matrix, not a whiteboard brainstorm board. Every ad starts with a persona, then it goes deeper into a specific angle, concept and visual.

They’re asking, “Which persona-angle pairing do we want to test and how many ways can we express it?” All good creative strategies that scale answer this simple question.

They’re not selling supplements; they are trying to sell longevity, performance, status, and trust. Pillars that motivate people to take action fast.

By executing this strategy, IM8 has put itself right up there with the very best DTC brands. They scaled from $0 to $100M+ ARR in 11-months (yes, the David Beckham co-sign helps, but there’s just so much more to the strategy that makes it a scale strategy worth learning from). They run between 1,400 - 1,500 Meta ads every month, and spend over six figures per day on creative.

Here’s the breakdown of this playbook 👇

They don’t test random ads. When I reviewed each ad focused on new customer acquisition, all of them followed a simple hierarchy:

This framework allows them to get meaningful data and insights that they can use to inform their next set of creatives. It helps them scale to 1,000+ ad creative volume without losing the quality.

A winning angle can then be repurposed into new statics, UGC, whitelist ads, founder-led ads, expert-led ads, and us vs them/comparisons without rebuilding the strategy from scratch.

NB: IM8 runs four separate Meta ad accounts to spread the load of running high volumes of creatives.

Most brands pick one message and run it into the ground. Or they try to create more variations but don’t have structured data around it that tells them it’s a winner. And the creative still flops later anyway.

IM8 took one product and built four separate pillars around it, giving people four core reasons to buy from their brand.

Longevity - sells a future state, not the solution
There aren’t cheap anti-aging claims. Every claim is based on support, optimise and slow down. Something people can logically give a silent yes to. They anchor it in science that most brands can’t touch credibly (or well). Some sound bites from their ads, I’ve noticed 12 biological hallmarks of aging, advisors from Mayo Clinic, NASA, and Cedars-Sinai. The promise isn't transformation. It's "feel this good in ten years."

Performance - They turn the product into a habit, not a transaction.
The whole pitch is centred around ‘one scoop in the morning’. People are more likely to quit products but not routines, so they help them see and build it.

The battle moves away from the first order to surviving the first 90 days (which is awesome for their AOV and CAC: LTV ratio).

Status - They stack proof instead of making claims
They use David Beckham to get the reach and attention, but when you go through their funnel (MOF/BOF stages), the doctors actually get people to buy. Every ad layer has a celebrity/influencer endorsement (TOF), advisory board credentials (MOF) and clinical framing/certifications (BOF). No single trust signal carries the weight on its own. And, I think that’s why it resonates with the market well. They don’t just rely on Becks.

Trust - They use AG1 (Leading greens powder) as a ladder
They run direct comparisons against AG1 on their own site. The conclusions drawn are subjective, but some things that spring to mind with this ‘Us vs Them’ approach are:

They’re going head-to-head with the category leader and standing on its shoulders to position themselves as a massive upgrade. It becomes a no-brainer when science credibility and numbers are positioned so well. The unforgiving reality in this pillar is that AG1 spent years educating the market, and IM8 is cashing in its potential.

Meta's ad-set targeting is blunt. Broad audiences mean your ad reaches the right person, but it doesn't tell them it's for them. IM8 solves that in the creative itself.

IM8 targets specific personas in the first second of the visual hierarchy. They call out:

The hook mechanics are simple. The first frame shows the persona. "This is for me" or "This isn't for me." Their messaging is their targeting; they don't need Meta's ad-set targeting to do the work.

This is why they can run 1,000+ ads without audience fatigue. Each ad speaks to one person with one problem, so the same product gets endless creative angles

Hook pattern examples:

The thing that stuck with me most from this breakdown: IM8 didn't win because of Beckham. They won because every ad knew exactly who it was talking to before the first second was over. The persona does the targeting, the pillars do the selling, and the system does the scaling.

Most brands have the opposite problem. Good product, decent budget, but the creative speaks to everyone and lands with no one.

Appreciate you reading! Flick me an email if you want me to send over the links to their ad library and assets that I gathered in the research. Happy to share.

Talk Soon, Dev 🤙

P.S. If you've read this far and you're wondering where your own creative sits, we can have a look. I'm doing 2 free creative audits this month. I'll go through your account and creative, show you what's working, what's fatiguing, and where the gaps are, then give you a roadmap of what I'd test next. Grab a spot here.