How a beauty icon scaled globally with an integrated performance & influencer strategy.

Client :
Gisou
Beauty & Haircare | DTC & Retail

Challenge :
Scale international paid media while maintaining brand premium positioning and leveraging founder-led influencer momentum.

Result :
-47% CAC YoY

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The numbers that matter

-47%

Cost per New
Customer YoY

+65%

Paid Social
Efficiency

+110%

Avg. New Customer
YoY Growth

+45%

Creative iteration
velocity

The Challenge - Problem Statement

The problem

Scaling a viral brand without losing its soul.

Gisou, the honey-infused haircare phenomenon founded by influencer Negin Mirsalehi, faced the ultimate DTC challenge: how to industrialize performance marketing at international scale while preserving the authentic, founder-led storytelling that built the brand.

Key challenges

Founder-driven brand DNA requiring performance creative that feels native, not ads
International expansion across 20+ markets with diverse audience behaviors
Paid-organic synergy maximizing influencer content investment across paid channels
Premium positioning in a crowded beauty category dominated by aggressive discounting
Creative fatigue with high-frequency audiences demanding constant refreshment

The diagnosis: Standard performance playbooks would commoditize the brand. Gisou needed a hybrid model, data-driven precision execution wrapped in creator-first storytelling.

Client Testimonial

"Our brand was built on authenticity and community. We needed a partner who understood that performance marketing isn't just about conversion, it's about conversation. Ad's up Consulting didn't just optimize our campaigns; they reimagined how paid media could amplify our influencer strategy. The result? We scaled internationally while our brand equity actually got stronger."

Caitlin Sherry

Global Growth Marketing Director, Gisou

How we fixed it

From silos to synergy. We built an integrated performance ecosystem where SEA, Paid Social, Creative, and Data operated as one machine—orchestrated around Gisou's influencer DNA and international ambitions.

The Fix: Integrated Performance & Influencer Strategy

SEA International Mastery: Multi-market Shopping & Search architecture optimized by product line, customer intent, and local behavior. Dynamic budget allocation across 20+ countries with real-time performance triggers.

Paid Social Excellence: Meta & TikTok campaigns engineered for discovery-to-conversion. UGC-native creative systems, audience sophistication laddering, and founder-content amplification at scale.

Creative-First Iteration: Rapid-fire creative testing framework producing 50+ variants monthly. Influencer content repurposing pipeline turning organic moments into paid gold. Performance creative that looks like content, not ads.

Data & Attribution: Unified measurement across platforms. Incrementality testing, MMM modeling, and predictive analytics driving strategic decisions. Real-time dashboards powering agile optimization.

Influencer Synergy: Tight integration between organic influencer strategy and paid amplification. Paid media fueling influencer content, influencer content feeding paid creative, compounding returns.

Key challenges

International SEA rollout: Shopping feeds restructured by market, multi-language campaigns, localized bidding strategies
Paid Social scale: Meta/TikTok expansion with UGC creative systems, audience sophistication frameworks, retention funnels
Creative engine: In-house creative production pipeline, influencer content licensing, A/B testing at velocity
Data infrastructure: Attribution modeling, incrementality measurement, predictive audience scoring, unified reporting
Influencer integration: Paid amplification of organic content, whitelisting strategies, creator-brand co-creation

Outcome

ROAS multiplied by 1.6 year-over-year. New customer acquisition doubled while maintaining premium positioning. Creative refresh rate increased 300% without compromising brand consistency. International markets now represent 60% of revenue, up from 35%.

12-month transformation

Month 1-3:

Foundation & Integration

Strategic audit, tech stack unification, team alignment, creative pipeline setup

Discovery: Fragmented attribution masking true performance by 40%

Month 4-6:

Scale & Test

International SEA expansion, Paid Social architecture overhaul, creative velocity ramp

Momentum: ROAS +35%, new customer acquisition +55%

Month 7-9:

Optimize & Innovate

Audience sophistication rollout, influencer content amplification, predictive bidding

Growth: Paid Social efficiency +70%, creative iteration +200%

Month 10-12:

Compound & Expand

Full-funnel integration, retention marketing scale, new market penetration

Final results: ROAS +60% YoY, new customers +110%, international revenue share +71%

What made this work

Creator DNA + Performance Science

The magic wasn't choosing between brand authenticity and performance efficiency—it was engineering systems where one amplifies the other. Influencer content became creative fuel; data insights informed storytelling.

Creator DNA + Performance Science

Creative Velocity Beats Creative Perfection

In high-frequency channels, freshness > polish. We built a machine producing 50+ variants monthly, each rooted in real performance data. Fast iteration, continuous learning, compounding improvements.

Attribution Drives Everything

You can't optimize what you can't measure. Unified attribution revealed which touchpoints created value vs. captured credit. This shifted 30% of budget to higher-impact channels overnight.

Influencer Strategy IS Media Strategy

For creator-founded brands, the line between organic influencer and paid media is fiction. We treated them as one integrated system, multiplying the ROI of both.

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