DAWIDSTRZELECKI

The program had real benefits, but the messaging talked about what it was, not what the customer got out of it. On top of that, a budget with no room for blind testing.

With a subscription, the cost of a mistake is higher than with a regular sale. One bad message burns traffic across the whole funnel, not just one creative.

• Benefit-led messaging. Instead of describing the program itself, we showed how much the customer saves and what they get.
• Funnel architecture. Each stage got its own function and its own creative type.
• Creator and influencer selection. I picked people for the segment, not for reach.
• Briefs and content control. I checked every piece before it went live, because a fix after launch costs more than a day's delay.
• Audience exclusions. We cut people who'd already bought, so we didn't pay twice for the same person.
• Budget analysis and reconciliation. Results went back to the team as a list of changes for the next batch of creative.

The brand existed on paper. No tone, no formats, no reason for anyone to follow it. On top of that, a store opening date — a date that couldn't move.

With a start like that, the biggest risk is a brand that looks like a cheaper version of something already on the market. It needed its own character and its own language before a single złoty went into ads.

• Brand concept. Co-created who ShockPrice is and how it talks.
• Shocky the mascot. Built a campaign series around it, including the "American Dream" chapter, so the brand had a face from day one.
• Launch activation plan. A lead-capture layer in digital, a social rollout, a list of influencers to invite.
• Creative production. UGC scripts and image-generation prompts, to fill the calendar without waiting on a photoshoot.
• Catalog tool. An HTML product catalog built from PDF and PPTX files, so no one had to retype the assortment by hand.
• Post-launch digital direction. Decisions on which channels grow, what goes to paid, and what stays organic.

An off-price brand has an identity problem on TikTok. Too cheap to play aspiration, too much assortment to talk about one product.

On top of that, a team that started from zero and guessed the tone on every video. The channel needed rules to fall back on, so every piece of content didn't restart the same debate.

• 15 audience segments with archetypes. Perfect Madam, Weekend Swagger, Diva, and the rest. Actual characters you can write a script for, not a "women 18–34" bracket.
• Channel tone of voice. Boiled down to one line the team remembers: Ryanair's body, Rhode's soul.
• Faceless formats. Series that can be shot on a phone in-store, with no creator on camera.
• Scripts and hooks. I write them so the editor knows exactly what to do, without an extra call.
• Production oversight. From idea to publish — I shoot part of the material myself.

Four brands in one group easily start sounding the same. Same team, same tools, same sale calendar. It takes a few months before you could paste one brand's post onto another's profile and no one would notice.

Sprandi, Jenny Fairy, HalfPrice, and ShockPrice sell different things to different people. If they speak with one voice, none of them has their own, and the group pays four times for the same effect.

• A separate creative strategy per brand. Messaging angles, audience archetypes, and tone matched to who the brand actually sells to.
• Split content territories. Each brand got topics the others don't touch, so they stopped stepping on each other.
• Monthly publishing plans. Broken down by goal, format, and moment in the trade calendar, separately for each brand.
• One multi-channel calendar. Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok in one place, so overlaps were visible.
• Organic and paid alignment. Content planned so the best posts could be backed with budget right away.
• Message automation. Rolled out ManyChat to handle DMs on MODIVO's Instagram, for repeat questions about availability and returns.

Creative decisions in retail often get made by gut feel, because no one has time to review two hundred of someone else's ads. The result is half the category doing the same thing and no one noticing.

An audit only makes sense if it ends in a list of things to do. A description of the competition on its own is a curiosity.

• Breakdown of creative from ad libraries. Each one classified by messaging angle, mechanic, hook type, and format.
• Social media presence audit. Formats, frequency, tone, and how the channel is run.
• Paid activity analysis. What they promote, how long each creative runs, who it's targeting.
• A separate TikTok layer. Because different rules apply there than on the rest of the channels.
• Gap map. Spots no one in the category covers, turned into concrete topics to act on.

Campaigns across several markets, five people on the team, and campaign names everyone set up their own way. Putting together one report ate a whole day and ended in a debate about whether the numbers were even comparable.

I once mixed up the translation folders for Lithuania and Latvia myself. It surfaced when the local team received it, we fixed it the same day, and the naming convention and per-market checklists came directly out of that mistake.

• Multi-market plan in Excel. 14 sheets, five roles, one shared place — not five versions of the same file in five inboxes.
• Naming convention. Shared across Meta and TikTok, so the report builds itself.
• Automated sponsored-post report. With a rule that missing data gets flagged explicitly, not entered as zero.
• CPM benchmarks and reach modeling. You know what reach should cost before a campaign even launches.
• Year-over-year comparisons. The impact of budget changes on results, in a form you can show to leadership.