From agency setup to agile growth – a shift in execution, not vision

Copenhagen Cartel is a known name in Denmark’s fashion scene – a sustainable swimwear brand backed by a strong community and a clear mission. Featured on Løvens Hule (Danish Shark Tank), they already had traction. Strong products. Strong brand. Solid momentum.

When I came in, it wasn’t to fix something broken – it was to make it sharper. Bikini season was coming up, and they needed performance to match the season's demand. The foundation laid by the previous agency wasn’t bad. But scaling had stalled, and returns were drifting. Over the course of 6 months, I worked closely with their team to rewire how paid social and search were executed – not by changing the brand, but by making the engine behind it run better.

Key Issues

Too much control, not enough signal
Meta was running on tight manual settings. Heavy segmentation, narrow lookalikes, constant tweaks. The algorithm had no room to breathe.
Fix: We stripped it back. Simplified targeting. Cleaned the structure. Let the platform do what it’s built to do: find signal and scale it.

Creative testing was too slow
Great visuals – just not enough iteration. No loop for hooks. No fast way to double down on what worked.
Fix: Introduced 3-2-2 dynamic testing. Weekly loops for statics and video. Focused on top sellers, not scattered bets.

The copy didn’t speak human
A lot of ads sounded like product pages. Specs, slogans, safe lines. Not enough real talk.
Fix: Exported customer reviews, ran AI extraction to map key patterns, then rebuilt the messaging to reflect what actual buyers say and feel.

Too many products, not enough push
Budget was spread thin. No hero. No control over focus.
Fix: Consolidated around the bestsellers. Built lead-gen funnels tied to limited stock drops. Even ran lead ads profitably above breakeven POAS on cold.

Results

We scaled spend aggressively for summer – more than doubled it – while bringing down CPA by almost half. That’s rare. But it wasn’t luck. It was simplification, focus, and speed in execution.

+287% revenue
+87% ROAS
+106% ad spend
-48% blended CPA
+133% Google ROAS
+80% Meta ROAS

Reflections

After six months, the team decided to take performance in-house – a natural next step for a brand with a strong internal culture. And by then, the account had a clear blueprint: simplify the structure, focus on fewer products, test fast, write clearer.

It wasn’t a rescue mission. Just real execution on levers that were already sitting there.

A good run. Solid collaboration. And performance that proves how fast momentum can shift when you keep things simple – and actually act on the data.