Most fashion founders think their ads do not work because the creatives are weak.
They are wrong.
The truth is, mediocre creative is not a mistake. It is an optimisation.
Here is why.
The Real Cost of “Perfect” Advertising
Truly great ads are rare; not because brands do not care, but because making them is extremely expensive. To get there, you need multiple rounds of testing, iterations, research, production, and distribution. That process costs time and money most brands simply do not have.
So, most ads end up in the middle of the bell curve: clear enough, branded enough, good enough.
And that is exactly where they should be.
Because once you are out of the “bad” category, the gap between average and exceptional is much smaller than people think. Between an average creative and a really great one, we typically see about a 60% lift in conversions.
Why Reach Changes Everything
A 60% lift in conversion sounds like a big win, until you put it next to the real driver of performance: reach.
While creative can give you a marginal boost, reach changes the entire playing field.
The gap in reach between small and big fashion brands is not 60% (or 1.6x).
It is 50x, 100x, sometimes 1000x.
This is not just opinion. Research from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute (led by Professor Byron Sharp) confirms this principle across industries.
Their analysis of buying behaviour spanning decades found that market share correlates directly with the number of buyers a brand reaches; not with loyalty metrics or creative brilliance. Brands grow primarily through market penetration. According to IPA advertising effectiveness awards data, 82% of the 880 papers submitted reported growth from penetration, while only 2% attributed growth to loyalty.
For example, enterprise fashion businesses with direct-to-consumer channels spend six to eight times the ad budgets of mid-market brands on Google Ads and Meta Ads alone.
For smaller players, the gap becomes even more dramatic.
The Budget Tradeoff Most Fashion Brands Get Wrong
Here is the kicker: the budget you would spend to produce that “perfect” ad?
Often, it would move the needle more if you redirected it into reach.
On top of that, producing an amazing creative is never guaranteed. You can invest heavily and still end up with something average. Reach, on the other hand, is guaranteed. You pay for it and you get in front of more people.
This does not mean you should not improve your creatives; you should. But the goal is not to make “the best ad.” The goal is to make ads that are good enough to work efficiently at scale.
That is how you maximise profit.
And in the end, profit – not perfection –, is what keeps brands alive.
Building the Financial Foundation for Maximum Reach
To achieve maximum reach, you need to be able to outspend other fashion brands on paid advertising.
How do you get there? By making your brand as financially robust as possible:
→ Keep cashflow as positive as possible.
→ Keep fixed costs low; no more than 10% if you are running a pure DTC brand.
→ Focus your resources. Too many products that do not sell, or branching into multiple categories too early, only adds complexity and drives up costs.
This last point matters more than most founders realise. Bain & Company research found that product complexity is a quiet thief of market penetration. Too many brands and SKUs result in everything from ineffective levels of advertising to shopper confusion; problems that conspire to erode your ability to reach new customers efficiently.
The fashion brands that win are the ones that concentrate their resources, keep their operations lean, and funnel the savings into reaching more people. Not into chasing the perfect ad.
