The Biggest Lie in DTC Right Now

“CAC is your core problem.”

It’s the sentence I hear more than anything else when a brand comes to us.

But here’s the truth: CAC is almost never the real problem.

At least not in the way founders think.

From the operator seat, looking across dozens of brands, millions in spend, and a front-row view of what’s actually driving (or killing) profitable growth, the pattern is painfully obvious:

👉  𝗜𝘁’𝘀 𝗿𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗹𝘆 𝗢𝗡𝗟𝗬 𝗮 𝗺𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗮 𝗶𝘀𝘀𝘂𝗲. 𝗜𝘁’𝘀 𝗮𝗹𝗺𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗮𝗹𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝗮 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗶𝘀𝘀𝘂𝗲. 𝗔𝗻𝗱 𝘂𝘀𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗶𝘁’𝘀 𝗯𝗼𝘁𝗵.

> You can’t really optimize weak creative.
> You can’t scale generic storytelling.
> You can’t spend your way past a message that doesn’t land.

A quick example:
We recently onboarded a brand that thought their CAC problem was tied to platform volatility and bad campaign structure.

➡️ Spend up → CAC up.
➡️ Spend down → CAC… still up.

🪝 But once we rebuilt their creative system - new hooks, new angles, new formats, creator-led iterations, and a testing framework with 𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗟 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲 - CAC dropped by 20% in 6 weeks without touching spend.

Same media strategy.
Same meta algorithm.
Same budget.
𝗗𝗜𝗙𝗙𝗘𝗥𝗘𝗡𝗧 𝗖𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗩𝗘.

This is the actual lie in the market right now:
“Your growth unlock sits inside Ads Manager.”

It really doesn’t.

It sits inside your message. Inside the story you tell. Reliant on your content engine and your ability to generate consistent creative.

So…
👉 What’s the creative lever you’re under-investing in right now, and what would change if you fixed it first instead of last?