Myprotein Meta Ads Case Study: Balancing Brand and Performance
How a two-phase Meta creative testing strategy helped Myprotein understand when to use brand, value and promotional messaging across its customer acquisition campaigns.
- Brand vs. discount creative testing
- Creative design, messaging and iteration
- Campaign analysis and commercial reporting
Key Commercial Results
The business challenge
Promotional messaging played a significant role in Myprotein’s acquisition activity. Strong discounts gave customers an immediate reason to purchase, but raised a broader creative question: How could Myprotein communicate the strength of its products while maintaining acquisition performance?
I developed a testing programme to assess the relative contribution of brand-led and discount-led messaging. The objective was to establish where each approach performed, then use those findings to refine the creative proposition.
The analysis focused on purchase revenue, acquisition costs, order value and reported new customers, supported by creative engagement metrics.
My role in the project
This project was completed while I was Director of Creative Performance at THG Studios, working in-house with Myprotein’s brand, creative and performance teams.
I led the creative performance strategy behind the test. My responsibilities included developing the testing framework, defining the creative hypotheses, shaping the propositions being compared and analysing how each approach influenced commercial and creative performance.
I then translated the results into practical recommendations that could inform future campaign planning and creative development. This approach to aligning creative testing directly with commercial outcomes forms the foundation of the framework I use today as a digital growth consultant.
The testing strategy
Brand-led and discount-led creative ran in separate campaign cells, with closely aligned spend between the two treatments within each test.
The results presented here cover prospecting (PRS) and Advantage+ shopping campaigns (ASC). The retained reporting periods were:
Test 1: 27 April–10 May 2023
Test 2: 1–16 June 2023
Separately, I benchmarked the combined redesigned creative against Myprotein’s business-as-usual (BAU) activity. That comparison used different reporting windows and budgets, detailed under “Wider commercial impact”.
Brand versus a strong discount
The first test compared two distinct propositions.
Discount-led creative emphasised:
- A 40% promotional offer
- Free delivery
- Immediate savings
- A direct reason to purchase
Brand-led creative emphasised:
- Clear Whey’s product differentiation
- Taste and refreshment
- Customer ratings and social proof
- Product quality and brand recognition
This established a commercial baseline for evaluating the two messaging approaches across PRS and ASC.
Brand plus value versus a reduced discount
For the second test, I strengthened the brand proposition with a more explicit value message, including cost per serving. The discount creative advertised a reduced offer of 30%.
My working hypothesis was that product differentiation and social proof would be more persuasive when customers could also understand the product’s everyday value.
The creative approach
I structured the brand video around a 15-second sequence, giving each stage a specific communication task.
Establish the product
The opening frames introduced Clear Whey and the Myprotein brand immediately, using movement and distinctive product imagery.
Explain the difference
The next sequence communicated the product’s benefits, including its taste and refreshment proposition.
Support the proposition
Customer ratings, social proof and endorsement-led messaging gave viewers evidence to consider alongside the product claims.
Direct the next action
The closing frames presented a clear product or offer-led call to action.
For Test 2, I made the opening proposition more direct and integrated the cost-per-serving message into the creative.
Test 1: Discount led acquisition; brand recorded higher order values
At closely aligned spend, the discount treatment generated 104.3% more Meta-attributed purchase revenue than the brand treatment across PRS and ASC.
Discount also accounted for 66.4% of reported new customers, compared with 33.6% for brand.
Brand-led activity recorded a 6.0% higher AOV, but this did not offset its lower purchase volume. The campaign-level comparison gave discount a clear lead on immediate acquisition performance.
That finding established the challenge for the next iteration: retain the product proposition while making the value of purchasing more explicit.
Test 2: Brand and value achieved near-parity on revenue
The second test produced a much closer commercial result.
With spend differing by less than 0.2% between the treatments, discount-led activity finished just 0.6% ahead on Meta-attributed purchase revenue.
Brand-plus-value activity recorded:
50.7% of reported new customers, compared with 49.3% for discount
4.9% higher AOV
91.5% more three-second video plays
33.1% more video plays reaching 95% of the video
The video figures describe recorded play volumes. They provide supporting creative context alongside the acquisition results.
Within this reporting period, the revised brand proposition competed closely with promotional creative on revenue while recording higher order values and a marginally larger share of new customers.
Brand’s share of reported new customers across PRS and ASC increased from 33.6% in Test 1 to 50.7% in Test 2. PRS = prospecting; ASC = Advantage+ shopping campaigns.
Customer acquisition across the two tests
Across the PRS and ASC campaigns, brand’s share of reported new customers increased from 33.6% in Test 1 to 50.7% in Test 2, a rise of 17.1 percentage points.
This describes the change in the acquisition mix between the two tests. The creative propositions, promotional offers and reporting periods also changed.
Wider commercial impact
I also assessed the combined brand-led and promotional creative against Myprotein’s existing BAU activity across PRS and ASC.
For these comparisons, the redesigned and BAU activity used the same commercial offer and underlying source assets. My intervention focused on the design and messaging: how those assets communicated the product, its benefits and the reason to buy.
Across the combined reporting periods, the redesigned activity recorded:
174.9% more Meta-attributed purchase revenue
156.1% more reported purchases
29.0% lower CAC
45.4% lower COS
7.3% higher AOV
These results accompanied 50.0% more media spend. The combined activity recorded stronger acquisition efficiency alongside greater purchase volume.
Link clicks increased by 31.9%, while link CTR decreased by 16.4%. This distinction reinforced the importance of evaluating creative through acquisition costs and purchase outcomes alongside engagement metrics.
The BAU reference periods were 10–17 May 2023 and 1–20 June 2023. This was a benchmark across different reporting windows and investment levels.
What the testing changed
The first test gave discount-led creative a clear acquisition lead. The second showed that a revised brand-plus-value proposition could achieve closely comparable revenue within its campaign conditions.
That supported a more specific approach to creative development:
Retain promotional creative as an acquisition option.
Make product differentiation and tangible value work together.
Evaluate each treatment against purchase revenue, acquisition costs and order value.
Use video engagement to inform creative development alongside commercial results.
Keep the performance of individual treatments separate from the results of the complete creative system.
My contribution was to turn a broad question about brand versus discount into a structured programme of creative development, measurement and iteration.
The strategic takeaway
The testing did not prove that discounting could be removed without affecting performance.
It demonstrated that brand-led creative could compete more effectively when supported by clear product differentiation, social proof and a meaningful value proposition.
At the strongest promotional level, discounting remained the dominant direct-response lever. When that promotional gap was reduced, the refined brand proposition closed most of the commercial difference, attracted a slightly larger share of new customers and generated a higher AOV.
The most valuable outcome was therefore not a single winning advertisement. It was a more informed framework for balancing immediate acquisition performance with stronger product and brand communication.
Measurement and confidentiality
Results are based on Meta Ads Manager reporting across PRS and ASC campaigns. Selected figures are presented as relative changes to protect commercially sensitive information.
The combined redesigned-versus-BAU comparison covers different reporting periods and 50% more media spend. Revenue figures represent purchase revenue attributed by Meta; the analysis assesses reported campaign performance rather than incremental revenue.
About Chris Curry
I am a freelance marketing consultant and former Director of Creative Performance at THG Studios.
This case study documents work completed for Myprotein before I became an independent consultant. Today, I help brands and agencies develop stronger creative testing programmes, manage paid media and turn performance data into practical commercial decisions.
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