At Tiege Hanley, a subscription-led D2C men’s skincare brand co-founded by Aaron Marino (Alpha M) — the #1 men’s grooming influencer on YouTube — the company had begun to experience diminishing returns from its early-stage growth engine. Three years after launch, the Alpha M channel was showing signs of saturation, and the team was under pressure to diversify acquisition channels and stabilize CAC.

Initially, attempts to replicate YouTube’s success through paid social and in-stream ads struggled to achieve the same CPAs. Influencer integrations had become expensive, and traditional attribution failed to capture their true impact.

To address this, Thomas led a holistic overhaul of the influencer marketing system:

• Built a halo impact model quantifying the incremental lift in branded search, direct, and organic sales following each creator deployment.

• Developed ROI calibration frameworks to price creator partnerships proportionally to real revenue impact, not vanity metrics.

• Automated creator sourcing, outreach, and contract workflows to sign influencers in high-performing content verticals (dating advice, lifestyle, podcasts).

• Partnered with the content team to improve landing page conversion rates and design predictable posting schedules tied to audience engagement data. Instilled constant A/B testing with Intelligems + Replo Tech stack.

With these systems in place, Thomas re-positioned YouTube from a direct-response channel to a full-funnel demand-generation engine — scaling influencer budgets to seven figures while lowering total advertising cost as a percentage of revenue.

The result was sustained revenue growth, improved contribution margin, and record EBITA efficiency, driven by a scalable, data-backed YouTube creator ecosystem that became a durable competitive moat for the brand.

After two years leading Growth at Tiege Hanley across D2C channels, Thomas took ownership of the brand’s Amazon Marketplace performance — which had plateaued in annual sales, with TACoS spiking and category saturation increasing.

At the time, 95% of sales came from a single hero SKU, and ad spend was heavily concentrated on branded and high-competition keywords that delivered minimal incremental return.

Thomas led a complete marketplace turnaround, building a scalable, data-driven engine for growth:

• Re-engineered ad efficiency: Capped brand defense to 10% of spend and redirected investment into incremental demand generation — targeting competitor ASINs with low reviews, leveraging category/auto campaigns to harvest new targets, and developing a high-ROI non-brand keyword portfolio.

• Optimized merchandising for conversion: Continuously A/B-tested titles, bullets, and hero images; built A+ content, storefront experiences, and video modules; and introduced upsell variants to lift AOV.

• Built a deal & discount strategy: Implemented brand-tailored promotions, strategic Lightning Deals, and always-on coupon + Subscribe & Save campaigns to drive velocity while protecting margin.

• Expanded full-funnel demand generation: Layered Amazon Creator Connections, Sponsored TV, and DSP funnels modeled in Amazon Marketing Cloud to create cross-channel awareness and retargeting loops.

• Developed a forecasting & replenishment model: Built demand forecasts and FBA inventory systems to maintain momentum and prevent stockouts during volatile growth periods.

• Scaled globally: Rolled out proven U.S. playbooks across Canada, Europe, and Mexico, driving incremental sales and brand visibility in new markets.

Within two years, these initiatives transformed Tiege Hanley’s Amazon channel into a $6M+ growth engine — with TACoS reduced by double digits, organic rank gains across key categories, and record contribution margins.

At Breath Death, Thomas designed and embedded a closed-loop Meta growth system — merging ad testing, landing page optimization, and creative archetype insights into a single performance feedback engine.

When he joined, Meta was driving volume but lacked structure for learnings or sustained compounding performance. Thomas built a scalable system that turned campaign data into actionable creative and conversion insights.

Core System Design

• Re-architected Meta into two core campaign structures:

  • Testing / Nursery (ABO): Forces equal spend across all new creatives to identify winners based on early signals.

  • Scaling (CBO / Advantage+): Automates budget allocation to proven winners while capping fatigue and maintaining efficiency.

• Introduced psychographic-based creative archetypes (e.g. Proof-Hungry Skeptic, Smoker, Confidence Hacker, TikTok Native) to guide content development and match audience behavior patterns.

Feedback Loop Infrastructure

• All top-of-funnel ads were redirected to Intelligems split-test URLs, continuously rotating Replo-built landing page variants.

• Each test tracked RPU, AOV, and conversion rate (CvR) by traffic source — automatically promoting top performers.

• Weekly creative reviews linked performance data with archetype insights, informing the next round of ad production.

Impact

Within weeks, the system boosted Meta-specific conversion rates by +400 BPS and created a compounding growth loop — where each new ad test improved both creative strategy and on-site performance.

The end result: a self-optimizing Meta engine that continuously learns, improves, and scales profitably — turning creative iteration into a true competitive advantage for Breath Death.