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How we got here...

First things first...

Hi, I’m Justin Evergreen and I’d like to give you some background on how I ended up 
co-founding the Apparel Ad Cloud and what we hope to achieve in the future. 

Check out my full story below...

The First ‘Aha’ Moment... 

The first foundation was laid in college.

 I was sitting there in yet another ridiculously boring class on Ancient World History where the professor would bellow on and on about ancient pots and pans for an hour and a half each session. No interaction, no questions, just him and the clay pots and pans. 

I found myself zoning out and usually thinking about more modern possibilities. Since making kitchenware was already solved, I wondered what else I could work on that would be valuable now. Then one day my Mother actually said the words “I think this internet thing is going to be huge in the future.”

"I found myself zoning out and usually thinking about more modern possibilities."

I had control...

The internet was relatively new but the more I looked into it...the more there was to like. HTML, Javascript, CSS and Flash Animation were all fairly new and exciting technologies at the time. I looked around but found that my school didn’t offer any classes on any of the modern skills that would be relevant and valuable in an internet world. 

At that moment, I realized I could just teach myself these new technologies. The more I got into the process of teaching myself, the more I liked it. I could learn asymmetrically, in the order that I wanted to. I could try things now, without waiting. I could answer my own questions, even if it was out of the normal order. I could binge-watch tutorials and get a month’s worth of knowledge in a weekend. It was liberating. 

I had control. 


If At First You Don’t Succeed... 

After teaching myself...

After teaching myself all of the Adobe software products and Flash Animation, I was armed with an entry-level student portfolio of Giorgio Armani animated banners and interstitial ads. 

My first stop was the largest national ad agency in town, McKinney. Their clients included Audi of America, NASDAQ and Lands End. While I still believe I had the better portfolio at the time, I interviewed and didn’t get the job. 

Definitely down but not beaten, I took my first job at a digital agency doing websites and banner ads. As fate would have it, a year into the job, that small digital agency landed a new client. It was McKinney, the national ad agency that had turned me down the year before. 

Since McKinney didn’t have digital advertising capabilities, they set up a competition between two local digital shops to get the contract to make the animated banner ads for Audi. I was the only digital employee of the firm so the competition project landed on my desk. 

Working around the clock for 2 weeks, we won that competition and landed 2 years of campaign work for Audi. 


"I was the only digital employee of the firm..."

My First Successful Ad Campaign... 

Still craving a bigger role...

Still craving a bigger role on the national stage, after a year and several ad campaigns I ultimately was hired by McKinney as their 3rd digital employee and assigned to Audi and Lands End. We were given the assignment to relaunch all of the Audi vehicles including the A6, A4 and A3. 

Our digital campaign for the Audi A3 ended up winning National Advertising Campaign Of The Year, won at Cannes International Advertising Festival and was featured in the NY Times, Business Week, Forbes and hundreds of other publications. 

Campaign
of the Year

7 Times

for 7 Different Brands

It was a breakout moment...

It was a breakout moment that led to jobs at the top ad agencies in the world. From Converse to Coca-Cola to Gap to Nike, I zig-zagged up the corporate ladder creating digital campaigns for the world’s top brands. Over the next few years, campaigns that I worked on were featured in the NY Times 7 times for 7 different brands. 

It was an incredible journey that ultimately led to taking the position as Digital Creative Director for the National Walmart Account. A team of 30, thousands of ads per year and millions in ad spend across Back to School Apparel and the Holiday season.
I’m At The “Top” Why Does This Suck?... 

By many measures, I had “made it”... 

By many measures, I had “made it” in advertising. The big job with a big team and the big salary. We were doing great work. Walmart digital revenue was up. The Back To School Apparel campaigns were their highest performing ever and the Christmas campaign set the record for dotcom sales at the time. 

But as the months unfolded, I started to question why I was there and the relationships between agency and client. It seemed that there were flaws in the way agencies and brands worked together. I talked to friends in the industry and they said the same thing. 

At the end of the day, all agencies are motivated to bill more hours and increase a brand’s ad spend so the agency fees go up. But brands want the exact opposite. They want fees and expenses to go down as much as possible. They want less ad spend and more profit. 

What is going on here? 

I ultimately realized I was just a cog in a big billing machine and had no real say in how this all worked. 

I had no control. 

"I was just a cog in a big billing machine..."

"I had no control."

The Second ‘Aha’ Moment... 

So, I made a decision that changed my life forever...

I left. 

Off to LA to rebuild this from the ground up. 

First, I met Alicia. She had just left her agency after launching campaigns for Adidas and Red Bull. She had the sense that something was up with this agency business model too and was heading out on her own. 

We decided to team up and start our own company. We would provide value by creating breakthrough digital campaigns while not locking brands into long-term contracts and fees. 

And it worked. Over a few years, we launched campaigns for Jay-Z and Beyonce’s nutrition brand, Uber, Bolthouse Farms and culminated with the launch of LA’s largest tech startup with over $6.8 million in adspend on Facebook and Instagram.

$6.8M

in Adspend on
Facebook & Instagram

There is no shortage of clients...

In the LA market, from fashion to tech to entertainment, there is no shortage of clients. But as we received referrals and met with the founders of more and more small and mid-size brands, we realized yet again there was a problem with the agency-client model. 

In a small to mid-size business, every dollar counts. 

They need their limited resources to go to building the business and acquiring new customers. Not spent on agency fees. 

What most people don’t realize, even with flexible contracts, an agency ‘has’ to over-charge their clients. The agency business model requires that the owners pay as little as possible to junior talent while over-charging the client senior-level agency fees. The ‘difference’ is how the owner makes profit. 

After 10-15 of these conversations with founders of small and mid-size brands, we realized the truth:

Agencies don’t work for small and mid-size brands. 


"What most people don’t realize...
an agency ‘has’ to over-charge their clients."

Customer Acquisition Training... 

We knew this was an opportunity waiting to be solved...

But how?

The brand still needs high-level, efficient and effective advertising. Without it, they can’t compete and won’t make it long-term. 

We thought, should it be a SAAS solution? Software can help a brand do a few specific tasks, but it doesn’t really replace what a marketing agency can do. After a bit of industry research, we noticed that most software tools are just reskinning existing functionality already available directly in Facebook Ads Manager and Google Ads. It’s a bit like putting a mailbox in front of your mailbox. The brand just needs the mail, not another mailbox.

But the primary problem both software and agencies have in common is that they don’t teach the brand ‘how’ to market themselves and acquire customers. They attempt to create dependence and confusion while trying to hold onto the brand as long as possible to keep those fees coming in. 

What if...

Could we create an assembly line (like McDonald’s) that taught the founder and the brand exactly how to create high-performance digital ad campaigns on Facebook and Instagram, without needing an outside agency at all. 

Could they be truly independent and acquire their own customers and build their own brand?

If the brand could spend their entire budget only on adspend, without any monthly agency fees, could we finally crack the solution for small and mid-size brands?

Could it be so simple and easy that anyone could launch successful campaigns, even if they had never run an ad before in their life?

I’m proud to say that we have proven the answer to all of those questions to be… Yes.

A resounding yes. After 100+ founders and small teams have gone through our Customer Acquisition Training assembly line, we have helped these brands generate incredible results.

There are many inspiring testimonials and success stories of founders and brands that used our training to quickly teach themselves how to successfully launch and manage their own ad campaigns. 

When it began to really work...

One of our apparel brands now does 600k a month in FB revenue from their ads. 

A socks brand went from 15k in revenue per month with an agency to their first 100k+ month this year, without an agency. 

And a men’s and kids brand just hit their first $1M quarter at 10x Return On Ad Spend. 

But…

$600k/mo

in Facebook Ad Revenue

$1M

Quarter @ 10x ROAS

We knew there was another level to this. ...

While we had helped over 100 brands learn how to launch and manage their ads, there was still room for improvement in this approach. 

The assembly line method of teaching worked. But we knew it could be even better. 

We realized 25% of our brands were apparel brands. Could we create a competitive advantage for our apparel brands if we built a product specifically for them?



The Challenge...

First, we challenged ourselves… could we make learning more entertaining? Faster and more mobile? More visual? More fun to “binge-learn” like Netflix? 


Second, our clients were still spending too much of their time on managing their ads. Can we make the entire system more automated? How much of the weekly ad management could we eliminate with automation?

And third, how do we increase ad accuracy? Everyone says you can test-and-learn but what if we could bypass that entire testing process altogether and get closer to mathematical certainty? We realized agencies are just guessing-and-testing. How can our program use Apparel Ad Data to eliminate guessing and give our brands a rock-solid competitive advantage?

I’m proud to say that those things are now the bedrocks of our program today. Speed Learning, Automated Ad Management and Apparel Ad Data have truly changed the game for our clients.
Looking ahead... 

"What began years ago... is snowballing into a movement."

Apparel Ad Cloud has fundamentally shifted the way apparel brands approach their ads management. 

As a category, apparel sales online continue to grow rapidly every single year. But the bad news... it’s now more competitive for apparel brands than it’s ever been. 

If you don’t know what you are doing, you are going to get left behind. 

I started out teaching myself how to do this stuff. Built a career of doing it at the highest possible level. And ended up teaching 100+ founders and teams to follow in my footsteps and do the same for themselves. 

Now we have built a world-class group of successful apparel brands, founders and teams. 

What began years ago as a career, became a product and is snowballing into a movement. 

If you’re ready to take the next level with your apparel brand and finally take control of your ad profitability… we would love for you to join us. 

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