Meta Ads for a Gift Brand With Personality, Products and Plenty to Say
The Brief
+113% YoY Increase in Purchases
+130% YoY Meta Ads Sales Growth
Meta Became the Main Paid Channel
A Brand People Already Loved
Born & Bred were not starting from zero. They had already built a loyal following through their Belfast store, distinctive product range and strong local identity.
With a loyal Belfast customer base, a distinctive product range and a strong local identity, the foundations were already there. Our role was to help take that brand further online, using Meta Ads to reach new audiences and turn more product discovery into sales.
The Challenge
The challenge was not getting people to care about Born & Bred. They already did.
The initial challenge was rebuilding confidence in Meta Ads as a channel.
Before working with Vend Digital, Born & Bred had tried Meta Ads with another agency but had not seen the results they needed. By the time we started working together in 2024, the channel had been paused for a while, so we were effectively rebuilding it from scratch with our own approach.
By 2025, the focus had shifted from proving Meta Ads could work to scaling what was already working. The goal was to strengthen Born & Bred’s position across Northern Ireland, while introducing the brand to more customers across Ireland.
With a creative-led brand, a wide product range and a heavy reliance on Q4 demand, the campaigns needed to be structured, flexible and commercially focused.
Just as importantly, they still had to feel like Born & Bred.
What We Did
Campaign Structure
We rebuilt Born & Bred’s Meta Ads activity from the ground up, creating a clearer campaign structure across Facebook and Instagram.
Rather than treating Meta Ads as a place to simply boost posts or promote everything at once, we gave different parts of the account different jobs. Some campaigns focused on reaching new customers, some supported product discovery, and others helped bring previous visitors and engaged audiences back to the site.
This gave Born & Bred a more structured way to use Meta Ads as an online sales channel, while still allowing enough flexibility to react to new products, seasonal moments and changes in demand.
Product and Audience Strategy
Born & Bred has a wide product range, from gifts and homeware to clothing, cards and locally inspired products. That meant product selection mattered.
We worked to identify which products and collections made the most sense to promote at different times of the year, and how those products should be positioned to different audiences. Some campaigns leaned into gifting. Others focused on specific product categories, new arrivals or items with strong visual appeal.
As the brand continued to grow across Northern Ireland and into Ireland, Meta Ads gave us a way to introduce Born & Bred to people who may not already have visited the Belfast store or followed the brand online.
Creative Testing
Born & Bred is a creative-led brand, so the ads could not feel flat, generic or disconnected from the rest of the business.
We tested different creative approaches across product imagery, catalogue ads, seasonal messaging and more brand-led content. The aim was to find the balance between performance and personality: ads that could drive sales, but still felt like Born & Bred.
This meant paying close attention to the products being shown, the copy used in the ads, the timing of campaigns and how the creative would land with both existing customers and new audiences.
Seasonal Campaigns
Seasonality played a major role in the account, particularly in Q4.
For a gift-led retailer, key retail moments are not just useful opportunities; they can define the year. We planned campaigns around the periods where customers were most likely to be browsing, gifting and buying, while also supporting activity during quieter parts of the calendar.
By December 2025, demand was strong enough that ads had to be paused during the busiest period for the second year running. That created a good problem to have, but it also reinforced the importance of managing paid activity carefully around stock, fulfilment capacity and customer experience.
The Results
The biggest shift was that Meta Ads became a more dependable part of Born & Bred’s online sales strategy.
From 2024 to 2025, tracked sales from Meta Ads increased by 130% year-on-year. Just as importantly, purchase volume increased by 113%, showing that the growth was not simply coming from higher order values. More customers were buying through the channel.
Meta Ads also became Born & Bred’s main paid channel, helping the brand reach more customers across Northern Ireland and Ireland while supporting key product launches, gifting campaigns and seasonal retail moments.
Q4 remained the busiest period by far. In December 2025, ads had to be paused for the second year running due to demand, which highlighted both the strength of the campaigns and the importance of managing growth around stock, fulfilment and customer experience.
The result was not just more sales from Meta Ads. It was a stronger, more structured paid social channel that helped Born & Bred grow online without losing the personality that made people love the brand in the first place.
130% YoY sales growth from Meta Ads
113% YoY increase in purchases
Ads paused in December due to demand
