Truth Belt Co.
Story-driven content cut their cost per customer by 60%.
- South Florida
- DTC apparel
- Video and photography
The story
Truth Belt Co. is a South Florida brand selling handmade leather belts and hats. We produced all of their video and photography; their agency ran the ads on our creative.
The results
- Cost to acquire one customer
- $100 → $40
- Lower acquisition cost
- 60%
- Lifetime value per customer
- $90 → $350
- Lifetime value vs. cost to acquire each customer
- 0.9× → 8.8×
Each customer now costs less than half as much to win and spends almost four times as much over their lifetime with the brand. Trust keeps them coming back.
The challenge
Win customers’ trust fast enough to buy from an ad.
TruthBelt sells a product people wear every day and want to believe in. Each new customer was costing more than $100 to win through paid ads. The brand needed content that made a stranger trust them in a few seconds.
What performed best
Story beat the product showcase.
The highest-performing short-form ads were story-driven videos of the product being used in the real world, not studio product spots. People buy from brands they trust, and they trust what looks real.
What we made
One crew, every asset the brand needed.
- 01
Real people in the gear
Lifestyle golfers and models we cast, wearing the belts and hats out in the world.
- 02
The craft, behind the scenes
The team hand-making the leather belts, showing the work in every piece.
- 03
Interviews with the founders
The people behind the brand, on camera, explaining why it exists.
- 04
Photos, commercials, shorts
Product and lifestyle stills, brand commercials and short-form ads from the same shoots.
What we learned
The structure that worked: hook, retain, reward.
Every short-form video was built on the same three beats, shot with a polished, professional look and driven by a story rather than a product pitch.
- 01 · Hook
Stop the scroll
The first seconds open on a person and a moment, not a product on a table.
- 02 · Retain
Tell the story
The viewer stays for the story: who wears it, who makes it, and why it matters to them.
- 03 · Reward
Pay it off
The product shows up in real use as the payoff, so the sale feels earned.
The metric that matters
100,000 views mean nothing if 99,900 are the wrong people.
We stopped judging content by views and started judging it by cost per customer and lifetime value. A video earns its keep when the right buyer watches, trusts the brand and comes back to buy again.
Paid and organic work together
Ads push it. Story makes people engage.
An ad budget is what puts content in front of buyers at scale. But the story-driven videos also drew the most organic engagement, and that’s the signal that a story is landing before you spend money behind it.
What we’d do differently
Less product, more documentary.
Next time we’d spend fewer shoot hours on product shots and more on production and the story itself. A documentary-style story drives the product further than another clean product shot.
What happened next
Jared is bringing us his next brands.
After working together, TruthBelt’s owner, Jared Stanton, told us he wants Seaside Media to produce content for the other brands he’s building. He’d seen the value of professional video built on storytelling.
I trust Seaside Media to bring my creative vision to life while making the filming experience feel natural and comfortable. They have a gift for capturing the heart behind a vision and telling a story. They’re my go to and my first recommendation for anyone looking to tell their brands story, promote their brand, or bring a creative idea to life!
Watch the film
Meet Jared and Kendyl, the founders of Truth Belt Co.
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