Why September has felt flat, and what we're doing about it
- Last September dipped in exactly the same way, and picked back up from the last week of the month.
- Two things made it sharper this year: ads cost about 20% more to show, and our Tomato ads have run out of steam while still taking the biggest share of the budget.
- The fix is creative, not structure. Pause the tired ads, test new ones properly, refresh the Tomato copy for autumn, and rework our best Tomato video.
1. Why we're seeing the dip
Weekly Meta return on ad spend. Hover or tap a point for the exact figure.
Late August is strong every year, then the first half of September softens. Last year it recovered from around 22 September and October ran at 2.5x. On top of that, ads cost about 20% more to show than in August. Merging into one main campaign in late August wasn't the cause: the two weeks straight after it were our best of the quarter.
2. What's going on with Tomato
Tomato demand is fine. It still makes up about a third of what new customers buy first. What has worn out is the ads. There's been no fresh Tomato creative since mid-August, our best Tomato ad slid from 3.0x to about 1.2x, and Meta kept giving Tomato 40% to 60% of the budget as it faded. The Autumn range was returning nearly 2x on half the money.
| Week of | Tomato share of spend | Tomato return | Autumn range return |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20 Jul | 34% | 2.75x | not live |
| 24 Aug | 59% | 1.98x | not live |
| 7 Sep | 48% | 1.48x | 1.98x |
| 14 Sep | 40% | 1.31x | 1.94x |
3. What we'll pause
Seven ads that have clearly faded: five Tomato and two Orangery. Each has spent enough to judge, now costs well over £50 per sale, and is doing worse than it did a fortnight ago.
We keep the Tomato ads still paying their way so Tomato doesn't go dark while new creative is made.
We bring back a couple of strong older Tomato ads that did well in the summer and then stopped getting budget, with refreshed copy (see section 5).
4. How we'll test new ads
- New ideas go into a test campaign first, with enough budget behind each one to give a real answer in a week. Today the test budget is spread too thin to judge most ads.
- Winners move into the main campaign once a week, in one batch, keeping their likes and comments.
- For every ad we add, one tired ad comes out, so the main campaign stays focused.
- Fresh versions of a proven ad (a new opening on a format that already works) can skip the test, a few at a time, so Tomato gets new creative quickly.
5. Tomato copy and our best videos are summer-heavy
About three quarters of the text showing in Tomato ads talks about summer: "greenhouse in July", "summer in a candle", "limited run for summer only". It isn't measurably costing us yet, but it will read worse every week into autumn. And if Tomato is staying in the range, the "limited" and "you won't see again" lines are no longer true.
The copy: we'll write an autumn set for Tomato that keeps everything that works (the greenhouse scent, the Isle of Wight collaboration, the hand-thrown Pott, the refills) and drops the summer and "limited" wording. It will come to you for approval as usual.
Flora's video: our biggest Tomato video opens with "I have just found the scent of the summer" and ends on "summer in a candle". It's worked too well to retire, so we either reshoot the opening or re-edit it with a new voiceover. Most of it is product footage with her voice over the top, so new lines drop straight in. Only the first three seconds show her face.
What we need from you
- Is Tomato staying in the range through autumn? That decides whether any "limited" wording can stay.
- Could Flora re-record a few lines, ideally re-filming the three-second opening on her phone?
- Does whoever edited her video still have the original project files? The captions are burned in, so re-editing cleanly needs the version without captions.
We'll judge the month from 28 September, when last year's recovery was well under way. Happy to go through any of this in more detail on a call.