Case Study · Telehealth
Fella Health — Built For Bigger Guys
Made men’s weight loss ads something men would actually click — and then made them scale.
Client
Fella Health
Industry
Telehealth / DTC Health
Channel
Meta Ads
Services
Creative Strategy · Paid Social · Iterative Testing
The Challenge
A category sold as gender-neutral, but messaging was all women.
Fella Health does one thing – GLP-1 weight loss. The recent GLP-1 boom started as gender-neutral yet messaging — the imagery, the language, the brands — was all for women. Men were on the medication and quietly losing the weight but nobody was actually talking to them.
Fella wanted to claim that space, to be the name men reach for first, own it and scale across the US and UK. Success came down to a single number — CPA under $300 at scale, and held there.
The catch was limited assets to work with. There’s no product to photograph, just a prescription and an app, so the account was starved of raw material. A thin creative pipeline can’t feed the volume of testing that we needed so had to be innovative.
The Customer
The barrier to purchase was never medical. It was shame.
I built the audience off the real friction in the category — what men actually feel about weight-loss drugs. This was pulled from review mining, men’s-health forums, and competitor analysis.
The insight learnt was what stops these men is shame. The fear of being read as lazy, of taking the easy way out. Plus most men won’t even admit they’re trying to lose weight.
The Go-Getter — driven exec, 38
Driver: wants to feel sharp, in control, present for work and his kids again.
Hesitation: a weight-loss programme feels like admitting failure.
Job to be done: a discreet, doctor-led system that fits a packed calendar and never makes him feel like a patient.
The Sceptic — tried everything, 45
Driver: exhausted by diets that work for a month, then fail.
Hesitation: half-convinced GLP-1 is a fad, wary of needles, unsure its for a body like his.
Job to be done: medical credibility, and proof this was designed for men , not women.
The Angles
One message, four ways in
Core message: weight loss engineered for men, handled by doctors, on your terms. Four angles tested, each pulling a different tension.
- Engineered for men (winner) — identity and belonging
- How GLP-1 actually works — scepticism and credibility
- Disarm-the-shame humour — meets the shame barrier head-on
- Your health, handled — the time-poor exec’s need for control and convenience
The Creative
Something out of nothing
No product to photograph turns an asset problem into a creative one. The solution was a AI generative pipeline. Midjourney for hyperreal lifestyle and concept imagery, Blender for 3D product motion.
The idea was put identity at the centre of each ad. From a a man holding out the waistband of his old trousers, caught mid-burger at his desk or standing in the gym. Messaging leant on humour that named the shame out loud — a cheeseburger strung up in a noose, “you’re not weak”. Clinical product renders and doctor-led proof gave the final proof points to purchase — 12.3% average body-weight loss, money-back guarantee, clinician support.
The Approach
A creative pipeline, turned into a testing framework.
To ensure scale, we developed a disciplined iterative testing framework. Every test stayed a pure test – changing three elements so Meta classified them as original ads but limited enough so we always knew exactly which lever moved the number.
This discipline, fed by the generative asset pipeline, took creative output from 5 to 40 ads a month without blowing the timeline, giving the account the volume of clean signal that profitable scale actually needs.
The Results
The work pulled CPA under the brand’s commercial line and held it there as spend climbed — proof that men’s weight loss could scale profitably, not just cheaply at small budgets. That unlocked the growth the brand was reaching for.
−54% CPA
Cut to ~$240 at scale, from ~$520 — under the $300 target.
3× spend
Tripled budget with CPA still falling. Efficient scale, not bought volume.
5 → 40
Ads per month — 4–8× the testing throughput, same timelines.
Efficiency held while spend scaled — the only kind of result a CFO actually believes.
The Takeaway
When the asset cupboard is bare, volume of clean creative signal beats one big idea. By pointing at the one tension the category ignored, Fella Health didn’t just lower CPA, it made a niche a category.
Got a number that needs moving?
Chris Hallam 