Nécessaire
Brilliant paid media performance for the beloved body care company
Services
paid media
Overview
Nécessaire has redefined body care with effective, eco-conscious products sold online and through retailers like Nordstrom and Sephora. When iOS 14 disrupted the brand's existing paid media strategy, Nécessaire partnered with Darkroom to rebuild its acquisition engine across paid social, search, and creative, with urgency to perform for the critical end-of-year sales season.
Outcomes
118%
Paid Media Revenue Increase
43%
YoY Revenue Increase in Q4
01
An acquisition strategy broken by platform changes
Nécessaire had built a strong DTC business on the back of premium positioning, retail partnerships with Nordstrom and Sephora, and a paid media program that was performing well, until iOS 14 changed the rules. Apple's privacy update degraded the pixel-based tracking and retargeting infrastructure that the brand's paid social strategy relied on, and acquisition efficiency deteriorated at the worst possible time: heading into Q4. Darkroom identified that the fix wasn't incremental optimization, it was architectural. The brand needed a closed loop paid social strategy that bypassed traditional pixel tracking entirely, using first-party purchase data to build retargeting audiences with higher repurchase likelihood.
02
New infrastructure, new creative, compounding returns
Darkroom partnered with Nécessaire to deploy the closed loop strategy across Meta and search, replacing pixel-dependent retargeting with a system built on actual purchase behavior. In parallel, the team refreshed the brand's entire creative library with a new art direction, leveraging Nécessaire's influencer network to produce digitally native ads that felt editorial rather than promotional. The refreshed creative assets drove a 46% revenue increase over previous versions, and the program earned recognition from Varos as a top 1% Meta advertising program in beauty. The compounding effect of new infrastructure and new creative delivered a 118% paid media revenue increase and a 43% YoY revenue increase in Q4, proving that the right response to platform disruption isn't retreat, it's reinvention.
