System One
While your agency reports ROAS, your leadership team & board are asking about profit.
System One is Zephyr’s proprietary commercial model & operating methodology. System One both runs and measures your growth as a visible daily P&L. Each dollar of ad spend reconciled against gross profit, live, presented in one place that you & your CFO can easily view.
“Zephyr’s team sit down with myself, our CFO, brands leads & the board. They function outside just the ad account.”
Nathan, Group CEO, The Leisures Collective
01
Diagnose the profit gap, not the ad account.
02
Architect against contribution margin.
03
Execute on concepts, not variations.
04
Compound on a daily P&L.
The reframe
Platform dashboards typically score Ads.
Your D2C business needs to be constantly scoring profit.
Having spent almost $100m in media across our team, we’ve seen where things can come unstuck. Spend too much and your margin evaporates with too much reliance on LTV being stronger than it likely is. Spend too little and you’re handing growth on a silver platter to your competitor and leaving market share on the table. The problem we’ve found is that reporting, whether agency or software, doesn’t give a proper indication of what’s actually happening and which direction the brand should move in when it comes to media planning, risk mitigation and capital decisions that deeply affect the business. This gap is what System One closes.
The core problems most brands miss
01
A Comprehensive Diagnosis
While most brands think they have a platform issue, it could be a creative, structural or commercial problem. This needs to be diagnosed effectively before budget is touched, or media is scaled or pulled back.
02
A Measurement Problem
ROAS as a north star presents significant problems. It can double count, it ignores margin, and as the industry knows, there is constant attribution noise. This results in hitting the target on the dashboard and still losing money on each new customer you buy.
03
A Data Problem
Whether it is Meta, Google, Shopify, GA4 or Klaviyo, each platform and tool tells a partial element of the overall commercial story. Very rarely do we see brands that join every component back to real profit on a daily basis, meaning the full data picture rarely exists.
04
A Mislabelling Problem
It sounds simple, but in our experience most ‘contribution margin’ labels have not been properly configured. For example, CM2 wearing a CM3 label without ad spend properly subtracted. The flow-on effect shows profitability while the account is underwater after the retainer.
The operating metric
The North Star Operating Metric. GP:nCAC
Our team run every account against GP:nCAC. This is gross profit divided by what it costs to actually acquire a new customer. This enforces using real margin that platform attribution can’t inflate, or on the rare occasion deflate. Revenue and nCAC come directly from Shopify, not from the platforms marking their own homework.
Reduce
< 1.0
Acquisition is losing money. Pull spend back and fix the unit economics first.
Steady
1.0 to 2.0
Working, but thin. Hold spend while efficiency improves.
Scale
2.0 to 3.0
Healthy. Every new customer pays for the next one.
Scale harder
> 3.0
You are likely under-spending. Growth is being left on the table.
One guardrail: if payback stretches past six months, the verdict downgrades to hold. Cash matters more than ratios.
The margin ladder
Marketing enters at CM3. Most reporting hides that.
One definition of contribution margin, mirrored across the platform. Marketing is a cost of the sale, therefore it should sit inside the margin, not below it. Your accountant will verify this.
Net sales (tax inclusive)
Net sales
minus GST
Net revenue (ex tax) · the margin base
minus COGS
CM1 · product margin
minus shipping, freight, fees
CM2 · true gross margin
minus ad spend, agency fees
CM3 · contribution margin
minus opex
Net profit
Four rules the ladder enforces
→
Breakeven MER is 1 ÷ CM2, never 1 ÷ CM1. Get this wrong and every floor is understated.
→
Agency fees sit above CM3, never in opex. Buried in opex, a brand reads profitable while underwater after the retainer.
→
A contribution margin that has not subtracted ad spend is CM2 mislabelled.
→
Headline revenue, MER and nCAC come from Shopify, not platform attribution. Platform ROAS lives only inside the channel detail.
The method
Diagnose. Architect. Execute. Compound.
01
DIAGNOSE
Find the constraint before you spend against it.
Every source is pulled and scored into one composite audit. Meta creative performance and quality (every creative, spend-weighted, benchmarked against category leaders), unit economics and Klaviyo email are live today. Google Ads, SEO, campaign structure and onsite are next. A deep audit ships whole, recommendations included, as an 18-tab workbook.
We ask
What is holding the account back, the media or the economics underneath it?
02
ARCHITECT
Plan against contribution margin, not last month’s ROAS.
We set nCAC ceilings by channel, compute breakeven MER from true gross margin, and plan spend against the profit frontier. Two revenue engines forecast separately: new-customer revenue against an acquisition MER floor, and blended. Blended alone over-buys for repeat-heavy brands.
We ask
At what spend does the next dollar still come back at margin?
03
EXECUTE
Creative is the targeting. Concepts move spend.
Meta reads inside the creative to decide who sees it, so a performance problem is almost never a targeting or bidding problem. We test concepts, not variations. A new hook on the same story is an iteration. A new story is a concept.
Portfolio, not hero ad. Every creative fatigues. About one new ad per $1,000 of monthly spend. Hit rates rarely exceed 15%.
Seven format families, by the job the ad does: fake-native, negative hook, contrast, proof, teaching, treatment, offer. Leaders cover most top-of-funnel families plus offer at the bottom.
Creative is a profit centre. Most brands underspend on production.
Funnel continuity. Where the click lands matters more than the ad. Angle-matched landers, not generic product pages.
We ask
Is this a new argument, or the same argument in a new outfit?
04
COMPOUND
One daily P&L, reconciled every day.
Ad spend is reconciled against gross profit every day and published as a P&L your CFO can open. It compounds because every decision, media and creative, is measured against the same one number. Honesty gates are built in: COGS only shows when the full window is covered, a panel that can’t cover its window does not render, and sales tax is stripped before any margin is computed.
We ask
Did last month’s decision actually show up in profit?
System One, live
System One is a live, always running platform
This is not a framework presented each quarter and reported on monthly. This is software that both your team and our team open every day.
▶
Track profit daily with a live P&L
Ad spend, revenue and gross profit reconciled every day, not rebuilt at month end.
Creative graded on cost per purchase
Every ad scored on what it buys, not what it clicks. Winners scaled, losers cut, on evidence.
Budget paced to the profit frontier
Spend moves to where the next dollar earns the most contribution, and stops where it doesn’t.
Finance-grade reporting
Numbers your CFO can take to the board without translating them first.
Our credentials
$100m
Lifetime media spend managed
$2b+
Portfolio gross merchandise value
100+
Brands
50+
Five-star Google reviews · 4.9 rating
Operating principles
The Operating Principles that we live & die by
01
We measure against one P&L
The platform will always report the flattering number. Measure against one P&L, not the platform trying to sell you more spend.
02
Diagnose before we prescribe
The constraint is very rarely the actual media. It’s typically the margin, the offer, the structure or the creative.
03
Evidence or it doesn’t ship
Each recommendation ties back to data from which educated decisions can be made.
04
Daily P&L is the same view for you & us
Your frame is our frame. When things aren’t working, we don’t shy away, we get critical and proactive.
The entry point
Book a Free Commercial Diagnostic.
Completely free, no strings attached. You keep the findings either way.
The diagnostic itself is the pitch. If the numbers reflect that you don’t need us, we will openly share those findings.
Cost
Free
Timeframe
Days, not weeks
Deliverable
Recorded walkthrough plus strategy call
Designed for
Ecommerce and consumer brands
This is the system we’ve used to scale 100+ of Australia’s fastest growing brands.
4.9
★★★★★
50+ five-star Google reviews
Selected work
Numbers we can put our name to.
Real accounts, real spend, and the working behind every figure. Each one measured against margin, not platform ROAS.
All case studies
Read the story →
Better Beer
380m+
Impressions
$15
nCAC
Driving growth for one of Australia’s leading and fastest growing independent beer brands; innovating a new category of beer.
Read the story →
CASIO G-SHOCK
3x
Oceania eCom Revenue
7-figure+
Media spend
Powering both eCommerce revenue growth and performance media for an iconic global brand.
Read the story →
Budgy Smuggler
20%
Uplift on Q4 Revenue
16.7x
Q4 aMER
Cutting acquisition cost across three international markets over the biggest period of the year, Q4.
Read the story →
The Collagen Co
150%
YoY Revenue Uplift
40%
Lower nCAC
From glow up to scale up for a global wellness giant. Scaling media from $100 per day to $3,000.
Read the story →
Nagnata
30%
YoY eCom growth
$20
Average nCAC on scale
Turning an elevated aesthetic into scalable, profitable acquisition. Creating an eCommerce engine for a leading fashion brand.
What clients say
Don’t just take our word for it.
Our team at Vaikobi have been working with Zephyr for over five years now and have achieved incredible results in our online performance. Together we have undertaken some major online marketing campaigns and projects which contributed to amazing growth for our brand.
Vaikobi
Patrick Langley
The team at Zephyr are an absolute dream to work with. They're efficient, incredibly attentive, and their attention to detail is exactly what we need at Better Beer. Couldn't recommend them highly enough.
Better Beer
Tessabella Reid
After years of working with agencies who overpromised and underdelivered, Zephyr came in and completely flipped the script. They took the time to understand our business, our goals, and our audience, and the results? Next level.
Skin Social
Sarah Perry
Incredibly knowledgeable, proactive, and always ready with thoughtful suggestions. Their gentle, considered approach has supported us in growing our revenue in a steady and sustainable way. We feel very lucky to have them as an extension of our team.
FIGUR
Jasmin Telford
I have been working with Zephyr for a couple of years now as our trusted marketing partner at Top Athlete, and the growth we've seen during this time has been superb. They understand our brand, adapt quickly, and always go the extra mile to ensure we're scaling effectively.
Top Athlete
Tony Banga
After years of jumping from agency to agency and trying different strategies, we made the switch to Zephyr last year and it has been one of the best things we've done for our online business. Incredible results already, can't wait to keep it going.
Creatures of Leisure
Nathan Omodei
We went through a handful of agencies before deciding it was too hard. After our first call we felt at ease, we'd finally found a team focused on growing our business, not focused solely on the metrics. Nothing is too hard, the team are readily available and highly capable.
Skin Social
Matt Perry
We love working with Zephyr. Their knowledge of Meta and Google best practice lets you get the most out of your account. They deliver on time, to budget and at a very high standard, even sometimes on a smaller budget.
Boodles
Nora Gordon
Zephyr Social have been supporting Better Beer for the last couple of years and have been an incredible extension of our marketing team. They always provide strategic insights, constructive feedback and go above and beyond their scope of work.
Better Beer
Hannah Goodey
Explore why 100+ of Australia’s fastest growing brands choose Zephyr One.
4.9
★★★★★
50+ five-star Google reviews
FAQ
Questions, Answered.
What kind of brands do you work with?
What makes you different?
Do you replace our in-house team?
How fast will we see results?
What does it cost to work together?
Which channels do you run?
Are we locked into a long contract?
Let’s talk numbers
Ready to scale on profit?
Whether you are scaling past seven-figure months or answering to a board, the first diagnostic is free and the findings are yours either way.