Black Friday Cyber Monday is the most competitive selling window in the retail calendar, and the easiest way to win it is also the most expensive: discount harder than everyone else. TDMC took The North Face in a different direction - moving away from a traditional, discount-heavy promotional month toward a high-urgency, strategy-led approach built on intent-based bidding, precision Meta targeting, and a deliberately condensed promotional calendar. The result was a 105% year-on-year increase in net sales, beating targets by 148% - achieved while cutting Google ad spend by 20%.
01
Executive Summary
02
Introduction
The North Face built its name on performance gear for people who push limits, which made it fitting that its BFCM 2025 campaign did the same. With the busiest, most contested retail week of the year ahead, the brand needed a strategy that could outperform the competition without simply outspending it.
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The Challenge
Winning BFCM without relying on bigger discounts.
The traditional playbook for the period - month-long, discount-heavy promotions - drives volume but erodes margin. The North Face needed record results without defaulting to that trade-off.
Doing more with 20% less Google ad spend.
Rather than scaling budget to chase scale, the brief called for genuine efficiency gains within a reduced spend.
A shorter Meta promotional window than the algorithm prefers.
Condensed three-day deal cycles meant Meta's algorithms had far less time in their learning phase than usual - typically a real disadvantage for paid performance.
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The Solution
TDMC built the campaign around three things working in concert: smarter bidding, sharper targeting, and a fundamentally different promotional structure.
Google Ads: efficiency over volume
Branded Search shifted from a Maximise Clicks strategy to Maximise Conversions, lifting conversions by 120%. Favourable auction conditions were capitalised on to bring CPCs down by 39%, which in turn drove a 106% increase in click-through rate. Together, these shifts delivered a 74% improvement in ROAS - all while spending 20% less than the previous year.
Meta: precision targeting across a multi-pillar funnel
Despite the shortened learning window created by three-day deal cycles, Meta performance was built across three coordinated pillars: Advantage+ Shopping campaigns to scale purchases using AI-driven optimisation, database-only warm audience campaigns to reach existing fans cost-effectively, and aggressive dynamic retargeting to recapture high-intent users who'd abandoned their carts. The combination drove a 185% surge in purchases and a 267% increase in conversion value, culminating in a ROAS of 29.64 - a 343% increase year-on-year.
Rethinking the promotional calendar
The single biggest lever, underneath all of it, was structural. Moving away from a month of background discounting, the campaign shifted to a condensed three-day flash sale designed to create genuine scarcity and urgency. That shift alone lifted overall account conversion rates by 16%, increased average order value by 26% during the sale period, and drove a 98% uplift in total conversion value.
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Results
Every layer of the strategy compounded into a BFCM period that outperformed on every front.
- 105% year-on-year increase in net sales, exceeding targets by 148%
- 74% improvement in Google Ads ROAS, achieved alongside a 20% reduction in ad spend
- 120% increase in Google Ads conversions, with CTR up 106% and CPCs down 39%
- 185% increase in Meta purchases and a 267% increase in conversion value
- ROAS of 29.64 on Meta - a 343% increase year-on-year
- 16% rise in conversion rate, 26% increase in AOV, and a 98% uplift in conversion value, driven by the shift to a condensed, urgency-led promotional structure
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Conclusion
The North Face's 2025 BFCM result makes a clear case: in the most competitive week of the retail year, spending more isn't what wins - spending smarter is. By pairing sophisticated, intent-led bidding with a promotional structure built around genuine urgency rather than blanket discounting, TDMC helped The North Face post record-breaking revenue while protecting the margin that volume-driven discounting usually costs. It's proof that the steepest climb of the retail calendar can still be a controlled ascent, not a scramble.
