FIGHTWEAR · CREATIVE DIRECTION
Built for the people who actually train
How a fightwear brand stopped looking like everyone else on the mat and started selling the feeling of stepping up.
Creative direction + design · 2025 · Full angle library
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A behind-the-scenes look at the work, the thinking, and where I fit in. Some of these projects were collaborations.
Product
Image: Anaconda hero / campaign shot
Every fightwear brand looks the same
Walk into any gym and the rashguards all scream the same thing: skulls, snakes, tribal lines, and the word savage somewhere. Anaconda was drowning in a sea of edgy sameness. The product was great. The scroll didn't care. The job was to make people feel something before they ever read the word fightwear.
Image: the sea of sameness vs the Anaconda angle
Sell the step-up, not the spandex
So we stopped selling fabric and started selling the moment. The first class. The first time you don't gas out in round two. The quiet pride of the belt that finally fits.
Every angle came from how it actually feels to train, not a product spec sheet. People buy the version of themselves they're chasing. The spandex is just the delivery system.
A full angle library, built brief-first
Then we built the library. Statics across beginners, hobbyists, competitors, and the coach who's seen it all. Gritty gym shots, clean product holds, comparison angles, social proof. Same rule every time: lead with the feeling, earn the scroll, then show the gear.
Image: angle library across audiences
LIVE ON META
Proof, not promises
Pretty work that doesn't sell is just a mood board. So here's the part that counts. These ran live, against real budget, in a brutally competitive niche.
[Drop your ad-manager screenshots below and call the winner here. For example: this angle held the lowest cost per purchase for weeks and scaled past everything before it.]
Live Meta ads: winning creative (drop screenshots here)
AI did the heavy lifting. I did the taste.
A lot of this is AI-generated: the gym scenes, the lifestyle shots, the holds that look like a teammate snapped them between rounds. The trick isn't typing make a fightwear ad. It's knowing the angle, briefing the image so it lands real not stocky, and stepping in by hand so it converts. AI is the fastest junior designer alive. It just needs a strategist holding the pen.
Image: AI-generated gym scenes vs the brief
What it added up to
A deep, on-brand library that gave Anaconda a fresh angle to test every week, a look that stood out in a copy-paste category, and a clear answer to the only question that matters: did someone stop, feel it, and buy?
That's the job. That's the whole job.