# Dollar Shave Club Produces 90% of Ads In-House, Uses AI for the Last 10%

*The DTC razor brand cut agency spend by building creative capacity internally, then deployed AI to close the remaining gap.*

By **Jenny Huang Goodman MPA MSc MHSA, Principal** — The Stash Edge, Hako Shikin LLC.
Published 2026-07-07.

Canonical: https://www.pops4.com/stash/articles/dollar-shave-club-2026-07-07t09-5
Subject: Dollar Shave Club
Tags: in-house creative, ai advertising, dtc marketing, agency replacement, creative automation

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Dollar Shave Club produces **90%** of its advertising internally, according to Digiday, and the company is now using AI tools to handle the remaining **10%** that historically required outside agency work. The shift represents a structural move in how physical-product brands allocate creative budgets: build the repeatable work in-house, then automate the exceptions.

The brand built an internal creative team capable of producing the majority of its video, display, and email assets without outsourcing. This approach gave Dollar Shave Club control over speed, consistency, and cost. For the **10%** of projects that required specialized execution—complex animations, niche formats, or one-off campaigns—the company historically turned to agencies. Now it deploys AI platforms to generate those assets directly, eliminating the vendor relationship for most edge cases.

The mechanism works because advertising for physical products follows predictable patterns. A brand running direct-response campaigns on Meta or Google needs dozens of creative variations each month: product shots on different backgrounds, lifestyle contexts, headline variants, aspect ratios for Stories versus Feed. An in-house team can standardize templates and shoot schedules. AI tools like Midjourney for image generation or Runway for video editing fill the gaps when the calendar demands a format the team has not pre-built.

For a small physical-product brand, the play scales down cleanly. Start by identifying the **three to five ad formats** that drive most of your revenue. These are typically static product images, short video demos, and carousel ads showing use cases. Shoot a library of raw assets in one session: your product on a white background, in a hand, on a counter, in use. Store these in a simple folder system. Use Canva or Figma to create templates for each format, then swap in different headlines, colors, or crops. This covers the repeatable **80%** to **90%**.

For the remaining **10%**, deploy AI where you lack internal skill. If you need a lifestyle scene but cannot afford a photoshoot, generate backgrounds in Midjourney and composite your product using Photoshop's generative fill. If you need a 15-second video but lack editing chops, describe the sequence in Runway or Descript and let the tool assemble it. The cost per asset drops from **$500** to **$2,000** for an agency deliverable to under **$50** in software fees and your own time. The quality ceiling is lower, but the speed and iteration rate are higher.

The broader pattern is that creative production is becoming a build-versus-buy decision, and the break-even point favors building earlier than it did five years ago. A solo founder can now produce the volume of assets that previously required a retainer. The constraint shifts from budget to taste: you need to know what works, not how to make it. Dollar Shave Club's move signals that in-house plus AI is now the default posture, and agencies become specialists for the work that still requires human direction.

## The takeaway

Build templates for your repeating ad formats, shoot raw assets in bulk, then use AI to fill format gaps you cannot pre-build.

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## Publisher

**Hako Shikin LLC** — Virginia Beach, Virginia. Founded 1997. ASI 217876 · DUNS 18-204-6339.
Principal and author: **Jenny Huang Goodman MPA MSc MHSA**.

- Author: https://www.huanggoodman.com/about
- LLM context: https://www.pops4.com/stash/llms.txt
- MCP endpoint, for AI agents: https://mcp.pops4.com/mcp
- Client dashboard: https://dashboard.pops4.com/
- Catalogue: 70,000+ products, 200+ brands