EXTERNAL MARKETING PLAN CASE STUDY
Trust Over Trends: 12th State Nutrition
How a PhD nutrition coach (and his two very good dogs) turned deep expertise into a consistent, credibility-building content engine–no diet-culture gimmicks, no contracts, no perfectionism required.
Chris Eschbach knows nutrition. Like, really knows it. With a PhD in Human Performance and years of coaching both inside 12th State CrossFit and one-on-one with clients navigating everything from busy-parent chaos to GLP-1 medications, Chris had built something rare: a nutrition practice grounded in science, honesty, and zero food guilt. No tracking. No contracts. No “good foods vs. bad foods.” Just real habits, real accountability, and a coach who talks to you like a friend who happens to have a doctorate.
Here’s what Chris didn’t have: a way to get that out into the world. His client transformations were remarkable, his seminars were packed with teaching gold, and his instinct was to hit record and share it all — but as he put it himself, with characteristic honesty, “I talk for too long in most videos.” The expertise was overflowing. The system to translate it into consistent, watchable, trust-building content? That’s where we came in.
The Challenge
Turning a wealth of expertise and real client wins into consistent visibility—without borrowing a single trick from diet culture.
The nutrition space is loud. It’s saturated with before-and-after photos, “clean eating” rules, miracle swaps, and content designed to make you feel bad enough to buy something. 12th State Nutrition’s entire brand is a rejection of that — which is a beautiful differentiator and a genuine creative constraint. We couldn’t lean on the tactics that perform cheaply. Every claim had to be honest (fat loss benchmarked at a realistic ~2 lbs/month, GLP-1s discussed neutrally, no fear-mongering), and every piece of content had to sound like Chris: warm, direct, science-grounded, never preachy. Our challenge was to build a content machine that could compete for attention in a noisy space while playing entirely by the brand’s own rules.
Why 12th State Nutrition Chose Aligned
A partner small enough to truly know his business—and professional enough to make his marketing a real priority.
Chris found Aligned Marketing the way the best partnerships often start: through community. A member of his gym community, who happens to be a colleague of Madeline’s in another space, made the connection. Chris had weighed his options—doing it all himself, hiring a big agency, finding an intern—before realizing what he actually needed: someone who would treat his social media as a professional priority (not a side project), give him the insights and direction to film content with a clear purpose, and be small enough to genuinely understand a business as unique as his. A PhD coach running nutrition coaching out of a CrossFit gym with an anti-diet-culture philosophy isn’t a plug-and-play client. That’s exactly why we hit it off.
The Process
Part One: A Voice Worth Protecting
Before a single reel was filmed, we built the foundation: a full messaging guide capturing Chris’s voice, the “plate-ish” framework (protein, veggies, intentional carbs, planned snacks, hydration) for everyday content, and the deeper PLISH teaching layer for seminars and thought leadership. Just as importantly, we documented what the brand won’t say — no food hierarchies, no transformation-bait, no perfectionism. This voice guide now protects the brand in every caption, hook, and video concept we create.
Part Two: A Production Rhythm That Respects Real Life
We built a monthly production system designed around how Chris actually works: filming requests go out a month ahead with concepts, shot lists, and inspiration examples; Chris batch-films and uploads; our team handles editing briefs, scheduling, and posting. When “day in the life” content felt intimidating to produce, we redesigned it — simple b-roll meal clips paired with a separately recorded voice memo — and the intimidation vanished. Chris films, coaches, and lives his life. We handle the rest.
Part Three: Test, Learn, Repeat
Rather than guessing what would land, we ran an ongoing trial reel program—intentionally simple, design-light videos tested against cold audiences to learn which hooks and concepts actually resonate. The discoveries shaped everything: “what I eat in a day” became the best-performing format, a creatine explainer became the surprise follower magnet, and—our favorite—we learned that Chris’s direct-to-camera videos filmed outdoors on his daily dog walks (with Chief and Tucker as recurring cast members) consistently outperform anything filmed indoors. The best filming setup turned out to be something Chris was already doing every day. For an anti-perfectionism nutrition coach, it doesn’t get more on-brand than that.
Part Four: Mining the Goldmine
Chris’s best marketing material was hiding in plain sight: six months of seminar recordings and coaching session notes, which we consolidated into organized, reusable reference documents, plus eight rounds of client Q&A interviews. The verbatim language of real clients now fuels our hooks and captions, and real corporate wellness outcomes—meaningful weight loss in the early weeks of a 6-Week Challenge, an A1C improvement, participants competing for the challenge leaderboard—became credible proof points for the B2B side on LinkedIn
The Results
Let’s be upfront, because that’s how both Chris and Aligned like to operate: this isn’t a going-viral story.
In our time working together this year, the account has grown by roughly 150 followers—modest on paper, but that number tells the smallest part of the story. Engagement has increased substantially, views have grown dramatically [METRIC: total views / reach % from Later/Meta], and the content is doing exactly what it was designed to do: building a credibility and reputation machine that helps Chris convert warm leads and gives new people a reason to trust the 12th State brand over time.
We’ll say it here like we say it in every case study: virality is never guaranteed, and anyone who promises it is selling you something. The nutrition space changes daily, the competition is fierce, and 12th State deliberately refuses the cheap tactics that inflate numbers. What consistent, honest, well-tested content can do is exactly what it’s doing—Chris regularly hears positive feedback about the content from clients and people around the gym, his expertise is finally visible in a form people actually watch, and every post compounds the trust that his business is built on. We’re equally honest with each other about what’s still in progress: translating that trust into a steady stream of cold nutrition leads is the current frontier, and it’s actively shaping our next moves together, including lead magnet development and a more nutrition-forward presence on Instagram.
And the intangibles? They’re the strong suit: a repeatable content system instead of ad hoc filming—Chris batch-films on a predictable rhythm and we handle everything else. A voice document that protects the brand from diet-culture drift. Six months of his teaching captured, organized, and reusable forever. A coach who’s visibly more comfortable on camera (turns out dog walks beat wall-sits). And the confidence that his expertise is being translated, never diluted.
“What I eat in a day”—our best-performing trial reel format, designed to reach cold audiences with the plate-ish framework in its most practical form.
A peek at our monthly content request system—every concept, shot list, and inspiration example mapped out a month ahead, so filming never feels like a scramble.
The winning format we discovered through testing: direct-to-camera videos filmed on Chris’s daily dog walks, starring recurring cast members Chief and Tucker.
Turning real corporate challenge outcomes into B2B proof points on LinkedIn—building the case for 12th State’s 6-Week Challenges with employer partners.
Mary and Scott, Co-Directors, the Grand Western Tour