Jack (00:00)
Hey everyone, welcome to another 4Play fireside. How are you doing, Jake? I haven't seen you since the Unverified Ad Awards.
Jake Abrams (00:06)
I'm good, doing well, happy to be here.
Jack (00:09)
In case you guys don't know, not that he needs an introduction, Jake is the founder of Odyssey. And today we're going to be talking about how to take one great creative idea and turn it into infinite creative assets. So let's get into it. Take it away, Jake.
Jake Abrams (00:23)
Awesome. I will just kind of pull up my screen and we'll start walking through everything.
All right, can you see my screen? Cool.
Jack (00:51)
Yeah, I see it.
Jake Abrams (00:55)
All right, so for today, as ⁓ you mentioned, Jack, we're talking about how to transform one breakthrough creative idea into as many assets or executions as possible. In terms of what we'll go through, here's the plan of action for today. And I'll start with just a quick intro about myself so that people know who's talking.
I'm Jake. I'm the founder of Odyssey. ⁓ We're a creative led growth agency. I've been working in consumer marketing for over 10 years, helping brands grow through creative strategy, ⁓ growth principles, things like that. Previously, I worked at a few different startups and a global ad agency. ⁓ And at Odyssey, I've had the opportunity to work with probably over a hundred different brands, including brands like CareWay, Jones or Beauty.
Insurify ⁓ and many others.
Um, so let's get into it. So I'm to start talking about this, call it like the creative value problem. So the creative value problem and any creative strategist, anyone who works in DTC makes ads for a living understands this. The creative value problem means that the value of any creative is unknown until it's tested. So if you're spending
$500 to make a video, that video could be worth 500K in conversion value if it takes off and scales, or it could be worth literally nothing. Maybe it's a dud, it barely gets any spend, and it's turned off, and you invested the same amount of money.
So a lot of people, when you tell them they have to ship a high volume of things, the natural reaction is to try to push back on that. ⁓ my attitude that I have taken on is really just suck it up. Like volume is part of the skill of creative strategy and you should just embrace that and work backwards from that, embrace the creative value problem. So you need to optimize for quality.
Quality still is the most important thing, but you need to be able to deliver that quality while also optimizing for volume and cost. Highest volume of quality creative assets for the lowest cost, that's actually your entire purpose as a brand, as a creative strategist, as a growth marketer working in this field.
So how do you do that? Just basically like decide you're going to ship an insanely high amount of volume and work backwards from that and use what I call the LeBron creation system where there's one powerful focal point that creates this ripple effect and multiplier impact. Just like LeBron impacts everybody else on the floor because he's just so good and has this multiplier effect.
you want to take that same approach. using this system, you're going to go deep once on research and then multiply across different audiences, different angles, different proven formats, different awareness levels. And if you do that, you can turn one session of deep work into hundreds of high quality creatives and solve the creative value problem.
So let's kind of get into all of the steps. research is the most important step of the creative strategy process. You should spend probably 50 % of your time here, since it's going to set the foundation for everything to come. And if that foundation isn't strong, then everything else that you execute on top of it is going to falter. So you're going to use this four-step research framework that I'm going to walk through each step.
on these following slides.
So past performance. So using tools like even if it's just a Google spreadsheet or Looker or Motion or ForPlay, you're going to want to have reports set up of how your ads in your ad account are doing. So you want reports for top performing ads. You want reports for losing ads, which is something a lot of people overlook. You want winning hooks. You want to set up comparison reports of
all the different variables that you're testing, like how does audience one comparing to audience two or going deeper into pivots, how is audience one combined with angle one compared to audience one with angle two. And you can kind of get a feel for what's working and what's not.
⁓ and then beyond the performance in the ad account, want to look at comparable brands. would say a lot of people make, I think the mistake of looking at direct competitors and that can be part of what you do, but you really want to look beyond just direct competitors, use foreplay to identify high performing ads from brands that are adjacent to you. Maybe they have a similar audience or.
are in a similar category or they have a similar AOV and Use Foreplay is your creative inspiration hub for organizing all of those references.
Jack (06:41)
Jake, do you want to take questions on the fly, or do you want to save them for the end? We've got an interesting one from Sarah here on Creative Volume.
Jake Abrams (06:49)
yeah, I think I'll just answer, answer them as they go. So I think it just disappeared. the question was, why can't I launch just one really good ad? ⁓ so I would say quality is still the number one thing. but they're still, even if you feel really good about, about that one ad.
there's still a really good chance that like it doesn't take off. So you need to give yourself more swings and it's about balancing quality with enough volume to give yourself enough swings to solve the creative value problem to like help you scale and add account. So I would say like the skill is really understanding how you can do both while still prioritizing quality. And that's what this system is really all about.
Jack (07:44)
I like the analogy of giving yourself more swings, because if you only have one ad, it's like putting all of your chips on black. Better work, right? Because otherwise, you know, you're stuck. It's sort of like having a store with only one product. That better be a really good product, right?
Jake Abrams (08:01)
Exactly. Yep.
⁓ so next step of the research process is looking at organic channels to figure out what, what's resonating there. So every creative strategist should be on TikTok. I'm on TikTok all the time, probably too much. And I found that an amazingly predictable strategy for making winning ads is just find videos that have gone viral on TikTok that are generally within the category of your brand.
⁓ either a straight organic video or a TikTok shop affiliate video, then, ⁓ adapt that like 20 to 30 % for your brand. So you want to have this ongoing system using like using foreplay. That's what I use to save these TikToks or, you know, use AI to scrape them and surface them to you so that you have this whole library of stuff that already worked and already
proved that it would resonate and you can adapt it for your brand and have a higher chance of making a winning ad.
and then probably the most underrated source of insights is it's just from your customers. And the reason is that the voice of your customer is your vote. Your competitors, other brands, they don't have access to the words of your customers or like the feedback that you're getting from your customers. So a really good system for doing this is just export a CSV of.
your reviews and or your post purchase surveys, get super organized about it, separate it out by product. And then you can use tools to essentially just mine the reviews for insights. So I'm using this to reframe the pain points in the customer's language, ⁓ reframe the benefits in the customer's language.
Understand the specific objections and the order of priority of those objections and even understand trigger events for buying and all that. The answers are in your customer reviews. You just need to run the analysis on.
So that's everything within research. then we're going to move on to the road mapping. So the creative roadmap, it's this high level library of all your ideas tied back to the research. So this is something, ⁓ you definitely want to do at least like monthly. ⁓ we do it quarterly and it's just ensuring that you're kind of putting specific concepts against all that research that you just did.
So I love running a team brainstorm to generate the first draft of the roadmap because I, I'm firmly of the belief that the best ideas typically come when people are talking to each other and building on ideas. It's really hard to just break off by yourself and come up with a bunch of really good ideas. So process for this is the person. Usually it's the creative strategist who is in charge of the creative for the account. They're gonna.
do all of that research that I just described and then build a Google Doc that organizes all of that and send that out at least a few days to everyone else who's touching that account. And everybody has a chance to review. So everybody's informed and the brainstorm will be built on the research and not just like random ideas. And then you can use a Google Doc. You can use things like FigJam.
⁓ which is what I have shown here. And typically you can get a hundred, maybe even more informed good concepts from a single one and a half hour session. And all of a sudden that creative strategist, all your work is mostly done. You just need to go execute and you didn't have to do it all yourself.
where do you go to research posts that work on tick tock? I honestly, the best for me is just being on tick tock and saving the stuff that I see. Like if I see, if I scroll past a tick tock shop affiliate video that has insane amounts of engagement, ⁓ clearly it worked. Like it found its way to me. It has a bunch of likes. It has a bunch of comments. ⁓
If I watch it and I'm like, that was really interesting. I will just save it. And I'm doing that every single day. And I'm using tools like foreplay to organize all of that in a space that all my team members can access. So that's really the best way I know. Other people are using tools to scrape TikTok based off hashtags or usernames and other things. And I've dabbled in that still working on that, but yeah, I usually just.
I'm on TikTok and saving stuff constantly. Um, after the brainstorm, you're going to get into building out the roadmap. use a notion database for this, which is what I've shown here. And, um, this is really going to be, um, kind of where everything is organized and you're going to have like your concept name. You're going to have a reference link. You're going to have your audience, your angle.
⁓ your offer, your summary, your hypothesis, really all of that key fields that are going to tie back to each concept.
So we've done all the research, we've done the planning and the road mapping. So now we're ready to go write the hero concept. So you're to want to start with your absolute biggest swing. So out of all your research, there's probably one concept that you're most excited about. It's probably the longest concept. It's the one that's highest up in the funnel. And that's what you want to start with.
It's the one that addresses the full customer journey. It talks about the problem. It agitates the problem. talks about the solution. It's the full explanation of the product. Start there because then it's much easier to like work your way down from that.
And then write your best script for that concept. So pick one audience, pick the most promising angle from all the research and write the absolute best 90 second script you can possibly write.
as far as AI as part of this process, I use AI as my writing partner. So, you know, I'm going to use Claude or typing mind to help with the scripting process. ⁓ I've set up AI agents for every brand that we work with, and that's been really helpful. ⁓ so I would say that should be your partner, not a replacement. ⁓
for your creative process.
So once you've written the hero, now you're going to write alternate versions of the hero. So exact same audience, but now you're going to write for four to five different angles. So you've already done all of that deep work on that audience. You've already written a script. 60 % of the script can really be the same. So a lot of your work is already done. Just shift the angle to angle two, and then to angle three, and then to angle four, and angle five.
And all of a sudden you're starting to like stack creatives on top of that one super strong foundational piece.
So just like some examples of this, ⁓ like let's say I'm writing an ad for CareWay for Millennial Moms, maybe the first angle that I write that hero script for is this like kitchen aesthetic angle. ⁓ So I can then take that one script and maybe I just wanna pivot it to family safety. And now I have a second script. And then maybe I wanna pivot it to easy maintenance and I have a third script. ⁓ And then a fourth and a fifth.
And again, just kind of reinforcing that you can keep stacking these wins on top of one thing that you spent a lot of time for effecting.
⁓ I use Claude for variations. So ⁓ like, what's an example? Maybe I prompt it and I say, here's a script that I wrote and I just want you to write the same thing, but it's going to be about this angle. And I want you to incorporate bullet one, bullet two, bullet three. And that's how I would get like a first draft of one of these ⁓ pivot scripts. So again, use it.
Use that as your writing partner, not as your writing replacement.
⁓ so those are all the angles and now this is really the biggest multiplier, which is the formats. So now that you're in the mind space of this target customer, you're in the mindset of all of these different angles. You have all of your messaging organized. Now you can go write the alternate formats of that ad. So if you wrote like a 90 second walk and talk elevated.
video, something that's like higher production value. Now take that messaging and take that energy and you can just put it into writing a podcast version or a faceless UGC. I'll get into examples of all of these.
So I have my hero script. Now I just want to write the podcast version. I've already done the foundational work. I should be able to write five different versions of that podcast ad pretty easily. Cause I'm already in my deep work state about this audience and these angles. So, ⁓ I would take that script. I would probably ask Claude to generate the first draft of the podcast version of it and feed it.
the structure of a podcast ad that I've already written that works and then do the work after that. In terms of how to structure a podcast ad, we have a pretty defined structure with these nine steps. ⁓ So if you follow these, that can make that process easier.
And the multipliers are just, I get one podcast ad for each of the five angles. And if I want to multiply it more, I can do that through doing for each angle, a different area of the funnel. like it's a longer podcast ad for top of funnel because the host should be talking more about the problem. Right. But if I want to do a more bottom of funnel podcast ad, I can just shave off the first 15 seconds of that.
and just get straight into the product.
Do you test formats in the beginning or just the angles in the beginning? ⁓ I would say angles are, it depends on the needs of the ad account. I would say angles are a bigger swing and formats are an easier win. Right? Like if I already know I have a winning audience and angle.
combination, the easiest win I can think of is just go do that in a different format. So if that is kind of what's required, you can do that. But if I'm looking for those deeper swings that are going to unlock lots more ad spend, that usually is going to come from uncovering a new angle or hitting a new winning angle.
⁓ I can go do a street interview format again, working from that original process of writing the hero. So same audience. can again, reframe it through those five angles that I've already developed. And I should be able to write five street interview concepts very quickly. ⁓ what I like about street interview ads, they look super organic. They feel native. ⁓ they're social proof and,
Again, I get the five angles and if I want to multiply it even more, I could do one that's top of funnel that does problem. And then I can do a middle funnel one or a bottom of funnel one that maybe just gets directly into the product. they just like, if it's a t-shirt, the street interview person just asks the interviewee what they're wearing, something like
⁓ I can do faceless UGC off that original concept as well. So let's find a perfect reference from all that research that we did. And again, same process. ⁓ Do a faceless UGC of those five angles. And if I want more multipliers, I can just do three different versions of that, one for each part of the funnel or the stages of awareness.
⁓ and then this is a format that I love now. It's gone. ⁓ it's gotten really popular, really replacing a lot of traditional UJC, ⁓ the stage moment format. ⁓ so I could write these, ⁓ so the one on the right is one that we did for, ⁓ just like a large insurance brand and, ⁓ these ads are great. It's.
They feel like relatable scenarios that you see on TikTok. It's actually a great way often to demonstrate how our product solves a problem and people just like watching them more than they like watching videos that feel like ads. Same process, multiply with angles and those areas of the funnel.
You can do listicle again, same process. Listicles are one of the easiest types of ads to write. So they're super skimmable. They're going to work well if you want to hit on different features or different benefits. And, you can multiply again with angles or areas of the funnel. For example, if I, let's say I'm writing an ad for a dog food company like Sunday's.
And I, I want to write the bottom of funnel version. It's probably an ad that really focuses on this food and how it's so much easier than fresh dog food and why it's so much healthier than kibble, right? Like get directly into like the direct comparisons and the failed solutions. And if it's something more top of funnel, it's going to be a longer version of that same video. The listicle is going to have to cover problem education.
and agitation and things like that.
and then we can do trending sounds. So these are these types of ads I see all the time now, ⁓ where it's, where the hook is kind of building on an existing tick tock trend. And then you get into the story. So, we use 11 labs to make things like that. and then use epidemic sound to find the right music. You can just plug in a Spotify song into epidemic and we'll spit out songs that are similar to that. It's pretty amazing.
So again, this is another format that we can make building off that initial process that we did.
Jack (24:50)
and you're 11 labs for the voiceover, right?
Jake Abrams (24:53)
For the voiceover, yeah. Like if you want, a lot of trending sounds on TikTok are their sound bites, right? So you can't just like use that specific sound bite, but you could use it as inspiration to make something yourself in 11 Labs.
Jack (24:54)
Nice.
Right, right. Have you seen any problems with using, I don't know, sound bites or training audio directly? Do you get copyright strikes or anything like that?
Jake Abrams (25:20)
I don't do it. I see people doing it. like, I see, I see ads that are. That like literally use a Kendrick Lamar song. I forget the name of the song, but the, like the main song that was on TikTok and it's for like large companies. And I'm like, I, definitely should not be doing that. I, I wouldn't do it. but I would use those as inspiration and then go make my own. And it's actually easier than you.
Jack (25:50)
Right, right, why take the risk?
Jake Abrams (25:52)
Yeah, I
wouldn't do it. Not a lawyer though.
⁓ and then we can do advertorials. So at Odyssey, we, we own and operate a bunch of these publisher websites and we found it's another format that we can plug in to any brand. So again, I can take that initial process that I did and I can do advertorials on sites like this. So some templates that I love.
Product comparisons, just you versus your competitor, ⁓ as head-to-head reviews, skeptic point of views, ⁓ expert reviews, and just problem solution narratives. The strategy crushes it for bottom of funnel for direct comparisons. ⁓ And again, you can use different angles as your multiplier ⁓ for writing five advertorials really at once.
Yes, I own I think like five or six of these websites and use them just for yeah, like content, newsletter and advertorials. That's the strategy.
Jack (27:11)
We've got another interesting question here. I'm sorry if I'm saying your name wrong. Emra, she said, any recommendation for creating ads with AI, like ARC ads or something else?
Jake Abrams (27:26)
⁓ with like, with the AI UGC people.
Jack (27:31)
Right, I think they're thinking about generated UGC.
Jake Abrams (27:35)
Got it. ⁓ my take on it, this is just one guy's opinion. None of the premium brands that I work with would do it. They, they're not going to put one of those AI UGC actors as like the spokesperson for the ad. ⁓ so I don't really use it for that. I use AI in the ways that I talked about earlier and maybe to fill some shots, some like B roll things like that.
⁓ that said for, for, know, five, six figure brands, brands that just want to get content out for the lowest costs. I can see the utility for them. I just, personally don't love it and I don't think the premium brands that we work with would accept it.
Jack (28:29)
Right. I think it might be illegal as well. I'm not sure if it's completely by the book, man, I live in foreplay and I'm always looking at the ads that big brands are launching and I never see AI generated, UGC being launched by big brands. It's never in the longest running ads either. They're not keeping them turned on if they are launching them. And every now and then, when I'm in platform and I see one, it's nearly always exclusively a tech company that's a little bit too early adopter for their own good.
Jake Abrams (28:32)
I don't know.
Jack (28:59)
And there'll be comments like, why would I buy from you if you're going to get fake people? You're going to use AI to advocate for your product.
Jake Abrams (29:07)
Yeah. People don't like those ads. I, far as I don't have like a data point, but I'm pretty confident that real people don't love those. It feels a little gross to me. ⁓ Maybe it does get to the point where you really can't tell that it's not a real person. think it's, it's like relatively close. I don't know. It gets into a weird, a weird area. I've seen some crazy things.
Jack (29:30)
Right.
Jake Abrams (29:34)
Like famous celebrity podcasters being deep fake videos of them recommending products, things like that. So I don't know. I'm staying away from all that.
Jack (29:44)
Right. It
seems like a shortcut to getting sued. Yeah, I think there's a through line between, you know, UGC and CGC and founders videos here. People want something they can trust and that's authentic and it's believable. So, you know, people are talking about, I don't know, the death of UGC and the birth of CGC customer generated content because it's more authentic. And then people are talking about how founders videos, founders ads are working so well for so many brands. And maybe there's something there about authenticity.
Jake Abrams (29:47)
Ha ha.
Jack (30:13)
So to run the other way in the name of expediency, just to make lots of content very quickly, might not be a strategy that works out.
Jake Abrams (30:24)
Yeah, I think so. Like, cause you could make the argument that people already were doing fake, like fake reviews, just paying a UGC creator to give a review of a product. So like really, what is the difference if that person's exists or not? It's kind of, it's kind of the same thing, but I think that's why these native, authentic feeling ads are performing so much better now.
and will continue because people really do crave real genuine human moments and interaction. yeah, you can't, I don't think you can do that with a fake person.
Jack (31:04)
100%.
Jake Abrams (31:09)
Another format, probably see these everywhere called long copy overlay videos or word walls. And ⁓ these are a great way to just use footage that you already have. So this is the easiest way to do angle testing because you can just write basically like a different sentence and swap in a couple of shots and all of a sudden you have a brand new ad that's going to hit a brand new audience.
So this is one we did ⁓ with some footage that we had and I think a really well written caption that hit a very specific audience and angle. So highly recommend using these to multiply your creative output.
So in terms of the creative multiplication formula, I'll just like run through it really quickly. If we go deep on one audience and we do five angles and we do 10 formats per angle, and we do three awareness levels per format. If my math is correct, which I'm like 90 % sure that's 450 unique.
concepts and we did that deep work once and that's only for one audience. ⁓ and it's built on a strong foundation. So that's really the through line, right? Of like going deep once and using these multipliers to turn that one amazing thing that you spent a lot of time on into more.
And then just do that exact same thing, but for now your other audiences. say this step last because audiences are the biggest swing and most brands can scale. Like you could scale past 10 million a year, just owning one audience, probably even higher. So you don't, you don't really need to do to branch out into different audiences first.
But if you just follow that process, I would do everything else first. And then when you need to find more wins, again, just repeat it. Exact same process, but for audience two, audience three, et cetera.
So awareness level, ⁓ thanks for the question, is the five stages of awareness. ⁓ at top, I'm like blanking on what they are. Top of funnel is, I think it's problem unaware, and then maybe problem aware, solution aware, product aware, most aware. I think I was close. ⁓
Jack (34:06)
something like that.
Jake Abrams (34:08)
And then simplified is just top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of funnel. But that's the piece that I think a lot of people don't realize is the three versions of your ad probably shouldn't be just three random hooks. It's like a top of funnel one with a longer problem sequence, a middle of funnel one where that's shorter, and then a bottom of funnel one where there's no problem sequence at all. Just get straight into the desired outcome. So it's a good multiplier.
and a good way of thinking about everything that you're making.
Jack (34:42)
got another one here from Britt. What would you say is your typical turnaround time on the entire process for this output of high volume of creative? Are you executing on these directly or are you outsourcing to content creators?
Jake Abrams (34:44)
Yep.
It's a good question.
Turnaround time, I would say you should be able to plan out, should be able within one day to do a month's worth of concepts for a brand in one day. ⁓ And then in terms of the scripting and the briefing, maybe two days per brand. And...
In terms of outsourcing, at Odyssey, do, it's probably, at this point, it's probably at least 30, maybe 40 % in-house production, actually, and the rest to content creators. I would say we still do a lot of script writing, but we're doing more with open-ended briefs and giving those to creators and trying to give them more creative reign.
It works if they actually are strong creators and that actually can save you time as well if you don't actually have to write the script. You can just write a really tight brief that outlines what to do and why not to do.
Jack (36:10)
And I think it's good to have a balance between in-house content creation and content creators that are outside, especially if those content creators are posting on their own channels, because then you get distribution through them as well.
Jake Abrams (36:23)
Yep, yeah, you want to balance, for sure.
Jack (36:26)
And I like the idea of open-ended briefs for those content creators as well, assuming that you're working with those content creators for a reason, they're creating content that's proven in the market organically, ⁓ they probably have a pretty good idea of what works for their audience, right?
Jake Abrams (36:41)
Yep. Yeah, a hundred percent. And you just want to define the box for them to play in. Right. So you want it like they should know the audience that they are making the ad for. They should know. I think they should know the angle. They should know a couple of bullet points of messaging. And I like giving them references of past content that they made, because then I know that
they're gonna, like I'm asking them to make something that they already are good at making. ⁓ So yeah, I would say those are the main components of a good brief, open-ended brief.
Jack (37:22)
Angela's asked an interesting question here. How do you find new audiences?
Jake Abrams (37:28)
How do you find new audiences? ⁓
I would say, I do think a lot of that should be done outside of ad platforms, especially the more mature brands. They're not, the more mature brands, they're not running Facebook tests to figure out who their next persona is. It's more of a deeper research process where
Maybe there's organization of customer feedback that they're getting, or they launch a new product for a specific audience. ⁓ So it's, it's really outside of ad platforms. I'm trying to think of a good example. Like, I mean, if I just look at like ⁓ a big brand, Nike, for example, they started in running.
And it was a running company. And then they built this reputation in running. And then they went and they had that foundation and they needed to unlock more growth. So they did other sports. did team sports like basketball and that unlocked a new audience. So, ⁓ I think it's a process of that. Like you own one foundational core thing, and then you find other audiences. ⁓
where they're still overlap with that core thing that you own. And you're doing that outside of ad platforms.
Jack (39:08)
I like that. think there's a, yeah, I think that it might start with product for some brands, product diversification into providing supply for a different market demand, right? In the case of ⁓ a running shoe brand making different types of product for different types of customer that don't just want running shoes. But I recently bought into something, Jake, I bought into the Loop earplugs. I'm not sure if you've heard of these. They're quite fast growing brand, right?
And one of their customer personas is that person that, I don't know, has noisy neighbors, construction, lives downtown, right? Then another might be ⁓ somebody who just wants to sleep, right? Somebody who is in public and wants to block out background noise. So understanding who's buying that product might also be another piece of creating those personas, right? You're already creating a product to solve a problem for your customer. But what are the different problems that you solve for your customers? And are they different?
personas, right?
Jake Abrams (40:07)
Yeah, 100%.
So last step, after you've written out all the plan, you have your your scripts, your briefs, you're tasking everything out. So from the perspective of the creative strategist, I really like to think of the creative strategist as the quarterback or the point guard of this creative system. It's on them to, you know, task things out, get the work flowing and make sure that everybody's bought in to the original research and the why behind everything.
So, you know, task out your statics to the designer, task out advertorials to the content writer, task out videos that can be edited with existing footage, the video editing team, task out new stuff to the creator team, and ⁓ probably give some input to the media buyer based on the research that you did about maybe how things should be structured. ⁓ And make sure to reinforce.
the why to all of these resources so that everyone understands why they're making what they're making. It should all tie back to that original first step where you went really deep on the research and you did that at the very beginning of the process and you have to make sure and take ownership over making sure that that doesn't fall off ⁓ as you get through and get to the end result of actually making the content.
Jack (41:45)
We've got a question from Rob here. What is the timeline from researching to launching an ad accounting for filming and post-production of the video content?
Jake Abrams (41:55)
Yeah, I would say...
For something that's brand new, where you're shipping product to someone, it's usually going to take probably three to four weeks. It just always, I keep trying to make it happen faster, but it typically always takes three to four weeks to go from strategy to something brand new being ready. I would say more like two weeks for the shorter term things like static ads.
You know, you do all your research in a week. You could probably have static ads ready week two. ⁓ advertorials could be week two. ⁓ and then I would say using existing footage that you have could be like a week two or the week three thing. And then once you get the system really going, you should be on a kind of a, a system of delivering stuff every week or every two weeks because.
You you have a bunch of product out with creators months ahead of time and it's all kind of flowing back to you. That's the state that you want to get into.
Um, and then toolkit wise in terms of key tools that I'm using, I'm using for play for all my creative inspiration and organization, saving it down from different channels. That's a huge part of the research process. Um, I use Claude. I have it plugged into a tool called typing mind since it's, it's just really good for team based AI work. So I'm using that. Um, I use motion for performance reporting.
I use frame for feedback and collaboration and then notion is my work hub of everything workflows, all of that.
And that's it. We're at, we can answer more questions since that's the entirety of the deck.
Jack (44:03)
Awesome. We've got one from Marta here. Jake, would you consider hiring a creative strategist who mostly worked with SaaS mobile apps and not direct to consumer e-commerce? She might be talking about herself here. I'm not sure.
Jake Abrams (44:04)
Would you?
⁓ Yeah, I don't, I don't really care that much about the vertical. I really think it's more about just, you, are you a real creative strategist or not? Which means you can, one, you can analyze data and know what to do next. That's actually the part that most people aren't that good at. So that's one. You have creative taste. So you can watch a video.
that you get back and know what comments to give and write them in a super actionable way that gets it to the next step and gets it to be better, which also is really hard. then three, do three, ⁓ three is creation. So can you write a good script? Can you come up with a good idea? So those are the three things I don't think the vertical really matters.
It's just, can you do those three things well and fast?
Jack (45:20)
Right? Right? Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think that sometimes when we use, you know, words with multiple syllables, like strategist, it's easy to forget what it is that you're trying to do, the problem that you're trying to solve. It's really writing a plan for the rest of your team that's gonna achieve the end goal, right? If you're a creative strategist, let's make a plan for our creative that's gonna work. And if your plan takes, I don't know, two months to turn around one ad.
or it doesn't turn around something that's creative, effective at accomplishing the goal that you have in front of you, it's not a very good creative strategy,
Jake Abrams (45:57)
Yep, exactly.
Jack (46:01)
We've got one from Andrew here. What about typing mind? What is it about typing mind that you like better than using chat GPT?
Jake Abrams (46:10)
so typing mind, it's basically just a layer that sits on top that is team friendly. So you might be able, like, I'm not an expert on all of these tools, but, I saw somebody posted one of those lead magnet videos using typing mind. So I downloaded it. So that's why I use it. And you can set up knowledge bases and AI agents specific to brands. I can.
have an AI CS writing partner that has been trained on CS best principles, but also documents that are specific to that brand that I'm asking it to work on. And then everyone on my team who I need to work on that brand can use that agent. And we can have a knowledge base that's specific to that agent. that's a huge unlock for me because now I know everybody's working.
It's like a superhuman suit that everybody gets to wear when they're working with this brand. have this writing partner that already knows everything about the brand and about CS. ⁓ And as far as I know, setting up that sort of thing for a big team is not as easy just like going directly into chat GBT. So you can plug in any model into typing line. You can plug in chat GBT. can plug plug in Claude, Gemini, whatever. So that's why.
Jack (47:35)
Nice. Well, wait, plot twist. Marta was the person who made that typing mind ad.
Jake Abrams (47:41)
really?
Jack (47:42)
No, no, no, no, I'm just making it up.
We've got another one from AC here. If you were a solo e-com founder, how would you approach the creative strategy?
Jake Abrams (47:52)
If I was a solo e-comm founder, how would I approach the Grief Strategy? I would probably do what you said, Jack. I would make it all about founder because it's more cost effective. If you're a founder who's good on camera, who's good at making TikToks, that's a huge competitive advantage because you don't need to pay creators. You can make anything anytime you want. So, and people connect with that and those ads work really well.
So I would, I literally would just do, that would be the main strategy. It would be TikTok style content, founder content with a, like an offshore video editor helping me. And I would, that would be like, you know, 70, 80 % of my content.
Jack (48:41)
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think as a solo founder, know, perfection can be the enemy of good and process can be the enemy of product. If you have some process that you build that uses, I don't know, so many different tools, this is very popular right now on different lots of different platforms, all the different ways that you can stack different tools to use to create your go to market strategy. But at end of the day, if it's not creating product, it's not making an ad that you can go to market with.
then it might be the enemy, right? It might be a time cost that's not worth the end result, right? The juice might not be worth the squeeze. We've got another one here from Lucian. How do you handle organizing a high volume of content, especially when coming from multiple creators, Google Drive, etc.?
Jake Abrams (49:33)
Yeah. I hate Google drive. I think it's the worst. ⁓ I hate it. I would never use Google drive. ⁓ I think air, unfortunately we started using Dropbox a while back, which also it's not as bad as Google drive, but it's also not great. ⁓ from what I've heard, air is the best and I've used air as well. ⁓ it's, it's like,
There's tagging, things like that. ⁓ I don't think the perfect one exists though. The perfect organization is really a place that's visual with previews, ⁓ draggable previews, where AI has watched every single millisecond of every single video and has tagged all the videos so that they are searchable. And I don't think a perfect version of that, I've tested some things, but I don't think a perfect
perfect version of that, that is affordable exists. I'm sure all those guys that I mentioned are working on that. Hopefully it's ready soon.
Jack (50:40)
We've got to build it at full play. We'll see. We've got a question from Gigi here. Any books to become the best creative strategist out there? Maybe on data analysis. Now, on the data analysis piece, I can share a little bit, not on books, but I think things are a lot simpler than they seem. There's, I think, a tendency from data analysts to get lost in the source and look at thousands of different numbers.
Jake Abrams (50:42)
Yep.
Jack (51:09)
the data that you have that's the most significant is probably the best data that you have. So what I mean by this is if you have five top performing ads, but one is really hitting a home run for you, it might be a better use of your time just to iterate on that top performing ad than to iterate on all five or 10. ⁓ That might be the simplest 80-20 there. And on data analysis as well, that could be an example of process being the enemy of product. If you spend all of your time
all of your time in analysis, you might not ever end up with an end product. That doesn't mean that it's not important. It's just that it's not everything. You actually have to create at the end of the day. I'm a big fan of imperfect action. But yeah, that's just my two cents. Jake, what you think?
Jake Abrams (51:55)
Yeah, I love that. I like, if you want to read some of the classic advertising books, there's lots of posts about that. I don't think in terms of modern creative strategy, I actually don't think it's possible to write a helpful book because it's going to change two weeks later. So I agree. I think the best way actually is just like stop consuming so much information.
because it ends up just being overwhelming. And you should just start creating and documenting. And you'll actually learn way better if you document your wins, your losses, and your process, and your thoughts. Because I always just thought that's a way better way to learn than just consuming. You will never really, really learn just by consuming information. You have to document and create yourself. And then you will be a lot smarter about the topic.
and you're credible enough already.
Jack (52:53)
and agreement.
We've got one here from Viti. I hope I'm saying your name right. Why do you think quality, so they're referring something. I'm not sure if this is actually something that you believe. Why do you think quality is the number one variable over quantity in terms of creative diversification? It's much more profitable having different formats, angles, and variations than one great quality ad.
Jake Abrams (53:21)
So I'm saying that you have to do both. It's actually the skill of being a creative strategist or just like operating a brand like this is you have to do both. ⁓ But you have to start with that deep process that leads to that foundation of quality. Because if you do a bad job on research, you're going to end up with 450.
assets that aren't actually built on any rock solid foundation and you just probably wasted all your time. So you have to start with quality, but the skill is really turning that into quantity. And that, yeah, that's the part that a lot of people fall short on.
Jack (54:09)
I think I've got a fun analogy for this one. If you imagine a tournament of professional sports teams, those sports teams are professional. They're quality. You're starting from quality, and then you have quantity and competition to find what's the best. And you have something similar in your ad accounts. These ads are in competition for the results that you're trying to generate from that campaign. But if you start with a lack of quality, I don't know, a tournament of ⁓ children, right?
the C league, the D league, right? Then the outcome of it, sure, it's going to be the best of that ⁓ collection of poor competitors, but it's not going to be the best product at the end of the day. Yeah, that might be a good analogy for.
Jake Abrams (54:54)
I'm stealing that. That's
incredible. I'm 100 % stealing.
Jack (54:57)
Go for it. All right. We've got another question here from Yuri. Can I just use text from one ad format and copy paste to another?
Jake Abrams (55:09)
I 60 % the role I would say 60 % of the content. Like if you wrote an amazing traditional UGC, you should be able to use 60 % of that content for the other format version of it.
Jack (55:31)
This is an interesting question from Justin. How do you measure successes in the output you create in the ads that you make?
Jake Abrams (55:40)
⁓ how do you measure success in the output? So if we are. If we're say like one agency among a couple of other agencies that are all making ads for an ad account, the main thing is just percent of spend of that ad account, like our share of the spend because spend is really, it's really the number one KPI now. So if we have, you know, at least.
depending on the number of people, but at least 30%, 40 % of the ad spend is against our ads. That's typically a good sign. If it's less than that, that means we have work to do. And then, you know, our CPAs, our ROAS, our thumb stops, our click throughs verse everything else that's in the account. Are we doing better at those things? And that if it's your own business, it's really just like, are you making
creative that is driving profitable growth for you or not. That's really what it comes down to.
Jack (56:46)
In case anyone's listening to this and they're thinking, why spend the number one KPI? I can take a stab at answering that one. Our ad platforms are way smarter than us. We are trusting them to do targeted delivery to achieve whatever the goal is of that campaign. So if we were doing manual marketing on the street and we had brochures, we're giving brochures to people who look like our customers. say, I don't know, we were advertising a gym. We wouldn't give them to young children or to elderly people because they're unlikely to sign up and come to our gym.
Meta doesn't have eyes. So it uses data on everyone who's engaged with your ads meaningfully, performed your optimization event, whether it's a purchase, to inform who it's going to show the next ad to. So it's really smart. It really knows how to spend your ad. And it's responsible for spending your ad spend to show your ads to the next person. You're not actually responsible for that piece. Whereas CPA, ROAS, don't know, click-through rate, there's a lot of different contextual reasons.
why these different metrics in isolation might not be the best indicator of your performance. For example, CPA. You're going to see your lowest CPAs and your highest ROAs from your existing customers. They've already bought from you before. They've already transacted with your business. And they're probably easier to persuade than somebody who's never heard about you before or is actually actively interested in shopping from a competitor. And click-through rate, right? If you run ads in a country where no one runs ads, it's very uncompetitive, you might get a lot of clicks.
But those clicks maybe aren't worth that much to you. So a lot of these metrics in isolation aren't a very good indicator of how that creative is performing against your goal. Whereas ad spend, that's relying on the brain that is meta to show your ads to the next person who is most likely to make a purchase from you or whatever your optimization event is.
Jake Abrams (58:36)
Yep, absolutely.
Jack (58:39)
We've got another question here from Angela. How much CPA reduction do you usually see with audience angle format awareness stages? Out size impact from one of these, and when do know you've hit diminishing returns? That's an interesting question.
Jake Abrams (58:55)
Yeah, it's a good question. It's not sure I'm going to have the perfect answer for it. I would say the, what you really are looking for, I would say generally you're looking for 20 % or more improvements, right? Like if you, I don't know, if you improve the CPA by 5 % or you improve the cost per click by 5%, there's, there's a very good chance that in three weeks, like it would actually, well,
be worse or it's not a meaningful difference. But if you're hitting 20 % or more, that's going to be a more meaningful difference. So that's kind of what your goal is. ⁓ As far as like, when do you see diminishing returns? ⁓ You want to measure the impact of, ⁓ like measure the performance of those different things over time.
And then you might see like a trend line. You might see CPA start going up for a specific audience. And if it keeps doing that, then maybe you're starting to hit diminishing returns. A lot of times people also look at their kind of like their reach and their week over week reach within their meta ad account to see if their ads are hitting new people or not. So that's something to look at as well.
Jack (1:00:22)
Yeah, one more point on diminishing returns, Angela, in case it's helpful. I think I see a lot of the time, and maybe this relates back to the data analysis point, creative strategists, ad strategists, media buyers pulling back when they start to see diminishing returns. But diminishing returns doesn't mean no returns, right? And if you start to see diminishing returns, I don't know, your CPA goes up from $25 to $30. But that's still a profitable sale for you. That's still within your targets.
And it's still exposing you to the lifetime value of continued business with that customer. Is it time to pull the trigger just because you've seen diminishing returns? So I just wanted to call that out. I know I'm probably preaching to the choir, you know this already. But in case anyone's listening and they're thinking, should I start pulling back when I see CPA going up, that might not be the worst thing if you're still at target.
Jake Abrams (1:01:16)
Yep.
Jack (1:01:16)
Awesome.
We've got one more from Rob here before we wrap up. How are you structuring your open briefs?
Jake Abrams (1:01:25)
I will, I'll probably do a post on LinkedIn next week where I'll just show one, but, ⁓ if I'm just thinking through the elements, it's really one, just who the audience is. You want to give the angle. You want to write a concept overview. You want to provide some thought starters for the hook. You want to provide a list of.
do's and don'ts. And then I think I said this, but I really like for my references, providing two to three references from the creator that I'm working with. Because then I again, I know they will actually do a good job on it. And a lot of times where things get screwed up is people grab a reference from some
totally different video and they give it to a creator who's never made a video like that before. And it's always a fail. use the reference, go back and look at their top performing videos and just brief them something that they've already done well before.
Jack (1:02:42)
Awesome. So we just hit the end of the questions. ⁓ We might have a couple more here, but we're to have to wrap up. over time. So for anyone who wants to get in touch with Jake, I've linked his LinkedIn. Is there anywhere else that would be good to reach you, Jake?
Jake Abrams (1:02:57)
Just go there, there's a link to my newsletter, the process on there as well. you know, definitely feel free to sign up. There's stuff that I'm sharing there that I know people are finding valuable. And yeah, that's kind of everywhere right now.
Jack (1:03:12)
Awesome. Well, thank you for your time today, Jake. I learned a lot. And thank you, everyone who attended and kept the chat pumping. Your questions were a lot of fun. See you guys.
Jake Abrams (1:03:21)
Yeah, thanks everybody.
