🥤 2024 Masterclass for Creative Strategy Trends Feat. Mirella Crespi

Mirella Crespi: Um, quick intro, Creative Milkshake, direct response creative strategy and production studio.

Mirella Crespi: We deliver the ads paid media teams need to drive revenue and ROAS. That's just a quick background about us, my team, and what we do.

Mirella Crespi: Um, some of the brands we've worked with in the past year alone, arguably one of the biggest spenders in paid social. So, um, there's that.

Mirella Crespi: We firmly believe that creative excellence is the result of a continuous cycle of experimentation, execution, iteration. And that's a lot of what this conversation is going to be about today, right? Like how to develop your creative strategy, how to execute on your creatives, how to test and iterate on them so you can unlock those winners that really help you scale.

Mirella Crespi: So, I'll cover these three topics. Again, I'll try and zoom through this so that we can spend more time having a conversation and answering your questions.

Mirella Crespi: But let's start with research. So, I could spend so long talking about research because it's the most important part of creative strategy arguably. But I think the these four um, parts of the research are the most important. So the ad account audit, the audience research, competitor landscape, trends research.

Mirella Crespi: Your ad account audit. Um, this is key to understand what has been tested, what worked, what didn't, because you want to build upon um, what that great budget has already um, done for the account. Um, it's important to understand creative metric benchmarks because even though we we have those like industry like agreed upon metrics of what a good CTR is or what a good hook rate is, each ad account is so different. And it's important to look at the creatives that have worked and delivered the best results when it comes to performance in terms of CPA and ROAS and looking through the creative analysis for the creative and understanding what was the hook rate on that? What was the CTR on that? What was the average watch time? Because you want to understand what you're aiming for and what you're want to improve upon because the default kind of benchmarks don't necessarily apply to all ad accounts, right? Like we've seen in multiple cases, creatives that drive incredible results and spend at scale for a long long amount of time. And, you know, they they work with like a 0.5 CTR or a 15 or 20% hook rate and it still gives fantastic results because sometimes that's just the best creative for that account. The creative is doing the job of filtering the audience and resonating with a like selective audience. So just because the hook and CTR are low, for example, it doesn't mean it's not going to have a very powerful conversion rate because it's doing the job of resonating and filtering through and doing the job of the targeting, right? Because the creative is your targeting. So, understanding those benchmarks are key. Then understanding spend and account structure. So this is important because no creative strategy is equal because all ad accounts are completely different. So, if you're developing a creative strategy, you have to understand like how much spend are we aiming to support, right? And what's the account structure? Because there's no right or wrong on this. Teams run ad accounts in completely different ways. Sometimes you're dealing with accounts that put everything in dynamic creative testing or they just use um, Advantage Plus or they rely on cost controls. They dump all creatives in one account, set their cost controls and they're like, if Facebook decides to spend on it, it's spending. If it didn't spend, it didn't work. While other teams go by a different philosophy and they have allocated budgets and a more controlled method of testing where they will dedicate creative testing budget and spend X amount or let these concepts run for a certain amount of time. Or you're talking about an ad account that will run um, top of funnel and retargeting campaigns. So really understanding when you're developing your strategy, are we going for a lot of net new concepts and these big swings? Or are we does the ad spend allow for that? Or are we maybe developing a couple new concepts and then we're doubling down on what's working? And I'll touch more on this later when we talk about iterations, but it is important to understand what that ad account is and and how is it run and what does it need in order to decide what ads you should create. So then the last part of it is understanding the funnel and the offer analysis, right? Like if this is a brand that drives traffic straight to, let's say a product page with a buy one get one free offer, then that's going to inform your creative strategy where your ads should be very product focused. You need to bring that offer into your call outs. If it's the case where the brand runs um, quiz funnels or VSLs or advertorials, then that's a very different strategy, right? Like maybe your creatives are less product focused and more about um, speaking to the audience, getting them engaged and bringing them into um, that quiz or VSL. So that will definitely inform um, your creative strategy as well and helping you determine what kinds of ads you're going to make and how you're going to make them.

Mirella Crespi: So, second part is audience research. Arguably the most important one. Um, when we make direct response creatives, we're talking about identifying key emotional motivators. People buy the same things for different reasons and they don't buy the product, they buy the problem you solve and how it makes them feel. So, it really is so important to understand what is the consumer behavior behind um, those buying patterns. Like what are their pain points? What problems are they trying to solve? What are their desires? What are their objections? And most importantly, what language do they use? This is the same language you should use in your scripts, in your graphic ads. And diving into customer reviews, comments in your own ads and your competitors' ads, also comments in places like TikTok, right? Like it's such a fantastic source of inspiration where you can search through their amazing, you know, keyword search capabilities. You can find so much organic content around a specific topic and dive into the comments to see what people say. And also Reddit threads where people really go deep into discussing their experiences are also a great place um, to help with that.

Mirella Crespi: So then competitor landscape is the other part of it. So this is always an interesting one because since Meta rolled out the ad library and TikTok the top ads, um, I think a big mistake a lot of people make is just assuming that because the ad is running, it means it's working. That's not true. And top ads are also quite deceiving because top ads aren't really top ads, right? It's just ads that are running or that have run. So, it's really important to understand how to use these tools. So for example, if it's Meta ad library, paying attention to the amount of time the ad has been running to give you some more clear indication whether it has performed or not. And within the top ads, knowing how to use the filters of picking ads that have a conversion objective, have a higher CTR, have a higher average watch time because this is also a closer indication that it has performed. So, don't get like distracted by all the things that your competitors are or or other brands are testing. Um, and don't try to mimic. The goal is to understand the landscape from a more strategic point of view. So, pay attention to, you know, the collection of ads within their ad library. What are the common themes? What are the emotional motivators they're speaking to? What are the general angles they're going for and use that to improve um, upon your strategy and add your spin to it. And then observe other verticals too. I think a lot of the times we tend to just, um, what are other hair care brands advertising? What are other gaming brands advertising? But you can learn a lot from other verticals. So say for example, you are selling shapewear or or underwear that helps women feel more confident, you can learn a lot from um, fitness and wellness advertisers that are targeting weight loss, right? Because it's those common themes of talking about confidence and feeling good in your body.

Mirella Crespi: So, the last one is trends research. So, trends live and die fast. So, from our perspective, we don't really put a lot of time and effort into trying to recreate and jump on trends because at the end of the day, our goal is to create ads that will scale, that are more evergreen, and that have a longer lifespan. Um, TikTok is a great, great source to help you uncover these trends. And they have a brilliant methodology of understanding trends. So, I can share a link to this report. It's an amazing report on trends for 2024 and I really like how they describe trend moments as these like creative prompts that gain this quick traction that live and die fast. But then they evolve to become trend signals, which become these new kind of content patterns and then eventually become trend forces. These are more these kind of larger scale behavioral changes that happen within the platform and that's what you should really aim to understand because you need to understand the language of the platform you are advertising in to really be able to create ads that are powerful, that feel native. Um, so the timing of creative execution is also really important, right? Like last year we saw ASMR unboxing, we saw the podcast ads and the street interviews and those like comedy skits of the same person playing two characters. Like if you were early on that trend and and you like maximized that opportunity, great. But now we're kind of starting to see that die and saturate. So, um, trying to keep the finger on the pulse of that, but for us, the biggest learning is from a creative execution perspective. So, how are they using sound? What are the different camera angles? Like recently there was a trend where you put your phone on the ceiling and you shoot content from that kind of angle. What are the fun transitions that creators are experimenting with? There's so much that you can learn from super creative creators on TikTok and Reels and YouTube to kind of help you execute creative that feels like fresh and native.

Mirella Crespi: So, moving on to ideation and execution, creative diversification is key, like so key, right? So creative is your targeting. Like I said, people buy the same things for different reasons. And because of how the Meta and TikTok auction works, if an ad is similar, it will reach the same audiences. And this is both good and bad and you need to know when to lean into it. And I'll I'll touch more on this in a bit. But having diversity in your creatives allows you to reach different audiences for sustainable performance over time.

Mirella Crespi: So, when we talk about creative diversification, it means a lot of different things. So, it means how you craft your message and what you say. So if we look at this chart, for example, your creative can focus on functional benefits. So the different ways that the product works, do you offer 30 days money back guarantee, all those like functional aspects, or you can speak only to the emotional part, right? Or you can live somewhere in the middle. But having that diversity is very important. And then from which point of view is it on? Is it from the brand's perspective? Is it say a founder's story or you're highlighting brand values, or is it more native and it's coming more from the customer perspective?

Mirella Crespi: So, then you have creative diversification when we speak of formats. All creative formats contribute equally to performance and you should be testing all of them. Um, from statics to short animated graphics, to carousels and catalogs, to short videos, to long videos. And this is not only because different people will react and resonate better to different formats, but because you also want to make the most out of the inventory, right? Out of the placements that are available. Definitely testing as many formats as you can.

Mirella Crespi: So, when we talk about creative diversification, we talk about testing different formats, we talk about different levels of awareness. So, making ads that speak to people that have no idea what your brand is, have never heard of it before, or maybe customers that are more familiar, or maybe customers that have already purchased from you before. Um, or levels of awareness that when it comes to being even aware that they have that problem or being very aware that they have that problem and have already tried different alternative solutions before. So then also crafting, like I said before, creatives from both points of view. And then also tone of voice. Um, making ads that have a humorous approach, an educational approach, a motivational approach, something provocative, something that starts with a question, starts with a statistic, um, there's so many different routes that you can take and having the diversification on that tone of voice within your messaging is also key. And this is when ChatGPT can be just wonderful for you because let's say you have a creative that shows sign of good performance or that is working, being able to diversify the tone of voice can literally just mean taking that script, putting into ChatGPT and saying like, write this with a humorous tone or make it more empathetic, make it more formal, make it less formal, um, insert statistics around XYZ. Um, so really leaning into that to help you test the the tone of voice within your messaging. And then, um, within the more specifics of the creative, testing different styles of visuals. So, testing more produced higher-end visuals versus testing the very native low-fi UGC style visuals, testing different voiceovers with men or AI generated or the robot voice or male versus female. Um, testing all of that as well. And then font treatment, which is does your do your ads always look super native and organic using the platform fonts or are you testing branded fonts? Definitely testing both. So, if you see what I mean, like there's so many different levels of creative diversification and it's important to play around with all of those, but being intentional about it and tagging and identifying each ad based on the list above so that then you can use a powerful tool like Motion to start creating those comparison analysis, right? Like do ads with a humorous tone perform better than an ads with a formal tone? Or do my ads from a brand POV perform better than my customer POV?

Mirella Crespi: Um, and so on and so forth. So, every ad creative is a hypothesis that needs to be tested. We can't really predict creative performance, but this is our way of conceptualizing the different ideas. This is kind of step one before diving into storyboarding and scripting. But always identifying what is that emotional motivator, what is the pain point or the desire or the objection that we're speaking to, and then connecting the product or service's benefit that addresses that specific motivator. And then from there, you craft your hook and you pick your offer and your call to action. That's kind of your concept one. And then intentionally creating concept two to be different and concept three as well, so that you can then test these creatives and then validate um, your hypothesis and from there draw the most learnings you can.

Mirella Crespi: Um, when it comes to creative ideation and execution, looking ahead to 2024, I think that the teams that are using AI for all stages of development and iteration are going to be ahead of the game. So, that means using AI to help you with ideation, help you with the execution in terms of pumping out scripts and changing tones and like changing personas and things like that. But then also the tools, let's say like Eleven Labs and Synthesia and Magic Ads that allow you to generate voices and even talent, right? Like you can even put human AI generated faces that look really realistic. Um, and that has shown to perform well as well. So, it's really exciting. These tools are developing so fast and it's really fun to play around with them and be able to understand um, how it can make your creative production more efficient. And we talked about formats, but I would say that looking into 2024 and beyond, if there's one format that you should absolutely try and master, it's short form vertical videos. And that's primarily because is where everything is going, right? So like Reels, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, if you can really crack short form vertical videos, you can make the most out of all these platforms with like one asset, which is beautiful. Thumbnail split testing. This is so overlooked. I'm willing to bet like 90% of media buyers do not manually select their thumbnails or upload a custom file for their thumbnails and they are sleeping because it makes such a difference. It can literally make or break a creative. You can take an a video that's showing mediocre performance and you split test the thumbnails and it it can grow into being a winner. Or if you already have a winner, split testing your thumbnails makes a huge difference. And when it comes to autoplay placements, focusing on the first frame retention, which is literally like the first microsecond or the first second has a huge impact on performance. And Motion is amazing for that because you have that like first frame, first second retention um, metric there that you can apply and you can start paying attention to what is the retention there. It should be like 80, 90% plus. If it's not, nothing else is going to work. There's no point in focusing on what's my hook rate if your first frame retention is low, right? So focusing on that first second. And then a sound first approach.

Mirella Crespi: Um, let's dive into that. 95% of TikTok, Reels and YouTube Shorts users spend time on the platform with sound on, which makes sound a very powerful tool for capturing attention. If we look back and think about how we think about creatives, and we're guilty of that as well, sound used to be such an afterthought, right? We put so much time and attention into developing the visuals, the hook, the script, and we would just layer on this like music at the end. But if you think about how content is creative in Reels or TikTok, it's a mostly sound first approach. Like audios trend and go viral and people take an audio and they use that to create their content. And that should be how you approach your creatives as well.

Mirella Crespi: Um, we for the last six months have been spending so much time and effort paying attention to sound, making sound first creatives with a combination of sound effects, voiceovers, beats, and just taking a sound first approach to even thinking about and conceptualizing the ads. So, original sounds supercharge campaign performance. We've been testing this with a lot of our partners and when we add bespoke sound, it can lower your CPAs by up to 50%.

Mirella Crespi: So, if we take our direct response ad structure where you have your hook, which is your what why, your body which works to break resistance and build trust, and your call to action, think of the hook as the ear stopper. So really pay attention to that other layer element of your creative, which is the sound. Um, and try to create an audio hook for every single one of your creatives. And adding in sound effects throughout the body of the ad is another way of making your creative more engaging.

Mirella Crespi: So, I'll play some examples. So this first one, we were creating ads for a telehealth brand that is advertising ED, right? Erectile dysfunction for men. And the thought process behind this creative is, what is that emotional motivator? Men that struggle with ED struggle with confidence, with performance anxiety. They, it affects their relationships, it affects their relationships with their partners and with themselves. And when you fix your ED and you feel like you have your mojo back and you have great sex with your partner, it's that feeling of confidence, of feeling like, you know, the best version of yourself. What does that sound like? So we played with the sound of confidence and starting with the sound kind of imagined what the visuals would be, um, with a little spin of humor. So let me play it. Hopefully you can hear it.

Mirella Crespi: So super easy, super simple, feels really native. Um, it's just funny, it's just the sound of confidence and he's feeling himself, he's waving to the imaginary crowd, feeling so good, and then boom, get your prescriptions easier and faster. And this ad absolutely crushed. And I challenge you to think of your brand, your product, your service, um, think about your customers and how they feel and are there any sounds that you can think of and create visuals around that. So this is another one.

Mirella Crespi: So it starts with the sound of the alarm and it's time to change to a better bank. And it's the sound of the alarm and the sounds of online banking, sounds of payment, sounds of transactions, sounds of using the app, um, mixed into a beat. And then you think about the visuals. This one is

Mirella Crespi: one of those voiceovers to create this like humorous approach. Girls don't want flowers for Valentine's. We want this! So as you can see, it starts with this with this sound that is already kind of the the audio hook, like the ear stopper.

Mirella Crespi: Um, and we sprinkle on some sound effects and the visuals kind of come together when you imagine um, using that sound. And it plays a lot with the emotional motivators behind using the product. And this one's another cute one. There are three things I love in life. This, this, and this. Dermatica's treatments contain prescription strength ingredients that are proven to work more effectively than any shop-bought products. Start your free online consultation, only takes two minutes. So you can play around with voiceovers that are not necessarily related to the specific product. Like she wasn't even talking about skincare. She was just like, there are three things I love in life. But it sounds native, it sounds like those audios that trend and people create content around. And you can start with that and then layer on your more, let's say commercial voiceover with the native visuals.

Mirella Crespi: So, some inspiration for you to understand what I mean about the sound first approach to creatives.

Mirella Crespi: So, jumping on to the metrics and creative analysis. So, what we pay attention to when trying to understand if an ad worked or if it didn't work, why, um, the first second retention that I mentioned before, so video play actions divided by impressions, and your hook rate, which is three second views divided by impressions, and you're wanting to answer the question of, did it make them stop scrolling? Um, these are kind of what you should be aiming for, but like I said, each ad account is so different. Um, it doesn't mean that if you don't have these metrics, the ad is not going to perform. But there's always room for improvement if these are low. Then after that, we have your hold rate, the average watch time, and the waterfall rate. So this is really paying attention to what happens after the hook and did the ad do a good job of retaining them after the hook? And using Motion's waterfall like the drop-offs, you can really understand um, where the biggest drop-offs happened and go back and analyze that frame and figure out why. Um, sometimes it's just a matter of replacing a visual or adding in a sound effect or cutting down the voiceover or whatever it is to make sure that you boost the engagement throughout the video. And then the more action-focused metrics like your CTR, your engagement rate, your conversion rate, did it generate interest? And ultimately, um, your performance metrics like CPA and ROAS, which answer the question of, did it make them want to buy? So, when we're trying to troubleshoot creatives or we're trying to understand why it worked or not, those are mostly the metrics that guide our analysis and decision making.

Mirella Crespi: So, going to zoom through iteration strategies.

Mirella Crespi: So spend does not equal reach. You can, you probably know this. If you have a winning ad, you can pump as much budget as you want through it. It doesn't mean you're going to necessarily reach more people. You're probably going to just saturate your core audience and start to see some creative fatigue. So, most learnings live on the creative. So instead of pausing your ads, add in new ad variations into that ad set that has the high spend and starting to show fatigue. So, creating these iterations of your winning ads will allow you to squeeze as much profit as you can from an audience that is working.

Mirella Crespi: So, this is the best way to look at and think about creative iterations. So again, understanding the level of spend and the ad account structure, but always trying to look at your accounts and figure out how you can refresh creatives that are resonating with your core audience while also developing and diversifying creatives that will help you unlock new audiences. And this balance is what's going to help you maintain performance. So, sometimes it's really not about trying to pump in as many new net new concepts, big swings into the ad account. Sometimes it's really just about, okay, we have creative that is working, that is resonating with this core audience. How can we create more variations of that um, through diversification within that kind of concept that has been validated or speaking to a persona or a motivator that is working to help support that increase in spend while also, let's say throwing in a couple new concepts to help you hopefully unlock these new audiences that will start converting as well.

Mirella Crespi: So, some creative levers. If you have low first frame retention, test a new thumbnail or edit the first second of the ad. Low hook rate, focus on the deep analysis of those first three seconds, try new visuals, new copy, new sound. Um, low hold rate, try reordering the clips, add a new shot after the third second, make the ad shorter. Sometimes changing the editing style, adding transitions can help, sound effects as well. Um, if you have a low CTR, try adding in messages of scarcity, exclusivity, urgency, agitate the pain point a little more, add in some social proof, um, some credibility as well. And then add in a new CTA. Um, what I mean by credibility is like sometimes you have PR features and things like that. And then low conversion rate, check for congruency or make a custom landing page. A lot of the times when we're kind of going too far with the creative testing, new concepts and new messaging, you might deviate too much from the page you're sending them to from the ad. So it's always important to check for congruency because if the ad metrics are really, really strong, it's doing the job of engaging the audience and bringing them to your website. So if you have a creative that really slaps on the ad metrics, but the conversion rate is low, maybe making a custom landing page or editing your page to bring on the message from the ad onto your landing page. And then checking spend by breakdown of age and gender is always key. Sometimes this is like overlooked, but you might have an ad that is spending more on a specific age and gender bracket and you could recreate that ad to resonate even more by adjusting the language to speak to a younger or older audience, changing the tone, changing the pacing to match.

Mirella Crespi: Um, and that's that. Let's get to your questions. I think I hopefully covered a lot of things. Um, I'll stop sharing my screen.

Mirella Crespi: And oh my god, so many questions.

Evan Lee: Let's do this.

Mirella Crespi: That was incredible.

Evan Lee: That was incredible. I feel like so, I don't feel, I know so many questions have come through and this was the perfect step to set the stage for the different areas. Everybody, I'm sorry, you know we're going to run out of time. There's no way we're going to get to 60 some questions. I'm sorry.

Mirella Crespi: Sorry, did I take too long?

Evan Lee: No, no, no, no, no. This was the foundation that everybody needed. And I think like there was so many great things in there. For me, talking about an ear stopper, drop the mic, bar, killer. Talking about AI and the concept of like an AI influencer-esque, super interesting. Like so many things to unpack. Um, I do want to get to these questions now. I have my own natural curiosities, but we'll save that for offline or a different thing.

Evan Lee: So, one of the, not the most upvoted question that we've actually got at this point that I took from um, our questions before the show, is what is your top tip for being, for getting the best creative as possible as a team of one at this point? So there's different angles you can take it from, but the idea is one person show.

Mirella Crespi: Okay. So, starting as a team of one, I would say your core focus is on the research part of it, right? Is understanding how to develop a really strong creative by understanding your audience deeply, understanding your competitive landscape, crafting those like scripts and storyboards to be really strong. Then the question then comes to the creative production and execution. Um, there's there's different ways to go about it. You can outsource this to content creators, right? Like you can go on to marketplaces and platforms and you can send your briefs and storyboards, get people to shoot content for you, and then you turn that into ads. Or you can take a more hands-on kind of do it yourself approach, which was our approach back then, which is just, I'm literally going to take my phone and I'm going to start shooting content. I was never the one to put my face on ads, but I always preferred to work with content creators and actors to come into what is a studio environment. It doesn't even need to be a studio, but you're just literally behind the camera executing on the creative yourself. Um, or you can outsource this creative production to, if you're going for a bigger budget production, you can develop the strategy and, you know, get these briefs over to a studio that will execute beautifully for you. Depends what you're going for. Um, but then really it is key to have um, a strong video editing support. However, if you're going for Reels and TikTok, CapCut is wonderful. Like it's just you can do so much with your phone. If you have like a fantastic script and really good references, you can shoot content yourself, you can get creators to shoot content for you, and edit them easily on CapCut to create ads that even look, feel native. Like CapCut has already built-in features that allow you to edit super and captions easily, the text to voice feature, you have trending audio in there. So, yeah.

Evan Lee: I'm in CapCut all the time. So I'm with you. I'm with you on that front. And I think you hit it nail on the head saying like research informs everything else, then you're leaning into your skill sets is how I interpret it. It's like, okay, if I'm more creative, can I own that script process? Can I invite someone over to shoot? But if you lean to the media side, it might differ a little bit. So I think that's super great.

Evan Lee: I do see a question that came in from Hannah along the line of teams. I do want to remix it a little bit here, but the question that Hannah has is who should drive this creative strategy when it comes to paid media advertising? So formats, should it be the paid media managers, should it be the designers, should it be a creative strategist?

Mirella Crespi: So, it really depends on like, some brands have like in-house creative teams, other outsource it completely to agencies. But just to to simplify a team that would execute the process I described, right? Creative strategist and a lot of media buyers now are playing the creative strategist role because they are able to speak to creatives, right? So, I think primarily understanding those metrics and being able to to speak to what has worked in the ad account, um, is is very important. So, kind of that first piece of the puzzle, a strategist that can understand um, the metrics in terms of how to use that to inform strategy, but that also have a really strong finger on the pulse of these channels and kind of understand how to create content that that works for that channel and and it is native. So then having a strategist can be someone on your team, can be someone that you outsource, but ideally that's the person that's guiding the decision making of like, understanding the ad account and being like, look, okay, like we have tested so much video already, let's throw in some statics or we have been leaning too heavy on statics, right? We're missing opportunities on testing shorter or longer form videos. So I think whoever is closest to like living inside the kind of ad account and understanding what it needs should be making those suggestions of what type of formats um, to test next. And then copywriters can be the creative strategist or not. Maybe sometimes the creative strategist just sends the brief and then either ChatGPT is your copywriter or you have a copywriter that will turn those into scripts. And then creative production, again, this can be in-house or outsourced. Um, you can be sending your storyboards and scripts to creators or you can be shooting all of this in-house. Um, and then video editor is key. Like CapCut can only take you so much. That's if you're like a scrappy team of one that, you know, will be putting out these videos. But if you're talking about a certain level of scale and being able to quickly turn around iterations, having a video editing team that is well versed in performance design best practices is invaluable. So, I would say either building that yourself or finding a partner like Creative Milkshake that can do that for you.

Evan Lee: If you didn't plug yourself, I was going to do it. When you're talking about send your storyboards to a partner, I'm like, hint, hint, Creative Milkshake, you know what to do. Make it come to life.

Mirella Crespi: Thank you.

Evan Lee: Okay.

Mirella Crespi: My heart.

Evan Lee: Everybody, you have to show love to Mirella in the chat. And she didn't strut herself, but please be sure to check out Creative Milkshake. Have to. Have to. You you've seen the mind, you've seen the mind, so let's make it happen. Okay? Everyone else, as I always say, always appreciate your eyes and ears during this time. If there's anyone else you think could benefit, like let's send this recording out to the masses after the fact. And Mirella has blessed us with all this knowledge, so let's start implementing it along the way too. Mirella, thanks a million. Thanks a million. This was super fun.

Mirella Crespi: Thank you so much. Thank you.

Evan Lee: I feel like so, I don't feel, I know so many questions have come through and this was the perfect step to set the stage for the different areas. Everybody, I'm sorry, you know we're going to run out of time. There's no way we're going to get to 60 some questions. I'm sorry.

Mirella Crespi: Sorry, did I take too long?

Evan Lee: No, no, no, no, no. This was the foundation that everybody needed. And I think like there was so many great things in there. For me, talking about an ear stopper, drop the mic, bar, killer. Talking about AI and the concept of like an AI influencer-esque, super interesting. Like so many things to unpack. Um, I do want to get to these questions now. I have my own natural curiosities, but we'll save that for offline or a different thing.

Evan Lee: So, I think this is super great. This takes it to the next question though, right? Because when we're talking about that skill set of being a little bit closer to the data, this is where I think of you as like goated. It's like you have this down to a science when you're talking about how great your team is. So a question that we have here is how do you onboard new employees to make them feel really good at creative, help them quickly become performance masters like yourself?

Mirella Crespi: Yeah, I think the the foundation of of great creative is like two things. Understanding consumer behavior because at the end of the day, you're you're selling to humans and the ad is not going to be great if you don't understand like how to to to craft creatives that really speak to those emotional motivators. Um, so for us, it's it's really onboarding people who either have some form of relevant experience or are just hungry and eager to learn. So teaching them direct response best practices first, um, teaching them how to conduct research, like knowing how to use the tools on how to understand competitor landscape, um, and then that feedback loop, right? Like understanding how to learn from your strategy, whether you get a best case scenario linked to a Motion report or you just get like, these are the ads that worked well, learning how to analyze creatives is really important. Knowing like, if someone sends you an ad and says this was our top performer, when you play that ad, like what do you see? Like you have to have a method of analyzing creatives. What is the hook? What is the body? What is the call to action? Like what is the overarching message? What is the pacing? What are the visuals? Like there's so many layers to analyzing creatives. So that's definitely one that is super important because if you know how to analyze a creative, you can reverse engineer it to recreate it, to iterate it, and so on.

Evan Lee: So, I I do want to jump to the tactics now. So we have the team in place, we're training them on up. I know there's a couple other questions. We'll try to get to them later. But Max now has a question where we get deeper into the weeds. So now you're working with teams that are involved. How do you balance performance with branding? It can be easy to lose sight of branding in pursuit of the best performing creative and vice versa, but digital ads are often the first interaction for a customer. How do you think about things, Mirella?

Mirella Crespi: That's a really good question. And it's it's a fair debate and it's it's always fair to think about what are the priorities for this brand and what is really the goal of your creatives and and your paid social strategy as a whole, right? Like, let's say your brand relies so heavily on paid social for customer acquisition, right? Like it is without that, you're dead. So, if that's the case, if you rely so heavily on paid social for customer acquisition, I would say your priority number one should be like performance. It's really about finding creatives that work because you will have to sacrifice some brand sometimes for that because ugly works, because, you know, you just have to concede because you have to think of the brand as a whole and there are so many other opportunities to build your brand outside of your creative, even though it is the first touch. So for example, you rely heavily on paid social, you sacrifice some brand to focus on performance, you're running ugly ads and you hate it. But then the customer receives the product in their house and you have a beautiful unboxing experience and you have a beautiful note from the founder that talks about your mission and you know what I mean? Like there's so many, your emails might do the job of helping convey your brand. Like there's so many other touch points that you can use to help build your brand. And if really paid social is crucial for you, I would say lean into performance. But if you if you can afford to, let's say your organic channel is super relevant for you, then maybe there's some room there to be like, okay, let's let's focus on the brand when it comes to our digital because it's not live or die for us, right?

Evan Lee: I love that. Honestly, drawing it back to the goal is so important. So perfect. Perfect, perfect, perfect.

Evan Lee: The most upvoted question we now have is what's your advice for low budget companies? So thinking monthly ad spends at this point. So it could be creative, it could be on the media side, um, anything that floats through your mind.

Mirella Crespi: Hmm, I think low budget doesn't mean like bad. I've seen like the the simplest creatives absolutely kill anything else. Like sometimes pulling out your phone and taking a photo yourself or like making a video that is like low-fi and feels and looks organic doesn't mean bad. Um, I would say like getting the basics right. So, like going back to like, you can do wonders with Canva templates for your statics and iPhone videos for your videos, you know, some iPhone content and CapCut. But as long as the message is there, like as long as you really have down like who your target audience is, what are their motivators, their pain points, their desires, and that's in your ad, like I don't see, like you don't need big budget productions to make creatives work.

Evan Lee: I love that. I love that.

Evan Lee: Okay. Now I want to start picking your brain on just like the the overall trends and from what you've seen. So, Ani has a question. What are some of the most authentic, non-looking like ad themes you have seen working well?

Mirella Crespi: Um, in the past year, um, street interviews have worked really well, like comedy kind of skits, um, using sound to create ads. Like everything that feels and looks really native to TikTok, um, and that is born out of a TikTok trend, um, tends to perform really well. Um, and these things don't necessarily look like ads. And also a lot of the time, yeah, those are getting overused, but it's about knowing what's coming next. Um, and what you can do as well is just like, you just really live on TikTok. Like it it kind of sucks because you have to like doom scroll a little bit, but it kind of helps you, you get so many ideas. Like we have DM groups with our team and we're always sharing like, oh wait, this would be a really good ad. Um, and people are so creative in how they create content and you can easily use that into in your creative strategy.

Evan Lee: We we need to be real. Like living on there gives us insight. Like I I'm on food talk like no tomorrow. So even just regular concepts that I'll just randomly think of are now inspired by food talk and I'm like, oh, that's kind of cool. Like it could work to tell the story. So I feel like inspo is everywhere and like being there actually helps out. All right. Uh, we're coming up to the end here, folks. Three minutes left. Please be sure to get your question, uh, like upvote where it makes sense. The last one that I'm going to get to, I have to try my best to to pick one that actually matters. And I think this is a good summary one. So we got it earlier before, uh, before the session started. But it's around hot takes. So Mirella, you've talked about a bunch of different things. ChatGPT, AI's involvement, um, the sounds themselves. But talk us through like what some of the hot takes are as we get into 2024 that you might not have already mentioned or dig a little bit deeper to the ones you have.

Mirella Crespi: Hot takes. Um, I guess the like UGC is dead is a is a hot take. Um, and like the the iterations, like that you should, there's no such thing as creative fatigue or you shouldn't iterate or you should iterate. Like that those two. Um, I would say that like UGC as we kind of know or whatever it became in the last few years, I think that is dead and and dying, I guess, just because it has just become so saturated and everyone and their mom is a is a UGC creator and, you know, this has been a game changer or this has changed my life. Like that just, it doesn't work anymore. But it doesn't mean that native first content, short form vertical content, native first is not going to work. Like that is the future. So, haven't come up with a proper term for it yet, but it's just like it's content that looks and feels native. It is created for direct response. You could kind of say it's UGC, but it's not really, right? So there's two directions you can take it. It's like on one direction, it's it's the scripted, well thought out, developed ads shot in a native format that look and feel like it could be done from like that native perspective. And then the other direction is real actual customer content. Like that's so, so powerful when brands can tap into their real customers to share their transformations, to talk about their stories. Like that is just like unmatched, right? Like it's so authentic and it builds so much social proof and you can use that to make really powerful creatives. So it's like the two two opposite directions. One is I guess you could call it actor generated content that does perform really well. And then really using real customers, but it's almost like that like in between, everyone's tired of. And when it comes to like the iterations part, I I go back to that slide that I showed, like, yes, that it doesn't mean you have to iterate endlessly. It has to be very intentional in terms of understanding like, is the goal really to get more creative into that ad set to speak to that audience that's resonating to get as much profit as you can out of an audience that is performing, or is it about developing new concepts and can the ad account sustain, you know, testing so many new concepts?

Evan Lee: Mirella, you're incredible. Is there, is there anything you, we we've come to time, we've come to time. You've you've crushed it on setting the foundation and gotten to some of the questions that the that the audience has had. Any final things you want to leave the audience with?

Mirella Crespi: Um, I challenge you guys to like think outside the box. Like look at all the um, amazing AI tools and powerful tools that are out there to to help you with your creative. Um, yeah, just it I just love seeing great creative out in the wild, you know? Whenever I see a good ad, I'm like, oh my god, this is so good. And I know there are a lot of you out there that are making these ads. And just, yeah, let's let's keep pushing the bar. We are literally like, it's such a cutting edge industry, you know? Like performance marketing is just constantly evolving and it's challenging and it's exciting. Um, and I really appreciate you guys taking the time to join and and ask your questions. I hope um, lived up to your expectations. Thank you so much.

Evan Lee: My heart. Everybody, you have to show love to Mirella in the chat. And she didn't strut herself, but please be sure to check out Creative Milkshake. Have to. Have to. You you've seen the mind, you've seen the mind, so let's make it happen. Okay? Everyone else, as I always say, always appreciate your eyes and ears during this time. If there's anyone else you think could benefit, like let's send this recording out to the masses after the fact. And Mirella has blessed us with all this knowledge, so let's start implementing it along the way too. Mirella, thanks a million. Thanks a million. This was super fun.