3 Creative Strategy Leaders on What's Actually Working in 2026 (Everyday Dose, Arrae, Harry's)

Evan Lee: The the first thing that I'm interested in is how are your teams using AI and was there a moment where it clicked and it all became clear that this is the right way we should use it? Travis, I'll throw it to you to kick off and then we'll go around the horn here.

Travis Eubanks: Yeah, um, I'll first off say this, I don't think there anyone really knows what's the right way to use it. It's more of what is the best way that you can use it for your current situation or things that you're needing. Um, but where the the the biggest part where it came from was like when we're doing creative reports.

You know, we would still use Motion, we'll take screenshots of the the the the ads, maybe put it into a slide deck, but then there's like a lot of back and forth and like sometimes that could take multiple hours just to do and then you have to watch all the videos, look at all the statics, see what's happening, draw your own conclusion.

And we would then went into like Claude and said, hey, I'll export everything from from Motion, put it into Claude. And that worked, but there was so much friction to just get to even that point that what you found was a lot of people just weren't they weren't actually using it, right? Because that friction, which I don't blame them. There was like 19 steps just to get to that. And so when uh, we started using Runneth and it's been, dude, like night and day difference. Like our our speed of creative analysis is cut down from literally like 18 hours of analyzing, building and presenting down to three minutes.

And much more in-depth knowledge in three minutes and we don't have to even leave Slack, which is fantastic. Um, and so, yeah, I I I would say that's where it came big for us is just cutting down on the the the extra steps that we had to go through. And um, creating like just even little simple stuff.

Like, hey, shoot me a message of the ads that launched in the last seven days so I can see which ones have hit our thresholds and should be scaled up. Something super simple. Um, and now that has been been able to be done literally like I said in minutes at 6:00 AM every morning when I'm logging in.

Evan Lee: Love it, Travis. Super helpful and honestly the context of like everyone's still figuring out is an important one. So it's like clarity in the sense of like we're all aligned, we're still figuring it out as we move forward. Morgan, I'm curious about in your world and your team's world, is there uh, how how is the team working with AI right now?

Morgan Hubans: Yeah, we're also still figuring it out always. Um, I think to Travis's point, like the way that Motion plugs into your competitor brands is so massive for us to kind of identify the gaps. Um, like we'll take our current creative library, say, compare what we have to our top competitors in the space for this specific product. Tell us like where we're over-indexed and where we're under-indexed on specific messaging and angles. And that's been like such a huge unlock where it'll be like, hey, all of these other brands, they've unlocked this one angle and like you don't have any creative that's performing right now. Like, how can you kind of like aggressively iterate and figure out how to make sure that you're in every single persona and message. Um, and even like using that in the past few months, I feel like we've unlocked a bunch of messaging that we hadn't before. Um, and then another one on the reporting side, like obviously the reporting and and data is a huge piece of it, is also building like a scaling and losing agent because I think in the past when we look at Motion, even if we have all of these dashboards broken out by product, by creative source, you're really looking at like your top eight creatives, right? Or at least your creative strategy team is. The media buyers, like the growth side of things, they're digging into it, but the creative strategy team, they're like hopping in and looking at the top eight creatives. So how can we actually look at what's scaling the most quickly week over week and then also what's fatiguing um, quickly week over week, like looking at that delta of ad spend has been super helpful so that you can kind of like not have to wait until it rises to that top eight to understand is something killing it or like the same with fatiguing, is something fatiguing and like how can we like get ahead of iterating on it before it's like dead.

Evan Lee: Huge. I love it, Morgan. And then Daniel, take us home on this one. Is there any way that you're using it and your team is using it?

Daniel Rivera: Yeah, I'm going to echo what Morgan said. A lot of it is messaging, angles, what are competitors saying that we're not saying. Um, we've also been using a lot of AI to just test messaging, test angles. We've been playing around with this MCP connection for Figma. So we had an internal like AI creator for images and video, but this Figma MCP has really changed the game because we have made our top performers and been able to iterate on it very quickly. It spits out editable like layouts and now it's 75, 80% of the work is done, sometimes 100% and we just have to launch them. So my designer is now like my one-person designer is like killing it. We're making landing pages, um, emails, we're doing everything with this thing and it's kind of it's kind of amazing.

Evan Lee: Huge. Okay, we had to start with AI just to talk about the current state, but along the same line of the current state of creative strategy, the next question that I'm curious about is a two-parter. So the first one is, are there any decisions you've made in the last 12 months that have unlocked a ton of growth for y'all? And then the second piece, is there anything that you were doing that isn't working anymore? Morgan, can I toss this one to you first?

Morgan Hubans: Yes. So I haven't been at Array for a year yet, but when I came in, um, just looking at our creative diversity in the ad account, we were super under-indexed in partnership ads, um, which was just a huge gap. So we came in and just aggressively created this partnership influencer whitelisting program from scratch. I know everyone is doing it. We were we were a bit behind. Um, but that has been just a huge unlock and we've also learned so much in the past six months of what's working, what's not working. And I think time and time again, we've found that these like smaller TikTok style creators that are speaking organically and like clickbaity can have this high energy and are also like just a lot, you know, cheaper than some of the bigger Instagram influencers win time and time again. Like, I'm sure we'll talk a lot throughout this panel of the yapper style, but it's definitely killing it for us. And so that's been a huge unlock to like really dive into partnership, um, angles, like also setting it up as a partnership, um, handle, like dynamic identity. That has been like a huge unlock for us. So, um, just continuing to invest into that, but also understanding like at what rate does it make sense to continue to pay these people and like it really is a volume play of if we can find someone that has that high energy, can speak really well to camera, but is also not like a huge risk from the investment side of things.

Evan Lee: Sounds familiar. What is a test?

Morgan Hubans: Not working. I know you asked that too. I would say the like early TikTok trend content, like they were still doing a lot of the like lip singing to audio, like that kind of thing. I feel like that's in my opinion a little bit out. People want like to be, I think, a little bit more like educated or have something more substantial versus just like the mind-numbing scroll.

Evan Lee: Uh, I'm trying to like balance the going back and between people, but I want to double click into like the the trend piece. So there's something about like building a brand that can stand the test of time, like that's part of it. Then there's also these trends that pop up. Is there, are there versions of trends that you will hop on or is it always like a hard and fast rule? How are you typically making decisions related to this?

Morgan Hubans: Totally. Yeah, we're still, I think we're still as a brand pretty trend-driven, but I mean like the quick kind of lazy like lip sync to an audio. But in terms of like trends, I feel like we're always like there might be some fun creative thing. Like my team was just talking about some clam bake or boil or something that's going on on on Instagram. I don't even know. Like the Gen Zs always keep me in the loop. But especially on organic, we love to have fun on TikTok. And I think also just like to stop the scroll, having something that's fun and exciting and not so serious and being like comedic with it for sure. I just think that like 15 second like lip sync to a trending audio is kind of dying for us a little bit.

Evan Lee: Super helpful clarifier. Daniel, on your end, uh, great decision and then something that's not working anymore.

Daniel Rivera: Yeah, great decision for us has been leaning into statics again. I think there was a period of time where we were doing a lot of video and a lot of UGC cuts. Not to say that UGC cuts are not it anymore, but they're not what they used to be. But with with our product, right? At Harry's, I have two different products. I have body wash, I have this razor, two very distinct products that you advertise and speak to in a very different way. For the body wash, video, UGC is still working, but for the razor, we need to do more static work. We need to do a lot more explaining. And what we've noticed is that when it's very polished creative actually are doing better for us with B-roll. We were like, we're supposed to be making ugly ads. These are not ugly. These are very clear. The razor, you can really appreciate how sharp it looks. It's a really nice looking razor. And I think this takes us back to the principles of creative strategy. What am I trying to communicate? What is important? And what is the best vehicle for that? And I think the statics are really doing that. The razor on its side is absolutely crushing it. And like going back to creative strategy 101, like putting reviews on things is suddenly working for us again. And we're like, okay, what is this? What what are people looking for? And I think my hypothesis here is like there's so much AI, there's so much marketing in the world where people are looking for something that feels authentic and maybe build some trust. And I think, you know, for something like a body wash, you're going to trust someone telling you how this smells where a razor, if there's like a static that just feels very polished and clean, I'm going to trust that more because it's more of a tool. So I think that's that's what I'm seeing. And then what isn't working, I'll go back to the UGC videos. I think we used to do UGC is not cutting it anymore. And I think we have to go back to that yapper style, which I think we're going to talk about and we're seeing, you know, less hooky and more, let's be real, like meet the customer where they are and don't try to get their attention with something that is outlandish. Instead, meet them where they are with something that's going to get their attention and that's what Andromeda is all about, right? We're trying to target our customer exactly where they are, meet their pain points, create interest. So a lot of our videos are starting to look and feel a little bit more organic and less like hypey UGC cut because that's kind of what customers are looking for.

Evan Lee: Love it, Daniel. And then Travis, on your end, from a decision perspective of what's something that's gone really well and then not working anymore.

Travis Eubanks: Yeah, yeah, I'll go with the what's not working as well is and this like last year, we would have like these little meme ads, right? Where it'd be six seconds long. It's like a Will Ferrell on there doing a laugh or something like that and we had some text overlay. And those like crushed for for a while. And then they started kind of like I think people just got used to it, right? It was no longer like, oh, it's one of those ads again. And so we started seeing those die down a little bit. And I would say the one like big decision we made as well is testing like concepts with our internal creators first before we distribute them out to third-party uh, creators. The reason for that one is like creators can kind of get expensive, especially if you're, you know, throwing out 50, 60 different concepts and you're getting two, two different creators to do each one of them, that adds up. And so what was great with that is one, we could test internally on those concepts much quicker because the turnaround time is quicker, they're internal. And what's really nice is we have internal creators, they understand the product at a much, much deeper level than somebody that maybe just knows of the brand but hasn't been leveraging and using the product for a very long time. I feel like the internal creators have a, I don't want to say a a bigger buy-in, but they just have a better understanding so you can test those concepts a little better.

Evan Lee: So let's talk about creators a little bit more because it is a really good segue. I think like on the creator front, there's the uh, like the influencer world, there's the creator front, and then Travis, you just mentioned like internal creators in this process. Morgan, Daniel, in your world, are you doing something similar where you have like an internal approach to creators first?

Daniel Rivera: Yep. I my video editor is also in a lot of our ads. I have you've as you have seen, I've been in our ads. I think it just makes it easy to test and learn and then you know what to brief other creators on. Um, and I think you can speak with a different voice as someone that's internal. And I think as Andromeda like sequences creative out to people, you want that brand voice, that internal, maybe more trusted voice, and then you're going to want the external like social proof from other people. So to me it's all about creating an ecosystem with all of these levers that you can pull.

Morgan Hubans: Yeah, we also basically hired like our best influencer as a full-time creative strategist and that's been a huge unlock. Um, because I think on top of speaking from the brand POV, which she does do, she also speaks from a creator POV, but she dives super deep into what are what is every single messaging and persona we can target, what is like the body of the script really going to be to hit it home. And I just don't think that influencers have the same, you know, they're not going to spend the same amount of time to really understand and know your product on a deep level and be able to test everything. And then from there, you can kind of like figure out what messaging works because to Travis's point, creators are so expensive. So if you can kind of like reduce the variable of we know she as a creator works, so like we're truly testing the messaging um, specifically in a silo and then trying everything we possibly can. And then we'll also use her content that's working in the briefs that we're sending creators so that they have something to like reference that's not just like something we randomly pulled from a competitor. It's actually specifically talking about our product. And then on top of that, we do a lot um, on the founder side of things to Daniel's point, like having people be bought into the brand and hear it from the brand itself and have that one-to-one connection is super important. And then you can kind of you can get more into the nitty-gritty and the weeds of the product versus like a creator might that might not feel as organic for them to do that.

Evan Lee: Huge. It makes so much sense. And there's a lot of people with us who are building teams today. So, uh, Morgan, I want to double click once then Daniel and Trav will come back to you guys in a second here. But Morgan, on that one, so you would hired like your most successful influencer or creator to be your creative strategist. What is this person responsible for? Are they are they responsible for managing the creator relationships as well, prepping your founder on what they should talk about? How does that scope look in that world?

Morgan Hubans: Yeah, so we have two full-time creative strategists and that sounds like a lot, but it still feels really lean because of everything they're doing. We're actually looking to hire a third if anyone wants to DM me on LinkedIn. Um, but what they handle is actually everything from like persona identification, messaging, angles, briefing creators, but also briefing in like creating the copy for the static ads that are briefed into the graphic designer. They're writing like talking points and scripts for the founders. Um, but they're also developing like high-level product positioning and messaging for the entire brand, which is a little bit different than I think how most people structure it. They have like product marketing over here and then a creative strategist is like here in growth world versus brand world. And our head creative strategist is also head of like our entire product messaging. And I think the great thing with that, I'm sure it doesn't work for every single brand, is that you kind of want the same messaging to be cohesive across every channel and you want that feedback loop. So maybe like the way you say that message is going to be different per channel, but I think when they're like two siloed and two segmented, you're kind of like losing the plot of, hey, if we know that this messaging angle works, like we should be using that on every single channel. So I think that's been a huge unlock that's like a little bit how we do it differently. But yeah, they're doing everything. The one thing that they don't do and we just hired for because we had to kind of like prove it out on the influencer side of things is we hired a full-time um, creator whitelisting, um, manager and she's responsible for like all of the negotiation, the um, booking the creators, the back and forth because there is so much to do with that. So that my creative strategist can focus on briefing the creators, but then from there, the influencer team like cast to the persona that we build and then going back and forth with them, you know, on like reviewing the content, etc.

Evan Lee: Good, a ton to unpack there, but Trav, I want to kick it to you first here. So what I'm curious about is you talked about your internal creators first. Were you hiring a creator specifically or was it somebody already on the team or at a different skill set that could rise up into it? How did you approach it?

Travis Eubanks: Yeah, yeah, we it's an internal um, team member that's always been a part of the team from like almost from like day zero. So he is like you've probably seen his ads before, the handsome guy with the blonde hair. Um, he, yeah, he's been in all the videos. So he was always doing videos along side with having external creators as well. And what we started noticing is like, hey, your hit rates are really strong and one of the things we believe is the way you present the product and talk about it, you're passionate, you you you understand it at a deep level. Like, let's lean a lot more into you and and create more internal creators like that. And we even got to the point too where I think where you mentioned it or or or Daniel maybe, it was, you know, one of your your creative strategist is also in the videos, right? And so we we we lean into that as well. Um, and I think it's just a great way to again, they're seeing the product all day long, talking about it, reviewing creatives, scripts, etc. So they just have a really strong understanding. So, yeah, going back to the original question, he was day zero uh, employee and so he had a really deep understanding from that. And we still use like external creators, like again, Morgan, I can say you guys hired your best top performing one. We always try to find the top three that we that always have good hit rates and then we say, hey, like let's use those three for the first round of these concepts that have proven internally and see if they can do it and then let's diversify that out as well.

Evan Lee: And Travis, one follow-up I have for you there is like this person who was there day zero, like there's a, there's a couple options. It could be both, like let me know. But it's like this person's scope could expand and start to take on more and more and more or it's like you really hone the craft and go deep, deep, deep. So in this person's responsibilities, are they are they responsible for a broader scope as Morgan had described or is it really like make those winning ads that crush in print essentially for us? How do you guys approach it?

Travis Eubanks: Yeah, it's it's a mix of both. Um, so he he puts a lot into on the on the creatives and testing concepts. So like the amount of videos he produces is is pretty remarkable. But he also leads an entire team of creative strategists as well. And so he helps drive, you know, where are we going next in the in the concepts for this week or or showcasing like what's working, what's not working, um, and helps relay that information to all the creative strategists. So he's leading that as well, but also deep diving hardcore inside of creating his own creatives as well.

Evan Lee: Huge. And then Daniel, we started this part of the conversation with like creators first, like who plays that role, but I think where we've landed is some version of like team construction and like roles and responsibilities. So in your part of the world, how are you thinking about like who's responsible for what? How does that scope expand? How have you structured it?

Daniel Rivera: Yeah, I think you said it right when you said we have to bring down the silos. I think when I started at Harry's, like growth sat in one section, it was called Growth Island. Since then, we have moved and we're working really closely with the brand, right? And for us, yes, we want to hit our DTC numbers and we want handles in hands, but we're also trying to test and learn how we can inform the brand and what the brand is doing. So a lot of the work I do, I have two metrics. I have to, you know, keep CACs low and get like new people getting the razor, but I also have to come back to the brand and say, don't use this language, use this language. Use the razor like this, not like this. This is what we're learning about who our customer is and what they care about. And then I inform the brand on what do we put on pack? What do we want to go forward for retail? Um, they had a TV spot they were working on. They sent it my way. I recut it with my team. We put a growth spin on it and now it became like our number one video on on TV. So we we are just doing a lot of collaboration, testing a lot of concepts and filming together. So we are working on a couple of like podcast things that growth has, this is what I want to get from it and organic, this is what I want to get from it and we're getting together to have these larger shoots and productions so that the content does speak to each other and we're like leveraging all our learnings across the board.

Evan Lee: Love it, Daniel. And then Travis, on your end, collaboration across these different departments, different teams, how does it look?

Travis Eubanks: Yeah, um, I think it's been a lot more important now to to Morgan's point and Daniel's point. Um, I'm going to take a little bit of a different approach to this. More like on the retention side, right? So like if you have a lot of, say you're running a ton of ads and you have some ads that are starting to crush, right? Well, what type of customers are coming through uh, through those ads, right? What are we saying in that ad? What what what is the the hook or the angle that is getting people to be interested and excited about the product? Well, we need to we need to and should share that information with the retention side too, because now they understand why people are coming in. Now we can start crafting emails and SMSs based on the people that came through these types of ads. Um, and keeping that what I like to call like keeping the scent from like the ad to the landing page to the post follow-up of after they made a purchase and all the extra emails they're receiving uh, after that as well. So like just communicating that across the board is super important. Um, and what's cool is like when you go through it, you're like, oh my god, like I remember I came in through for a gut and the landing page that came on was like, you know, six reasons why this helps with your gut. And then the thank you message was, you know, reviews about people that have experienced uh, uh, a gut health improvement. So you just keep that scent and reduce the friction on there so it keeps people excited about the product. So communicating that across the board I think is super important.

Evan Lee: Huge. Morgan, I'm curious to get your perspective because it sounds like you've done a like a really smart decision of giving that like type of messaging to a single person, but how are you, how are you navigating this brand and performance type of messaging relationship?

Morgan Hubans: Yeah, I mean, it feels like now I'm brought into like product development stage because all of those things are so connected to what does growth mean? Growth is like such a big umbrella term, but it it connects with every single piece, right? So I think that scope has expanded. When I think about brand, I think you you really have to juggle like it's not enough, I think, and back in the, you know, D2C boom where every brand could just like spend a bunch on ads and that's how you grow. Like it's not enough to have that. You have to have a really strong brand presence and I think that's the way that you stand out against your competitors because there's so many, everyone can like run a bunch of ads and pay a lot of money, but the way that you show up organically and if you can create that organic viral buzz, that's a lot harder to do in my opinion than a lot of times if that's like product led, that will also translate into stronger paid performance as well. Um, but I think that's the hardest thing to unlock right now because there is so much competition in the feed and the algorithm to produce virality. Um, and I think that's something that we're constantly thinking about and wanting to make sure that we're like protecting the brand piece of it. And I think nowadays like you see Alo Yoga is doing a yacht like in whatever Europe, like it's just so much harder to compete versus before when like, you know, Revolve would run a um, brand trip and it would make headlines. Like every brand is doing that now. So I think that's a struggle that we're talking about, but it does kind of like go into paid in a way because if people recognize your brand for that moment, then it just helps amplify the paid side of things. A, but then you can also utilize that. Like we're seeing that right now um, perform really well where Hailey Bieber used our bloat supplement five years ago and loves it and still purchases it to this day. Like that was not a paid um, collaboration at all, but people even in ads just being like, this is Hailey Bieber's favorite bloat supplement, continues to perform. So you can kind of like use that piece of it that went viral and organic and turn it into what makes sense for a paid ad versus like those two pieces of content might be different, but it really helps to have that like organic lever to go off of. And I think it just becomes like more and more difficult to stand out on the organic side of things.

Evan Lee: Does the organic role into you in terms of ownership and decision making?

Morgan Hubans: No, but I'm um, heavily involved now in every brand marketing decision because those things work in parallel and we really can't invest into these crazy organic brand moments unless we think that there's also going to be some paid element that we can utilize, right? Like, oh, we want to work with this big creator and maybe that content itself isn't going to be used as an ad, but we A, think like it's going to build launch momentum or B, we get the, you know, people talking about that in an ad, um, green screening it or at the event, we're getting content that we can utilize into ads. Like how are we thinking 360 about these organic brand moments versus them being in a silo? And like we basically have decided that if we can't have a 360 moment, it doesn't make sense to do like, you know, some organic moment over here if it doesn't going to is if it's not going to like amplify or have like a bigger strategy.

Evan Lee: It feels like crashing down these silos fundamentally changes the way that people collaborate, teams collaborate, and like projects are executed. So, Daniel, I'm curious on your end at Harry's, how you all are collaborating across the different channels now at this point rather than just in paid.

Daniel Rivera: Yeah, I think it's such a great question. And I think this is where I think about AI versus like human and us being us. You know, I think I'm chronically online. I do my best to be chronically online, but also pay attention to the zeitgeist. What's going on in the world? What are people caring about? What are the trends that I could probably like pay attention to and how do I incorporate that into into my work? Because you can ride the waves, but I think it's more important to think about the future and you can use AI to help you get there. But I think we have to be innovative in how we come up with concepts. What are the visual formats we want to leverage? Because to to the point we just spoke about, once you find your angle and your winning message, now you need to find different ways of making people, different people care about the same thing. And that's where you can start being innovative in how how you create. So use your AI, it's backward facing and that's where you can like learn all your new things, but you want to be future facing. I think you need to be creative, sit with your reviews, sit, understand who your customer is, and maybe you can be, you can build the next trend for your customers and the next ad that everyone else replicates and that's up to up to you really.

Evan Lee: Love it, Daniel. Travis, on your end, any final words for the audience?

Travis Eubanks: Um, yeah, I would say, it kind of ties into what Daniel is, bring out your inner child when it comes to trying things. Whether that's a media buying strategy, a creative strategy, a new AI tool, bring out your inner child and have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have-

Evan Lee: I think this is an ad. Like remake it.

Travis Eubanks: have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have have-

Evan Lee: Uh, team in the back, can we get some help taking them off stage real quick?

Evan Lee: Perfect. Thank you. Thank you. I feel like he was in it there and then we just turned it into a song. So it's like there we go. We got a good beat that we can work with now.

Morgan Hubans: Thinking on the spot.

Evan Lee: Morgan, take us home. Any final words to leave with the audience?

Morgan Hubans: I don't know if I have any final words, but I will say that I'm inspired to like continue to encourage my creative strategist to block entire days off. Like I think you don't have the space to be creative in between like 30 minutes in between two meetings. Block off this entire day to like dive deep into this product and come up with the crazy idea. And I think to Daniel's point, it's also like creating the culture of allowing there to be no bad ideas and I'm very lucky that both of my creative strategists do come up with crazy ideas all the time and they'll be like, okay, hear me out, like there's going to be this and this. And I'm like, let's try it. I think, um, obviously within specific brand guardrails, but when companies, especially leadership, like create too much red tape and picket fences, then like in approving every single idea and um, I think that can just kind of like restrain your growth and ability to be creative. So I think we're lucky that we're very like a test and learn mindset and as long as people understand what guardrails that you need to fit into and make sure that you're aligning on a brand perspective, allowing them to kind of like have that creative freedom to not be afraid to say the crazy idea and like, let's try it. Let's try anything once. Um, so I think that culture is so important and I do think a lot of brands kind of like get bogged down by leadership needing to like approve every single little detail. That's just like not what's helpful in growth growth today. Um, but yeah, I don't, I feel like maybe you asked something else that I'm forgetting now. Was there another question?

Evan Lee: No, that was great. No, that was great, Morgan. That was perfect. So, I think the the last one I'm going to pull up here is I think it's a good representation of like different types of audience members we have with us today. So we have some smaller teams with us today. And Shayna asks, now, you all have the teams you've built at these brands that you operate at, but what would you prioritize today if you were a one-person marketing team? Uh, Daniel, I'm going to throw it to you first.

Daniel Rivera: Yeah, customer research, customer research, customer research, understanding your customer. I firmly, firmly believe that creative strategy is empathy at its core. You need to understand who you're speaking to and understand what are they facing because I think it's one thing, we can solve a problem for ourselves, but it's different when you're trying to solve a problem for somebody else. And that's that's the work we do, right? We're advertising a product, but we need to create, I don't want to say create culture again, but we want to connect empathetically with our customer, meet them where they are, and then build off of that. And once you understand that, you can test that with very simple statics and that's probably where I where I'd start, right? Like I understand what I want to test. I'm going to go make a static or I'm going to pull up my phone and I'm going to yap at my screen all day and start testing these things and make it low lift. I know it's easy to look at the bigger brands and say, I want to do all of that, but ultimately the heart of the work is understanding your customer and being able to tie the benefits and what your product does and how it can change their lives, connect that with your customer and what you know about them and you will get winners.

Evan Lee: Amazing. Travis, on your end, if it was just you, where are you starting?

Travis Eubanks: Man, Daniel really like nailed it with the reviews. I I that's where I would 1,000% start and just do like social listening, like what are people saying about the products, whether it's Amazon reviews, your competitors' Amazon reviews, anything where people are talking, go there. But what I would also say to like add to that to also try to help amplify it is I think uh, Rezza mentioned this like in the the the beginning video was teach, like if you have Motion, like have Motion and Runneth know everything about your brand. Give it customer reviews, let it learn about how it's how your customers are talking. And then leverage the AI to try to do some of that heavy lifting of like analyzing 200, 300 reviews, which I know no one wants to look at 200 and 300 reviews. Leverage AI to help with that. So I think that would be where I would first go and it's just like I think the things that are that you do all the time and whether you you think you can or can't automate with AI, just ask it. You'll be pleasantly surprised that it'll be like, let me think through that. It's like, yeah, we can do it this way. Um, and so yeah, automation part is is a big part.

Evan Lee: Huge. Morgan, on your end, one person squad.

Morgan Hubans: That's a hard, it's a really hard question. And yeah, I think like Travis and Daniel answered it really well. Like I would definitely echo everything that they said. I think problem-solving mentality is so important and also a curiosity to like understand what are the problems that maybe your consumer is facing or that you're facing and trying to like ask the why so you can figure out how to solve them and being super curious about your audience. Like that's kind of how you develop the persona, right? Is like who are they? What are their problems that they're facing? What are their like desires? Um, what are the things that get them going? And then I think from there, you can have a really good idea of how to find them and go after them and retarget them and retain them is like who are they and being curious about that. As well as I think for any high-performer, the problem-solving mentality is so important because as you know, when, you know, being an operator of a business or being a founder of a business, like there's a new problem every single day and like the ability to go solve it is so important regardless of like what your role is.

Evan Lee: This has been incredible. I have one final question. Daniel, I'm going to throw it to you first because you've done this with me before, but I'm wondering if you have any final words for the audience today or anything you want to mention that you didn't get a chance to.

Daniel Rivera: Well, what just came to mind like as we thought about this, I think I would encourage everyone, I know sometimes we do this work all the time and we almost want to stay off of social media because I experience that, but in the last year, I've definitely leaned in, not just in consuming media, but making content, like my own day in the life stuff and just yapping, nothing to do with creative strategy, just like consciousness. And I think I've learned so much about one, creating content, what works, what doesn't, what are people looking for. And I think if you immerse yourself, don't expect it to like blow up, but just start playing there because you will learn how to speak, what not to say. And even if you're not going to star in your own ads, it'll help you with scripting, it'll help you with angle. It's just going to let you understand the landscape that you're trying to win in. And we all know that you can't win a war in a landscape that you don't know. So I encourage you, make your own content, get it out there, build build a presence, whatever you want that to look like.

Evan Lee: Love it, Daniel. Travis, on your end, any final words for the audience?

Travis Eubanks: Um, yeah, I would say, it kind of ties into what Daniel said is, bring out your inner child when it comes to trying things. Whether that's a media buying strategy, a creative strategy, a new AI tool, bring out your inner child and have fun with it. I think that's where you start finding those trends or those viral ads ideas.

Evan Lee: Prompt strategy is definitely a thing, so it makes sense. Daniel, I'm curious in your world on if there's been something that is encouraging people to be creative.

Daniel Rivera: I think it's fostering that culture on your team. I think I I come at creative strategy as a right-brained person. I do say I'm left and right-brained, but I'm very creative. And I always tell my team, we need to leave time to play, right? We're going to iterate, we're going to do the things that we know work, but also what's the idea that sparked out of nowhere? I want you to make time for that and I want to test it because we will learn something. Like Travis said, whether it flops or it works, we're going to learn something about it. And sometimes it might just be an indicator for your next hook. It might not be the full concept, but now you have a hook that works and you're going to marry it with your top performing video and now you have a winner in the account. So to me, it's about creating space to play and bounce those ideas. And I mean, we've had skits. I we had a founder come up with like a puppet show idea that like had a great hook. And I was like, this is great. This is not going to convert, you know? And like we start playing around with that, but it creates that atmosphere where I think I think with the AI stuff, it's very easy to kind of just like Claude brain and you're just on there typing all day. And if you want to create culture, I think you need to look up from your screen, you know, and engage with the community around you and be active in the comments and be active with how people are behaving on the internet and amongst your peers and how you interact with product. Recently, which is why I have the razor on my desk, sometimes we would just sit there and start fiddling with the razor to see what are the interesting things we can do or texture with our products, squeezing it out. Like how do we create texture and create things that people are excited to watch? Because ultimately, the creative that's going to work now is not just here's a great offer. It's content that people want to watch. People want to stick around for and that's ultimately what you're looking for. Because once you have that, you can put your offer in there and it will work.

Evan Lee: This really does make me think of, uh, there's understanding who you're going after in terms of the persona, and then back to what is the right message to talk to that persona that it's like, what are the creative ideas to then like be able to to demonstrate that in a visual way first. Morgan, curious if you had a perspective on like creating the culture, but I think the the question I'm I'm I'm more interested in throwing at you is like, is there a person on your team that comes up with the wild ideas? And what I'm trying to stitch together is is like, is that person the one who like understands the product and customer best? And is that driving it? So curious to get your thoughts.

Morgan Hubans: Yeah, I mean, from a from a culture perspective, I'm trying to encourage like my creative strategist to block entire days off. Like I think you don't have the space to be creative in between like 30 minutes in between two meetings. Block off this entire day to like dive deep into this product and come up with the crazy idea. And I think to Daniel's point, it's also like creating the culture of allowing there to be no bad ideas. And I'm very lucky that both of my creative strategists do come up with crazy ideas all the time and they'll be like, okay, hear me out, like there's going to be this and this. And I'm like, let's try it. I think, um, obviously within specific brand guardrails, but when companies, especially leadership, like create too much red tape and picket fences, then like in approving every single idea and um, I think that can just kind of like restrain your growth and ability to be creative. So I think we're lucky that we're very like a test and learn mindset and as long as people understand what guardrails that you need to fit into and make sure that you're aligning on a brand perspective, allowing them to kind of like have that creative freedom to not be afraid to say the crazy idea and like, let's try it. Let's try anything once. Um, so I think that culture is so important and I do think a lot of brands kind of like get bogged down by leadership needing to like approve every single little detail. That's just like not what's helpful in growth growth today. Um, but yeah, I don't, I feel like maybe you asked something else that I'm forgetting now. Was there another question?

Evan Lee: No, that was great. No, that was great, Morgan. That was perfect. So, I think the the last one I'm going to pull up here is I think it's a good representation of like different types of audience members we have with us today. So we have some smaller teams with us today. And Shayna asks, now, you all have the teams you've built at these brands that you operate at, but what would you prioritize today if you were a one-person marketing team? Uh, Daniel, I'm going to throw it to you first.

Daniel Rivera: Yeah, customer research, customer research, customer research, understanding your customer. I firmly, firmly believe that creative strategy is empathy at its core. You need to understand who you're speaking to and understand what are they facing because I think it's one thing, we can solve a problem for ourselves, but it's different when you're trying to solve a problem for somebody else. And that's that's the work we do, right? We're advertising a product, but we need to create, I don't want to say create culture again, but we want to connect empathetically with our customer, meet them where they are, and then build off of that. And once you understand that, you can test that with very simple statics and that's probably where I where I'd start, right? Like I understand what I want to test. I'm going to go make a static or I'm going to pull up my phone and I'm going to yap at my screen all day and start testing these things and make it low lift. I know it's easy to look at the bigger brands and say, I want to do all of that, but ultimately the heart of the work is understanding your customer and being able to tie the benefits and what your product does and how it can change their lives, connect that with your customer and what you know about them and you will get winners.

Evan Lee: Amazing. Travis, on your end, if it was just you, where are you starting?

Travis Eubanks: Man, Daniel really like nailed it with the reviews. I I that's where I would 1,000% start and just do like social listening, like what are people saying about the products, whether it's Amazon reviews, your competitors' Amazon reviews, anything where people are talking, go there. But what I would also say to like add to that to also try to help amplify it is I think uh, Rezza mentioned this like in the the the beginning video was teach, like if you have Motion, like have Motion and Runneth know everything about your brand. Give it customer reviews, let it learn about how it's how your customers are talking. And then leverage the AI to try to do some of that heavy lifting of like analyzing 200, 300 reviews, which I know no one wants to look at 200 and 300 reviews. Leverage AI to help with that. So I think that would be where I would first go and it's just like I think the things that are that you do all the time and whether you you think you can or can't automate with AI, just ask it. You'll be pleasantly surprised that it'll be like, let me think through that. It's like, yeah, we can do it this way. Um, and so yeah, automation part is is a big part.

Evan Lee: Huge. Morgan, on your end, one person squad.

Morgan Hubans: That's a hard, it's a really hard question. And yeah, I think like Travis and Daniel answered it really well. Like I would definitely echo everything that they said. I think problem-solving mentality is so important and also a curiosity to like understand what are the problems that maybe your consumer is facing or that you're facing and trying to like ask the why so you can figure out how to solve them and being super curious about your audience. Like that's kind of how you develop the persona, right? Is like who are they? What are their problems that they're facing? What are their like desires? Um, what are the things that get them going? And then I think from there, you can have a really good idea of how to find them and go after them and retarget them and retain them is like who are they and being curious about that. As well as I think for any high-performer, the problem-solving mentality is so important because as you know, when, you know, being an operator of a business or being a founder of a business, like there's a new problem every single day and like the ability to go solve it is so important regardless of like what your role is.