[0:00] Host: after our calls.
[0:02] Host: Perfecto.
[0:05] Host: Amazing.
[0:08] Host: And then team, we're we're we're literally in the Black Friday, Cyber Monday, like guts of it more than anything, right? How's it, how's it been going? Nicole, on your end? Has it been a good time in comparison to the previous like years you've been going through this?
[0:22] Nicole: Yeah, this is not my first rodeo. This is probably, I think my fifth or sixth Black Friday, Cyber Monday. And I feel like each time it gets a little bit more smooth. Oh, it's always chaotic. It's just the time of year. Everyone's just scrambling to get things out. So,
[0:37] Host: Yeah, when it start it starts to build up like that. I think like on my end, I always say, hey, there's some stuff from Q2 that I didn't do yet. Uh, but it's okay. I've done all the mandatory stuff, but there's definitely some stuff from Q2 that I wish that I was able to get to more than anything. But uh, Sarah, how's your Black Friday, Cyber Monday or Black Friday or Q4 time been going?
[0:55] Sarah: This one's been really fun. And I think it's because we've kind of migrated into this brand new like era for our agency and just for the industry as a whole. Um, so I'm feeling a lot better. I'm feeling a little bit more organized this year than I was last year. Last year I felt like it was just just scrambled to get as many ads as you possibly can. This year, we had a whole lot better of a system for actually creating those for our brands. So yeah, I I'm feeling confident. I don't know if that's going to continue. It depends on how this Black Friday goes. But no, I mean, having a system has really helped a lot just to like decrease the stress in general.
[1:31] Host: Entirely, entirely. And then Lauren, I know the content production, like when you're starting to make some stuff, there's a ton of stuff going on, but how's it been working with your clients in particular and some of the stuff that they are asking you for?
[1:42] Lauren: Um, well, I'm glad everyone else is great. No, I'm just kidding. Uh, no, it's good. It's good. Um, I mean, every year trying to get better with just, you know, organizing and prioritizing things. So I always make calendars and try to get things available on time, but there's always going to be a change. So it's it's been good, but it's still it's crazy on the production side. I feel like once we get to Black Friday, it's just hectic and then after we kind of slow down a little bit.
[2:13] Host: Entirely, entirely. Okay. Uh, I'm excited to kick off with everybody here. So without further ado, I'm going to share my screen and we can get into some things together.
> [VISUAL: slide titled "Creative analytics and reporting" with subtitle "The Creative Strategist's Hub". A screenshot of the Motion app is on the right showing "Last Week's Top Creatives".]
[2:22] Host: And first and foremost, everybody who's in the party, I'm excited that like at Motion, we get to host so many people who respect immensely and what we're going to help really talk through today is like the creative strategy element on our end. But before I get into like all of the AMA stuff, all of the questions that I'm excited to hear from the team, I just wanted to cover a a couple housekeeping items first and foremost.
> [VISUAL: slide titled "Housekeeping" with two bullet points: "Use our sli.do to ask questions - be sure to upvote if something resonates with you" and "This event is being recorded and will be available afterwards".]
[2:45] Host: So as everyone knows who has been to our AMAs before, potentially not, um, all of the questions aren't actually done through the Zoom chat. Where we like to manage them is within Slido. So I'll throw that into our chat here. And through this link, you can throw in your questions, you can upvote if there's something that someone likes so that we can actually prioritize those questions that start to come in. And then the other thing that I like to note is ultimately like these are being recorded, like I had mentioned earlier. So whoever needs it, we want to spread the wealth and we really want to make sure that everyone has this educational material that they ultimately need. Amazing. Okay.
[3:20] Host: So with all of that being said, I'm super, super lucky to get to sit here today with Lauren, Nicole, and Sarah. I've known all of them for quite some time. They're absolutely incredible in everything that they do and I'm excited, so excited for everyone here to get the insights that they need. And one of the biggest pieces that we're going to learn more about is that they've actually gone ahead and started like the world's first creative strategy agency. Now, you know at Motion, we love that and that's music to our ears, but everybody else, you're really going to learn today like why that's such an important step towards not only just like creative strategy as a community, but more importantly your bottom line, right? Like we're looking at the macro environment and everything that's going on, we need to be efficient and ultimately this creative strategy element is going to help you become more efficient over time. So that's my spiel, uh, more than anything. And eventually, I promise we're going to get into these lovely questions that everybody has here.
> [VISUAL: Dark mode view of a sli.do Q&A page with a list of questions from anonymous users.]
[4:14] Host: But before we get into those, I just wanted to start with a couple like introductory questions, more than anything. So, first one I'm going to direct is actually to Nicole. Um, on this topic of creative strategy, we've been doing it whether it's defined or not. It's been something that's been around, but now more than ever, why is it so important?
[4:35] Nicole: Oh, this is a loaded question. I mean, creative strategy has always been important. You have to keep in mind like our consumers or our potential customers, they're getting bombarded every single day with ads left and right, all over social media, all over their phones, on billboards, etc. So creative strategy has always been important to make sure that your brand stands out from the rest. Um, and you want to make sure that you're doing this because you don't have budget or bandwidth, your teams don't have the money to waste or the time to waste. So creative strategy is a great way for cutting through the noise and really getting to your target audience that you're trying to get to. Why now, I think is the big question. Why it's kind of all over social media right now and you're hearing about this new role, the creative strategist. I think it really, um, iOS 14 put some gas to this fire where we lost a lot of attribution, we lost a lot of data that we're relying on previously for targeting. So it's getting more and more challenging to reach your consumers. So it's just even more relevant now to get back to the basics, get back to the research, get back to understanding your audience and who these people really are because at the end of the day, you're talking to a creative, you're talking to a real person like across from the screen. So, I think that's why creative strategy is important now and why we're seeing it blow up today in particular.
[5:54] Host: I love that. Humans first at the end of the day and then how do we also scale it with the bottom line needs of the company to make it work. Um, and then again, I still wanted to set the stage for everybody, but people come to these AMAs to learn really about those tactics and how do we get these the actual job that needs to be done, done. But before we get in there, I almost wanted to look at this through a different lens. All three of you work with so many great companies on a day-to-day basis, right? And a big part of this is like who's actually doing the work at the end of the day. So what I wanted to jump into a little bit was actually some team structure stuff. Like what are those personalities, what are those roles we start to need to fill outside of solely just the creative strategist and we'll loop them in of course at the end there. So Lauren, uh, you bring that, you bring that unique perspective of a unicorn status being from the design end and being able to understand everything that's going on, right? So talk to us a little bit about some of like the myths of some of these roles that exist, what those roles are and what you believe they should be doing. Would that be cool?
[6:54] Lauren: Yeah, for sure. So, again, uh, kind of that unicorn status, I think, I mean, I heavily come from a creative background side. So, you know, a lot of people when they say they're going to hire a graphic designer, they make, they think the graphic designer is literally going to do everything. They're going to be the copywriter, the designer, the video editor, everything, which in reality that's not true. You have to have one role for each. You, they all play different parts within the ecosystem. And so making sure that you have each person on that team is a huge benefit and is only not only going to help the side of the design, but it's also going to help the side of the creative strategist. And then obviously, you know, your media buyer, um, and everything else that kind of ties into that. But I think those are kind of the roles as far as the creative side goes that you need to make sure that you're fulfilling all three of those areas because one person cannot do everything, so don't expect them to.
[7:51] Host: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, incredible, incredible. And then on the other side of things, Nicole, like when we talk about the translation layer of like creative strategist as a role as well as media buyers, what are some of those personality traits people need to succeed?
[8:03] Nicole: Yeah, absolutely. I think too, similar to the graphic designer being siloed in the role, the media buyer's role is kind of changing and shifting as well where the media buyers often times are being sent out and go run these ads and they don't quite, they're so data and analytical focused that they're in the weeds and they could tell you exactly what like the thumbs up ratio, the click through rates, the CPCs, but how does that actually translate into your creatives? So that's where you have to have that that dual lens. You have to be able to read the data and make decisions on the fly and iterate off that data, but you also have to have that creative lens to know how do you actually execute this ad? What actual elements in the ad need to be tweaked so that we can continue to see success and scale ultimately.
[8:52] Host: I love it. I love it. And then now if I go back to sharing my screen, Sarah actually put out a tweet yesterday that I absolutely love everybody. And if you haven't seen it, go check it out. But it's it's just like this idea of what that uh, like the process and steps in the creative strategy process starts to look like, right?
> [VISUAL: slide titled "CREATIVE STRATEGY RECAP" with subtitle "PUTTING THE PIECES TOGETHER". A flowchart shows the steps: ALIGNMENT -> RESEARCH -> AVATARS -> IDEATION -> BRIEFING -> CONTENT PRODUCTION -> LAUNCH -> CREATIVE ANALYSIS -> ITERATIONS -> ORGANIZATION. A tweet is visible on the right side of the slide.]
[9:11] Host: And what when I see this, it makes it really digestible. That's for sure. But I think one of the big things that stands out to me is like there's so many things to do within creative strategy at the end of the day. There's these tasks that everyone can see here, plus the management of those roles that we've just talked about with Lauren and Nicole. But then Sarah, now that you've been able to see a lot of this, how is like the creative strategy agency that you all are putting forward really help play into this and tie it all together?
[9:40] Sarah: Yeah. So one of the most interesting things about this is it was actually created kind of from something that Nicole had had before where she was kind of just working on what exactly is going into a creative strategy because we can throw this word around a lot. We need a creative strategist, we should have a strategy, who's going to do the creative strategy, but unless you know what it actually is, it's very difficult I think for people to wrap their minds around what the heck we're supposed to be looking for when we go to hire somebody or or a team of people to actually produce this for us. So when we talk about the strategy itself from the agency side, all of these things have to be included, otherwise we're basically just again, just guessing on our ads. So we have to start with that alignment. What the heck are we doing? Where are we going? What KPIs are we trying to hit? What are the goals that we're actually reaching for? Then we go into that research phase and on the agency side, this is kind of how we wrap in our NLP reports. So we actually take a whole bunch of comments and reviews down and if we can't find those, we'll go to Reddit, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, wherever we can get them, where people are talking about not only just your product, but the actual industry itself. So any of the problems that they're facing, anything that they're actually struggling with, we'll go through and categorize them into nine different emotional categories so we can figure out what do these people actually feel about their problem and how did they get to this point of like, I need a solution. That research also encompasses things like who's involved in the purchasing process? Is it their mom? Is it their sister? Their dads, their co-workers, who's involved in that? And then we'll also go deep, deep into actual language use, which is one of the best places I think to find good ad copy and good ad angles. So once we've done that entire research, we now have like this giant list of all these different things we can test. And that's what the research is for. So your entire strategy is based upon this huge piece of research that's basically coming up with an entire list of things so that you'll never run out of things to test. That's the most important part about research. We should never be running out of things to test if we do the research correctly. After that, then we'll go into creating actual avatars around that research. We'll go into the ideation phase, which is usually the fun part for us because we get to go in and actually pin things and do an ideation board. We'll go in and kind of get inspiration from not only what other brands in the industry are doing, but we'll actually take that information and use it for our new ideation on ads on our side. Then we go into the actual creation process, which is briefing, content production, launching the ads, doing the analysis. That's the part that I think most people are doing currently is the middle, the actual middle chunk. So briefing, content production, launch and creative analysis, everybody's currently doing that because that's what we were doing pre iOS. After iOS happened though, we forgot about this like four-step process in the beginning and the actual iteration and the organization afterwards. So the top and the middle, like the top and the bottom pieces are what's missing currently. So for any of those brands that are currently doing all four in the middle, great, keep it up, keep doing it. But if you're missing any of the four steps before or the two steps afterwards, that's where hiring an agency or a creative strategist can really push you into a totally new era for your brand and for paid advertising.
[13:02] Host: I love it. I love it. I love the fact that like honestly, like giving people kudos where they are because it's like you're doing great things at the end of the day. This is just how you take it to the next level, right? So I really like how you've been able to spell it out. And where that now takes me to are are kicking off our Q&A from the audience here. And everybody, as you know, the link is in the chat. Feel free to throw your questions into Slido from here. But something that drew uh my eye to it is initially just speaking about about like alignment, research, all of those different steps. Now, there's two things at play. There's speed because we have Q4 here, but there's also preparation for making sure we're set in Q1 and can take off where we need. So throughout this entire process, and I'm going to throw this one at Nicole first, is how do you manage the feedback process with internal stakeholders, the client and everyone else in between to make sure that they feel heard, but you're not developing creative by committee at the end of the day.
[13:56] Nicole: Oh, yeah, you this one's tough. You really, there's so many different key players that have an input from the media buyer to the copywriter, the graphic designer, and then even the brand team. You have to manage a lot of personalities, which takes some, you know, jushing. Um, but how do I, um, sorry, what was the question?
[14:17] Host: Manage that feedback process. So even whether in your world when we're talking about like an initial creative and then making sure you feel good about it, but now you need to make sure everyone feels good about it at the end of the day. So how do we make sure, yeah, go ahead.
[14:32] Nicole: No, I think, yeah, it all comes down to the research and the alignment. If once your teams are aligned, I think this whole process, this question almost gets eliminated or this problem, um, because you're aligned and you have the same goals. And then once you've done the research properly, you really could just go back to it, um, and keep building off of the research from prior.
[14:51] Host: Love it. And then Sarah, on your end, like when you that research and those initial reports are created, is that something you're like immediately going to the client with to be like, listen, this is how we view the world. Are you cool with that? Or what does that conversation look like?
[15:04] Sarah: Yeah, yeah. So easiest way obviously is to start with what you already have. If you're a brand that's been around for a while, best place to go is obviously your comments and reviews. Reviews are a little bit tough just just so that you know, depending on the brand, they could either be very positively weighted or very negatively weighted. So you have to keep that in mind when you're actually doing any sort of like review analysis. If they are positive, that's great, but sometimes people will like overflower what they're saying. They'll just make it super positive because they really want, I don't know, the brands to like what they say or they want other people to like what they say. So just keep that in mind that sometimes they're a little bit weighted. But outside of your comments and reviews, second best place I think is surveys. Anytime that you can have actual personalized data coming in is fantastic. If you have none of those, if you're a new brand that you're like, I don't have comments, I haven't done surveys, like we're just brand new at this, best place to go, I think is Reddit. That's probably my my third place to go, um, mostly because Reddit, people get very emotional. They're very like open with how they feel about their problems and you'll get just threads on threads, just like so many people either agreeing or disagreeing and giving you kind of good discussion as to how they feel about whatever topic they've chosen to comment on. Um, so Reddit is one of the best places to go. I also think Reddit categorizes things really, really well. So you can get really nitty gritty into your search. It's not just like broad topic, how do you feel about like sourdough bread? You can get down into like what's the best pot to like bake sourdough bread in an electric oven. Like that's how detailed they get on Reddit. It's nuts. After Reddit, I'll usually go to TikTok, mostly because TikTokers are also very emotional. I don't know why, but their comments get real fiery. And then from there, I'm going to branch out and do Google trend searches, Pinterest trend searches. I'll go into and actually do like ad comment searches if we can get it from the brands. Um, that's kind of like secondary to those top ones. But yeah, as long as you can get personalized ones first, I think that's best. And then go to the places where people are most emotional with their comments.
[28:30] Host: I love that. I love that. And then I think like Lauren, to loop you in here, um, it's also tied into this question that I saw. It's just like when starting to develop an actual asset, like where do you even start? So, of course there's research involved. Um, on your end, how do you take that initial research and then determine what to actually do with that? What does it look like? How do you make sure it resonates, it looks good and all that kind of stuff?
[29:01] Lauren: Yeah, I mean, honestly, this is a tough one. And I think it's just because there's a lot of creators out there. And so really kind of flushing out, you know, who's good, who's bad, um, working with them, seeing how they do work, how they operate. Um, I mean, I I work with a lot of creators and I think you kind of start to find the ones that just get it. They can look at a brief, they can understand it, they understand how to talk to consumers, they understand how to take your research and the brief and utilize it in a good content piece. But really, I think kind of once you start to find those strong creators, then literally just take their information and start packing it into an Excel spreadsheet, um, you know, anything that you can to basically start building up these creator profiles. And then once you have that, then you can really just start to tap into that database. So, I think it's just, again, it's a lot of research, it's a lot of testing and just seeing who works and who doesn't.
[31:21] Host: So important to just be open.
[31:23] Sarah: I'll add something to that too.
[31:24] Host: Go ahead, Sarah.
[31:25] Sarah: I have a prediction that I'm going to put out that may or may not be correct. I have a hypothesis. Um, I think we're going to start to see since there's so many UGC creators out there and so many of them are very, I what I would call green actors. I think we're going to start to see more and more brands utilize actual seasoned actors. So there's sites where you can go on and hire actual actors for pretty cheap, 2 to 300 bucks, and they will literally do whatever you want them to do, like any kind of acting anywhere for anything, any kind of advertising. These actors though are ones who are either trained to do this, like they're actually went to school to be actors, or they really want this to be their career. So they're focused on an entirely different product output. I have a prediction that this is kind of where the industry is headed next. And this is based upon talking with quite a lot of founders, a ton of different agency owners, and they're all kind of seeing the same thing that like UGC creators were fantastic for last year for like handling this issue of iOS kind of basically tore apart our entire system, how do we fix it? UGC was the bridge, right? But now what we're finding is we know UGC works. Now we just need to produce higher quality UGC. And to find that, we basically have to hire higher quality actors is what we're kind of seeing coming up next. So, I would love to hear some feedback from any of the brand owners who have actually tried this. Um, yeah.
[32:48] Lauren: I agree. I agree, Sarah. And I I'll only say this just because I do have creators that actually work with me. And really at the end of the day, it's like we started out where they weren't necessarily trained. And literally it was me saying, no, do this, shoot this, get this concept. You know what I mean? Like it's it was a lot of like me working with them and training them. And now it's so easy to just already have those trained actors that I don't have to reach out to those, you know, newer UGC creators. I mean, honestly, I think with so many creators that have reached out to me and want to work with me, I it's very hard because I have to say no because it's like you just don't have the skill that I need in order to get that high quality UGC anymore. Like there are a lot of people out there, but at the end of the day, it's like there's a lot of people out there doesn't mean they're necessarily good. And so I agree with you, Sarah, 100%.
[33:47] Nicole: It's a skill and I think it shows very, very apparently when you get your content back, whether the person is acting and actually good at it or if it's organic, 100% organic or if it's some weird spot in between. So, you'll know.
[34:05] Host: I'm so curious mainly around like the the top of the funnel, right? So when I say the top of the funnel, what I mean for everyone who's like listening in here is like, let's say I'm a brand and I don't know where to get a creator. Like, Sarah, you had mentioned potential websites, Lauren, you mentioned people reach out to you, but you started somewhere for sure. So I almost, it I almost wonder if we can give the people insight into like how do you even make those right connections and what are we looking for? Does that make sense?
[34:35] Lauren: You can jump in.
[34:37] Sarah: Oh, go ahead, Nicole.
[34:40] Host: Go ahead, Nicole. Kick us off. Kick us off.
[34:44] Nicole: Um, so I started in that position where I worked with a lot of bootstrap brand brands years ago and it was just five years ago, there wasn't, you know, the Billow or the Insense, which are platforms, not affiliated, but um, that you can go and hire UGC talent and there's different degrees of their quality and talent. Uh, but before all that, like I had to post ads on Craigslist and Fiverr and ask the local community and people on the web, hey, can you shoot this content for me? And often times I it was easiest to actually emulate and do it myself and show them I want basically this and send over my bullet pointed script and that's worked pretty well back in the day. There's definitely a lot more efficient methods such as the platforms I mentioned or having your own database of UGC creators. But most recently, actually, um, Meta just launched a platform for creators on their back end. I'm not sure if it's fully released to everyone. I know it got released to brands within the US only, but basically it's kind of like an integrated grin UGC creator platform where because they've got the data on everyone on Instagram and Facebook. So they you can go in as a creator, make your little profile, match with different brands based on your uh engagement levels and get paid right all within Facebook back end. So very interesting to see that new development in the last few weeks here and how Meta is trying to compete against these other creator platforms. So be very cool to see how this plays out.
[36:20] Lauren: Yeah, I actually, when I first started, to be honest, I I stocked a lot of social media managers. Um, I mean, people who are already do social media, I think already kind of get it and they're already having to like produce that content for a lot of their brands anyway. And so I actually, like I did a lot of stalking on on them and they were great to kind of start with because again, like some of them are kind of wanting to transition more into this UGC role and they were more willing to like work with me and more willing to be worked with and worked on as opposed to going out and vetting all these, you know, quote unquote UGC creators. Like it was just easier to work with them and easier to find them because they're more readily available, I guess. And they already understand how to market to social media and how to market a brand that they're just easier to work with, I think. Um, so I think if you're kind of starting out, that's a good place to kind of reach out to.
[37:20] Host: Perfect. And then Sarah, you were mentioning one of those websites specifically for like people who are trained and I don't know if I'm putting words into your mouth, but are there any of those that come to mind for you?
[37:29] Sarah: Um, I've I've tested a couple different ones. I honestly, I haven't I haven't like pinpointed one that I use all the time. So I can't, I don't remember any off the top of my head. But I do know that there's quite a few from from people who are just like really interested in acting and just want to try and make it their career. So they're on the cheaper end, which I think is fantastic because man, UGC gets expensive. Like it's really high production value like cost wise. So the cheaper you can get it, I think the better. And if you find someone that you really, really love, please, please, please treat them well, pay them what they're worth, you know, obviously don't don't overpay these people because we're trying to like manage the flow at this point. There's so many UGC creators out there and all of them are just kind of confused about what they should charge. So, pay them well, treat them well, and I mean, you could work for people for years. There's some really good people out there that you can work with for a long, long time if they're good. So, yeah.
[38:24] Host: Love that. Love that. And then on the topic of UGC right now, like the number one voted question that we have here is that it's hard to build a brand image when focusing so heavily on UGC. How do you balance the UGC style with more branded and produced content across your different channels? Um, Nicole, do you want to kick us off on that one?
[38:43] Nicole: Sure. Yeah, UGC is just a style. Um, it's just having that supposedly authentic person giving their content and usually a selfie style from a phone is pretty traditional for UGC. Um, graphics, man, people forgot that graphics and statics work. And this is one of the easiest plays. There's so many variations, but even just a review style graphic, you can do problem, uh, solution focus. There's so many angles that you can play into a graphic that immediately will just expand. And you can keep it very branded too by having, you know, on brand colors, using your brand fonts and brand logo. You can take almost any static angle and polish it up and make it look branded and on point. UGC is a little bit harder unless you start adding post-production video edits such as like your copy cards at the end and keeping your logo and even font styles, maybe mashing up the two.
[39:37] Host: And then Lauren, would love to know your thoughts since you live in this every single day.
[39:42] Lauren: Yeah, I actually, it's funny because like don't build your brand image on UGC. Like that that's really like it's one of those things like don't heavily focus on it. I mean, yes, it's it's great to have, but I say this all the time to anyone that I work with or anyone that I talk to, like you have to diversify your creative. You cannot build a solid structure on just UGC alone. Like it's just it just doesn't work. Like you have to make sure that you're still adding in those statics, those simple elements of, you know, creative. It's just it you can't build it on just UGC. Like I think it's so funny when I have clients come to me and they're like, well, we only have UGC and it's like, well then you're you're doing it wrong. Like, I mean, really at the end of the day, like you have to have the simple things. You still have to have statics, you still have to have carousels, like you still have to have those simple things that are going to pop out in people's feed. So, I would just say make sure you're just building all creatives for all parts of the funnel really.
[40:53] Host: And I know there's another question on here, but it's like people are in love with videos right now. Why why do you think that is?
[41:00] Lauren: I mean, video like, oh, I mean, I'll just give my opinion. I mean, honestly, I think video because it's just always in your face. Like there's always something to entertain you. There's no like with TikTok and shorts and YouTube and everything, it's like the generation now is just fully focused on video. It's very rare like, I mean, I'm a lot older than much people, but I mean, really at the end, you know, like we had print, like we had magazines that was like that was our thing. And now it's just constant like video is always in your face. So I think that's why people are so much more drawn to it. But there's video in the sense of UGC and there's video in the sense of an animated static. So it's like there's still different parts of video that you can have. It doesn't always necessarily have to be UGC. I think a lot of people's misconception is that they think video and they automatically think UGC, but like that's not really the case. Like you can make something animated and still have it be a video. Sorry. I'm off my soap box.
[42:02] Host: The passion is what drives this. I love it. The passion is what drives this. I love it. I love it. And then there's another question here that Sarah, I'd like to direct to you. You and I have chatted about this a bunch, but I'd love for everyone else to be in the loop here. It's like, how do you better control outcomes when making UGC specifically with outside talent? How do you make sure that if it's in-house, um, doesn't feel forced or inauthentic, um, for example. So how do you go about that process with your avatars?
[42:27] Sarah: This is such a good question. And also leans into the fact that like as a brand and as creative strategist, we completely understand that for some brands, UGC is all that's working right now. So like, I'd love to bring that out because I'm sure somebody on this call is thinking, well, UGC is all that's working in my account. Like, how am I supposed to have a good split when no static is working or no, none of my gifts are working. Like, we totally understand that for some accounts, Facebook just algorithms you into UGC. So I understand that that's a thing. When it comes to producing good UGC and actually getting something that's authentic, I think it's important to have a good creative stack on both sides. Continue testing all of your statics so that you can check messaging in your static and pull it into your UGC if that makes sense. We need to use statics because they're quick, right? Real fast. Like let's let's produce 10 of them and test messaging with the statics. Once we find one that hits, then we're going to pull that and build it out into a very well structured direct response, paid advertising focused UGC. UGC is because it's much more like high, high production value, like it just takes a lot more time to produce it. We need to make sure that when we produce it, we're producing it off of an idea that we know is going to work. So one, it comes down to actually sourcing somebody that's a very good actor. We've already talked about this, so we don't need to like beat that one again. But the other side of it is understanding that your particular UGC creator is actually not playing the part of somebody who's actually advertising the brand or like promoting the brand. They're playing a character. So, and I'm sure some of if you've heard me on Twitter before, you've heard me say this before, but what I would rather us do is actually create a brief off of a character and not actually set down lines of like, this is what I want you to say. So we need to think of ourselves as we are the director, we are not the screenwriter. You're not the person who's actually writing the lines. You want them to write their own lines. And we do this in particular from like a psychology standpoint because we don't want our voice to come through a different human. Nobody is going to say things the exact same way that another person does. So I could write a script for Lauren and have her say it and it may come out real strange because she uses different language than I do. She uses different like phrases, you know, and I'm also obviously talk with my hands a lot. Like if I'm on camera and I do this all the time, it makes sense for Sarah. But it's possible that maybe it doesn't make sense for Lauren. I'm pretty sure you're Italian, but if not, you and I use our hands a lot. It's fine. So this is just the way that we talk. But for somebody else, it might not make sense.
[44:57] Lauren: I actually, when I first started, to be honest, I I stocked a lot of social media managers. Um, I mean, people who are already do social media, I think already kind of get it and they're already having to like produce that content for a lot of their brands anyway. And so I actually, like I did a lot of stalking on on them and they were great to kind of start with because again, like some of them are kind of wanting to transition more into this UGC role and they were more willing to like work with me and more willing to be worked with and worked on as opposed to going out and vetting all these, you know, quote unquote UGC creators. Like it was just easier to work with them and easier to find them because they're more readily available, I guess. And they already understand how to market to social media and how to market a brand that they're just easier to work with, I think. Um, so I think if you're kind of starting out, that's a good place to kind of reach out to.
[45:22] Sarah: That's the character, right? You're a tired mom. That's your character. The next summary is going to be down into the nitty gritty of like, this is how the product solves that problem. Our particular shampoo works within 20 minutes. Your hair will dry faster. It'll be beautiful out the door and you won't have to worry about like actually styling it because all you have to do is let it air dry and it'll be fine, right?
[45:42] Sarah: That's what it solves. Then go into, here's some suggested actual copy that you can use if you'd like. And please rephrase so that it makes sense to you. I always put this is suggested, it is not something I want you to actually say. Please rephrase it into however it works for you as a UGC creator because at the end of the day, we're trying to get natural. We want it to come across as if they're just opening up their phone, turning it around and starting to talk to their friends. If you want it to be natural, do not script it.
[46:10] Sarah: That's my suggestion.
[46:13] Evan: So good. It's funny because
[46:15] Lauren: I actually think
[46:16] Evan: Oh, sorry.
[46:17] Lauren: I was just going to say, I think it's it's hard for some it's hard for brand owners I think and and people on that side to understand that too because they want to get their point across so fast and they want to make sure that people are understanding what the product is. And so they don't think about, again, like bringing it back to the human side. Like they don't think about the busy mom who's running out the door who like doesn't have time to wash her hair, you know? Like they're just thinking about, I want to tell you about all these, you know, it doesn't have this in it and this in it and it's like at the end of the day, like you have to talk you have to talk to that person and not necessarily, you know, share like get so nitty gritty, I guess. So just making sure that you're just understanding the people element again.
[47:03] Sarah: Yeah.
[47:04] Evan: One of the best ads I ever saw was actually a Black Friday ad from last year and I knew the guy that ran the ad. It was the same person talking to herself, which was the funniest thing. It's a puffy jacket that's heated. So all you have to do is like push a button and the whole jacket will warm up. And it was a conversation between her in her normal jacket and her in the puffy jacket. And the puffy jacket was just saying, you look cold. And she was like, yeah, it's freezing out here. Like I am dying right now. How are you not cold? She was like, I have a puffy jacket that heats.
[47:31] Evan: And that was the whole ad. It was literally like one person talking to herself on either side of her like problem and solution. And he's running the same I just got it on my phone yesterday. I was like, you're running the same ad again this year. And he was like, this crushed. Just crushed. But it was it was great because it was so natural. You could tell this person probably thought of this concept herself and just like randomly shot it on a whim and it just even for Black Friday, it did so, so well because it was natural to her. It was natural to the actress. So like as natural as you can get it and as free form as you can get it is best way to go.
[48:09] Evan: I love it. I love it. Um, we're coming up on 10 minutes here and there are questions that getting are getting upvoted. I do want to give some like our media buyers some love too. We focused heavily on UGC, which is a huge topic of course, but I do want to give some love. So the first question that I wanted to dig into here is this one right here.
[48:26] Evan: So as a creative strategist, uh, are you proposing the test for media buyers or are they proposing the test to you? And then Nicole, you know I'm throwing this one at you.
[48:34] Nicole: Yeah, it's a blend. You're you're collaborating with the media buyer. You don't want to come in and run their show. They've been in the account much longer than you, typically. Um, and they're very hyper focused day to day in the account. So often times I'm not coming in and telling you, you need to run it this way. But I like to do is set them up for success. I like to say that, you know, these are the creatives that we have um, in that we'd like to test. These are the the key goals for these creatives is to test the hook or the key goal is to test, you know, the click through rate. And this is these are the benchmarks that we're trying to beat or establish, you know, in the account. So when I give that information to the media bar, it is a back and forth kind of conversation and then we work together on how to best build it out. So there's not kind of a one size fits all in terms of how to test it creatively because it's going to vary, you know, whether you're doing top of funnel traffic or bottom of funnel traffic, it's completely different and your goals are very different. So again, it comes back to that alignment. Alignment with the media buyer, making sure you're on the same page. This is what we're testing, this is why, and this is my suggestions and best practices, but at the end of the day, I'm going to leave it to you and I trust your judgment. And that's really key because you can't do it all. I can't go in and run the show. So I really got to lean on the media buyer sometimes.
[49:48] Evan: And then with that media buying hat on, let's say we get to the place of like the test is ready to go. We have those assets, we know we're going to go live. What's your preferred way of like setting up the account to run that test?
[50:01] Nicole: It's I hate saying it, but it's going to vary test by test. It's going to vary completely different. Um, in general, I see a big shift towards the less uh, buttons you have to press the better. So switching from ABO to CBO, um, putting less emphasis on the targeting and the interest, stop breaking it out by different segments. Let the algorithm do its job. Let it work. Often times we're seeing that succeed. Now, the difference I would say when you're at much smaller scale, that's when I'm seeing like the look alike audiences still can sometimes outperform broad, but in general, I say if I had to blanket statement it, which I hate doing, but I would say broad is probably going to be your best foot forward, especially because it allows you room to scale and it's more consistent, it's more stabilized. You go heavy into like your 1% look alike audience, that might be great at a $100 budget, but when you try to scale it up to $1,000 budget, it usually tanks. It just goes kapoof. So I see that frustration across media buyers and testing. So for creatives in general, again, broad is probably the way you want to go.
[51:08] Evan: And do you have any thoughts on like structure being testing campaign versus scaling campaign versus like evergreen campaign, for example?
[51:16] Nicole: Yeah, absolutely. I love to keep um, my creative tests in particular, the isolated variables that I'm testing in a completely separate campaign. I like to do this for a few reasons, organizational purposes. It's much easier to go back and see what we're testing and why. If it's working, I like to then move it into a scaling campaign. Then we try to squeeze it out. We may switch from automatic bidding structures to um, more cost caps to squeeze out, you know, the remaining juice out of that, really maximize the media buys. Um, but I also like to isolate it because you want to have a dedicated creative testing budget and a lot of brands aren't doing this. So they they simply testing it, but they don't have a dedicated budget to creative testing. We really need to isolate that factor um, and ensure that we're doing it. In general, kind of a loose rule of thumb, I like to have about 60% of my ad account be focused on proven content that's winning because of course we got to stay profitable for the most part. About 30% is like iterations and tweaks of the profitable content or ideas that are we know are going are pretty confident that are going to succeed. And maybe it's based off the NLP report or something. That's probably in that 30% iterations. And then 10% big swings. We have no idea if this is going to work, but you have to throw those ideas out on the wall. You have to be creative with it. You want to make sure that you allocate budget to those big swings because you might hit a grand slam and off you go to the races. So I still recommend having a little bit of budget aside for those as well.
[52:48] Evan: I love that. And then Sarah and Lauren, where I'd love to get your opinion on is there's a question in here about repurposing content. What's the correct flow for it? Like, is it best to test test it on organic first, then social, then paid or what does that process start to look like? Sarah, maybe I can throw it at you first.
[53:05] Sarah: Yeah. So when we're testing any sort of creatives, I honestly like to take a little bit of what's worked off of organic. Um, it's difficult to kind of translate organic to paid though because often times we will run an organic thinking that it'll do really, really well on paid because it did so well organically, but because it's not framed to sell, sometimes it'll completely flop. So organic's a little bit a difficult one. You have to have a very specific organic, an organic that's like a little bit of paid, which is like weird to say. I don't even like I don't know how you would frame that, but like in the middle somewhere. Um, one of the best things that I've noticed though is taking concepts from organic that seems to be working, specifically trends. So when we're doing any sort of iterations, pulling from organic and using them in paid, we're usually using platform trends and not necessarily a specific organic post. But Lauren probably has kind of a deeper analysis than I do because she does the actual production side. But I don't know. What do you think, Lauren?
[54:01] Lauren: No, I mean, I agree. Like it's it's hard because again, like Sarah said, like you're going from an organic side where again, you're you're not selling anything. You're just doing an organic post. And so again, for us, we just usually look at trends. Like that usually seems to be the best way to kind of sell an organic type of material is just by a trend.
[54:23] Evan: Makes a ton of sense. And then, um, we'll probably have time for one or two more depending, but the one that got upvoted super quickly here is diving into the first, I want to say three buckets and just almost putting some definitions beside them. So anybody can take this. I know, I know all of you excel here, but just the alignment, avatars, and I think it was research. Yeah, alignment, research and avatar steps, just putting some definitions around what each of these around what each of these buckets mean.
[54:51] Nicole: Nicole, do you want to take alignment because you're super, super good at this one?
[54:53] Sarah: Oh, alignment, my favorite. Oh, it is the bread and butter, man. You really have to start here because there's so many variables. You mentioned actually evergreen versus like promotional content. What are you what's the goal of this whole creative strategy, right? Um, and then you've got like the more branded brands and performance. So alignment is where I'm literally sitting down with the brand or the team and being like, what is our goal? How are we trying to execute it? What variables are at play? And then is the brand as a whole, do we tilt more brand oriented where we're focused on, um, brand elements would be such as staying on brand fonts, on brand colors, despite the fact that sometimes it's not the best choice for performance. For example, Meta, we all know is very blue background. Um, if your brand is all blue colors, you're going to blend into the background. This is just psychology 101, color theory. Um, so bright colors such as oranges, red tones are going to pop and increase performance. We know this across the board. Now, where does your brand align? Are you willing to sacrifice some brand qualities to have more performance or are we going to stay in our lane? So understanding those almost like, I call it like the bowling lane, like where your gutters are, where we have to stay in between to make sure that we're all aligned. That's comes together, um, of course at the ad level. So very key. Um, that's a little bit more color to alignment, hopefully.
[56:20] Sarah: Yeah, and that kind of leans into like the research part really, really well because once we know where the brand wants to go, then we can actually take time and do the research based upon, okay, they're more brand focused, this particular brand. So we need we know that we need to stay a little bit on target when it comes to the actual display, like the actual, I don't know, personification of the brand itself. So we will go into the research and actually do a deep dive not just into what the consumers want from the NLP standpoint, but also what are your competitors saying, right? And and what are they putting out messaging wise that we can actually use to our benefit? What is the industry doing? What trends are happening on Google? What trends are happening on Pinterest? The research is really just telling us where the environment sits, right? Alignment really is what planet do you want to build? Research is what universe do you live in, which helps a little bit because often times I notice that the brands will go into research with an idealistic standpoint of this is what we want to put out there. We want this message of like inclusiveness and a community and this is what we want our people to notice about us. And we'll come back and say, well, unfortunately, your customers really want individualism. They don't want to be a part of a community and that's based upon all this data. So, it's good to have alignment so you know what you're building. Research is how you figure out what's actually reality, what what's the actual environment you're living in. Sorry, go ahead, Nicole.
[57:46] Nicole: I was just going to add one quick thing. Or they want that inclusivity, but then when you go run that ad and it tanks, they're like, oh, cut it.
[57:53] Sarah: So Yes. That happens a lot.
[57:56] Nicole: At whose fault is it? At the end of the day, it always comes back to the media buyer. Oh, performance, performance, performance, but that doesn't align. We just talked about how we want to build more traffic to our website and grow this community. You have two polar opposite goals. So it's very, very important to get on the same page and and not blame the media buyer.
[58:16] Lauren: Lauren, do you want to do avatars? I know you have a lot of
[58:19] Sarah: Oh, I was just going to say, and the creative too, Nicole. I mean, honestly, it's always the media buyer and the creators that it's like you you both hand in hand together like mess it up. So I feel you on that side.
[58:32] Lauren: I mean, yeah, and then obviously like, again, alignment research, basically that's what's going to build your avatars. That's going that's what is going to build the people that you're talking about, messaging to, um, essentially taking all of this information and and building out who these people are that are going to be who you're talking to. I mean, really there's that that's kind of how it is.
[58:53] Nicole: Yeah, I'll add to avatars is not just demographic information. Demographics cool, you know, middle-aged woman, 55, whatever, but it's the psychographic information, like what are their goals? What are their core values? What triggers them to purchase? That's what we want from avatars. So often times brands like, oh, we did our avatar research and I get back this little doc and I'm like, that's not going to help. That's not our our ads don't convey any emotion. Yeah.
[59:20] Lauren: Yeah, it's emotion. I would say emotion is the biggest one for sure.
[59:23] Nicole: Yep.
[59:24] Evan: I love that. I love that. And I think that's the perfect ending. Literally on that piece just talking about how to build those avatars out. No, I love the approach. Like alignment anchors you, right? You can always come back to that. That's where we've literally aligned on the planet and what success looks like on that planet. So with that being said, let me stop sharing my screen. Um, I want to give you all your flowers. You three are absolutely incredible. Thank you so much for your time. I really, really appreciate it and I know everyone here really appreciates it. Everybody, um, who's here as well, thank you so much for attending. I hope this is helpful, especially coming up for Black Friday, Cyber Monday and as we plan out the new year. I'll be sending this recording out. And be sure to hit these three on Twitter. Like for sure, give them a follow, see what they're up to. If you're looking for like advice when it comes to creative strategy, not only does, well, Nicole has the BFCM stuff, but um, Lauren and Sarah are dropping a course. So there's a lot of things happening. Just come check them out. Um, and it's been absolutely incredible. Thank you everybody so much.
[1:00:21] Sarah: Thank you, Evan.
[1:00:21] Nicole: Thank you.
[1:00:22] Lauren: Thank you.
[1:00:24] Evan: Thank you so much, everybody. We'll talk to you real soon. We'll talk to you real soon.
[1:00:27] Sarah: Bye.
[1:00:27] Nicole: Bye.
[1:00:27] Evan: Take care.
[1:00:28] Lauren: Bye.
[1:00:28] Evan: Bye, everybody.
