[0:00] Dara Denney: Guys, I am so honored to be here today. I really am. Um, and today I'm particularly excited about this session because I think that this is the gap that I've not seen other people train on or educate on. Um, essentially, how do we go from research to real strategy? How do we decide what insights are important? Now, if you've ever attended one of my sessions before, you know how I like to start off these things. I'm going to show you two ads and I want you to tell me which one you think performed the best, A or B. And I'm only going to show you the hooks of these because we have so much stuff to get through that I want to make sure that we can really dive in on the meat of this presentation first. So, we're going to watch A first.
[0:51] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Ad A plays. A man talks about dry, flaky skin around the nose, eyebrows, beard, or forehead. It shows close-ups of flaky skin and then a microscopic view of a fungus. On-screen text: "THIS ISN'T DRY SKIN". Audio: "If you've got dry, flaky skin around your nose, eyebrows, beard, or forehead, you don't just have a dry face. You've got something living on your skin."]
[1:00] Dara Denney: Ooh, all right. And now B.
[1:02] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Ad B plays. A woman talks about not being able to wear makeup due to flakes around her nose. It shows a close-up of her face and then an animation of skin cells. On-screen text: "If you can't wear makeup because of flakes around your nose...". Audio: "You can't wear makeup because of flakes around your nose. This might be why. You moisturize, it feels better, but a few hours later, the flakes are back."]
[1:12] Dara Denney: Okay, I saw a few A's. I see a few B's. Honestly, me trying to keep up with that chat is mad. Um,
[1:21] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: The slide highlights Ad B in a yellow box, indicating it was the winner.] it was actually B. Um, and I'm actually really excited to dive into this creative a little bit later to actually tell you the story of how we got to this top performing creative. But one thing I do want to mention about this ad, this entire thing was made with AI. So shout out to my video editor who works at PGM with me. She made this entire thing using AI and now it's crushing it in the ad account. Now, for those of you that don't know me, I want to take a step back and introduce myself.
[1:51] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide with a photo of Dara Denney. Text: "hi, i'm dara." Bullets: "10 years in performance marketing", "Former: Senior Director, Performance Creative at Thesis", "NYC".] My name is Dara Denny. I've worked for the past 10 years in performance marketing. I'm I was a trained media buyer, turned creative strategist. Um, I spent many years working as a senior director, um, at Thesis and I also live in New York City.
[2:06] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide with logos of various brands she has worked with, including Condé Nast, Laura Geller, Speedo, Daily Harvest, Hubble, Nuts.com, etc.] Now, I've had the privilege and honor of working with some amazing, amazing brands throughout my career. Um, and creative strategy is truly my life's work. But I always like to tell people that today I have three main jobs.
[2:21] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide about her first job. Text: "co-owner & creative advisor @ agency". A photo of her and a man at a table with microphones. The Point Guard Media logo.] Number one, I'm the co-owner and creative advisor at Point Guard Media. We actually do performance creative for eight and nine figure brands.
[2:29] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide showing a LinkedIn profile of Miguel Mendez. Text: "Modern Day Performance Creative". URL: https://www.linkedin.com/in/miguel-mendez-batres/.] And we're actually hiring right now. So if you're interested in coming on board as a creative strategist or a video editor, be sure to reach out to my business partner Miguel Mendez on LinkedIn.
[2:39] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide showing the Point Guard Media website homepage. URL: https://www.pointguardmedia.com/.] Um, but yeah, we do performance creative every single day for our brands and I honestly love the brands that we get to work on. We have some amazing people.
[2:50] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide with text: "content creator". It shows her YouTube channel, a photo of her being interviewed, and a photo of her on a panel.] But I'm also a content creator. So I've been doing YouTube for the last five years teaching people everything from media buying to creative strategy. And I get some awesome opportunities as a result of this work. Actually, last week I was on a panel in New York for NewFronts, um, where I got to be on stage with Carl Radke and Jenna Lyons. If there's any, uh, reality TV fans in the house, then you know who those people are. It was a huge honor.
[3:16] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide listing her social media platforms (YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok) with screenshots of her Instagram and LinkedIn profiles.] Um, but I'm across all the platforms. So you can catch me on Instagram, on LinkedIn, Twitter sometimes, but that place is a little crazy.
[3:26] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide with text: "soon to be brand founder" and an icon of a cube with question marks.] Um, now, the third thing that I'm working on right now is I'm also a soon to be brand founder. Um, more about this soon in the coming weeks. Uh, but we're going to be launching early next year.
[3:37] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide with two YouTube video thumbnails from her channel: "The 10 Best Creatives to Test on All Facebook Ad Accounts" and "How To See Other Brands' Facebook Ads | Facebook Ads Library (FREE!!)".] Now, I've been doing creative strategy and teaching this stuff for several years. And it's been so interesting to see the trajectory of this work. You know, when I first started, everyone was just obsessed with formats and, um, how to copy your competitors in the right way and, oh, if this has been running for 100 days on Foreplay, that means it's a good ad. We've come such a long way, y'all. We really have.
[4:06] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide with text: "the number one question I get lately..."] Um, but I will say the number one question that I've been getting more recently is this.
[4:10] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Graphic showing a list of research terms (reddit, amazon questions, customer reviews, etc.) with a squiggly arrow pointing from them to the word "research".] How do you go from all the amazing research that you're doing and actually turn it into winning ad creative? How do you decide which insights are important? How do you decide what you're actually going to concentrate on as a team?
[4:26] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide with text: "how do you turn that into winning creative?"] So that's what we're going to be focusing on today.
[4:29] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide titled "today's agenda" with three bullet points: "PERSONAS", "HOW TO DIAGNOSE YOUR BRAND", "CREATIVE ROADMAPS". A small screenshot of a creative roadmap is on the right.] We're really specifically going to dive into these three things. We're going to dive into personas. I think really understanding who your personas are is going to make it really clear what types of insights you should be focusing on. And then also about how to diagnose your brand. This is something that I've started doing in the last year that's really helped provide a lot of clarity. Um, and then we're going to go into creative roadmaps. I know I've made some content about creative roadmaps over the last few weeks. So I'm going to show you exactly how I'm roadmapping for my clients. And yes, I will be providing you guys a template at the end of this so that you can see exactly how I'm doing this and you can make your own roadmaps, um, of your own.
[5:09] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide with a yellow button that says "personas" being clicked by a cursor icon.] So, let's go ahead and dive in to personas.
[5:13] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide with the word "WHY?"] Why personas? Why is it so important, right?
[5:18] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide with screenshots of news headlines about "Meta's Andromeda". The word "Andromeda" is highlighted in yellow.] Now, for many of you that are very familiar with this work, you've probably heard of Meta's Andromeda.
[5:22] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Graphic illustrating the Andromeda algorithm. It shows "Millions of potential ads" being filtered by "Andromeda" into "Retrieved Ads".] And essentially, this is the new algorithm that is able to look at the millions of potential ads that advertisers put out into the ecosystem and decide which ones are going to be the most impactful for every unique individual.
[5:39] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: The graphic updates to show the "Retrieved Ads" being sorted into "Persona 1", "Persona 2", and "Persona 3".] And what Meta has said is that this is actually more of a persona-based algorithm. So they are ranking and retrieving ads based on the personas, aka how we show up, um, in their feeds.
[5:55] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide showing a grid of 10 different ads for a product called "POOPING EVERY DAY".] So, what this will tactically look like for a brand, right, is something like this from Seed Health. This is one of their most, um, best performing verticals, which is this idea of pooping every day. Uh, just spoiler alert, you're going to hear me say this word a lot in this presentation, so just gear up for that. Um, but Meta is categorizing for everyone who's going to be interested in a specific, uh, in specific messaging or formats like this, and that's how they're delivering them.
[6:25] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide with text: "As a creative strategist, you need to think about personas in 2 distinct ways..."] Now, as a creative strategist, I actually want you to think about personas in two distinct ways.
[6:37] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide with a screenshot of customer reviews on the left and text on the right: "1. who your customers actually are."] And I find that this tends to be a pretty big unlock for people. Number one, who your customers actually are. So this is going through your reviews, this is going through your customer interviews. These are the people who've actually bought your product.
[6:49] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide with a picture of a Venn diagram on a whiteboard on the left ("I'm FINALLY pooping everyday" and "I don't bloat after EVERY meal") and text on the right: "2. who your ads are actually targeting."] And then number two, who your ads are actually targeting, right?
[6:56] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide with an image of a brain and an arrow. Text: "if this analysis has not been done previously, these 2 are often DIFFERENT..."] So, if this isn't an analysis that you haven't done before, I often find that who you are currently targeting in your ads and who is actually buying your product can often be very different.
[7:07] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide with two text boxes: "who are your ads targeting now?" and "who are your real personas?"] And it's a really good idea to make sure that you're on the same page with this. So I'm going to go through and show you how you can figure out both of these. So, let's start with who your ads are targeting now.
[7:20] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide titled "who are your ads targeting now?". Text: "1. Easy way: Use Motion's Intended Audience feature in ai tagging." with two screenshots from Motion showing performance broken down by audience tags.] The easy way, let's get this out of the way first. You can use Motion's intended audience feature in AI tagging. And I love being able to use this to get a quick gut check on who these ads are actually delivering to. So this is some of our top performing creative and you can see, oh wow, we actually have pretty different audiences here. People who are daters versus odor conscious women.
[7:44] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: The slide updates to add "or 2. Use Claude to run an analysis on your Ads Library".] But what I will say is as creative strategists, it's our job to go a lot deeper. So I actually really love using Claude to run an analysis on your ads library.
[7:55] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide showing a prompt for Claude AI. The prompt asks for an analysis of an Ads Library URL and specifies what to look for, including "Who they seem to be targeting as personas, from the pov of their ads only". The URL and this specific line are highlighted.] And what's really cool about this is you can actually do this for any brand that's on ads library, aka any brand out there. So, um, even if you're going through a audit process with a brand or you're just nosy as hell like me, then you're going to be able to do this type of analysis. And just, you know, spoiler alert, we are going to be providing this presentation to you guys afterwards, but now would be a good time if you want to take a screenshot of this prompt, do so. Now, the big thing with this prompt, right, is, hey, ask Claude, and I'm using Claude Co-work for this. Can you do an analysis on this brand's ads library? Provide the link. And the big thing that we're going to be zeroing in on right now is, hey, who do they seem to be targeting as personas from the POV of their ads only?
[8:46] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide showing the output from Claude AI, titled "Oats Overnight Ad Library Analysis". It has an "Overview Snapshot" and a "Format Breakdown".] And this is the analysis that Claude Co-work was able to give to me.
[8:51] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: The slide zooms in on the "Overview Snapshot" section.] And what I really love about this too is it gives you an overview snapshot of all the live ads in the account. So we have the video ads, static ads, and how many partnership ads they have going.
[9:01] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: The slide shows the "Target Personas (Inferred from Ads)" section of the Claude analysis. It lists Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary personas.] Now, the personas, here's how this is netting out. It's going to look at your primary personas, secondary personas.
[9:12] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: The slide shows two arrows pointing from the "Primary Persona" and "Secondary Persona" boxes.] So, if I was a creative strategist getting ready to work with Oats Overnight, I'd be looking at this like, okay, it seems like the majority of our ads are targeting the busy health conscious professional and the fitness focused macro.
[9:25] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide with an image of a brain in the middle. On the left, an icon representing "The Busy Health-Conscious Professional". On the right, an icon representing "The Fitness-Focused Macro Tracker".] Keep that in your head, right? Because what we're looking at now is just who our ads seem to be targeting at this point.
[9:34] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide with two text boxes: "who are your ads targeting now?" and "who are your real personas?". An arrow points to the second box.] But now, let's go into our real personas, right?
[9:37] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide titled "who are your real personas?". It shows a prompt for an AI model. Text: "Step 1: Use AI to determine your customer personas." The prompt asks the AI to extract core personas from a CSV of reviews.] And this is the prompt that I am using to get the real personas, the real people who are actually buying. So this is another good one for you to screenshot. You're going to want to take a CSV of your reviews and put this into chat GPT or Claude Co-work. And what we're going to have here is we're going to have it extract five core personas and give each a name that fit their trigger or their main problem. Now, if you're using Claude Co-work, it's going to give you a pretty little presentation like this.
[10:09] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide showing the output from the AI prompt, titled "Persona Rankings". It has two tables: "Ranking by Volume (Most Frequently Appearing)" and "Ranking by Emotional Intensity".] And what I find is immediately interesting is this.
[10:14] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: The slide shows the two persona ranking tables side-by-side with the inferred ad personas from the previous analysis.] Number one, the comfort craver, which is showing up as the people who are actually buying oats overnight, is actually quite different than the primary persona that is showing up on the ads that we actually make. Now, I do want to pause here for a second. When I am thinking about my own process as a creative strategist, this, you know, mapping out personas is wildly, wildly important. And it's something that we actually do, you know, once we have Claude Co-work go through and make these presentations, we also create something that's a little bit more shareable, something that we can go a little bit more in depth on.
[10:52] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide titled "Audience Segments" showing five different persona cards: "Stinky but Clean" Anxiety Crew, "Clean Beauty / Aluminum-Free & Sensitive Skin People", etc.] This is actually an audience segment or persona segment, um, document that's for one of our clients.
[11:00] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: The slide zooms in on one persona card ("Hormonal / Life-Stage BO People") and annotates its different sections: "trigger-based audience segment", "what triggered them into their current state", "demographic data", and "desire".] And I want to break this down for you a little bit more. Now, when I say trigger-based audience segment, again, this is essentially the problem or the trigger that caused people to be in their current state. Now, we also like to have a little bit more of that core story. So here, for this specific brand, one of their segments is hormonal or life stage people who experience body odor. So the core story is, okay, body odor suddenly started happening after a life event or a shift. Then we break down the demographic data. Are they women or men? Um, you know, what age are they? And then we also dig a little deeper into their core desires and what they really care about.
[11:43] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide titled "Signals from Reviews" showing the five persona segments with verbatim quotes from reviews for each.] Now, another thing that we always do too is we always get signals from our reviews. We always make sure that when we are working with AI, and this is regardless of what LLM that you're working with, we always kind of want the AI to like prove why they created this type of persona or audience segment. So always ask for those signals of reviews so that you can double check the AI's work essentially.
[12:12] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: The slide compares the real persona analysis (from reviews) with the ad-inferred persona analysis again.] Now, let's go back to Oats Overnight, right? When I was looking at these two really different personas that showed up on, you know, number one from the reviews, number two from who we're actually targeting, you know, I still had a few more data points where I was like, okay, how am I going to start building this roadmap? What are the things that I want to pressure test?
[12:34] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: The slide highlights a specific part of the prompt: "Rank the personas for the ones that show up the most. Make another ranking that shows the ones who use the most emotion in their reviews."] I'm not sure if any of you noticed this, but I did have one more thing that I told the LLM. Make sure that you rank the personas for the ones that show up the most and then make another ranking that shows the most emotion in their reviews.
[12:50] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide showing the "Persona Rankings" again, highlighting the ranking by volume and by emotional intensity.] Essentially, what this did is it really helped me like understand where I should prioritize. So again, we already knew the comfort creator, the texture fixer was something that was showing up a lot in the reviews. But I also wanted to see how emotive or the emotional intensity of these audiences. And what I noticed here was pretty interesting. It was actually the fullness chaser, which was actually ranked pretty low on the ranking by volume. So this showed me, hmm, I think this could be a really interesting opportunity for Oats Overnight actually. So, I know I'm going through this pretty fast and there's a lot of questions around, hey, like how can we do this more slowly? Like you guys will have all the step-by-step.
[13:40] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide titled "next steps for you:". Text: "1. Analyze your current creatives to understand who you are actually targeting." with the Claude prompt screenshot below.] But the main things for you guys to remember is, number one, you're going to want to analyze your current creatives to understand who you are actually targeting, who your ads are currently attracting out in the ecosystem.
[13:53] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: The slide adds a second step: "2. Analyze your customer reviews to understand who is actually buying." A red bracket connects the two steps with the text "this gap is your opportunity."] And then you're going to analyze your customer reviews to understand who is actually buying. And it's this gap that's going to be your opportunity as a creative strategist.
[14:04] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: The slide shows the two persona analyses side-by-side again.] So, let's dive back into Oats Overnight, right?
[14:07] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide showing a "Creative Testing Roadmap" for Oats Overnight. Red arrows point to rows for "PARTNERSHIP ADS" and "FULLNESS CHASER STATICS".] I actually created a creative testing roadmap for them. If I was going to be their creative strategist, what I would actually want to make for them. And I want to zoom in on these partnership ads really quick because when I did that initial analysis with Claude Co-work, it was actually the partnership ads that stuck out to me as a really big opportunity.
[14:23] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide showing the "Partnership Ads vs. Brand Ads" section of the Claude analysis. It shows 32 partnership ads, which is 15.5% of the total. The highest partner rank is #24 by impressions.] We could see here, okay, there are 32 partnership ads, 15% of total. And I know as a creative strategist working in this industry for a long time that that's actually pretty low for a brand of their size. And then another thing, their highest partner ranking is a number 24 in terms of impressions. So, what I mean by that is that this is showing up in number 24 when you are ranking your ad creatives from high to low.
[14:59] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Screenshot of the Facebook Ads Library for Jones Road Beauty, with the "Impressions high to low" filter highlighted.] So this is something anyone can do in ads library. And essentially like what this shows you is the ad creatives that are in theory getting the most spend, performing the best. They're at least getting the most eyeballs, right? I have heard of a few brands doing reach campaigns to try and throw off their competitors, but for the most part, when I check what my brands personally are doing here, it is showing up that everything that is in the top two rows are what is actually performing the best. So, this is something that, you know, I would make sure that you're looking at, especially for brands that you want, you are interested in in looking at.
[15:40] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide showing a "Top 10 Ads by Impressions - Deep Dive" table from the Claude analysis.] Now, as a part of this analysis too, I had it do a deep dive on the top ads by impressions.
[15:47] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide showing a "Creative Hook Strategies" bar chart from the Claude analysis. The "Packing/Warehouse" bar is the longest.] And as a part of that, it also looked at the creative hook strategies. And what I saw here was, oh, the packing and warehouse hooks and formats is something that seems to be working the best for them. But it's not something that they are really leaning into as much in terms of partnership ads.
[16:06] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: A video of a woman in a warehouse packing an order for Oats Overnight plays next to the roadmap.] So as a creative strategist, I would say, huh, I think this is a good opportunity for this brand to actually create a new page that they can use to run whitelisted content or partnership ad content through. And then you'll see here that I have the EGC main. EGC stands for employee generated content. They do have a main content creator. And sometimes I've seen by just having a single individual, that could potentially be better. But this to me reads as low-hanging fruit that this brand could like look into to see could we get better performance and get higher ranking partnership ads.
[16:44] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: The slide now shows the roadmap and the two persona analyses, with a red arrow connecting the "PA: BUSY WORKERS CREATORS" row on the roadmap to the "The Busy Health-Conscious Professional" persona and the "HIGHEST PARTNER RANK #24" box.] Now, another partnership ad idea that I had for them, PA right here, is based on this busy health conscious professional individual, right? Because their highest ranking partnership ad right now is based on a tennis pro or based on their macro health audience. I would really actually want to try sliding in someone who's more a part of that busy health conscious professional. And what's interesting is is I did this analysis for them maybe about two weeks ago, but I saw yesterday that they actually did have busy working families now doing partnership ads. So they were thinking the exact same thing that I was, which we love to see it.
[17:25] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: The slide now shows the roadmap and the real persona analysis. A red circle is drawn around the "The Comfort Craver", "The Macro-Conscious", "The Breakfast Skipper", "The Skeptic Convert", "The Fullness Chaser", and "The Flavor Collector" personas. A red arrow points from the "FULLNESS CHASER STATICS" and "TASTES LIKE... COMPILATION" rows on the roadmap to this circled group.] Now, the final, um, four ad creatives that I want to go into that I was prioritizing for them is based on their taste and on their nostalgia audience, right? Those comfort cravers, those people who are really digging into the nostalgia of their childhood. So I'd want to test out a compilation that you could use with B-roll, really diving into the type of taste profiles they have and also digging more into that nostalgia bent.
[18:42] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide with text: "Audience breakdown data skewed 25-35 Women" and a screenshot of the winning ad B.] Now, I want to go back to this creative that I showed you at the beginning, right? When we were doing our persona research, we realized that actually, even though all of the ad creative that this brand had been running previously, a lot of it was men because they have founders who are men. Um, but the audience breakdown actually skewed a lot more towards women.
[19:03] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: The slide adds more text: "Review data showed us: African American, Make-up / cosmetics".] And when we did the persona breakdown and review data, we showed that a lot more of them were African-American women and they were also really concerned about makeup and cosmetics flaking, which is how we were able to get to this winning creative.
[19:18] Dara Denney: All right, guys. Let's go next to the diagnosis. I know I see a lot of questions popping up. We're going to leave plenty of time for us to go into your questions. And I'm also happy to just like dive into some of my Claude stuff to show you if you guys want to jam on that a little bit more. But I do want to hop next into the diagnosis.
[19:39] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide with two video ads side-by-side, labeled A and B. The slide asks "which ad performed best?".] But before I do that, I want to show you two more ad creatives that my team made. And I want you to guess which one you think performed best. So, I'm going to show you A and then I'm going to show you B.
[19:52] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Ad A plays. It shows a bed with a TikTok comment overlay about the frequency of bamboo sheets. Text on screen lists the frequencies of different fabrics. Audio: "Bamboo and polyester measure at just 15 hertz. Your body's natural frequency is 68 hertz. Cotton gets to 100 hertz, but linen, 5,000 hertz. That's why the fabrics you sleep on can affect your energy and health."]
[20:06] Dara Denney: All right. And then B.
[20:08] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Ad B plays. It's a montage of different colored bed sheets in various bedroom settings. There is no audio.]
[20:23] Dara Denney: Pretty even split. I will say both of these performed pretty well. But it was actually, B when we first came onto the account that was their top performer.
[20:37] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: An arrow points to ad A.] But A is actually the thing that's performing the best right now, which I think is really interesting. We actually made this as a result of our, um, TikTok ads viral SOP that my business partner Miguel made. Um, but this ad creative B really highlighted the big diagnosis that we had coming into this ad account, right?
[21:01] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide showing four different ads for Bed Threads.] When we first entered this ad account, we noticed that a lot of the creatives were actually pretty lower mid funnel, right? We had a lot of testimonials, we had a lot of, um, messaging that was about our best sellers. And even this ad creative right here, even though the imagery is so amazing, it's like pointing out the color profiles and the color name. It's more of a merchandising play. It's not actually encouraging someone who's outside of this ecosystem to buy really.
[21:35] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide showing a marketing awareness level chart with the Bed Threads ads placed in the "Solution Aware" and "Product Aware" sections.] So, when we first got on board, we ended up mapping out all of their top performing creatives to understand, okay, where are they in the marketing awareness level? And we noticed pretty much everything was solution aware or below.
[21:51] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide titled "The Diagnosis..." with text: "This business needs more top of funnel content that engages, educates, and refills their paid social funnel. By concentrating only on unaware and problem-aware segments, we'll open up new personas and continue to drive performance on the lower funnel assets that are already working."] So, the diagnosis that we came to was, hey, this business needs more top of funnel content. This is the type of content that's going to engage, educate, and refill their paid social funnel. And in fact, if we only concentrate on generating more upper funnel content, we're not only going to open up new personas, but we're also going to continue to drive more performance on the lower funnel assets that are already working.
[22:17] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide with an image of a doctor with a syringe. Text overlays explain what "The Diagnosis" is: an anchor point, 1-2 sentences explaining the "why", and that without it, you just have testing, not strategy.] So, your diagnosis when you come into a brand is really your anchor point as a creative strategist. It's going to be one to two sentences that explains the why behind the ads that you are testing. Um, and it's it's really a point where you're going to take a step back and be like, okay, looking at all the ad creatives that we want to test, what is the connective tissue there? And what I'll say is if you don't have a diagnosis, you don't really have a real strategy. You just have aimless week-to-week testing. And this diagnosis that we gave this brand ended up working super well for us. And all of the content that we've been making for them for the last several months have all been really top of funnel content.
[23:03] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide showing three different ads for Bed Threads.] So this one right here, how to pick sheets that are safe for your skin. And then this winning message which was around, um, how to break the curse of millennial gray, which is like super viral TikTok ad style.
[23:25] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide titled "Examples of more diagnosis..." with several bullet points and images of ads.] Um, but I want to go into a few more diagnosis for you, right? Because I think that for Bed Threads, it was really specific. Um, a recent client we onboarded, actually, we noticed that all of their top performing content was for one persona. So our big hypothesis coming in is, hey, we actually want to focus on opening up a brand new audience for them. So, in the early days of working with this brand, which we're in now, we're focusing a lot on split testing tons of different audiences and doing a lot more persona research. Now, another one, this is actually a client that we re-diagnosed recently. So, something we like to do is give a re-diagnosis to a brand like every quarter or so. Um, now, after we did the initial round of persona testing, we realized that the older age segment had the best performance and retention. So, what we're focusing on right now for this brand is actually solely going to be focusing on 40 plus creators to see such great performance coming out of there. And we really want to double and triple down on that. Now, an old client that I still do consulting work with, I was recently doing a session with their creative strategist and we realized that actually they need to do a lot less promotional ads and things that are going to be turned off within a specific time period. I can't tell you how many times I talk to teams that are overwhelmed with requests from the marketing department or brand marketing. Um, your job as a creative strategist is not to make these Mother's Day 25% off statics. Your job is to grow the business and to grow revenue. And often times that is going to be as a result of just taking advantage of the rich data that you have.
[24:38] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide titled "Golden Rules of Roadmapping" with a list of five rules.] Um, the thing too about roadmapping is you're going to be able to map out big swings that have massive upside, like mapping out your different personas and big production. And again, like leave room for creativity and magic, but it's not your job to be creative.
[24:49] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Screenshot of the "Creative Testing Roadmap" template.] Um, so let's dive into this creative testing roadmap. I will be giving you guys these templates.
[24:55] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Screenshot of the Google Sheet tabs: "Creators", "Icebox", "Quarterly Planning", "Roadmap Template [DUPLICATE]".] So, my roadmaps are split into four distinct parts.
[35:01] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: The "Creators" tab is highlighted.] Number one, creators. So, I always like to list out the creators that we really like or the creators that we want to work with. Um, this just helps on the performance end of things because even in the age of AI and even though I showed you some of our AI creatives that are doing well, like we still need creators, we still need partnership ads, we still need amazing partners to get great content out the door.
[35:25] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: The "Icebox" tab is highlighted.] The second thing here is the ice box. So, this is where you are going to really write out all of your great creative ideas. So, anytime that when you're going through research and you're like, oh, I want to do a before and after ad of this, or, hmm, this messaging point really sticks, or, oh, this persona is really interesting. You're going to write that down here in the ice box. And what's great here is like, you don't get graded for anything in the in the ice box. You're just actually writing it down. Now, to the marketing leaders in the room, being able to have a central location to categorize your ideas is going to save your ass again and again because I can't tell you how many times I have been at the, you know, end of a creative sprint cycle and everyone is just like, what, like, what are the ideas? And it's like, we should have been cataloging our ideas in the ice box all along. That's what you should be doing. So, it's really a part of your job as a leader on the team to enforce that your creative strategists are routinely putting ideas in a centralized location. It could be in a Google sheet like this, it could be in some AI thing that you spin up. I've been using Replit lately. Love it. Or it can be in a Notion file. It doesn't really matter what, it matters that you do it.
[36:42] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: The "Quarterly Planning" tab is highlighted.] Now, the third thing inside here is quarterly planning. So, I will say one big unlock that I've had recently with my roadmaps is being able to map out your holidays and your marketing calendar events, your product launches, and even different personas that are going to be better targeted at different types of the year, gives me so much like space to actually do my job, not having to reinvent the wheel all the time. Um, especially if you're working on an internal marketing team where, you know, performance creative has to make ads for the new product launch or, oh God, we need something for Mother's Day. Knowing this stuff in advance, planned out quarterly is huge for the program. Um, and I really also like to map out like business as usual or iterations at times. But I will say like, if I see an iteration that can get out the door within a week, I'm adding that into our weekly sprint. You don't have to wait just because it's on, it's not on the quarterly roadmap.
[37:48] Dara Denney: Um, a note about the personas. This is something new that I started doing after talking with your coach and my personal great friend, Joanna Wallace. Um, I know sometimes if you're doing this persona research for the first time, you might be like, oh my God, um, I have so many personas, how do I test them all? And being able to map out quarterly, hey, um, we're not going to test everything right away. We had a hot climate, uh, like gym goer audience that we decided to not actually start testing until May or Q2 so that we could have room to really explore the other personas in depth earlier in the season.
[38:31] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: The "Roadmap Template [DUPLICATE]" tab is highlighted. Annotations point out that it's duplicated monthly for agencies and that each row contains a persona, idea, and 3 messaging options.] Now, the meat of this is going to be your actual creative roadmap, right? So, after you decide which creators you're potentially going to want to work with, you put all of your ideas in a centralized ice box, and then you have planned everything out quarterly, then monthly, we are creating these roadmaps. Now, the way that I like to really flesh out these ideas inside the roadmap is to have the persona, have like a one to two sentence idea, and then have three messaging options. So, maybe their hooks, maybe their variations. And what I'll say too is that I as, you know, someone who owns an agency and has worked agency side for a lot of my career, we will duplicate these roadmaps monthly so that it's really easy to see, okay, for this client, this is what we're doing for May, for this client, this is what we're doing for June. But when I have been internal brand side, we'll just have one of these ongoing forever and ever on end, which is crazy, but when things are out the door and you've already analyzed them, you can just collapse them.
[39:40] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide titled "Creative Roadmap: The Purpose" with three bullet points summarizing the purpose of the Icebox, Quarterly, and Monthly roadmapping.] Now, again, the creative roadmap, the main purpose here is like for your ice box, you want to get all of your ideas documented. No one's getting graded for anything that's in the ice box, but it is going to save your ass when it comes time to making your roadmaps. Number two, quarterly, plan out all the things you need to do so you can prioritize what gets real results. And number three, your monthly roadmapping is going to force you to get clear and make better decisions.
[40:07] Dara Denney: [VISUAL: Slide titled "The Sprint Structure" showing a flowchart: "Creative roadmaps built on a monthly cadence" -> "Tasks prioritized and assigned weekly" -> "Daily or bi-daily stand-ups" -> "Creative retro with team or client" -> back to "Creative roadmaps..."] Now, how this all falls into like a creative ops system, like falls into the sprint structure, right? I like to create creative roadmaps on a monthly cadence. And this is especially relevant for me because I'm agency side. But then the tasks are going to be prioritized and assigned weekly. So, the way that we would do this or the way that we do this now is every Friday or Monday, we have a stand-up meeting and we decide, okay, these creatives are the one that are actually going to move into production. And then we have daily or bi-daily stand-ups. When I was at the big agency, we had a stand-up every single day for the production team. And then this then falls to the creative retro with the team or client, which happens monthly with the team or client. Um, I guess the thing I want to emphasize with creative roadmapping is the sheer act of writing down all of your ideas, deciding which ones are going to get the, are going to be on the chopping block or the what ones are actually going to go into production, filtering through this lens of evidence is going to inherently make you a lot more strategic and learn how to prioritize things. Like I said, I'm going to be giving you guys access to this creative testing roadmap.
[41:26] Dara Denney: I'm ready to just jam with you. That was 50 minutes in. I figured I'd give us a lot of time to be able to connect and just like go over your questions because I know there hasn't been a lot of content like made about the messy middle of like research to briefing and I'm really curious to see what you guys have questions on. So, thank you, everyone. I love the Motion team and the Motion crew so, so much.
[41:53] Evan Lee: Everybody, throw some love into the chat. Get the emojis going, get how you're feeling going. I I I Dara, absolutely crushed it. Oh my goodness.
[42:02] Dara Denney: Thank you. I will say I saw some people in there making fun of the way I pronounce library. I'm never going to change. You just have to accept it. I'm just a, I'm just a humble girl from the Midwest. My haters are going to hate.
[42:14] Evan Lee: I like it. I like it. Library. Yeah, we say it differently. Okay, tomato, tomato, potato, potato. Everybody, we make it work. We make it work. Dara, there's a, there's a bunch of different questions that are popping up, honestly. So I got to like read through and pull some things up, but there is a consistent theme of uh, like people want to double click into some of the things you had shown. So like one of the big ones that popped up was like how you use Claude. So I'm wondering if that's the first one we could double click into.
[42:43] Dara Denney: Yeah, sure. So, what I will say about like how I'm using Claude is number one, like this is something that my team crushes at. Like, we are using Claude in a few distinct areas. Number one, we are not using it for the first pass of our research. I always think that's like an important thing to like talk about and share because there are and there are other creative strategists who I respect and like I think are god tier that do a first pass using AI. I choose not to. Um, and so that's like a choice that you get to make as a creative strategist. But the points where we are using it in in research is like our customer review mining. Um, with Claude Co-work, you can also get all your customer reviews directly from the website. So like if you're agency side, a lot of times you'll like bother the client, give me a CSV of your reviews. If they don't have it, you can now do that with Claude Co-work. And so anything that has to do with reviews, analyzing mass data sets, going through that persona research, that's where I'm using the bulk of like our work in Claude. The other place that we are using Claude is we will always create a, um, a Claude project unique for each client where we are uploading all of our context documents, all of our persona research, all of our past performance, um, like documentation. And we are localizing all of our briefing and all of our, um, even our hook building and our brainstorming to those specific projects. I'd say like where Claude has had the biggest impact team-wise has been in the briefing process. We're not, um, doing full complete AI briefs or AI scripts. There's a heavy hand in how much we are like changing and adapting based on like the creators that we're working in and based on like my experience as a creator. But like we're using it heavily, heavily in like the briefing process and getting briefs just like out the door quicker. Um, but like some of the stuff that I showed you guys earlier, let me see if I can pull some of this up so I can just like dive a little deeper.
[45:23] Dara Denney: Like it begins with this overview snapshot. It does a format breakdown, which I find to be like helpful from a high level. But the partnership ad stuff was like things that as a strategist, I was like, wow, I actually feel like I can give better high level strategy like seeing this type of data. Um, it also goes into like creator profile patterns. So I don't have this pulled up right now, but another analysis that I did actually had Claude pull out all of the different creators that they were working with and like developed profiles for them, which is how I was able to see, oh, actually they're mostly like fitness creators and based on like their core messaging strategies and like the the pillars that they're using, um, it didn't actually quite make sense. I well more to their like creative hook strategies. Um, but yeah, this little like this document has been clutch when we start onboarding with a brand or even just like candidly when we go into a pitch meeting, I can be like, yeah, what's the dealio with your partnership ads? They're not doing well. And I haven't even looked at your ad account. It's uh kind of a power move.
[46:34] Evan Lee: Such a good anchor in the visual. It's like start at the high level and then you can get into the granular. So it works really well. It works really well.
[46:41] Dara Denney: Yeah.
[46:41] Evan Lee: Dara, one of the questions, so you you'd actually mentioned this at the beginning, but there's a theme of question that keeps popping up that looks similar to this.
A text overlay appears with a question from Michelle Jameslina: "Can you explain how you would do the Claude steps without Claude? I think it's important for people to understand the underlying logic so they can spot when Claude makes mistakes."
[46:50] Evan Lee: So it's like, can you explain how you would do the Claude steps without Claude? I think it's important for people to understand the underlying logic so they can spot when Claude makes mistakes. So, I'm wondering if you have comments on that and then your reasoning of why.
[47:04] Dara Denney: Yeah. Uh, I I like this question. It's kind of I want to make sure that I understand it, but I'm going to I'm going to kind of go down the direction I'm going to go down anyways. But I want to make sure that like this question is being asked not because you want to not use AI. Like, I think that for analyzing mass data sets and for analyzing a lot of this like data, like you you need it and you should be using it. But the things that help me so that I know when AI is acting whack and it's not like giving me the right output, does come back to this idea of making sure that you are doing some sort of research manually.
Evan shares his screen, showing a Notion document titled "How to Conduct Creative Strategy Research".
[47:50] Dara Denney: So, this is actually my like our internal process for how we conduct creative strategy research. So like I had said to you guys, hey, like I actually like doing research initially, um, manually.
The Notion document shows a 5-step process: 1. Reputation Analysis, 2. Customer Review Mining, 3. Persona Segmentation, 4. Past Performance Analysis, 5. Competitor Research & Analysis.
[48:03] Dara Denney: And that starts and this is a five-step process that we have. That starts with this reputation analysis.
Dara clicks on "Step 1: Reputation Analysis", which opens a new page with instructions.
[48:10] Dara Denney: Um, so this reputation analysis, this is actually a document that I have given Motion and like I've like done presentations for you guys for like what, four years now? It's crazy.
Dara clicks a link which opens a Google Doc titled "Reputation Analysis: Creative Strategy Research Documentation". It's a template with sections for "Overview", "Reputation Analysis Part 1", "Part 2", and "Part 3".
[48:21] Evan Lee: Yeah.
[48:23] Dara Denney: Um, but like I've given this away before. I still use it. Like it's changed, but being able to go through this process and like actually see how people are interacting with content with like this market in real time allows you to like spot when AI is just giving you bullshit. And like AI is going to give you a lot of bullshit. So like, I just think that like having that like initial manual process is is kind of like my cheat code for it. So, yeah, I hope that helps.
[48:58] Evan Lee: I think so. Shout out to whoever asked the question. I think it was Michelle who asked the question because it's like, don't be afraid of AI. Like there are things that it's genuinely good at that we should be able to leverage for.
[49:09] Dara Denney: Yeah, cuz like, Evan, I have a hot take. Like, and I'm wondering if I'm going to cause a stir. I'm like, I'm like side eyeing the chat. But like my current hot take is that like the people who are adamantly like against AI are probably like more dangerous to like creative strategy as a whole than people who are actually making AI. And that's because I think it's so integral to our process now. Like, we can't we can't like unwind Pandora's box, people. Like we really do need to like utilize this as a tool. But like nothing pisses me off more than when I see like some think piece that's like about why like AI is like the end of humanity and like, yeah, it's bad for the environment. Talk to Anthropic and OpenAI. Don't talk to your fucking average creative strategist who's just like out there trying to make coin because that's what we're doing. Like it's not the audience. Um, so, yeah, like all of us, we're all pro AI. We're all going to use it in our workflows. We got to, but like definitely do that manual process. So, yeah.
[50:25] Evan Lee: Coming through with mic dropping. Yeah, it's it's so interesting cuz it's like, do you want to be a martyr to the system and like just say screw it. And like there's a place for that. Like if that's how you want to stand up.
[50:37] Dara Denney: My problem with it is it gives people permission to not develop the skills that they need to survive in this next era. And like we all need these skills to survive in this next era. I was slow on the come up for like creative strategy. You want to know who wasn't slow and who like really got in there early? Like, I still see people who are like, yeah, I'm not going to use it. Like and getting mad at like people using chat GPT for like average shit. It's just like, no. Like, I don't condone that. Yeah. You can tell I've had a lot of this. So we can move on to the next question.
[51:15] Evan Lee: Dara, honestly, with the hot takes plus the game that you're sharing with everybody, there's been a lot of people like, what are Dara's socials again? Like, how do I connect with Dara? So maybe you can bring your slide up again so people can screenshot.
A slide appears with Dara Denney's social media handles for YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and TikTok, along with screenshots of her profiles.
[51:24] Evan Lee: So people can tap in.
[51:26] Dara Denney: Oh, no. Oh. Well, I'm excited to have new I'm excited to have new friends. That's what I'm getting from this.
[51:36] Evan Lee: Amazing. Okay, that's where you can tap in. Make sure you don't miss Dara.
The slide is removed.
[51:39] Evan Lee: Dara, another question that's popping up here that's been pretty common is people who are just getting started with a new brand.
A text overlay appears with a question from Denise Nunley: "If a brand is really new how do you suggest doing the personas without actual customer data?"
[51:46] Evan Lee: So Denise has a question that represents a lot that have been popping up. So if a brand is really new, how do you suggest doing the personas without actual customer data?
[51:57] Dara Denney: Yeah, that's a really good question because you're also not going to be able to like look at the creative that you're making. Um, I think where I would start is like identifying a few different, uh, competitors or similar brands in the market and running that persona SOP through those brands, but filtering it through the lens of where they are failing. So really concentrate on not like the five star like reviews where you're looking at their cheerleader VIP customers. Really focus on like the three, two, and one star reviews and see where you can really fill that gap in that market specifically. So that's where I would start. Um, and then from there you're going to be able to build slowly on like who your customers are, the feedback that they're giving, and then the type of performance data that you're getting out by actually putting things into market. I wish that I could tell you guys that I had an SOP that like made me creative winners every single time that I put like out into the algorithm. And I don't. Like a big part of what we do is like we have to test, we have to have a hypothesis, we have to pressure test it. Um, so like also just accept that that's part of the process.
[53:14] Evan Lee: Huge. Okay. Now, you showed the actual, uh, document where you're actually planning out the road map. One of the questions that popped up quite a bit, and Bianca has one that represents a lot that I've seen pop in.
A text overlay appears with a question from Bianca Markey: "Where does budgeting come in?"
[53:26] Evan Lee: Is where does budgeting come into this mix? And then the added layer that people are asking about is volume. So how how many should we be making?
[53:35] Dara Denney: Yeah, yeah. So the volume question is always going to fall to the brand. Like how much volume should you be making is going to be like a brand question. Um, it's going to be a confluence of the amount of budget that you have and also your creative operations. So I'm not going to like sit down and tell a brand, oh yeah, you need to put 10 new ad creative tests out into the market when like realistically they're only going to be able to make three. Um, I know some people make like calculators that spit that stuff out and like tell you how many ad creative tests like that you should be running every single week. I don't I don't do it like that. Um, I guess I should develop a process for you guys, but I just I've been doing this work for so long that I kind of just have like a spidey sense of like, hey, here's how much volume you guys need. Um, but then what was the second part of that question?
[54:31] Evan Lee: Uh, budgeting, budgeting.
[54:34] Dara Denney: Budgeting. Yeah. The budgeting is going to be a part of like the quarterly process for us. Um, and again, this is like another thing that falls to the brand because me being agency side, it's like the budgeting I do is all right, like a brand hires us for a retainer. We know we're we are going to be supplying this amount of creative on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. So a lot of the budgeting questions is going to fall brand side, which I always mapped out quarterly when I was brand side. And something that I always did is like when I was at Laura Geller, I managed like five agency relationships. And using Motion, I would map out agency performance so that I could determine on a quarterly basis, are we going to renew, um, are we going to renew the budgets for like are we going to renew the retainer for this agency or not moving forward. Um, but in terms of like budgets for individual creatives, that's also like a creative testing methodology question that I've never changed my mind more on creative testing methodologies than I've had within like the last two months. So that's my teaser there.
[55:49] Evan Lee: I I think it's a good layout. So, so first of all, everyone, if you were here last week, you heard Sarah say a similar thing. Like you could build this fancy equation that spits out how many creatives you need, but it needs to be rooted in reality. Like what can you actually produce that meets your threshold of quality, basically. So it's like live in reality. That's the important thing. And then Dara, speaking of testing, there is a question that popped up from Anne.
A text overlay appears with a question from Ann Le: "how would you go about creative testing"
[56:15] Evan Lee: So I'll pull this one up here. How would you go about creative testing?
[56:22] Dara Denney: Oh God, guys. Just go on Twitter, you'll see the fights. The boys can't can't contain themselves. It's like literally every other month. Is it ABO or CBO? There are not many things that are consistent in this world. That argument on Twitter is one of them. Bless them. Um, if I if you handed me a $2 million per month meta budget like tomorrow, I would do a creative testing campaign ABO. I know that makes people angry. And don't get me wrong, like I have CBO like CBO creative testing clients. Whatever, I'm not romantic about it. But what I like about ABO is like you're not going to be guessing or left wondering if like a creative is going to perform. Actually, the ad creative I showed you guys from Bed Threads that was the frequency ad, we put that ad into market two months ago, two months ago, and it just started performing like hot cakes like three weeks ago. And like me and my co-founder were talking about it, we're like, what the hell is going on? Like, why is that? And I'm like, if we would have known if it was ABO, but like people don't want to have that conversation. I also think that ABO forces a little bit more creative diversity because you're like pressure testing everything that is getting out into market and like it's also for me a question of where you're at in your brand growth. Like, a question you should ask yourself, ABO versus CBO, or do you want as many creatives as possible that are performing at goal? If you're in a high scale phase, high growth phase, that's what you want. But if you just want efficiency, then you're probably going to go CBO, but you're always going to be left wondering about certain creatives. So, that's that's where I'm at and my response isn't perfect and you know what? I don't lose any sleep over it. So,
[58:23] Evan Lee: Yeah, I it's such an interesting one cuz it's like the media buying question ultimately. And like the the one truth that everyone can agree on is like you want to spend more on what's winning. It's like make that happen and it's like thumbs up. And then beyond that, it just becomes a list of things you want to learn. So whenever I hear the CBO ABO debate, I always pop back to like, well, I have a very specific learning I want. Like if you can get me that with CBO or ABO, like fine, like whichever way, don't really care. But like I need this learning. Please and thank you. And that's the requirement on my side. It's how I've been thinking about it, but there's no perfect answers in all honesty.
[59:01] Dara Denney: Yeah. No perfect answers. Clearly like people that I think are very smart and like I work on brands that have CBO testing and it's not just because like I'm like they're not going to change it because like I have a different opinion. That's just how it is. The more that you can like be comfortable in the nuance of this field and the more that you allow context to dictate your strategy, the stronger of a creative strategist you'll be. The more that you have these hard and fast always on rules, like that's where like when I work with those type of creative strategists, I'm like, ugh, like good luck. Um, I find the most the the most senior, the highest experts are the ones that like change their mind a lot and have a lot of context.
[59:49] Evan Lee: Got to be like water. And and speaking of this, there is a a couple questions that popped up.
A text overlay appears with a question from Keara Moon: "What do you do about ideas that are trends-based and have a shelf life?"
[59:55] Evan Lee: This is from Kiara, if I pronounce that incorrectly, let me know in the chat. I hate messing people's names up. So I think this one's from Kiara. It's like, what do you do about ideas that are trend-based and have a a shelf life?
[1:00:08] Dara Denney: I don't prioritize them. Uh, especially if it's like, oh my God, this thing's going viral on Tik Tok, we got to do it. I'm like, no. Especially as the agency, I'm like, no. Like, I have eight shots on goal to get a winning creative. I'm not doing a Tik Tok trend. However, what I will say is I got proven very wrong on this recently and I loved it. But I had a creative strategist, um, make a creative for Bed Threads actually. And she was like, I want to do a listicle that's like the different, uh, signs of the zodiac equated with the different like sheet colors. And I'm like, not going to work. Like, how is how is Meta going to target to the right individual? It actually ended up performing really, really well and I was like, damn, like, you got me there. So, I do think too, like when you're thinking about populating your ad account with different creatives, like I'm starting to look at it as like a creative ecosystem. And like some weeks you're going to want to do super top of funnel, super organic stuff. And like I've been encouraging my team and myself to try things that maybe we wouldn't have tried before. Like it is kind of interesting that that frequency ad like did so well. Like when I first saw it, I was like, I don't know about that. Like, where's the problem solution? You guys are just shitting with us with your polyester sheets. Um, but it's been a banger. So, like, I do think just like creative strategy as a whole is like moving towards this more organic, more the bar is, can you make great content or not? And like that is like always changing with culture and with just like the platforms as a whole. So, yeah, I'm always willing to have more magic.
[1:01:59] Evan Lee: But I was actually going to ask you about the organic side of things. So I have another one that I'll pop up to you, but on the on the organic end, um, there were a lot of questions that popped in. It's like, can people use the same testing for organic? Like is that something you'd encourage? But more holistically, I'm actually quite curious to how you view organic and paid these days and that relationship.
[1:02:24] Dara Denney: Wait, can you rephrase that question?
[1:02:27] Evan Lee: So first question is, is let's keep it simple, related to your road map question, uh, related to your road map doc. Is that something that you would encourage people to adopt for like a brand's organic strategy?
[1:02:39] Dara Denney: Oh, yeah. Well, fun fact, I do like an organic road map for my content as a creator. So like, yeah, like you you should have like a marketing calendar. I guess like where I get kind of confused, um, in this conversation, especially with people who are like who straddle the paid social creative and like the organic creative worlds is like sometimes they'll say things like, oh, like we test all of our ads first on organic and then only then do we scale to our, um, paid social platforms. And like I don't know who has time for that. Like, I don't know any of the top brands that are doing that. And like I've heard of like a few brands here and there. And it's like, yeah, like don't get me wrong. There are times when we're working with a brand, we're like, yo, this popped off on your organic or we think this is going to work on paid in a certain type of way. Let's test it. But like I've heard of some workflows that everyone wants to test on organic for free. Everyone's obsessed with this idea of testing for free. I think that's a myth. I don't like it. I don't love it. I don't want to hear about it. But like, you know, you can get lots of learnings from organic.
[1:03:43] Evan Lee: So Dara, something I've something I've been, uh, like seeing in the chat and also picking up in our conversation is like, I've noticed that and it's probably not completely accurate, but but strategists start to fall into a couple buckets. There's people who are the like, let's test everything and they don't really develop an opinion. It's more like project managing and like, let's throw everything at the board, see what works and what doesn't. And then there's other folks who get to a point of like really strong conviction. It's like, that thing's going to work. It's like, or prove me wrong. And it's like straddling those lines. So I'm curious for, um, we have we have people across the beginner, intermediate and expert field who are kind of attending these things. Like should a creative strategist be shooting to get to a point of like high conviction around their like creative decisions and like what's going in the ad account? Or what do you think?
[1:04:33] Dara Denney: I always love when a creative strategist has like high conviction because it's either it's it's such a good like I don't really care in terms of like should that be something that they optimize for so that they can get more winning ads. I actually just think it's like probably the most powerful learning tool. Like, because if someone has high conviction and it flops, like what what a better way to learn? You know? We had this recently, one of our creative strategists was like, I would stake like an entire month's salary on this ad. And it did not work as well. And I was like, but I fucking loved that you went there, you know? So, do I think you should develop conviction as a creative strategist? I think it's a really great like guiding tool. I think your instinct is something that like I talk a lot about with my creative strategist. Like you have to develop the instinct based on evidence and like that evidence ranking system that I showed earlier is something that's like really helped to develop more of that instinct. Because I guess the other thing that people talk a lot about is taste and oh, you have to develop taste as your creative strategist. And it's like, boring, boring conversation. Like, okay. Like, maybe I'm just not the creative director type, but it's like, yeah, taste is like kind of important, but like your instinct as a creative strategist is going to be the thing that's going to help you like steer your road mapping, steering you to like decide which insights are important. Um, but taste often just goes back to like, do you like it or not? And it's like, who gives a shit if you like it? It might perform even if you hate it. Like I can't tell you how many times I've put ads out into the market where I'm like, ugh, cringe. Um, but it is what it is.
[1:06:26] Evan Lee: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've I've had similar conversations and the thing that roots me is going back to the research. And it's like, what we are starting to do is understand who is the ideal consumer of this brand. And then like what we are trying to figure out and develop conviction around is the idea of like what messaging cuts through all the bullshit to speak directly to that person at the end of the day. So a simple like thumbs up, thumbs down never passes in my mind. But it's like if you've done the work and it's like you know who you're speaking to, it's like that's where the conviction can start to come to life.
[1:06:59] Dara Denney: Yeah. And like I literally I think I literally yelled at someone on like a team call the other day. They're like, I don't like it. And I was like, I don't give a fuck. Like, do not care. Like, it's just not the thing. It's just like not the thing to optimize for.
[1:07:16] Evan Lee: This is so funny. Dara, I I love the energy. I got to get you out of here though. I'm I'm wondering if you have any final words for our audience today.
[1:07:26] Dara Denney: Uh, creative strategists are my most favorite people in the world. It is my true calling to like develop like more education and training for you guys. Like I love being in these rooms. I love meeting you guys like IRL because nothing absolutely nothing compares to like we all do this work and it's very button, button, whatever. You're like in your Claude for hours at a time and you just have no sense of anything. Being able to meet people and talk about this work in real life is bar none like the most impactful thing. So, um, I want to like, you know, have iced coffee with you guys and like hang out and rub elbows and like wear sunglasses, like get the sun on our face, you know?
[1:08:15] Evan Lee: Dara, you're the best. I appreciate you. Everybody, throw love in the chat one time, one time, one time, one time and connect with Dara on all socials, okay? Love, love, love, love, love.
[1:08:23] Dara Denney: Thanks, everyone. Bye.
