Sprints With Evan: Building The Optimal Creative Team | Brendan Bannister

Evan Lee: But welcome to the party, everybody. I'm super happy to have you joining us today. Um, I have a very special guest that I'm excited to chat with today.

Uh, Brendan in the house. And today what we're going to be talking about is how do we build the optimal data-driven creative team? Now, this is a big topic because there's an entire process that needs to be owned by specific people and specific team members. But before I get into like all the goodness and the meat and potatoes of what we're going to chat about, the biggest thing is like, why are we actually here to chat about it? And as everybody knows, here at Motion, we're very much the hub for creative strategy.

And ultimately what that means is that we know that creative has become the most important lever for success, especially when it comes to paid advertising.

But ultimately, the people involved in this process are almost at a conflict.

So that's on one hand, we have our performance marketing teams who are very data-driven, and on the other hand, our creative teams, which are exactly that, creative and conceptual.

And there's this natural gap that exists. And at Motion, we hope to bridge this with the creative strategy workflow. And the way that we bridge this is through the entire flywheel that produces the best creative output possible.

And the final thing I'll note here is like, anyone who's been to our events before, the way that we empower this process is we're very focused on how do we make it easy to analyze,

visualize,

and ultimately share this information out to the necessary teams.

And that makes sure that we're all in a good spot and producing the best creative possible. Um, the last thing to note here is a couple of housekeeping housekeeping notes is, uh, any questions that you might have, I know some of you are used to Slido at our events, but today what we're doing is we're keeping it in the chat.

So if you have any of those questions, throw them into the chat where everyone's throwing love in right now. And what I'll also mention is if you start to notice there are questions that you think you have the answer to, we have a number of experts in the chat with us. So please, please, please jump in and throw your two cents in as well. We want to hear it, we want to comment on it. And then finally, I know Miriam just asked this question in the chat, the recording's going to be made available after this event. So everybody's going to be able to walk away with this, including those who had registered. Perfect. So now, this brings us to the main event.

When we're talking about building those optimal creative teams. And like I mentioned, like at Motion, we think of creative strategy very much as a flywheel, but none of this can be done without specific people who are involved.

And that's why I'm super, super excited to welcome Brendan to the show today.

Now, Brendan, um, I've been able to chat with Brendan for probably for the last like three months or so, something along those lines. We've gotten a chance to know each other. And he's probably like, one, a nice guy, but two, just very proven and just low-key about what he does. And those are the people I ultimately gravitate towards. So Brendan has a long history and like road to success. And what he's been able to do is he actually started on the creative end, cutting his chops in photography and all that good stuff. He was able to really scale on, uh, the YouTube side of things as well, racking up a ton of views and ultimately being featured by YouTube. Not to mention his experience being able to build out creative teams, training them up on the data side as well as building creative ambassador programs. So I think Brendan is the perfect person for us to chat with today around how we can help enable the creative strategy workflow.

So everybody in the chat, one time, welcome Brendan. Let's give him a round of applause. Welcome to the show. Welcome to the show.

Brendan Bannister: The claps go off in the background.

Evan Lee: All the claps go off. All the claps go off. Well, Brendan, um, I'm super excited to have you here like I was saying, but one thing for sure is I don't think I gave you enough justice on why exactly we're chatting here today.

So I know a lot of people here aren't as familiar with you as I am. Can you let them know why you're such a rock star really quickly?

Brendan Bannister: I don't know if rock star is the right word, but um, I've been, I've been a photographer for probably about 11 to 12 years now. And I originally started as a commercial photographer, um, back in like 2014, 2015, 2016 era, kind of like in the early days of e-commerce. And I've been able to work on both sides, the sides of of a photographer and a videographer and then later transitioning to the creative director role and then building teams. So I've got to experience both sides of the spectrum, like working for brands that have good creative directors and working for brands that have no idea. And then, uh, being on the side of a creative, you know, you get to experience where kind of the downfalls are in your guidance and like where expectations aren't set. And then when I transitioned over to like creative director role, it gave me the ability to work with people that I, you know, came up with in the industry, but also understand like where the pitfalls were to like really how to kind of, not only incentivize creators, but also guide them to success, um, without kind of getting in the way of their failure point. Um, and then since then I've been in e-commerce since probably about 2016. Um, you know, doing various things, scaling, um, I worked for, worked for a brand a couple years ago and then recently been building Natura Labs, which is kind of like an external, um, powerhouse that works with brands and a lot of what we do is called brand architecture and part of that project is helping brands build out their creative teams, um, whether that's in-house, external, or whatever that may be.

Evan Lee: I love it. I love it. And Brendan's just been like building in the background for a lot of the times. He and I were chatting beforehand, just going like really heads down mode, make sure we have something to bring to the table. And what he's building over at Natura Labs is something that I really respect at the end of the day. Now, Brendan, um, before we get into like all the goodness of building out the optimal creative teams and what we came here to chat about, I think like let's set the stage first with a couple, uh, like easier questions to answer. So I've talked a little bit about like how I view creative strategy. What does creative strategy ultimately mean to you?

Brendan Bannister: I think there's there's a lot of things to it, but I think the most important thing is, well, there's two sides of the strategy. I would say there's the the strategy that works on the on the creative side at the ad level, right? But then there's also the strategy of how you go about getting that content produced. You know, there's like two sides of the spectrum. There's people that sit at the brand level and, you know, come up with the strategy, but then there's the people that actually produce the content. And there has to be, you know, a a good, clear direction to give to the creators, whether it's a full-on power, a full-on like agency or a team that's doing a hero video or UGC creators or whatever that may be. So it's it's really about how you position the messaging and the the brand or the the um, campaign to these creators.

Evan Lee: I love that. Like it's ultimately you know you need success like whatever ads you're running or whatever it might be, but you need the process that's going to get you there ultimately. And something that's super cool about you is like you mentioned it, you've been doing photography and you've been doing creative work like forever at this point, right? So in your side of things, like you've now been exposed to all areas and all like parts of the spectrum. Why do you think now more than ever it's more it's important for like creative people or creative world in general to be data-driven?

Brendan Bannister: Um, because I think as media buying becomes more consolidated and more AI-driven, it's less about how you press the buttons at the media level, it's more about what you put in it. So you have to be able to understand like how the ads are kind of performing to then give guidance to create those ads. Um, and as as we shift more towards an AI world where, you know, media buying, media buyers will eventually get phased out, it's all on the creative team. And it's those people who can look at the creative details that, you know, Motion provides such as, you know, how long are we drawing users into a video, where they when are they clicking and things like that, which can give guidance to producing more content or making iterations from that content.

Evan Lee: It's so, it's it's actually the perfect segue because when we talk about like being data-driven, it's also a matter of like who does that person actually like need to be who's data-driven? Is it the actual designer themselves or is it someone who's enabling that process? Um, so let's switch gears a little bit. Now, through your experience, you've touched so many different things to speak to starting to build out creative teams and ultimately what that means. Um, the first place that I like to start is as much as process is important is that conversation of brand and performance, right? Like sometimes they're so at odds just in terms of contending focuses for brands and all that kind of stuff. Like first of all, like share your opinion on brand and performance. And then secondly, if I have to ask you the second again, don't worry, but secondly, like depending on where you land, how do you tackle that conversation?

Brendan Bannister: It's a conversation that, you know, we consult for quite a few clients and a lot of the struggle is around letting go of that that kind of like attachment to brand. And you know, I think brand has to be fluid, but also has to be data-driven. So like people are really attached, they have a parameters of what their brand is, but really in the digital era as we go more towards AI algorithms again, you have to be open to changing that. And I think one of the things that I've fought with a lot as a creative, right? When I first started doing video in the in the performance marketing side as a video producer, I wanted everything to be beautiful. I wanted it to have, you know, that artistic touch to it. And I learned very quickly that beautiful doesn't always convert. And truthfully, iPhone converts a lot more. So as a creative, it's something you fight against. As a creative director, you want everything to be so nitpicky, but you know what? There's 12 fonts in the world that just convert better because humans just like them better. And if your font isn't one of those, you know, it's going to hurt your, you know, conversion rate at that video level, at the at the photo level. So you have to be okay, look, I'll have my fancy fonts on my website, but at the ad level, we have to be okay and, you know, just let the data take us where it goes.

Evan Lee: I love it. And when you first learned that, like that realization of, because I think a lot of people go through that. It's like this is so pretty, this looks incredible. It should work, right? Like when did you actually first learn that it's no longer the case?

Brendan Bannister: Um, this is back in, uh, I think 20, 2019 when I was working with William Painter and we were scaling on YouTube and we had some really fancy content that I shot. We had some really fancy content that some of the agencies we work with shot and they were scaling. And we went out and filmed an iPhone video in the rain trying to sell sunglasses and it crushed. And it just blew my mind and I'm like, wait a minute. So this iPhone video in the rain that's, you know, kind of blurry, you can't even hear the audio is doing better than this video we spent three months producing. And it's like, okay, like I got to separate from brand and creative direction and you know, be a little bit more open to the fluidity of, you know, what the ads actually want, what converts, what catches attention.

Evan Lee: It's so interesting because like now we're talking ad level, but in your experience, was there a different process for building for performance creative versus building for like the website and more traditional brand assets?

Brendan Bannister: Great question. Yeah, and again, this is something I've been, you know, kind of trying to teach some of the brands that we work with. Um, I noticed a lot in the younger brands who haven't necessarily cracked scale, you know, people that are probably below 5 million in revenue and run rate, um, maybe even at that level too, but creative has to be, there has to be intention behind your creative. You have to when you when you go and produce it, there has to be an intention. What is the reason for this creative? Am I just making creative because it looks beautiful and because I want to show off my product? Or am I making creative because I want to convert, right? So you can have different levels of creative. You know, there's brand creative that is for the website to make things look beautiful, to launch a new product. But then there's performance marketing creative. And this is where things are really shifting where people are realizing that, okay, the beautiful stuff or the non-intentional creative doesn't necessarily work. And we have to have direct response marketing and hooks and intention behind the creative. Like the creative has to have a specific purpose. Are we trying to show off or are we trying to drive revenue? Because there's two different things.

Evan Lee: Yeah. And speaking to your creator hat when you were going through the process of starting to shoot stuff and go through that process, um, the assets that you made, were there, was there a primary intention that you speak to? Like was it to live on the website or was it to live on ads or are you doing like simultaneously both at the same time?

Brendan Bannister: Um, when we first started out, it was to be beautiful, right? Like the the the hypothesis was beautiful creative will convert. You know, six months, nine months into it, you realize, wait a minute, if we have intention behind it, if we focus on hooks, if we focus on grabbing attention in the first three seconds, it's going to convert better. And then it shifted to having two different types of creative. There's a creative direction creative, which is to show the brand, to build the brand, to to display the brand as bigger than life. And then there's the intentional creative that is top of funnel, middle funnel, bottom of funnel, cold traffic, warm traffic, and then, you know, ready to purchase. So it does have to shift at some point to have be intention-based.

Evan Lee: So interesting. So I'm now personally curious because I feel fired up just the way that you're talking about it. Um, like being able to foster that culture essentially, right? Like how do you, how do you communicate that to the specific person to be like, no, dig into your bag. Like we want to see something amazing. Are you doing it through a brief and like, if so, what's in that information? Is it a conversation? If so, what are you talking about? How does that look?

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, so whenever I write creative briefs, uh, for any type of person that's doing anything creative, I say, think outside the box. This is your, these these are the parameters of what I'm looking for. You're the artist. I'm hiring you for a reason. I want you to think outside the box. Don't be afraid to give me an idea. But don't take offense when I turn the idea down. And people are like, okay, I like that. And they'll come up with you with, you know, three, four, five ideas. And if you shoot four of them down, but one of them you test, that's all that matters.

Evan Lee: What are some examples of those parameters?

Brendan Bannister: Uh, you know, like I was talking about, um, it just kind of like totally depends on what you're doing, but let's say if you're shooting for a makeup brand, you're doing some UGC scripted creative for a makeup brand, you know, parameter is has to have natural light. You have to be looking at the camera, you know, you have to be, you can't be wearing any, you know, big logos on your shirt, you know, basic things like that. The video has to be one minute long. You have to use this type of hook, you know, etc. These are the parameters. But if you have any other ideas, like please throw them at me. Like I want to hear what you're thinking. And they'll say, oh, I was thinking about doing a shot in the backyard in the jacuzzi. I'm like, perfect. I didn't know you had a jacuzzi. Let's do it. That doesn't make sense for makeup, but you know what I'm saying.

Evan Lee: That's so cool. Um, I get to talk to a lot of people about this kind of stuff, right? And I know there's some teams who are super strict on, we provide the whole script, they do the script, right? And then there's other people like yourself who says, have that freedom, like push some back to me and like be creative at the end of the day. And the really cool thing, Brendan, just about this is because you come from that lens of being the creator, it's like wanting to give them maximum flexibility. So I think that's something that everybody can kind of take away. You might lean because you're a more data-driven person to say, how do I control the situation? But we need to be sure to empower people with the with the right parameters and then just like give them a chance to be like empowered and make the decisions they want.

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, exactly.

Evan Lee: Okay. So let's let's switch gears a little bit with what you were mentioning, um, with your creative ambassador or UGC program and all that good stuff. So you started off the conversation talking about like retainers and making sure people feel valued in their work and it's like you're willing to give them a shot. Let's take a step back, um, a little bit further. It's like, where do you, where do you go to even source these type of creators that you want to work with?

Brendan Bannister: Upwork. I go on Upwork. No, seriously. I go on Upwork. Well, what I'll do is I'll go on Instagram. I'll find a creator that I like that fits my parameters, maybe three of them, so three similar creators. And I'll say, and then I'll go on Google Docs and I'll make a list and I'll put the three creators in there. I'll say what I like about them. And then I'll find someone that I don't like and I'll put that as an example. This is an example of what not to use. I'll go on Upwork. I'll hire someone on Upwork to go and source me 250 or 300 of these creators or 100 of these creators in America or Europe or in geographic location. They have a software that automatically sources them, so they do it in a split second. And then they give me that database. And then I'll go through the database that I get on Excel sheets or Google sheets and, you know, pick the ones I like and reach out to the ones I like with a DM, email, you know, whatever it may be.

Evan Lee: Are you manually sending those DMs out yourself?

Brendan Bannister: Um, usually, it depends, right? You know, sometimes you give them to the client and here's your here's your list. It it just totally depends. DMing takes a lot of time, but you know, if you have the resources, you have to remember right now, I'm I'm on the consultant side, so I'm helping the brands build their teams and kind of giving them ideas of how to do it. Um, so it's it's about, you know, whose time you should you should do it with, but you know, um, yeah.

Evan Lee: Love it. Love it. And then on your end, something that we've chatted about off camera a bunch is just like the idea of building out a creative ambassador program. So sometimes, uh, I'm not sure how people in the chat feel, so I'm really curious to hear your thoughts too, but just like the whole idea of UGC sometimes is again, two ends of the spectrum. It's either we don't get paid enough or it's like it's becoming super expensive and a little bit like like wild out there. And in in between our conversations, I know you've mentioned ways that it's like we can do this in an inexpensive way, but everyone's happy. Like talk to the talk to the people a little bit more around like your process and how you've done that.

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, so another, I'm sorry, another thing that I I see kind of coming up a lot is people confusing ambassadors with influencers and UGC content. And it's kind of like no one, there's no label for it right now. So when I say creative ambassadors, I'm not a big believer in influencer marketing personally, being an influencer as well in the past. Like as a media buyer and as a creative strategist, to me, the most valuable thing is the creative itself, not the influence, the influencer that comes with it. So I'm not really interested in the people that have 200,000 followers and make beautiful content because they're going to be expensive, no matter what. And they're looking for the influence. They're not necessarily selling the content. I care more about the person on TikTok or or Instagram that has 2,000 followers and makes content and that can take direction is willing to be a creative for me, not an influencer.

Evan Lee: That's so interesting. Is it just like, does that tie into, I don't even know how to describe it. Is it an ego thing that you've noticed just through just through these conversations or does it just like you're sorting through a million people and there just happens to be diamonds in the rough? Does that make sense?

Brendan Bannister: Well, I just haven't, you know, I haven't worked with a brand that's really had major success off of the word influencer. One of the brands and I I suggest everyone in this chat to go take a look at it is LSKD, Loose Kids. They're a clothing company from Australia. Um, the guy who built their creative team did a brilliant job of it and the ambassador team. And he didn't go after influencers, but influencers actually came to him. So what he did is he just got creators, photographers, you know, travel people, van life people from all over the world, sent them free gear, and they sent in content. And as they grew and grew and grew over the years and he said, you know, I'm going to send you $200 a month worth of gear and I need 10 photos. They love it. They get free clothes and they get 10 photos of them traveling and stuff like that. And as it grew and grew and grew, it became an influencer team. Now they have influencers reaching out saying, hey, I want to be a part of, you know, LSKD, I want your I want your clothes. And everyone's happy at the end at the end of it. And then of course as they get bigger, then they start, you know, paying massive influencers to be a part of it. But it kind of like starts from just building a creative team that people want to be a part of. And you'd be surprised at how the kind of like the group ideology plays on on Instagram. Like people like to represent things. They like to be a part of something. They like to be in a click and a collective of something. And if you foster that with creativity and with content and with, you know, either paid or free gifts, people love it and gravitate towards it.

Evan Lee: Yeah, wanting to be a part of the community is something that really resonates for me. It's just like they want to be there at the end of the day. It's not just a paycheck. So that starts to make a little bit more sense, right?

Brendan Bannister: Exactly. And if you can give them a paycheck, even better.

Evan Lee: Entirely, entirely. Um, and when we when we think about, when we think about like, uh, to the analysis side of things. So you have the asset that's gone live. Justin asked a question recently. It says, when it comes to creative analysis, how long are you typically letting creative sit in the market before you begin to optimize and iterate? So advising like media buying teams on when those changes need to be made.

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, it it it all depends on the amount of money you're spending. You know, if you're spending $50 a day, you're going to have to let it run for a month. If you're spending $1,000 a day, you'll know in three days, four days, five days. Um, also, you can't, like for example, um, over the holidays, a lot of companies tried to scale new creative during Black Friday, you know, the two or three weeks up to Black Friday. I'm like, it's not going to happen. Like you're literally trying to drive a boat in a storm. So just because it didn't work during Black Friday, doesn't mean it's not going to work in February or March. So you have to think, okay, what's the actual market doing? Am I testing this creative in a good time? Am I giving it enough data to learn? So, you know, when you're working with smaller budgets, if you're if you're testing, if you're starting with a $200, $200 a day budget on on YouTube or Facebook or whatever, I can't speak on Facebook, but on the YouTube side, you can't test five different videos with $200 a day budget because you'd have to let it run for a month or two months. But if you're able to test $1,000 a day, you can test five videos. You have to be cognizant and take the number, at least on YouTube, take the take your daily budget and divide it by the amount of videos that you're testing. And that's how much money has to go to each video at the same time. So if you have $100 and you're testing four videos, each video only gets $25. But if you test, if you test two videos with $100, you're getting $50 of learning per video, theoretically. Um, so it just goes a lot longer.

Evan Lee: Love it. Yeah, touching on so many of these things is just even like stage of funnels important to know. How long do we do we launch before we iterate is important to know. Justin also has another question just digging into, uh, like the team structures once again. So let's say we do hit that point of scale. Remember how you were talking about like those three types of, uh, like creative, which honestly should have their own types of people associated with them. If you're advising on like a structure that you would like to see built, how are you typically building that out? Is it a creative strategist that owns each of those portfolio? Is it only one creative strategist with multiple editors rolling up? What does that start to look like?

Brendan Bannister: I think it it just has to be fluid. Like if you have a very, very talented creative strategist who can oversee multiple different areas and can systematically separate them the different systems, uh, the different types of creative, then yeah, you could have one person doing it. Um, but you know, if you have, if if you don't have someone at that level, you know, maybe you should have, you know, someone focusing strictly on creative ambassadors, someone focusing strictly on, you know, high-level art directed directed credit or creative and then some person focusing on direct response, you know, drive creative that's going to drive revenue.

Evan Lee: So interesting. So interesting. And and now I just want to take, um, a step back not only to just focus on ads, but focus on like the larger business goals because when D2C brands are starting to do things like, hey, product development, merchandising, and all of that kind of stuff, information from ads is ultimately important. And to tie this to to tie this to like team structures more than anything, on one hand, like we've spoken about, we have our media buyers who are running that information and they can toss it back to the creative teams. On the other hand, we have our strategists who interpret the data and then like ultimately drive creative direction. Whose job would you say it is, whether it be one of them or somebody else, to like take these insights and move them up? So move them up to the people who need to know like, hey, these are the products we should look into further developing or SKUs along that line.

Brendan Bannister: I would actually say it's the inverse. I think it's the person at the top's job to bring up the data. Right? Like the the CMO or the, you know, lead product designer or the director of growth, whatever it is, they need to have the mindset to say to tell the the teams that are on at the ad level, at the creative level, at the UGC level, at the, you know, customer service level, what are you seeing? What commonalities are you seeing? What, you know, what are the comments on Facebook saying, right? What are the comments on Instagram saying? Like, are they asking us to make certain products? Or if you see that, please bring it up. But people might not, you know, think to bring it up without being told to or being asked to.

Evan Lee: Have you ever built any processes that makes that a little bit easier?

Brendan Bannister: Oh, definitely. Yeah. I mean, we'll have VAs scraping all the comments, all the reviews, all the customer service stuff, literally reporting monthly saying, you know, we had 55 reviews saying make this product or 55 reviews or 55 comments complaining about, you know, the product being defective on this level or customer service had, you know, 100 emails that said, please make sunscreen, right? And these are, you know, reviews we look at at the end of the month and say, okay, you know, here's commonalities we're seeing, here's stuff that popped up we didn't know existed. So I think it's extremely important to scrape every ounce of data from the customers or the clients or the ad level that you possibly can. And also ignore the negative comments because those are no good.

Evan Lee: Sometimes if it's constructive, like the word constructive that you used earlier was super helpful there.

Brendan Bannister: Yeah.

Evan Lee: Um, but I love that because ultimately it's taking the work and the ownership off like the people on the ground who are doing the work because ultimately it could create more just complexity, but you're now saying like, we want this information, but I got your back. Like this is who can help get that information for me and then we can make decisions together. So I really, really like that.

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, exactly.

Evan Lee: Okay. The last question that I have on my end, then we're just going to go in the chat and pull some of the questions that have been flowing in from our group here. Um, I just wanted to make it like super meta in all honesty, so high level more than anything. So I've mentioned this a million times that you were a creator. So let's let's give some advice out there. So let's say we have in this room, people watching the recording, someone who's literally just a creator who's starting out and they want to get to somewhere either you are or just build their portfolio, whatever it might be. What's the best way for them to just even get started in your interpretation of that?

Brendan Bannister: Getting in contact with the correct person. So if you want to be, if you know, if you want to be working on at the brand as a media buyer or as a creative director, you don't need to contact the CEO. You don't need to contact the founder. You can, depending on the size of the organization, but you you want to get in contact with the person that you want to be working with. Now that I say that, it might not work because some people might get threatened by someone saying that, but, you know, I think it's important to make your desires known, make make it known that you want to work to to work up to, you know, you want to, hey, I love your brand. I'd love to work with you one day or, you know, I'm I'm a photographer. I love your products. I'd love to work on your photo team one day. And tell the CEO that, tell the CMO, it just depends on the size of the organization. Um, but I think just making your goals known is the most important thing. And again, like from my personal experience, uh, as a young photographer, that's what I did. I I was in contact with the organization and I said, hey, I love your products. I'd love to grow with your team. And then a year later when I was in town, I said, hey, I just moved moved back to the states and I'm looking for a full-time position. If you know anyone hiring a photographer or videographer, let me know. And they were like, oh, we have a position available. And I was like, well, perfect.

Evan Lee: It's genuinely about putting yourself out there is what I'm hearing, right? It's like you got to go, you got to go get it.

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, and you you can't be afraid of being rejected either. Like as a photographer, I've sent thousands of emails to companies trying to get jobs, thousands, I'm not even kidding, thousands of emails to companies trying to get, you know, trying to get them to let me shoot for them, you know, do these things, even get free gear just to shoot for, you know, shoot for them for free. You know, you get, you know, out of a thousand emails, you probably get like 25 back. And it's the 25 are what change your life. The thousand that you don't get, you don't hear back from, they don't matter.

Evan Lee: Entirely. Sweet. Thanks, Brendan. Let's get to, let's get to some of these questions to to end off these eight minutes that we have here. And the first one that I noticed, and I apologize if I've missed it, but I see Matthew has a question. So he's asking, does branded/beautiful content still play a role in top of funnel? If so, how do you make a business case for it when it's DR BOF creative driving conversions?

Brendan Bannister: Great question. You have to make your brand appear larger than life. So if you don't have beautiful content on your homepage, on your landing page, on your Instagram, your brand will look less valuable. Like you could make, you could make a two, a brand that does $2 million in revenue look like a $100 million brand just by investing in high-quality creative. And that is one of the most important things is the perception that your brand gives to the world. If you look like a cheap brand, people are going to think you're a cheap brand. If you look like a professional $100 million, billion dollar organization, they're not going to know you're only doing a million dollars in revenue. They're going to think you're huge and they're going to trust you. So beautiful content builds trust. Direct response content drives revenue.

Evan Lee: I love it. Worded perfectly. And then when we when we think about, when we think about like, uh, to the analysis side of things. So you have the asset that's gone live. Justin asked a question recently. It says, when it comes to creative analysis, how long are you typically letting creative sit in the market before you begin to optimize and iterate? So advising like media buying teams on when those changes need to be made.

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, it it it all depends on the amount of money you're spending. You know, if you're spending $50 a day, you're going to have to let it run for a month. If you're spending $1,000 a day, you'll know in three days, four days, five days. Um, also, you can't, like for example, um, over the holidays, a lot of companies tried to scale new creative during Black Friday, you know, the two or three weeks up to Black Friday. I'm like, it's not going to happen. Like you're literally trying to drive a boat in a storm. So just because it didn't work during Black Friday, doesn't mean it's not going to work in February or March. So you have to think, okay, what's the actual market doing? Am I testing this creative in a good time? Am I giving it enough data to learn? So, you know, when you're working with smaller budgets, if you're if you're testing, if you're starting with a $200, $200 a day budget on on YouTube or Facebook or whatever, I can't speak on Facebook, but on the YouTube side, you can't test five different videos with $200 a day budget because you'd have to let it run for a month or two months. But if you're able to test $1,000 a day, you can test five videos. You have to be cognizant and take the number, at least on YouTube, take the take your daily budget and divide it by the amount of videos that you're testing. And that's how much money has to go to each video at the same time. So if you have $100 and you're testing four videos, each video only gets $25. But if you test, if you test two videos with $100, you're getting $50 of learning per video, theoretically. Um, so it just goes a lot longer.

Evan Lee: Love it. Yeah, touching on so many of these things is just even like stage of funnels important to know. How long do we do we launch before we iterate is important to know. Justin also has another question just digging into, uh, like the team structures once again. So let's say we do hit that point of scale. Remember how you were talking about like those three types of, uh, like creative, which honestly should have their own types of people associated with them. If you're advising on like a structure that you would like to see built, how are you typically building that out? Is it a creative strategist that owns each of those portfolio? Is it only one creative strategist with multiple editors rolling up? What does that start to look like?

Brendan Bannister: I think it it just has to be fluid. Like if you have a very, very talented creative strategist who can oversee multiple different areas and can systematically separate them the different systems, uh, the different types of creative, then yeah, you could have one person doing it. Um, but you know, if you have, if if you don't have someone at that level, you know, maybe you should have, you know, someone focusing strictly on creative ambassadors, someone focusing strictly on, you know, high-level art directed directed credit or creative and then some person focusing on direct response, you know, drive creative that's going to drive revenue.

Evan Lee: So interesting. So interesting. And then when we're talking about the actual structure of teams now, right? Because like traditionally on one hand, we have people who who are running the ads and then we have the creative folks on this side, right? Structurally speaking, who do these editors and additional members roll up into?

Brendan Bannister: Right. So you'd have the creative strategist, you know, theoretically at the at the top of the pyramid. I like to, you know, describe things in in pyramids, but you have you have the creative strategist in the top. You'd have, uh, copywriter, you know, script writers is extremely important. You know, that I if if we have a triangle, I would say the messaging of the creative is at the bottom of the triangle. I don't know how many people are familiar with like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but I model a lot of a lot of that off this. You have you have a triangle like this, the bottom layer would be messaging. Um, and that's kind of like what you build the script around. And then the next layer would be either creative strategist or like an art director or a creative director that would say, you know, here's our intention behind this creative, whether it's a seasonal creative or, you know, it's going to be outdoors or indoors or whatever it is. And then you kind of give the art direction. And then you have the producers and the editors or what kind of like bring the final piece together. And then, you know, when you have the content produced, the editors can chop that up a hundred different ways. So one of the things that's really popular now is you you get your script, you you do it all. Let's just say for example, the script is one minute, you could write five or 10 different hooks. And the editors can chop, can make that video and then chop up, you know, 10 different hooks. And this is where, you know, Motion comes in because you can run these ads against each other for the 10 different hooks and see, okay, hook one and three worked, the other ones don't. So let's make variations of hook one and three and we don't have to change the rest of the video. We just have to change the hook.

Evan Lee: Most definitely. Maximize, yeah, if it works, maximizing your time and dollars at that point, right? And and something I'm always so curious about is to like bring it back to that brand and performance style conversation. In your experience, how does the overlap occur between both of the teams? Because technically speaking, a creative strategist and the team could live in one org, but then the performance side on the other. How do you make sure that they're almost able to act in lock step to be able to produce winning assets? Does that make sense?

Brendan Bannister: Right. Yeah. Um, it's an interesting question. I think it it has to be a, um, collaborative approach between the performance team and the creative team. But when I say collaborative, it can't be kind of like directional based. Like you can't have a performance team telling the creative team exactly what needs to be done. The performance team will have to say, here's what's working. And the creative team has to be able to look at what's working and say, we can copy this and make iterations of it or that's working, here's a theory I have and then you have to and then you test it. And then the performance team will say, it looks beautiful, this worked, but this doesn't work. And the creative team has to say, okay, I'm not going to take offense to the fact that it doesn't work, but I'm going to come, you know, come back with three other options that may or may not work.

Evan Lee: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I love it. And it's so interesting because like you mentioned, you've been doing photography and you've been doing creative work like forever at this point, right? So in your side of things, like you've now been exposed to all areas and all like parts of the spectrum. Why do you think now more than ever it's more it's important for like creative people or creative world in general to be data-driven?

Brendan Bannister: Um, because I think as media buying becomes more consolidated and more AI-driven, it's less about how you press the buttons at the media level, it's more about what you put in it. So you have to be able to understand like how the ads are kind of performing to then give guidance to create those ads. Um, and as as we shift more towards an AI world where, you know, media buying, media buyers will eventually get phased out, it's all on the creative team. And it's those people who can look at the creative details that, you know, Motion provides such as, you know, how long are we drawing users into a video, where they when are they clicking and things like that, which can give guidance to producing more content or making iterations from that content.

Evan Lee: It's so, it's it's actually the perfect segue because when we talk about like being data-driven, it's also a matter of like who does that person actually like need to be who's data-driven? Is it the actual designer themselves or is it someone who's enabling that process? Um, so let's switch gears a little bit. Now, through your experience, you've touched so many different things to speak to starting to build out creative teams and ultimately what that means. Um, the first place that I like to start is as much as process is important is that conversation of brand and performance, right? Like sometimes they're so at odds just in terms of contending focuses for brands and all that kind of stuff. Like first of all, like share your opinion on brand and performance. And then secondly, if I have to ask you the second again, don't worry, but secondly, like depending on where you land, how do you tackle that conversation?

Brendan Bannister: It's a conversation that, you know, we consult for quite a few clients and a lot of the struggle is around letting go of that that kind of like attachment to brand. And you know, I think brand has to be fluid, but also has to be data-driven. So like people are really attached, they have a parameters of what their brand is, but really in the digital era as we go more towards AI algorithms again, you have to be open to changing that. And I think one of the things that I've fought with a lot as a creative, right? When I first started doing video in the in the performance marketing side as a video producer, I wanted everything to be beautiful. I wanted it to have, you know, that artistic touch to it. And I learned very quickly that beautiful doesn't always convert. And truthfully, iPhone converts a lot more. So as a creative, it's something you fight against. As a creative director, you want everything to be so nitpicky, but you know what? There's 12 fonts in the world that just convert better because humans just like them better. And if your font isn't one of those, you know, it's going to hurt your, you know, conversion rate at that video level, at the at the photo level. So you have to be okay, look, I'll have my fancy fonts on my website, but at the ad level, we have to be okay and, you know, just let the data take us where it goes.

Evan Lee: I love it. And when you first learned that, like that realization of, because I think a lot of people go through that. It's like this is so pretty, this looks incredible. It should work, right? Like when did you actually first learn that it's no longer the case?

Brendan Bannister: Um, this is back in, uh, I think 20, 2019 when I was working with William Painter and we were scaling on YouTube and we had some really fancy content that I shot. We had some really fancy content that some of the agencies we work with shot and they were scaling. And we went out and filmed an iPhone video in the rain trying to sell sunglasses and it crushed. And it just blew my mind and I'm like, wait a minute. So this iPhone video in the rain that's, you know, kind of blurry, you can't even hear the audio is doing better than this video we spent three months producing. And it's like, okay, like I got to separate from brand and creative direction and you know, be a little bit more open to the fluidity of, you know, what the ads actually want, what converts, what catches attention.

Evan Lee: It's so interesting because like now we're talking ad level, but in your experience, was there a different process for building for performance creative versus building for like the website and more traditional brand assets?

Brendan Bannister: Great question. Yeah, and again, this is something I've been, you know, kind of trying to teach some of the brands that we work with. Um, I noticed a lot in the younger brands who haven't necessarily cracked scale, you know, people that are probably below 5 million in revenue and run rate, um, maybe even at that level too, but creative has to be, there has to be intention behind your creative. You have to when you when you go and produce it, there has to be an intention. What is the reason for this creative? Am I just making creative because it looks beautiful and because I want to show off my product? Or am I making creative because I want to convert, right? So you can have different levels of creative. You know, there's brand creative that is for the website to make things look beautiful, to launch a new product. But then there's performance marketing creative. And this is where things are really shifting where people are realizing that, okay, the beautiful stuff or the non-intentional creative doesn't necessarily work. And we have to have direct response marketing and hooks and intention behind the creative. Like the creative has to have a specific purpose. Are we trying to show off or are we trying to drive revenue? Because there's two different things.

Evan Lee: Yeah. And speaking to your creator hat when you were going through the process of starting to shoot stuff and go through that process, um, the assets that you made, were there, was there a primary intention that you speak to? Like was it to live on the website or was it to live on ads or are you doing like simultaneously both at the same time?

Brendan Bannister: Um, when we first started out, it was to be beautiful, right? Like the the the hypothesis was beautiful creative will convert. You know, six months, nine months into it, you realize, wait a minute, if we have intention behind it, if we focus on hooks, if we focus on grabbing attention in the first three seconds, it's going to convert better. And then it shifted to having two different types of creative. There's a creative direction creative, which is to show the brand, to build the brand, to to display the brand as bigger than life. And then there's the intentional creative that is top of funnel, middle funnel, bottom of funnel, cold traffic, warm traffic, and then, you know, ready to purchase. So it does have to shift at some point to have be intention-based.

Evan Lee: So interesting. So I'm now personally curious because I feel fired up just the way that you're talking about it. Um, like being able to foster that culture essentially, right? Like how do you, how do you communicate that to the specific person to be like, no, dig into your bag. Like we want to see something amazing. Are you doing it through a brief and like, if so, what's in that information? Is it a conversation? If so, what are you talking about? How does that look?

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, so whenever I write creative briefs, uh, for any type of person that's doing anything creative, I say, think outside the box. This is your, these these are the parameters of what I'm looking for. You're the artist. I'm hiring you for a reason. I want you to think outside the box. Don't be afraid to give me an idea. But don't take offense when I turn the idea down. And people are like, okay, I like that. And they'll come up with you with, you know, three, four, five ideas. And if you shoot four of them down, but one of them you test, that's all that matters.

Evan Lee: What are some examples of those parameters?

Brendan Bannister: Uh, you know, like I was talking about, um, it just kind of like totally depends on what you're doing, but let's say if you're shooting for a makeup brand, you're doing some UGC scripted creative for a makeup brand, you know, parameter is has to have natural light. You have to be looking at the camera, you know, you have to be, you can't be wearing any, you know, big logos on your shirt, you know, basic things like that. The video has to be one minute long. You have to use this type of hook, you know, etc. These are the parameters. But if you have any other ideas, like please throw them at me. Like I want to hear what you're thinking. And they'll say, oh, I was thinking about doing a shot in the backyard in the jacuzzi. I'm like, perfect. I didn't know you had a jacuzzi. Let's do it. That doesn't make sense for makeup, but you know what I'm saying.

Evan Lee: That's so cool. Um, I get to talk to a lot of people about this kind of stuff, right? And I know there's some teams who are super strict on, we provide the whole script, they do the script, right? And then there's other people like yourself who says, have that freedom, like push some back to me and like be creative at the end of the day. And the really cool thing, Brendan, just about this is because you come from that lens of being the creator, it's like wanting to give them maximum flexibility. So I think that's something that everybody can kind of take away. You might lean because you're a more data-driven person to say, how do I control the situation? But we need to be sure to empower people with the with the right parameters and then just like give them a chance to be like empowered and make the decisions they want.

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, exactly.

Evan Lee: Okay. So let's let's switch gears a little bit with what you were mentioning, um, with your creative ambassador or UGC program and all that good stuff. So you started off the conversation talking about like retainers and making sure people feel valued in their work and it's like you're willing to give them a shot. Let's take a step back, um, a little bit further. It's like, where do you, where do you go to even source these type of creators that you want to work with?

Brendan Bannister: Upwork. I go on Upwork. No, seriously. I go on Upwork. Well, what I'll do is I'll go on Instagram. I'll find a creator that I like that fits my parameters, maybe three of them, so three similar creators. And I'll say, and then I'll go on Google Docs and I'll make a list and I'll put the three creators in there. I'll say what I like about them. And then I'll find someone that I don't like and I'll put that as an example. This is an example of what not to use. I'll go on Upwork. I'll hire someone on Upwork to go and source me 250 or 300 of these creators or 100 of these creators in America or Europe or in geographic location. They have a software that automatically sources them, so they do it in a split second. And then they give me that database. And then I'll go through the database that I get on Excel sheets or Google sheets and, you know, pick the ones I like and reach out to the ones I like with a DM, email, you know, whatever it may be.

Evan Lee: Are you manually sending those DMs out yourself?

Brendan Bannister: Um, usually, it depends, right? You know, sometimes you give them to the client and here's your here's your list. It it just totally depends. DMing takes a lot of time, but you know, if you have the resources, you have to remember right now, I'm I'm on the consultant side, so I'm helping the brands build their teams and kind of giving them ideas of how to do it. Um, so it's it's about, you know, whose time you should you should do it with, but you know, um, yeah.

Evan Lee: Love it. Love it. And then on your end, something that we've chatted about off camera a bunch is just like the idea of building out a creative ambassador program. So sometimes, uh, I'm not sure how people in the chat feel, so I'm really curious to hear your thoughts too, but just like the whole idea of UGC sometimes is again, two ends of the spectrum. It's either we don't get paid enough or it's like it's becoming super expensive and a little bit like like wild out there. And in in between our conversations, I know you've mentioned ways that it's like we can do this in an inexpensive way, but everyone's happy. Like talk to the talk to the people a little bit more around like your process and how you've done that.

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, so another, I'm sorry, another thing that I I see kind of coming up a lot is people confusing ambassadors with influencers and UGC content. And it's kind of like no one, there's no label for it right now. So when I say creative ambassadors, I'm not a big believer in influencer marketing personally, being an influencer as well in the past. Like as a media buyer and as a creative strategist, to me, the most valuable thing is the creative itself, not the influence, the influencer that comes with it. So I'm not really interested in the people that have 200,000 followers and make beautiful content because they're going to be expensive, no matter what. And they're looking for the influence. They're not necessarily selling the content. I care more about the person on TikTok or or Instagram that has 2,000 followers and makes content and that can take direction is willing to be a creative for me, not an influencer.

Evan Lee: That's so interesting. Is it just like, does that tie into, I don't even know how to describe it. Is it an ego thing that you've noticed just through just through these conversations or does it just like you're sorting through a million people and there just happens to be diamonds in the rough? Does that make sense?

Brendan Bannister: Well, I just haven't, you know, I haven't worked with a brand that's really had major success off of the word influencer. One of the brands and I I suggest everyone in this chat to go take a look at it is LSKD, Loose Kids. They're a clothing company from Australia. Um, the guy who built their creative team did a brilliant job of it and the ambassador team. And he didn't go after influencers, but influencers actually came to him. So what he did is he just got creators, photographers, you know, travel people, van life people from all over the world, sent them free gear, and they sent in content. And as they grew and grew and grew over the years and he said, you know, I'm going to send you $200 a month worth of gear and I need 10 photos. They love it. They get free clothes and they get 10 photos of them traveling and stuff like that. And as it grew and grew and grew, it became an influencer team. Now they have influencers reaching out saying, hey, I want to be a part of, you know, LSKD, I want your I want your clothes. And everyone's happy at the end at the end of it. And then of course as they get bigger, then they start, you know, paying massive influencers to be a part of it. But it kind of like starts from just building a creative team that people want to be a part of. And you'd be surprised at how the kind of like the group ideology plays on on Instagram. Like people like to represent things. They like to be a part of something. They like to be in a click and a collective of something. And if you foster that with creativity and with content and with, you know, either paid or free gifts, people love it and gravitate towards it.

Evan Lee: Yeah, wanting to be a part of the community is something that really resonates for me. It's just like they want to be there at the end of the day. It's not just a paycheck. So that starts to make a little bit more sense, right?

Brendan Bannister: Exactly. And if you can give them a paycheck, even better.

Evan Lee: Entirely, entirely. Um, and when we when we think about, when we think about like, uh, to the analysis side of things. So you have the asset that's gone live. Justin asked a question recently. It says, when it comes to creative analysis, how long are you typically letting creative sit in the market before you begin to optimize and iterate? So advising like media buying teams on when those changes need to be made.

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, it it it all depends on the amount of money you're spending. You know, if you're spending $50 a day, you're going to have to let it run for a month. If you're spending $1,000 a day, you'll know in three days, four days, five days. Um, also, you can't, like for example, um, over the holidays, a lot of companies tried to scale new creative during Black Friday, you know, the two or three weeks up to Black Friday. I'm like, it's not going to happen. Like you're literally trying to drive a boat in a storm. So just because it didn't work during Black Friday, doesn't mean it's not going to work in February or March. So you have to think, okay, what's the actual market doing? Am I testing this creative in a good time? Am I giving it enough data to learn? So, you know, when you're working with smaller budgets, if you're if you're testing, if you're starting with a $200, $200 a day budget on on YouTube or Facebook or whatever, I can't speak on Facebook, but on the YouTube side, you can't test five different videos with $200 a day budget because you'd have to let it run for a month or two months. But if you're able to test $1,000 a day, you can test five videos. You have to be cognizant and take the number, at least on YouTube, take the take your daily budget and divide it by the amount of videos that you're testing. And that's how much money has to go to each video at the same time. So if you have $100 and you're testing four videos, each video only gets $25. But if you test, if you test two videos with $100, you're getting $50 of learning per video, theoretically. Um, so it just goes a lot longer.

Evan Lee: Love it. Yeah, touching on so many of these things is just even like stage of funnels important to know. How long do we do we launch before we iterate is important to know. Justin also has another question just digging into, uh, like the team structures once again. So let's say we do hit that point of scale. Remember how you were talking about like those three types of, uh, like creative, which honestly should have their own types of people associated with them. If you're advising on like a structure that you would like to see built, how are you typically building that out? Is it a creative strategist that owns each of those portfolio? Is it only one creative strategist with multiple editors rolling up? What does that start to look like?

Brendan Bannister: I think it it just has to be fluid. Like if you have a very, very talented creative strategist who can oversee multiple different areas and can systematically separate them the different systems, uh, the different types of creative, then yeah, you could have one person doing it. Um, but you know, if you have, if if you don't have someone at that level, you know, maybe you should have, you know, someone focusing strictly on creative ambassadors, someone focusing strictly on, you know, high-level art directed directed credit or creative and then some person focusing on direct response, you know, drive creative that's going to drive revenue.

Evan Lee: So interesting. So interesting. And then when we're talking about the actual structure of teams now, right? Because like traditionally on one hand, we have people who who are running the ads and then we have the creative folks on this side, right? Structurally speaking, who do these editors and additional members roll up into?

Brendan Bannister: Right. So you'd have the creative strategist, you know, theoretically at the at the top of the pyramid. I like to, you know, describe things in in pyramids, but you have you have the creative strategist in the top. You'd have, uh, copywriter, you know, script writers is extremely important. You know, that I if if we have a triangle, I would say the messaging of the creative is at the bottom of the triangle. I don't know how many people are familiar with like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but I model a lot of a lot of that off this. You have you have a triangle like this, the bottom layer would be messaging. Um, and that's kind of like what you build the script around. And then the next layer would be either creative strategist or like an art director or a creative director that would say, you know, here's our intention behind this creative, whether it's a seasonal creative or, you know, it's going to be outdoors or indoors or whatever it is. And then you kind of give the art direction. And then you have the producers and the editors or what kind of like bring the final piece together. And then, you know, when you have the content produced, the editors can chop that up a hundred different ways. So one of the things that's really popular now is you you get your script, you you do it all. Let's just say for example, the script is one minute, you could write five or 10 different hooks. And the editors can chop, can make that video and then chop up, you know, 10 different hooks. And this is where, you know, Motion comes in because you can run these ads against each other for the 10 different hooks and see, okay, hook one and three worked, the other ones don't. So let's make variations of hook one and three and we don't have to change the rest of the video. We just have to change the hook.

Evan Lee: Most definitely. Maximize, yeah, if it works, maximizing your time and dollars at that point, right? And and something I'm always so curious about is to like bring it back to that brand and performance style conversation. In your experience, how does the overlap occur between both of the teams? Because technically speaking, a creative strategist and the team could live in one org, but then the performance side on the other. How do you make sure that they're almost able to act in lock step to be able to produce winning assets? Does that make sense?

Brendan Bannister: Right. Yeah. Um, it's an interesting question. I think it it has to be a, um, collaborative approach between the performance team and the creative team. But when I say collaborative, it can't be kind of like directional based. Like you can't have a performance team telling the creative team exactly what needs to be done. The performance team will have to say, here's what's working. And the creative team has to be able to look at what's working and say, we can copy this and make iterations of it or that's working, here's a theory I have and then you have to and then you test it. And then the performance team will say, it looks beautiful, this worked, but this doesn't work. And the creative team has to say, okay, I'm not going to take offense to the fact that it doesn't work, but I'm going to come, you know, come back with three other options that may or may not work.

Evan Lee: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I love it. And it's so interesting because like you mentioned, you've been doing photography and you've been doing creative work like forever at this point, right? So in your side of things, like you've now been exposed to all areas and all like parts of the spectrum. Why do you think now more than ever it's more it's important for like creative people or creative world in general to be data-driven?

Brendan Bannister: Um, because I think as media buying becomes more consolidated and more AI-driven, it's less about how you press the buttons at the media level, it's more about what you put in it. So you have to be able to understand like how the ads are kind of performing to then give guidance to create those ads. Um, and as as we shift more towards an AI world where, you know, media buying, media buyers will eventually get phased out, it's all on the creative team. And it's those people who can look at the creative details that, you know, Motion provides such as, you know, how long are we drawing users into a video, where they when are they clicking and things like that, which can give guidance to producing more content or making iterations from that content.

Evan Lee: It's so, it's it's actually the perfect segue because when we talk about like being data-driven, it's also a matter of like who does that person actually like need to be who's data-driven? Is it the actual designer themselves or is it someone who's enabling that process? Um, so let's switch gears a little bit. Now, through your experience, you've touched so many different things to speak to starting to build out creative teams and ultimately what that means. Um, the first place that I like to start is as much as process is important is that conversation of brand and performance, right? Like sometimes they're so at odds just in terms of contending focuses for brands and all that kind of stuff. Like first of all, like share your opinion on brand and performance. And then secondly, if I have to ask you the second again, don't worry, but secondly, like depending on where you land, how do you tackle that conversation?

Brendan Bannister: It's a conversation that, you know, we consult for quite a few clients and a lot of the struggle is around letting go of that that kind of like attachment to brand. And you know, I think brand has to be fluid, but also has to be data-driven. So like people are really attached, they have a parameters of what their brand is, but really in the digital era as we go more towards AI algorithms again, you have to be open to changing that. And I think one of the things that I've fought with a lot as a creative, right? When I first started doing video in the in the performance marketing side as a video producer, I wanted everything to be beautiful. I wanted it to have, you know, that artistic touch to it. And I learned very quickly that beautiful doesn't always convert. And truthfully, iPhone converts a lot more. So as a creative, it's something you fight against. As a creative director, you want everything to be so nitpicky, but you know what? There's 12 fonts in the world that just convert better because humans just like them better. And if your font isn't one of those, you know, it's going to hurt your, you know, conversion rate at that video level, at the at the photo level. So you have to be okay, look, I'll have my fancy fonts on my website, but at the ad level, we have to be okay and, you know, just let the data take us where it goes.

Evan Lee: I love it. And when you first learned that, like that realization of, because I think a lot of people go through that. It's like this is so pretty, this looks incredible. It should work, right? Like when did you actually first learn that it's no longer the case?

Brendan Bannister: Um, this is back in, uh, I think 20, 2019 when I was working with William Painter and we were scaling on YouTube and we had some really fancy content that I shot. We had some really fancy content that some of the agencies we work with shot and they were scaling. And we went out and filmed an iPhone video in the rain trying to sell sunglasses and it crushed. And it just blew my mind and I'm like, wait a minute. So this iPhone video in the rain that's, you know, kind of blurry, you can't even hear the audio is doing better than this video we spent three months producing. And it's like, okay, like I got to separate from brand and creative direction and you know, be a little bit more open to the fluidity of, you know, what the ads actually want, what converts, what catches attention.

Evan Lee: It's so interesting because like now we're talking ad level, but in your experience, was there a different process for building for performance creative versus building for like the website and more traditional brand assets?

Brendan Bannister: Great question. Yeah, and again, this is something I've been, you know, kind of trying to teach some of the brands that we work with. Um, I noticed a lot in the younger brands who haven't necessarily cracked scale, you know, people that are probably below 5 million in revenue and run rate, um, maybe even at that level too, but creative has to be, there has to be intention behind your creative. You have to when you when you go and produce it, there has to be an intention. What is the reason for this creative? Am I just making creative because it looks beautiful and because I want to show off my product? Or am I making creative because I want to convert, right? So you can have different levels of creative. You know, there's brand creative that is for the website to make things look beautiful, to launch a new product. But then there's performance marketing creative. And this is where things are really shifting where people are realizing that, okay, the beautiful stuff or the non-intentional creative doesn't necessarily work. And we have to have direct response marketing and hooks and intention behind the creative. Like the creative has to have a specific purpose. Are we trying to show off or are we trying to drive revenue? Because there's two different things.

Evan Lee: Yeah. And speaking to your creator hat when you were going through the process of starting to shoot stuff and go through that process, um, the assets that you made, were there, was there a primary intention that you speak to? Like was it to live on the website or was it to live on ads or are you doing like simultaneously both at the same time?

Brendan Bannister: Um, when we first started out, it was to be beautiful, right? Like the the the hypothesis was beautiful creative will convert. You know, six months, nine months into it, you realize, wait a minute, if we have intention behind it, if we focus on hooks, if we focus on grabbing attention in the first three seconds, it's going to convert better. And then it shifted to having two different types of creative. There's a creative direction creative, which is to show the brand, to build the brand, to to display the brand as bigger than life. And then there's the intentional creative that is top of funnel, middle funnel, bottom of funnel, cold traffic, warm traffic, and then, you know, ready to purchase. So it does have to shift at some point to have be intention-based.

Evan Lee: So interesting. So I'm now personally curious because I feel fired up just the way that you're talking about it. Um, like being able to foster that culture essentially, right? Like how do you, how do you communicate that to the specific person to be like, no, dig into your bag. Like we want to see something amazing. Are you doing it through a brief and like, if so, what's in that information? Is it a conversation? If so, what are you talking about? How does that look?

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, so whenever I write creative briefs, uh, for any type of person that's doing anything creative, I say, think outside the box. This is your, these these are the parameters of what I'm looking for. You're the artist. I'm hiring you for a reason. I want you to think outside the box. Don't be afraid to give me an idea. But don't take offense when I turn the idea down. And people are like, okay, I like that. And they'll come up with you with, you know, three, four, five ideas. And if you shoot four of them down, but one of them you test, that's all that matters.

Evan Lee: What are some examples of those parameters?

Brendan Bannister: Uh, you know, like I was talking about, um, it just kind of like totally depends on what you're doing, but let's say if you're shooting for a makeup brand, you're doing some UGC scripted creative for a makeup brand, you know, parameter is has to have natural light. You have to be looking at the camera, you know, you have to be, you can't be wearing any, you know, big logos on your shirt, you know, basic things like that. The video has to be one minute long. You have to use this type of hook, you know, etc. These are the parameters. But if you have any other ideas, like please throw them at me. Like I want to hear what you're thinking. And they'll say, oh, I was thinking about doing a shot in the backyard in the jacuzzi. I'm like, perfect. I didn't know you had a jacuzzi. Let's do it. That doesn't make sense for makeup, but you know what I'm saying.

Evan Lee: That's so cool. Um, I get to talk to a lot of people about this kind of stuff, right? And I know there's some teams who are super strict on, we provide the whole script, they do the script, right? And then there's other people like yourself who says, have that freedom, like push some back to me and like be creative at the end of the day. And the really cool thing, Brendan, just about this is because you come from that lens of being the creator, it's like wanting to give them maximum flexibility. So I think that's something that everybody can kind of take away. You might lean because you're a more data-driven person to say, how do I control the situation? But we need to be sure to empower people with the with the right parameters and then just like give them a chance to be like empowered and make the decisions they want.

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, exactly.

Evan Lee: Okay. So let's let's switch gears a little bit with what you were mentioning, um, with your creative ambassador or UGC program and all that good stuff. So you started off the conversation talking about like retainers and making sure people feel valued in their work and it's like you're willing to give them a shot. Let's take a step back, um, a little bit further. It's like, where do you, where do you go to even source these type of creators that you want to work with?

Brendan Bannister: Upwork. I go on Upwork. No, seriously. I go on Upwork. Well, what I'll do is I'll go on Instagram. I'll find a creator that I like that fits my parameters, maybe three of them, so three similar creators. And I'll say, and then I'll go on Google Docs and I'll make a list and I'll put the three creators in there. I'll say what I like about them. And then I'll find someone that I don't like and I'll put that as an example. This is an example of what not to use. I'll go on Upwork. I'll hire someone on Upwork to go and source me 250 or 300 of these creators or 100 of these creators in America or Europe or in geographic location. They have a software that automatically sources them, so they do it in a split second. And then they give me that database. And then I'll go through the database that I get on Excel sheets or Google sheets and, you know, pick the ones I like and reach out to the ones I like with a DM, email, you know, whatever it may be.

Evan Lee: Are you manually sending those DMs out yourself?

Brendan Bannister: Um, usually, it depends, right? You know, sometimes you give them to the client and here's your here's your list. It it just totally depends. DMing takes a lot of time, but you know, if you have the resources, you have to remember right now, I'm I'm on the consultant side, so I'm helping the brands build their teams and kind of giving them ideas of how to do it. Um, so it's it's about, you know, whose time you should you should do it with, but you know, um, yeah.

Evan Lee: Love it. Love it. And then on your end, something that we've chatted about off camera a bunch is just like the idea of building out a creative ambassador program. So sometimes, uh, I'm not sure how people in the chat feel, so I'm really curious to hear your thoughts too, but just like the whole idea of UGC sometimes is again, two ends of the spectrum. It's either we don't get paid enough or it's like it's becoming super expensive and a little bit like like wild out there. And in in between our conversations, I know you've mentioned ways that it's like we can do this in an inexpensive way, but everyone's happy. Like talk to the talk to the people a little bit more around like your process and how you've done that.

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, so another, I'm sorry, another thing that I I see kind of coming up a lot is people confusing ambassadors with influencers and UGC content. And it's kind of like no one, there's no label for it right now. So when I say creative ambassadors, I'm not a big believer in influencer marketing personally, being an influencer as well in the past. Like as a media buyer and as a creative strategist, to me, the most valuable thing is the creative itself, not the influence, the influencer that comes with it. So I'm not really interested in the people that have 200,000 followers and make beautiful content because they're going to be expensive, no matter what. And they're looking for the influence. They're not necessarily selling the content. I care more about the person on TikTok or or Instagram that has 2,000 followers and makes content and that can take direction is willing to be a creative for me, not an influencer.

Evan Lee: That's so interesting. Is it just like, does that tie into, I don't even know how to describe it. Is it an ego thing that you've noticed just through just through these conversations or does it just like you're sorting through a million people and there just happens to be diamonds in the rough? Does that make sense?

Brendan Bannister: Well, I just haven't, you know, I haven't worked with a brand that's really had major success off of the word influencer. One of the brands and I I suggest everyone in this chat to go take a look at it is LSKD, Loose Kids. They're a clothing company from Australia. Um, the guy who built their creative team did a brilliant job of it and the ambassador team. And he didn't go after influencers, but influencers actually came to him. So what he did is he just got creators, photographers, you know, travel people, van life people from all over the world, sent them free gear, and they sent in content. And as they grew and grew and grew over the years and he said, you know, I'm going to send you $200 a month worth of gear and I need 10 photos. They love it. They get free clothes and they get 10 photos of them traveling and stuff like that. And as it grew and grew and grew, it became an influencer team. Now they have influencers reaching out saying, hey, I want to be a part of, you know, LSKD, I want your I want your clothes. And everyone's happy at the end at the end of it. And then of course as they get bigger, then they start, you know, paying massive influencers to be a part of it. But it kind of like starts from just building a creative team that people want to be a part of. And you'd be surprised at how the kind of like the group ideology plays on on Instagram. Like people like to represent things. They like to be a part of something. They like to be in a click and a collective of something. And if you foster that with creativity and with content and with, you know, either paid or free gifts, people love it and gravitate towards it.

Evan Lee: Yeah, wanting to be a part of the community is something that really resonates for me. It's just like they want to be there at the end of the day. It's not just a paycheck. So that starts to make a little bit more sense, right?

Brendan Bannister: Exactly. And if you can give them a paycheck, even better.

Evan Lee: Entirely, entirely. Um, and when we when we think about, when we think about like, uh, to the analysis side of things. So you have the asset that's gone live. Justin asked a question recently. It says, when it comes to creative analysis, how long are you typically letting creative sit in the market before you begin to optimize and iterate? So advising like media buying teams on when those changes need to be made.

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, it it it all depends on the amount of money you're spending. You know, if you're spending $50 a day, you're going to have to let it run for a month. If you're spending $1,000 a day, you'll know in three days, four days, five days. Um, also, you can't, like for example, um, over the holidays, a lot of companies tried to scale new creative during Black Friday, you know, the two or three weeks up to Black Friday. I'm like, it's not going to happen. Like you're literally trying to drive a boat in a storm. So just because it didn't work during Black Friday, doesn't mean it's not going to work in February or March. So you have to think, okay, what's the actual market doing? Am I testing this creative in a good time? Am I giving it enough data to learn? So, you know, when you're working with smaller budgets, if you're if you're testing, if you're starting with a $200, $200 a day budget on on YouTube or Facebook or whatever, I can't speak on Facebook, but on the YouTube side, you can't test five different videos with $200 a day budget because you'd have to let it run for a month or two months. But if you're able to test $1,000 a day, you can test five videos. You have to be cognizant and take the number, at least on YouTube, take the take your daily budget and divide it by the amount of videos that you're testing. And that's how much money has to go to each video at the same time. So if you have $100 and you're testing four videos, each video only gets $25. But if you test, if you test two videos with $100, you're getting $50 of learning per video, theoretically. Um, so it just goes a lot longer.

Evan Lee: Love it. Yeah, touching on so many of these things is just even like stage of funnels important to know. How long do we do we launch before we iterate is important to know. Justin also has another question just digging into, uh, like the team structures once again. So let's say we do hit that point of scale. Remember how you were talking about like those three types of, uh, like creative, which honestly should have their own types of people associated with them. If you're advising on like a structure that you would like to see built, how are you typically building that out? Is it a creative strategist that owns each of those portfolio? Is it only one creative strategist with multiple editors rolling up? What does that start to look like?

Brendan Bannister: I think it it just has to be fluid. Like if you have a very, very talented creative strategist who can oversee multiple different areas and can systematically separate them the different systems, uh, the different types of creative, then yeah, you could have one person doing it. Um, but you know, if you have, if if you don't have someone at that level, you know, maybe you should have, you know, someone focusing strictly on creative ambassadors, someone focusing strictly on, you know, high-level art directed directed credit or creative and then some person focusing on direct response, you know, drive creative that's going to drive revenue.

Evan Lee: So interesting. So interesting. And then when we're talking about the actual structure of teams now, right? Because like traditionally on one hand, we have people who who are running the ads and then we have the creative folks on this side, right? Structurally speaking, who do these editors and additional members roll up into?

Brendan Bannister: Right. So you'd have the creative strategist, you know, theoretically at the at the top of the pyramid. I like to, you know, describe things in in pyramids, but you have you have the creative strategist in the top. You'd have, uh, copywriter, you know, script writers is extremely important. You know, that I if if we have a triangle, I would say the messaging of the creative is at the bottom of the triangle. I don't know how many people are familiar with like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but I model a lot of a lot of that off this. You have you have a triangle like this, the bottom layer would be messaging. Um, and that's kind of like what you build the script around. And then the next layer would be either creative strategist or like an art director or a creative director that would say, you know, here's our intention behind this creative, whether it's a seasonal creative or, you know, it's going to be outdoors or indoors or whatever it is. And then you kind of give the art direction. And then you have the producers and the editors or what kind of like bring the final piece together. And then, you know, when you have the content produced, the editors can chop that up a hundred different ways. So one of the things that's really popular now is you you get your script, you you do it all. Let's just say for example, the script is one minute, you could write five or 10 different hooks. And the editors can chop, can make that video and then chop up, you know, 10 different hooks. And this is where, you know, Motion comes in because you can run these ads against each other for the 10 different hooks and see, okay, hook one and three worked, the other ones don't. So let's make variations of hook one and three and we don't have to change the rest of the video. We just have to change the hook.

Evan Lee: Most definitely. Maximize, yeah, if it works, maximizing your time and dollars at that point, right? And and something I'm always so curious about is to like bring it back to that brand and performance style conversation. In your experience, how does the overlap occur between both of the teams? Because technically speaking, a creative strategist and the team could live in one org, but then the performance side on the other. How do you make sure that they're almost able to act in lock step to be able to produce winning assets? Does that make sense?

Brendan Bannister: Right. Yeah. Um, it's an interesting question. I think it it has to be a, um, collaborative approach between the performance team and the creative team. But when I say collaborative, it can't be kind of like directional based. Like you can't have a performance team telling the creative team exactly what needs to be done. The performance team will have to say, here's what's working. And the creative team has to be able to look at what's working and say, we can copy this and make iterations of it or that's working, here's a theory I have and then you have to and then you test it. And then the performance team will say, it looks beautiful, this worked, but this doesn't work. And the creative team has to say, okay, I'm not going to take offense to the fact that it doesn't work, but I'm going to come, you know, come back with three other options that may or may not work.

Evan Lee: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I love it. And it's so interesting because like you mentioned, you've been doing photography and you've been doing creative work like forever at this point, right? So in your side of things, like you've now been exposed to all areas and all like parts of the spectrum. Why do you think now more than ever it's more it's important for like creative people or creative world in general to be data-driven?

Brendan Bannister: Um, because I think as media buying becomes more consolidated and more AI-driven, it's less about how you press the buttons at the media level, it's more about what you put in it. So you have to be able to understand like how the ads are kind of performing to then give guidance to create those ads. Um, and as as we shift more towards an AI world where, you know, media buying, media buyers will eventually get phased out, it's all on the creative team. And it's those people who can look at the creative details that, you know, Motion provides such as, you know, how long are we drawing users into a video, where they when are they clicking and things like that, which can give guidance to producing more content or making iterations from that content.

Evan Lee: It's so, it's it's actually the perfect segue because when we talk about like being data-driven, it's also a matter of like who does that person actually like need to be who's data-driven? Is it the actual designer themselves or is it someone who's enabling that process? Um, so let's switch gears a little bit. Now, through your experience, you've touched so many different things to speak to starting to build out creative teams and ultimately what that means. Um, the first place that I like to start is as much as process is important is that conversation of brand and performance, right? Like sometimes they're so at odds just in terms of contending focuses for brands and all that kind of stuff. Like first of all, like share your opinion on brand and performance. And then secondly, if I have to ask you the second again, don't worry, but secondly, like depending on where you land, how do you tackle that conversation?

Brendan Bannister: It's a conversation that, you know, we consult for quite a few clients and a lot of the struggle is around letting go of that that kind of like attachment to brand. And you know, I think brand has to be fluid, but also has to be data-driven. So like people are really attached, they have a parameters of what their brand is, but really in the digital era as we go more towards AI algorithms again, you have to be open to changing that. And I think one of the things that I've fought with a lot as a creative, right? When I first started doing video in the in the performance marketing side as a video producer, I wanted everything to be beautiful. I wanted it to have, you know, that artistic touch to it. And I learned very quickly that beautiful doesn't always convert. And truthfully, iPhone converts a lot more. So as a creative, it's something you fight against. As a creative director, you want everything to be so nitpicky, but you know what? There's 12 fonts in the world that just convert better because humans just like them better. And if your font isn't one of those, you know, it's going to hurt your, you know, conversion rate at that video level, at the at the photo level. So you have to be okay, look, I'll have my fancy fonts on my website, but at the ad level, we have to be okay and, you know, just let the data take us where it goes.

Evan Lee: I love it. And when you first learned that, like that realization of, because I think a lot of people go through that. It's like this is so pretty, this looks incredible. It should work, right? Like when did you actually first learn that it's no longer the case?

Brendan Bannister: Um, this is back in, uh, I think 20, 2019 when I was working with William Painter and we were scaling on YouTube and we had some really fancy content that I shot. We had some really fancy content that some of the agencies we work with shot and they were scaling. And we went out and filmed an iPhone video in the rain trying to sell sunglasses and it crushed. And it just blew my mind and I'm like, wait a minute. So this iPhone video in the rain that's, you know, kind of blurry, you can't even hear the audio is doing better than this video we spent three months producing. And it's like, okay, like I got to separate from brand and creative direction and you know, be a little bit more open to the fluidity of, you know, what the ads actually want, what converts, what catches attention.

Evan Lee: It's so interesting because like now we're talking ad level, but in your experience, was there a different process for building for performance creative versus building for like the website and more traditional brand assets?

Brendan Bannister: Great question. Yeah, and again, this is something I've been, you know, kind of trying to teach some of the brands that we work with. Um, I noticed a lot in the younger brands who haven't necessarily cracked scale, you know, people that are probably below 5 million in revenue and run rate, um, maybe even at that level too, but creative has to be, there has to be intention behind your creative. You have to when you when you go and produce it, there has to be an intention. What is the reason for this creative? Am I just making creative because it looks beautiful and because I want to show off my product? Or am I making creative because I want to convert, right? So you can have different levels of creative. You know, there's brand creative that is for the website to make things look beautiful, to launch a new product. But then there's performance marketing creative. And this is where things are really shifting where people are realizing that, okay, the beautiful stuff or the non-intentional creative doesn't necessarily work. And we have to have direct response marketing and hooks and intention behind the creative. Like the creative has to have a specific purpose. Are we trying to show off or are we trying to drive revenue? Because there's two different things.

Evan Lee: Yeah. And speaking to your creator hat when you were going through the process of starting to shoot stuff and go through that process, um, the assets that you made, were there, was there a primary intention that you speak to? Like was it to live on the website or was it to live on ads or are you doing like simultaneously both at the same time?

Brendan Bannister: Um, when we first started out, it was to be beautiful, right? Like the the the hypothesis was beautiful creative will convert. You know, six months, nine months into it, you realize, wait a minute, if we have intention behind it, if we focus on hooks, if we focus on grabbing attention in the first three seconds, it's going to convert better. And then it shifted to having two different types of creative. There's a creative direction creative, which is to show the brand, to build the brand, to to display the brand as bigger than life. And then there's the intentional creative that is top of funnel, middle funnel, bottom of funnel, cold traffic, warm traffic, and then, you know, ready to purchase. So it does have to shift at some point to have be intention-based.

Evan Lee: So interesting. So I'm now personally curious because I feel fired up just the way that you're talking about it. Um, like being able to foster that culture essentially, right? Like how do you, how do you communicate that to the specific person to be like, no, dig into your bag. Like we want to see something amazing. Are you doing it through a brief and like, if so, what's in that information? Is it a conversation? If so, what are you talking about? How does that look?

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, so whenever I write creative briefs, uh, for any type of person that's doing anything creative, I say, think outside the box. This is your, these these are the parameters of what I'm looking for. You're the artist. I'm hiring you for a reason. I want you to think outside the box. Don't be afraid to give me an idea. But don't take offense when I turn the idea down. And people are like, okay, I like that. And they'll come up with you with, you know, three, four, five ideas. And if you shoot four of them down, but one of them you test, that's all that matters.

Evan Lee: What are some examples of those parameters?

Brendan Bannister: Uh, you know, like I was talking about, um, it just kind of like totally depends on what you're doing, but let's say if you're shooting for a makeup brand, you're doing some UGC scripted creative for a makeup brand, you know, parameter is has to have natural light. You have to be looking at the camera, you know, you have to be, you can't be wearing any, you know, big logos on your shirt, you know, basic things like that. The video has to be one minute long. You have to use this type of hook, you know, etc. These are the parameters. But if you have any other ideas, like please throw them at me. Like I want to hear what you're thinking. And they'll say, oh, I was thinking about doing a shot in the backyard in the jacuzzi. I'm like, perfect. I didn't know you had a jacuzzi. Let's do it. That doesn't make sense for makeup, but you know what I'm saying.

Evan Lee: That's so cool. Um, I get to talk to a lot of people about this kind of stuff, right? And I know there's some teams who are super strict on, we provide the whole script, they do the script, right? And then there's other people like yourself who says, have that freedom, like push some back to me and like be creative at the end of the day. And the really cool thing, Brendan, just about this is because you come from that lens of being the creator, it's like wanting to give them maximum flexibility. So I think that's something that everybody can kind of take away. You might lean because you're a more data-driven person to say, how do I control the situation? But we need to be sure to empower people with the with the right parameters and then just like give them a chance to be like empowered and make the decisions they want.

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, exactly.

Evan Lee: Okay. So let's let's switch gears a little bit with what you were mentioning, um, with your creative ambassador or UGC program and all that good stuff. So you started off the conversation talking about like retainers and making sure people feel valued in their work and it's like you're willing to give them a shot. Let's take a step back, um, a little bit further. It's like, where do you, where do you go to even source these type of creators that you want to work with?

Brendan Bannister: Upwork. I go on Upwork. No, seriously. I go on Upwork. Well, what I'll do is I'll go on Instagram. I'll find a creator that I like that fits my parameters, maybe three of them, so three similar creators. And I'll say, and then I'll go on Google Docs and I'll make a list and I'll put the three creators in there. I'll say what I like about them. And then I'll find someone that I don't like and I'll put that as an example. This is an example of what not to use. I'll go on Upwork. I'll hire someone on Upwork to go and source me 250 or 300 of these creators or 100 of these creators in America or Europe or in geographic location. They have a software that automatically sources them, so they do it in a split second. And then they give me that database. And then I'll go through the database that I get on Excel sheets or Google sheets and, you know, pick the ones I like and reach out to the ones I like with a DM, email, you know, whatever it may be.

Evan Lee: Are you manually sending those DMs out yourself?

Brendan Bannister: Um, usually, it depends, right? You know, sometimes you give them to the client and here's your here's your list. It it just totally depends. DMing takes a lot of time, but you know, if you have the resources, you have to remember right now, I'm I'm on the consultant side, so I'm helping the brands build their teams and kind of giving them ideas of how to do it. Um, so it's it's about, you know, whose time you should you should do it with, but you know, um, yeah.

Evan Lee: Love it. Love it. And then on your end, something that we've chatted about off camera a bunch is just like the idea of building out a creative ambassador program. So sometimes, uh, I'm not sure how people in the chat feel, so I'm really curious to hear your thoughts too, but just like the whole idea of UGC sometimes is again, two ends of the spectrum. It's either we don't get paid enough or it's like it's becoming super expensive and a little bit like like wild out there. And in in between our conversations, I know you've mentioned ways that it's like we can do this in an inexpensive way, but everyone's happy. Like talk to the talk to the people a little bit more around like your process and how you've done that.

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, so another, I'm sorry, another thing that I I see kind of coming up a lot is people confusing ambassadors with influencers and UGC content. And it's kind of like no one, there's no label for it right now. So when I say creative ambassadors, I'm not a big believer in influencer marketing personally, being an influencer as well in the past. Like as a media buyer and as a creative strategist, to me, the most valuable thing is the creative itself, not the influence, the influencer that comes with it. So I'm not really interested in the people that have 200,000 followers and make beautiful content because they're going to be expensive, no matter what. And they're looking for the influence. They're not necessarily selling the content. I care more about the person on TikTok or or Instagram that has 2,000 followers and makes content and that can take direction is willing to be a creative for me, not an influencer.

Evan Lee: That's so interesting. Is it just like, does that tie into, I don't even know how to describe it. Is it an ego thing that you've noticed just through just through these conversations or does it just like you're sorting through a million people and there just happens to be diamonds in the rough? Does that make sense?

Brendan Bannister: Well, I just haven't, you know, I haven't worked with a brand that's really had major success off of the word influencer. One of the brands and I I suggest everyone in this chat to go take a look at it is LSKD, Loose Kids. They're a clothing company from Australia. Um, the guy who built their creative team did a brilliant job of it and the ambassador team. And he didn't go after influencers, but influencers actually came to him. So what he did is he just got creators, photographers, you know, travel people, van life people from all over the world, sent them free gear, and they sent in content. And as they grew and grew and grew over the years and he said, you know, I'm going to send you $200 a month worth of gear and I need 10 photos. They love it. They get free clothes and they get 10 photos of them traveling and stuff like that. And as it grew and grew and grew, it became an influencer team. Now they have influencers reaching out saying, hey, I want to be a part of, you know, LSKD, I want your I want your clothes. And everyone's happy at the end at the end of it. And then of course as they get bigger, then they start, you know, paying massive influencers to be a part of it. But it kind of like starts from just building a creative team that people want to be a part of. And you'd be surprised at how the kind of like the group ideology plays on on Instagram. Like people like to represent things. They like to be a part of something. They like to be in a click and a collective of something. And if you foster that with creativity and with content and with, you know, either paid or free gifts, people love it and gravitate towards it.

Evan Lee: Yeah, wanting to be a part of the community is something that really resonates for me. It's just like they want to be there at the end of the day. It's not just a paycheck. So that starts to make a little bit more sense, right?

Brendan Bannister: Exactly. And if you can give them a paycheck, even better.

Evan Lee: Entirely, entirely. Um, and when we when we think about, when we think about like, uh, to the analysis side of things. So you have the asset that's gone live. Justin asked a question recently. It says, when it comes to creative analysis, how long are you typically letting creative sit in the market before you begin to optimize and iterate? So advising like media buying teams on when those changes need to be made.

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, it it it all depends on the amount of money you're spending. You know, if you're spending $50 a day, you're going to have to let it run for a month. If you're spending $1,000 a day, you'll know in three days, four days, five days. Um, also, you can't, like for example, um, over the holidays, a lot of companies tried to scale new creative during Black Friday, you know, the two or three weeks up to Black Friday. I'm like, it's not going to happen. Like you're literally trying to drive a boat in a storm. So just because it didn't work during Black Friday, doesn't mean it's not going to work in February or March. So you have to think, okay, what's the actual market doing? Am I testing this creative in a good time? Am I giving it enough data to learn? So, you know, when you're working with smaller budgets, if you're if you're testing, if you're starting with a $200, $200 a day budget on on YouTube or Facebook or whatever, I can't speak on Facebook, but on the YouTube side, you can't test five different videos with $200 a day budget because you'd have to let it run for a month or two months. But if you're able to test $1,000 a day, you can test five videos. You have to be cognizant and take the number, at least on YouTube, take the take your daily budget and divide it by the amount of videos that you're testing. And that's how much money has to go to each video at the same time. So if you have $100 and you're testing four videos, each video only gets $25. But if you test, if you test two videos with $100, you're getting $50 of learning per video, theoretically. Um, so it just goes a lot longer.

Evan Lee: Love it. Yeah, touching on so many of these things is just even like stage of funnels important to know. How long do we do we launch before we iterate is important to know. Justin also has another question just digging into, uh, like the team structures once again. So let's say we do hit that point of scale. Remember how you were talking about like those three types of, uh, like creative, which honestly should have their own types of people associated with them. If you're advising on like a structure that you would like to see built, how are you typically building that out? Is it a creative strategist that owns each of those portfolio? Is it only one creative strategist with multiple editors rolling up? What does that start to look like?

Brendan Bannister: I think it it just has to be fluid. Like if you have a very, very talented creative strategist who can oversee multiple different areas and can systematically separate them the different systems, uh, the different types of creative, then yeah, you could have one person doing it. Um, but you know, if you have, if if you don't have someone at that level, you know, maybe you should have, you know, someone focusing strictly on creative ambassadors, someone focusing strictly on, you know, high-level art directed directed credit or creative and then some person focusing on direct response, you know, drive creative that's going to drive revenue.

Evan Lee: So interesting. So interesting. And then when we're talking about the actual structure of teams now, right? Because like traditionally on one hand, we have people who who are running the ads and then we have the creative folks on this side, right? Structurally speaking, who do these editors and additional members roll up into?

Brendan Bannister: Right. So you'd have the creative strategist, you know, theoretically at the at the top of the pyramid. I like to, you know, describe things in in pyramids, but you have you have the creative strategist in the top. You'd have, uh, copywriter, you know, script writers is extremely important. You know, that I if if we have a triangle, I would say the messaging of the creative is at the bottom of the triangle. I don't know how many people are familiar with like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but I model a lot of a lot of that off this. You have you have a triangle like this, the bottom layer would be messaging. Um, and that's kind of like what you build the script around. And then the next layer would be either creative strategist or like an art director or a creative director that would say, you know, here's our intention behind this creative, whether it's a seasonal creative or, you know, it's going to be outdoors or indoors or whatever it is. And then you kind of give the art direction. And then you have the producers and the editors or what kind of like bring the final piece together. And then, you know, when you have the content produced, the editors can chop that up a hundred different ways. So one of the things that's really popular now is you you get your script, you you do it all. Let's just say for example, the script is one minute, you could write five or 10 different hooks. And the editors can chop, can make that video and then chop up, you know, 10 different hooks. And this is where, you know, Motion comes in because you can run these ads against each other for the 10 different hooks and see, okay, hook one and three worked, the other ones don't. So let's make variations of hook one and three and we don't have to change the rest of the video. We just have to change the hook.

Evan Lee: Most definitely. Maximize, yeah, if it works, maximizing your time and dollars at that point, right? And and something I'm always so curious about is to like bring it back to that brand and performance style conversation. In your experience, how does the overlap occur between both of the teams? Because technically speaking, a creative strategist and the team could live in one org, but then the performance side on the other. How do you make sure that they're almost able to act in lock step to be able to produce winning assets? Does that make sense?

Brendan Bannister: Right. Yeah. Um, it's an interesting question. I think it it has to be a, um, collaborative approach between the performance team and the creative team. But when I say collaborative, it can't be kind of like directional based. Like you can't have a performance team telling the creative team exactly what needs to be done. The performance team will have to say, here's what's working. And the creative team has to be able to look at what's working and say, we can copy this and make iterations of it or that's working, here's a theory I have and then you have to and then you test it. And then the performance team will say, it looks beautiful, this worked, but this doesn't work. And the creative team has to say, okay, I'm not going to take offense to the fact that it doesn't work, but I'm going to come, you know, come back with three other options that may or may not work.

Evan Lee: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I love it. And it's so interesting because like you mentioned, you've been doing photography and you've been doing creative work like forever at this point, right? So in your side of things, like you've now been exposed to all areas and all like parts of the spectrum. Why do you think now more than ever it's more it's important for like creative people or creative world in general to be data-driven?

Brendan Bannister: Um, because I think as media buying becomes more consolidated and more AI-driven, it's less about how you press the buttons at the media level, it's more about what you put in it. So you have to be able to understand like how the ads are kind of performing to then give guidance to create those ads. Um, and as as we shift more towards an AI world where, you know, media buying, media buyers will eventually get phased out, it's all on the creative team. And it's those people who can look at the creative details that, you know, Motion provides such as, you know, how long are we drawing users into a video, where they when are they clicking and things like that, which can give guidance to producing more content or making iterations from that content.

Evan Lee: It's so, it's it's actually the perfect segue because when we talk about like being data-driven, it's also a matter of like who does that person actually like need to be who's data-driven? Is it the actual designer themselves or is it someone who's enabling that process? Um, so let's switch gears a little bit. Now, through your experience, you've touched so many different things to speak to starting to build out creative teams and ultimately what that means. Um, the first place that I like to start is as much as process is important is that conversation of brand and performance, right? Like sometimes they're so at odds just in terms of contending focuses for brands and all that kind of stuff. Like first of all, like share your opinion on brand and performance. And then secondly, if I have to ask you the second again, don't worry, but secondly, like depending on where you land, how do you tackle that conversation?

Brendan Bannister: It's a conversation that, you know, we consult for quite a few clients and a lot of the struggle is around letting go of that that kind of like attachment to brand. And you know, I think brand has to be fluid, but also has to be data-driven. So like people are really attached, they have a parameters of what their brand is, but really in the digital era as we go more towards AI algorithms again, you have to be open to changing that. And I think one of the things that I've fought with a lot as a creative, right? When I first started doing video in the in the performance marketing side as a video producer, I wanted everything to be beautiful. I wanted it to have, you know, that artistic touch to it. And I learned very quickly that beautiful doesn't always convert. And truthfully, iPhone converts a lot more. So as a creative, it's something you fight against. As a creative director, you want everything to be so nitpicky, but you know what? There's 12 fonts in the world that just convert better because humans just like them better. And if your font isn't one of those, you know, it's going to hurt your, you know, conversion rate at that video level, at the at the photo level. So you have to be okay, look, I'll have my fancy fonts on my website, but at the ad level, we have to be okay and, you know, just let the data take us where it goes.

Evan Lee: I love it. And when you first learned that, like that realization of, because I think a lot of people go through that. It's like this is so pretty, this looks incredible. It should work, right? Like when did you actually first learn that it's no longer the case?

Brendan Bannister: Um, this is back in, uh, I think 20, 2019 when I was working with William Painter and we were scaling on YouTube and we had some really fancy content that I shot. We had some really fancy content that some of the agencies we work with shot and they were scaling. And we went out and filmed an iPhone video in the rain trying to sell sunglasses and it crushed. And it just blew my mind and I'm like, wait a minute. So this iPhone video in the rain that's, you know, kind of blurry, you can't even hear the audio is doing better than this video we spent three months producing. And it's like, okay, like I got to separate from brand and creative direction and you know, be a little bit more open to the fluidity of, you know, what the ads actually want, what converts, what catches attention.

Evan Lee: It's so interesting because like now we're talking ad level, but in your experience, was there a different process for building for performance creative versus building for like the website and more traditional brand assets?

Brendan Bannister: Great question. Yeah, and again, this is something I've been, you know, kind of trying to teach some of the brands that we work with. Um, I noticed a lot in the younger brands who haven't necessarily cracked scale, you know, people that are probably below 5 million in revenue and run rate, um, maybe even at that level too, but creative has to be, there has to be intention behind your creative. You have to when you when you go and produce it, there has to be an intention. What is the reason for this creative? Am I just making creative because it looks beautiful and because I want to show off my product? Or am I making creative because I want to convert, right? So you can have different levels of creative. You know, there's brand creative that is for the website to make things look beautiful, to launch a new product. But then there's performance marketing creative. And this is where things are really shifting where people are realizing that, okay, the beautiful stuff or the non-intentional creative doesn't necessarily work. And we have to have direct response marketing and hooks and intention behind the creative. Like the creative has to have a specific purpose. Are we trying to show off or are we trying to drive revenue? Because there's two different things.

Evan Lee: Yeah. And speaking to your creator hat when you were going through the process of starting to shoot stuff and go through that process, um, the assets that you made, were there, was there a primary intention that you speak to? Like was it to live on the website or was it to live on ads or are you doing like simultaneously both at the same time?

Brendan Bannister: Um, when we first started out, it was to be beautiful, right? Like the the the hypothesis was beautiful creative will convert. You know, six months, nine months into it, you realize, wait a minute, if we have intention behind it, if we focus on hooks, if we focus on grabbing attention in the first three seconds, it's going to convert better. And then it shifted to having two different types of creative. There's a creative direction creative, which is to show the brand, to build the brand, to to display the brand as bigger than life. And then there's the intentional creative that is top of funnel, middle funnel, bottom of funnel, cold traffic, warm traffic, and then, you know, ready to purchase. So it does have to shift at some point to have be intention-based.

Evan Lee: So interesting. So I'm now personally curious because I feel fired up just the way that you're talking about it. Um, like being able to foster that culture essentially, right? Like how do you, how do you communicate that to the specific person to be like, no, dig into your bag. Like we want to see something amazing. Are you doing it through a brief and like, if so, what's in that information? Is it a conversation? If so, what are you talking about? How does that look?

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, so whenever I write creative briefs, uh, for any type of person that's doing anything creative, I say, think outside the box. This is your, these these are the parameters of what I'm looking for. You're the artist. I'm hiring you for a reason. I want you to think outside the box. Don't be afraid to give me an idea. But don't take offense when I turn the idea down. And people are like, okay, I like that. And they'll come up with you with, you know, three, four, five ideas. And if you shoot four of them down, but one of them you test, that's all that matters.

Evan Lee: What are some examples of those parameters?

Brendan Bannister: Uh, you know, like I was talking about, um, it just kind of like totally depends on what you're doing, but let's say if you're shooting for a makeup brand, you're doing some UGC scripted creative for a makeup brand, you know, parameter is has to have natural light. You have to be looking at the camera, you know, you have to be, you can't be wearing any, you know, big logos on your shirt, you know, basic things like that. The video has to be one minute long. You have to use this type of hook, you know, etc. These are the parameters. But if you have any other ideas, like please throw them at me. Like I want to hear what you're thinking. And they'll say, oh, I was thinking about doing a shot in the backyard in the jacuzzi. I'm like, perfect. I didn't know you had a jacuzzi. Let's do it. That doesn't make sense for makeup, but you know what I'm saying.

Evan Lee: That's so cool. Um, I get to talk to a lot of people about this kind of stuff, right? And I know there's some teams who are super strict on, we provide the whole script, they do the script, right? And then there's other people like yourself who says, have that freedom, like push some back to me and like be creative at the end of the day. And the really cool thing, Brendan, just about this is because you come from that lens of being the creator, it's like wanting to give them maximum flexibility. So I think that's something that everybody can kind of take away. You might lean because you're a more data-driven person to say, how do I control the situation? But we need to be sure to empower people with the with the right parameters and then just like give them a chance to be like empowered and make the decisions they want.

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, exactly.

Evan Lee: Okay. So let's let's switch gears a little bit with what you were mentioning, um, with your creative ambassador or UGC program and all that good stuff. So you started off the conversation talking about like retainers and making sure people feel valued in their work and it's like you're willing to give them a shot. Let's take a step back, um, a little bit further. It's like, where do you, where do you go to even source these type of creators that you want to work with?

Brendan Bannister: Upwork. I go on Upwork. No, seriously. I go on Upwork. Well, what I'll do is I'll go on Instagram. I'll find a creator that I like that fits my parameters, maybe three of them, so three similar creators. And I'll say, and then I'll go on Google Docs and I'll make a list and I'll put the three creators in there. I'll say what I like about them. And then I'll find someone that I don't like and I'll put that as an example. This is an example of what not to use. I'll go on Upwork. I'll hire someone on Upwork to go and source me 250 or 300 of these creators or 100 of these creators in America or Europe or in geographic location. They have a software that automatically sources them, so they do it in a split second. And then they give me that database. And then I'll go through the database that I get on Excel sheets or Google sheets and, you know, pick the ones I like and reach out to the ones I like with a DM, email, you know, whatever it may be.

Evan Lee: Are you manually sending those DMs out yourself?

Brendan Bannister: Um, usually, it depends, right? You know, sometimes you give them to the client and here's your here's your list. It it just totally depends. DMing takes a lot of time, but you know, if you have the resources, you have to remember right now, I'm I'm on the consultant side, so I'm helping the brands build their teams and kind of giving them ideas of how to do it. Um, so it's it's about, you know, whose time you should you should do it with, but you know, um, yeah.

Evan Lee: Love it. Love it. And then on your end, something that we've chatted about off camera a bunch is just like the idea of building out a creative ambassador program. So sometimes, uh, I'm not sure how people in the chat feel, so I'm really curious to hear your thoughts too, but just like the whole idea of UGC sometimes is again, two ends of the spectrum. It's either we don't get paid enough or it's like it's becoming super expensive and a little bit like like wild out there. And in in between our conversations, I know you've mentioned ways that it's like we can do this in an inexpensive way, but everyone's happy. Like talk to the talk to the people a little bit more around like your process and how you've done that.

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, so another, I'm sorry, another thing that I I see kind of coming up a lot is people confusing ambassadors with influencers and UGC content. And it's kind of like no one, there's no label for it right now. So when I say creative ambassadors, I'm not a big believer in influencer marketing personally, being an influencer as well in the past. Like as a media buyer and as a creative strategist, to me, the most valuable thing is the creative itself, not the influence, the influencer that comes with it. So I'm not really interested in the people that have 200,000 followers and make beautiful content because they're going to be expensive, no matter what. And they're looking for the influence. They're not necessarily selling the content. I care more about the person on TikTok or or Instagram that has 2,000 followers and makes content and that can take direction is willing to be a creative for me, not an influencer.

Evan Lee: That's so interesting. Is it just like, does that tie into, I don't even know how to describe it. Is it an ego thing that you've noticed just through just through these conversations or does it just like you're sorting through a million people and there just happens to be diamonds in the rough? Does that make sense?

Brendan Bannister: Well, I just haven't, you know, I haven't worked with a brand that's really had major success off of the word influencer. One of the brands and I I suggest everyone in this chat to go take a look at it is LSKD, Loose Kids. They're a clothing company from Australia. Um, the guy who built their creative team did a brilliant job of it and the ambassador team. And he didn't go after influencers, but influencers actually came to him. So what he did is he just got creators, photographers, you know, travel people, van life people from all over the world, sent them free gear, and they sent in content. And as they grew and grew and grew over the years and he said, you know, I'm going to send you $200 a month worth of gear and I need 10 photos. They love it. They get free clothes and they get 10 photos of them traveling and stuff like that. And as it grew and grew and grew, it became an influencer team. Now they have influencers reaching out saying, hey, I want to be a part of, you know, LSKD, I want your I want your clothes. And everyone's happy at the end at the end of it. And then of course as they get bigger, then they start, you know, paying massive influencers to be a part of it. But it kind of like starts from just building a creative team that people want to be a part of. And you'd be surprised at how the kind of like the group ideology plays on on Instagram. Like people like to represent things. They like to be a part of something. They like to be in a click and a collective of something. And if you foster that with creativity and with content and with, you know, either paid or free gifts, people love it and gravitate towards it.

Evan Lee: Yeah, wanting to be a part of the community is something that really resonates for me. It's just like they want to be there at the end of the day. It's not just a paycheck. So that starts to make a little bit more sense, right?

Brendan Bannister: Exactly. And if you can give them a paycheck, even better.

Evan Lee: Entirely, entirely. Um, and when we when we think about, when we think about like, uh, to the analysis side of things. So you have the asset that's gone live. Justin asked a question recently. It says, when it comes to creative analysis, how long are you typically letting creative sit in the market before you begin to optimize and iterate? So advising like media buying teams on when those changes need to be made.

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, it it it all depends on the amount of money you're spending. You know, if you're spending $50 a day, you're going to have to let it run for a month. If you're spending $1,000 a day, you'll know in three days, four days, five days. Um, also, you can't, like for example, um, over the holidays, a lot of companies tried to scale new creative during Black Friday, you know, the two or three weeks up to Black Friday. I'm like, it's not going to happen. Like you're literally trying to drive a boat in a storm. So just because it didn't work during Black Friday, doesn't mean it's not going to work in February or March. So you have to think, okay, what's the actual market doing? Am I testing this creative in a good time? Am I giving it enough data to learn? So, you know, when you're working with smaller budgets, if you're if you're testing, if you're starting with a $200, $200 a day budget on on YouTube or Facebook or whatever, I can't speak on Facebook, but on the YouTube side, you can't test five different videos with $200 a day budget because you'd have to let it run for a month or two months. But if you're able to test $1,000 a day, you can test five videos. You have to be cognizant and take the number, at least on YouTube, take the take your daily budget and divide it by the amount of videos that you're testing. And that's how much money has to go to each video at the same time. So if you have $100 and you're testing four videos, each video only gets $25. But if you test, if you test two videos with $100, you're getting $50 of learning per video, theoretically. Um, so it just goes a lot longer.

Evan Lee: Love it. Yeah, touching on so many of these things is just even like stage of funnels important to know. How long do we do we launch before we iterate is important to know. Justin also has another question just digging into, uh, like the team structures once again. So let's say we do hit that point of scale. Remember how you were talking about like those three types of, uh, like creative, which honestly should have their own types of people associated with them. If you're advising on like a structure that you would like to see built, how are you typically building that out? Is it a creative strategist that owns each of those portfolio? Is it only one creative strategist with multiple editors rolling up? What does that start to look like?

Brendan Bannister: I think it it just has to be fluid. Like if you have a very, very talented creative strategist who can oversee multiple different areas and can systematically separate them the different systems, uh, the different types of creative, then yeah, you could have one person doing it. Um, but you know, if you have, if if you don't have someone at that level, you know, maybe you should have, you know, someone focusing strictly on creative ambassadors, someone focusing strictly on, you know, high-level art directed directed credit or creative and then some person focusing on direct response, you know, drive creative that's going to drive revenue.

Evan Lee: So interesting. So interesting. And then when we're talking about the actual structure of teams now, right? Because like traditionally on one hand, we have people who who are running the ads and then we have the creative folks on this side, right? Structurally speaking, who do these editors and additional members roll up into?

Brendan Bannister: Right. So you'd have the creative strategist, you know, theoretically at the at the top of the pyramid. I like to, you know, describe things in in pyramids, but you have you have the creative strategist in the top. You'd have, uh, copywriter, you know, script writers is extremely important. You know, that I if if we have a triangle, I would say the messaging of the creative is at the bottom of the triangle. I don't know how many people are familiar with like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but I model a lot of a lot of that off this. You have you have a triangle like this, the bottom layer would be messaging. Um, and that's kind of like what you build the script around. And then the next layer would be either creative strategist or like an art director or a creative director that would say, you know, here's our intention behind this creative, whether it's a seasonal creative or, you know, it's going to be outdoors or indoors or whatever it is. And then you kind of give the art direction. And then you have the producers and the editors or what kind of like bring the final piece together. And then, you know, when you have the content produced, the editors can chop that up a hundred different ways. So one of the things that's really popular now is you you get your script, you you do it all. Let's just say for example, the script is one minute, you could write five or 10 different hooks. And the editors can chop, can make that video and then chop up, you know, 10 different hooks. And this is where, you know, Motion comes in because you can run these ads against each other for the 10 different hooks and see, okay, hook one and three worked, the other ones don't. So let's make variations of hook one and three and we don't have to change the rest of the video. We just have to change the hook.

Evan Lee: Most definitely. Maximize, yeah, if it works, maximizing your time and dollars at that point, right? And and something I'm always so curious about is to like bring it back to that brand and performance style conversation. In your experience, how does the overlap occur between both of the teams? Because technically speaking, a creative strategist and the team could live in one org, but then the performance side on the other. How do you make sure that they're almost able to act in lock step to be able to produce winning assets? Does that make sense?

Brendan Bannister: Right. Yeah. Um, it's an interesting question. I think it it has to be a, um, collaborative approach between the performance team and the creative team. But when I say collaborative, it can't be kind of like directional based. Like you can't have a performance team telling the creative team exactly what needs to be done. The performance team will have to say, here's what's working. And the creative team has to be able to look at what's working and say, we can copy this and make iterations of it or that's working, here's a theory I have and then you have to and then you test it. And then the performance team will say, it looks beautiful, this worked, but this doesn't work. And the creative team has to say, okay, I'm not going to take offense to the fact that it doesn't work, but I'm going to come, you know, come back with three other options that may or may not work.

Evan Lee: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I love it. And it's so interesting because like you mentioned, you've been doing photography and you've been doing creative work like forever at this point, right? So in your side of things, like you've now been exposed to all areas and all like parts of the spectrum. Why do you think now more than ever it's more it's important for like creative people or creative world in general to be data-driven?

Brendan Bannister: Um, because I think as media buying becomes more consolidated and more AI-driven, it's less about how you press the buttons at the media level, it's more about what you put in it. So you have to be able to understand like how the ads are kind of performing to then give guidance to create those ads. Um, and as as we shift more towards an AI world where, you know, media buying, media buyers will eventually get phased out, it's all on the creative team. And it's those people who can look at the creative details that, you know, Motion provides such as, you know, how long are we drawing users into a video, where they when are they clicking and things like that, which can give guidance to producing more content or making iterations from that content.

Evan Lee: It's so, it's it's actually the perfect segue because when we talk about like being data-driven, it's also a matter of like who does that person actually like need to be who's data-driven? Is it the actual designer themselves or is it someone who's enabling that process? Um, so let's switch gears a little bit. Now, through your experience, you've touched so many different things to speak to starting to build out creative teams and ultimately what that means. Um, the first place that I like to start is as much as process is important is that conversation of brand and performance, right? Like sometimes they're so at odds just in terms of contending focuses for brands and all that kind of stuff. Like first of all, like share your opinion on brand and performance. And then secondly, if I have to ask you the second again, don't worry, but secondly, like depending on where you land, how do you tackle that conversation?

Brendan Bannister: It's a conversation that, you know, we consult for quite a few clients and a lot of the struggle is around letting go of that that kind of like attachment to brand. And you know, I think brand has to be fluid, but also has to be data-driven. So like people are really attached, they have a parameters of what their brand is, but really in the digital era as we go more towards AI algorithms again, you have to be open to changing that. And I think one of the things that I've fought with a lot as a creative, right? When I first started doing video in the in the performance marketing side as a video producer, I wanted everything to be beautiful. I wanted it to have, you know, that artistic touch to it. And I learned very quickly that beautiful doesn't always convert. And truthfully, iPhone converts a lot more. So as a creative, it's something you fight against. As a creative director, you want everything to be so nitpicky, but you know what? There's 12 fonts in the world that just convert better because humans just like them better. And if your font isn't one of those, you know, it's going to hurt your, you know, conversion rate at that video level, at the at the photo level. So you have to be okay, look, I'll have my fancy fonts on my website, but at the ad level, we have to be okay and, you know, just let the data take us where it goes.

Evan Lee: I love it. And when you first learned that, like that realization of, because I think a lot of people go through that. It's like this is so pretty, this looks incredible. It should work, right? Like when did you actually first learn that it's no longer the case?

Brendan Bannister: Um, this is back in, uh, I think 20, 2019 when I was working with William Painter and we were scaling on YouTube and we had some really fancy content that I shot. We had some really fancy content that some of the agencies we work with shot and they were scaling. And we went out and filmed an iPhone video in the rain trying to sell sunglasses and it crushed. And it just blew my mind and I'm like, wait a minute. So this iPhone video in the rain that's, you know, kind of blurry, you can't even hear the audio is doing better than this video we spent three months producing. And it's like, okay, like I got to separate from brand and creative direction and you know, be a little bit more open to the fluidity of, you know, what the ads actually want, what converts, what catches attention.

Evan Lee: It's so interesting because like now we're talking ad level, but in your experience, was there a different process for building for performance creative versus building for like the website and more traditional brand assets?

Brendan Bannister: Great question. Yeah, and again, this is something I've been, you know, kind of trying to teach some of the brands that we work with. Um, I noticed a lot in the younger brands who haven't necessarily cracked scale, you know, people that are probably below 5 million in revenue and run rate, um, maybe even at that level too, but creative has to be, there has to be intention behind your creative. You have to when you when you go and produce it, there has to be an intention. What is the reason for this creative? Am I just making creative because it looks beautiful and because I want to show off my product? Or am I making creative because I want to convert, right? So you can have different levels of creative. You know, there's brand creative that is for the website to make things look beautiful, to launch a new product. But then there's performance marketing creative. And this is where things are really shifting where people are realizing that, okay, the beautiful stuff or the non-intentional creative doesn't necessarily work. And we have to have direct response marketing and hooks and intention behind the creative. Like the creative has to have a specific purpose. Are we trying to show off or are we trying to drive revenue? Because there's two different things.

Evan Lee: Yeah. And speaking to your creator hat when you were going through the process of starting to shoot stuff and go through that process, um, the assets that you made, were there, was there a primary intention that you speak to? Like was it to live on the website or was it to live on ads or are you doing like simultaneously both at the same time?

Brendan Bannister: Um, when we first started out, it was to be beautiful, right? Like the the the hypothesis was beautiful creative will convert. You know, six months, nine months into it, you realize, wait a minute, if we have intention behind it, if we focus on hooks, if we focus on grabbing attention in the first three seconds, it's going to convert better. And then it shifted to having two different types of creative. There's a creative direction creative, which is to show the brand, to build the brand, to to display the brand as bigger than life. And then there's the intentional creative that is top of funnel, middle funnel, bottom of funnel, cold traffic, warm traffic, and then, you know, ready to purchase. So it does have to shift at some point to have be intention-based.

Evan Lee: So interesting. So I'm now personally curious because I feel fired up just the way that you're talking about it. Um, like being able to foster that culture essentially, right? Like how do you, how do you communicate that to the specific person to be like, no, dig into your bag. Like we want to see something amazing. Are you doing it through a brief and like, if so, what's in that information? Is it a conversation? If so, what are you talking about? How does that look?

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, so whenever I write creative briefs, uh, for any type of person that's doing anything creative, I say, think outside the box. This is your, these these are the parameters of what I'm looking for. You're the artist. I'm hiring you for a reason. I want you to think outside the box. Don't be afraid to give me an idea. But don't take offense when I turn the idea down. And people are like, okay, I like that. And they'll come up with you with, you know, three, four, five ideas. And if you shoot four of them down, but one of them you test, that's all that matters.

Evan Lee: What are some examples of those parameters?

Brendan Bannister: Uh, you know, like I was talking about, um, it just kind of like totally depends on what you're doing, but let's say if you're shooting for a makeup brand, you're doing some UGC scripted creative for a makeup brand, you know, parameter is has to have natural light. You have to be looking at the camera, you know, you have to be, you can't be wearing any, you know, big logos on your shirt, you know, basic things like that. The video has to be one minute long. You have to use this type of hook, you know, etc. These are the parameters. But if you have any other ideas, like please throw them at me. Like I want to hear what you're thinking. And they'll say, oh, I was thinking about doing a shot in the backyard in the jacuzzi. I'm like, perfect. I didn't know you had a jacuzzi. Let's do it. That doesn't make sense for makeup, but you know what I'm saying.

Evan Lee: That's so cool. Um, I get to talk to a lot of people about this kind of stuff, right? And I know there's some teams who are super strict on, we provide the whole script, they do the script, right? And then there's other people like yourself who says, have that freedom, like push some back to me and like be creative at the end of the day. And the really cool thing, Brendan, just about this is because you come from that lens of being the creator, it's like wanting to give them maximum flexibility. So I think that's something that everybody can kind of take away. You might lean because you're a more data-driven person to say, how do I control the situation? But we need to be sure to empower people with the with the right parameters and then just like give them a chance to be like empowered and make the decisions they want.

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, exactly.

Evan Lee: Okay. So let's let's switch gears a little bit with what you were mentioning, um, with your creative ambassador or UGC program and all that good stuff. So you started off the conversation talking about like retainers and making sure people feel valued in their work and it's like you're willing to give them a shot. Let's take a step back, um, a little bit further. It's like, where do you, where do you go to even source these type of creators that you want to work with?

Brendan Bannister: Upwork. I go on Upwork. No, seriously. I go on Upwork. Well, what I'll do is I'll go on Instagram. I'll find a creator that I like that fits my parameters, maybe three of them, so three similar creators. And I'll say, and then I'll go on Google Docs and I'll make a list and I'll put the three creators in there. I'll say what I like about them. And then I'll find someone that I don't like and I'll put that as an example. This is an example of what not to use. I'll go on Upwork. I'll hire someone on Upwork to go and source me 250 or 300 of these creators or 100 of these creators in America or Europe or in geographic location. They have a software that automatically sources them, so they do it in a split second. And then they give me that database. And then I'll go through the database that I get on Excel sheets or Google sheets and, you know, pick the ones I like and reach out to the ones I like with a DM, email, you know, whatever it may be.

Evan Lee: Are you manually sending those DMs out yourself?

Brendan Bannister: Um, usually, it depends, right? You know, sometimes you give them to the client and here's your here's your list. It it just totally depends. DMing takes a lot of time, but you know, if you have the resources, you have to remember right now, I'm I'm on the consultant side, so I'm helping the brands build their teams and kind of giving them ideas of how to do it. Um, so it's it's about, you know, whose time you should you should do it with, but you know, um, yeah.

Evan Lee: Love it. Love it. And then on your end, something that we've chatted about off camera a bunch is just like the idea of building out a creative ambassador program. So sometimes, uh, I'm not sure how people in the chat feel, so I'm really curious to hear your thoughts too, but just like the whole idea of UGC sometimes is again, two ends of the spectrum. It's either we don't get paid enough or it's like it's becoming super expensive and a little bit like like wild out there. And in in between our conversations, I know you've mentioned ways that it's like we can do this in an inexpensive way, but everyone's happy. Like talk to the talk to the people a little bit more around like your process and how you've done that.

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, so another, I'm sorry, another thing that I I see kind of coming up a lot is people confusing ambassadors with influencers and UGC content. And it's kind of like no one, there's no label for it right now. So when I say creative ambassadors, I'm not a big believer in influencer marketing personally, being an influencer as well in the past. Like as a media buyer and as a creative strategist, to me, the most valuable thing is the creative itself, not the influence, the influencer that comes with it. So I'm not really interested in the people that have 200,000 followers and make beautiful content because they're going to be expensive, no matter what. And they're looking for the influence. They're not necessarily selling the content. I care more about the person on TikTok or or Instagram that has 2,000 followers and makes content and that can take direction is willing to be a creative for me, not an influencer.

Evan Lee: That's so interesting. Is it just like, does that tie into, I don't even know how to describe it. Is it an ego thing that you've noticed just through just through these conversations or does it just like you're sorting through a million people and there just happens to be diamonds in the rough? Does that make sense?

Brendan Bannister: Well, I just haven't, you know, I haven't worked with a brand that's really had major success off of the word influencer. One of the brands and I I suggest everyone in this chat to go take a look at it is LSKD, Loose Kids. They're a clothing company from Australia. Um, the guy who built their creative team did a brilliant job of it and the ambassador team. And he didn't go after influencers, but influencers actually came to him. So what he did is he just got creators, photographers, you know, travel people, van life people from all over the world, sent them free gear, and they sent in content. And as they grew and grew and grew over the years and he said, you know, I'm going to send you $200 a month worth of gear and I need 10 photos. They love it. They get free clothes and they get 10 photos of them traveling and stuff like that. And as it grew and grew and grew, it became an influencer team. Now they have influencers reaching out saying, hey, I want to be a part of, you know, LSKD, I want your I want your clothes. And everyone's happy at the end at the end of it. And then of course as they get bigger, then they start, you know, paying massive influencers to be a part of it. But it kind of like starts from just building a creative team that people want to be a part of. And you'd be surprised at how the kind of like the group ideology plays on on Instagram. Like people like to represent things. They like to be a part of something. They like to be in a click and a collective of something. And if you foster that with creativity and with content and with, you know, either paid or free gifts, people love it and gravitate towards it.

Evan Lee: Yeah, wanting to be a part of the community is something that really resonates for me. It's just like they want to be there at the end of the day. It's not just a paycheck. So that starts to make a little bit more sense, right?

Brendan Bannister: Exactly. And if you can give them a paycheck, even better.

Evan Lee: Entirely, entirely. Um, and when we when we think about, when we think about like, uh, to the analysis side of things. So you have the asset that's gone live. Justin asked a question recently. It says, when it comes to creative analysis, how long are you typically letting creative sit in the market before you begin to optimize and iterate? So advising like media buying teams on when those changes need to be made.

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, it it it all depends on the amount of money you're spending. You know, if you're spending $50 a day, you're going to have to let it run for a month. If you're spending $1,000 a day, you'll know in three days, four days, five days. Um, also, you can't, like for example, um, over the holidays, a lot of companies tried to scale new creative during Black Friday, you know, the two or three weeks up to Black Friday. I'm like, it's not going to happen. Like you're literally trying to drive a boat in a storm. So just because it didn't work during Black Friday, doesn't mean it's not going to work in February or March. So you have to think, okay, what's the actual market doing? Am I testing this creative in a good time? Am I giving it enough data to learn? So, you know, when you're working with smaller budgets, if you're if you're testing, if you're starting with a $200, $200 a day budget on on YouTube or Facebook or whatever, I can't speak on Facebook, but on the YouTube side, you can't test five different videos with $200 a day budget because you'd have to let it run for a month or two months. But if you're able to test $1,000 a day, you can test five videos. You have to be cognizant and take the number, at least on YouTube, take the take your daily budget and divide it by the amount of videos that you're testing. And that's how much money has to go to each video at the same time. So if you have $100 and you're testing four videos, each video only gets $25. But if you test, if you test two videos with $100, you're getting $50 of learning per video, theoretically. Um, so it just goes a lot longer.

Evan Lee: Love it. Yeah, touching on so many of these things is just even like stage of funnels important to know. How long do we do we launch before we iterate is important to know. Justin also has another question just digging into, uh, like the team structures once again. So let's say we do hit that point of scale. Remember how you were talking about like those three types of, uh, like creative, which honestly should have their own types of people associated with them. If you're advising on like a structure that you would like to see built, how are you typically building that out? Is it a creative strategist that owns each of those portfolio? Is it only one creative strategist with multiple editors rolling up? What does that start to look like?

Brendan Bannister: I think it it just has to be fluid. Like if you have a very, very talented creative strategist who can oversee multiple different areas and can systematically separate them the different systems, uh, the different types of creative, then yeah, you could have one person doing it. Um, but you know, if you have, if if you don't have someone at that level, you know, maybe you should have, you know, someone focusing strictly on creative ambassadors, someone focusing strictly on, you know, high-level art directed directed credit or creative and then some person focusing on direct response, you know, drive creative that's going to drive revenue.

Evan Lee: So interesting. So interesting. And then when we're talking about the actual structure of teams now, right? Because like traditionally on one hand, we have people who who are running the ads and then we have the creative folks on this side, right? Structurally speaking, who do these editors and additional members roll up into?

Brendan Bannister: Right. So you'd have the creative strategist, you know, theoretically at the at the top of the pyramid. I like to, you know, describe things in in pyramids, but you have you have the creative strategist in the top. You'd have, uh, copywriter, you know, script writers is extremely important. You know, that I if if we have a triangle, I would say the messaging of the creative is at the bottom of the triangle. I don't know how many people are familiar with like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but I model a lot of a lot of that off this. You have you have a triangle like this, the bottom layer would be messaging. Um, and that's kind of like what you build the script around. And then the next layer would be either creative strategist or like an art director or a creative director that would say, you know, here's our intention behind this creative, whether it's a seasonal creative or, you know, it's going to be outdoors or indoors or whatever it is. And then you kind of give the art direction. And then you have the producers and the editors or what kind of like bring the final piece together. And then, you know, when you have the content produced, the editors can chop that up a hundred different ways. So one of the things that's really popular now is you you get your script, you you do it all. Let's just say for example, the script is one minute, you could write five or 10 different hooks. And the editors can chop, can make that video and then chop up, you know, 10 different hooks. And this is where, you know, Motion comes in because you can run these ads against each other for the 10 different hooks and see, okay, hook one and three worked, the other ones don't. So let's make variations of hook one and three and we don't have to change the rest of the video. We just have to change the hook.

Evan Lee: Most definitely. Maximize, yeah, if it works, maximizing your time and dollars at that point, right? And and something I'm always so curious about is to like bring it back to that brand and performance style conversation. In your experience, how does the overlap occur between both of the teams? Because technically speaking, a creative strategist and the team could live in one org, but then the performance side on the other. How do you make sure that they're almost able to act in lock step to be able to produce winning assets? Does that make sense?

Brendan Bannister: Right. Yeah. Um, it's an interesting question. I think it it has to be a, um, collaborative approach between the performance team and the creative team. But when I say collaborative, it can't be kind of like directional based. Like you can't have a performance team telling the creative team exactly what needs to be done. The performance team will have to say, here's what's working. And the creative team has to be able to look at what's working and say, we can copy this and make iterations of it or that's working, here's a theory I have and then you have to and then you test it. And then the performance team will say, it looks beautiful, this worked, but this doesn't work. And the creative team has to say, okay, I'm not going to take offense to the fact that it doesn't work, but I'm going to come, you know, come back with three other options that may or may not work.

Evan Lee: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I love it. And it's so interesting because like you mentioned, you've been doing photography and you've been doing creative work like forever at this point, right? So in your side of things, like you've now been exposed to all areas and all like parts of the spectrum. Why do you think now more than ever it's more it's important for like creative people or creative world in general to be data-driven?

Brendan Bannister: Um, because I think as media buying becomes more consolidated and more AI-driven, it's less about how you press the buttons at the media level, it's more about what you put in it. So you have to be able to understand like how the ads are kind of performing to then give guidance to create those ads. Um, and as as we shift more towards an AI world where, you know, media buying, media buyers will eventually get phased out, it's all on the creative team. And it's those people who can look at the creative details that, you know, Motion provides such as, you know, how long are we drawing users into a video, where they when are they clicking and things like that, which can give guidance to producing more content or making iterations from that content.

Evan Lee: It's so, it's it's actually the perfect segue because when we talk about like being data-driven, it's also a matter of like who does that person actually like need to be who's data-driven? Is it the actual designer themselves or is it someone who's enabling that process? Um, so let's switch gears a little bit. Now, through your experience, you've touched so many different things to speak to starting to build out creative teams and ultimately what that means. Um, the first place that I like to start is as much as process is important is that conversation of brand and performance, right? Like sometimes they're so at odds just in terms of contending focuses for brands and all that kind of stuff. Like first of all, like share your opinion on brand and performance. And then secondly, if I have to ask you the second again, don't worry, but secondly, like depending on where you land, how do you tackle that conversation?

Brendan Bannister: It's a conversation that, you know, we consult for quite a few clients and a lot of the struggle is around letting go of that that kind of like attachment to brand. And you know, I think brand has to be fluid, but also has to be data-driven. So like people are really attached, they have a parameters of what their brand is, but really in the digital era as we go more towards AI algorithms again, you have to be open to changing that. And I think one of the things that I've fought with a lot as a creative, right? When I first started doing video in the in the performance marketing side as a video producer, I wanted everything to be beautiful. I wanted it to have, you know, that artistic touch to it. And I learned very quickly that beautiful doesn't always convert. And truthfully, iPhone converts a lot more. So as a creative, it's something you fight against. As a creative director, you want everything to be so nitpicky, but you know what? There's 12 fonts in the world that just convert better because humans just like them better. And if your font isn't one of those, you know, it's going to hurt your, you know, conversion rate at that video level, at the at the photo level. So you have to be okay, look, I'll have my fancy fonts on my website, but at the ad level, we have to be okay and, you know, just let the data take us where it goes.

Evan Lee: I love it. And when you first learned that, like that realization of, because I think a lot of people go through that. It's like this is so pretty, this looks incredible. It should work, right? Like when did you actually first learn that it's no longer the case?

Brendan Bannister: Um, this is back in, uh, I think 20, 2019 when I was working with William Painter and we were scaling on YouTube and we had some really fancy content that I shot. We had some really fancy content that some of the agencies we work with shot and they were scaling. And we went out and filmed an iPhone video in the rain trying to sell sunglasses and it crushed. And it just blew my mind and I'm like, wait a minute. So this iPhone video in the rain that's, you know, kind of blurry, you can't even hear the audio is doing better than this video we spent three months producing. And it's like, okay, like I got to separate from brand and creative direction and you know, be a little bit more open to the fluidity of, you know, what the ads actually want, what converts, what catches attention.

Evan Lee: It's so interesting because like now we're talking ad level, but in your experience, was there a different process for building for performance creative versus building for like the website and more traditional brand assets?

Brendan Bannister: Great question. Yeah, and again, this is something I've been, you know, kind of trying to teach some of the brands that we work with. Um, I noticed a lot in the younger brands who haven't necessarily cracked scale, you know, people that are probably below 5 million in revenue and run rate, um, maybe even at that level too, but creative has to be, there has to be intention behind your creative. You have to when you when you go and produce it, there has to be an intention. What is the reason for this creative? Am I just making creative because it looks beautiful and because I want to show off my product? Or am I making creative because I want to convert, right? So you can have different levels of creative. You know, there's brand creative that is for the website to make things look beautiful, to launch a new product. But then there's performance marketing creative. And this is where things are really shifting where people are realizing that, okay, the beautiful stuff or the non-intentional creative doesn't necessarily work. And we have to have direct response marketing and hooks and intention behind the creative. Like the creative has to have a specific purpose. Are we trying to show off or are we trying to drive revenue? Because there's two different things.

Evan Lee: Yeah. And speaking to your creator hat when you were going through the process of starting to shoot stuff and go through that process, um, the assets that you made, were there, was there a primary intention that you speak to? Like was it to live on the website or was it to live on ads or are you doing like simultaneously both at the same time?

Brendan Bannister: Um, when we first started out, it was to be beautiful, right? Like the the the hypothesis was beautiful creative will convert. You know, six months, nine months into it, you realize, wait a minute, if we have intention behind it, if we focus on hooks, if we focus on grabbing attention in the first three seconds, it's going to convert better. And then it shifted to having two different types of creative. There's a creative direction creative, which is to show the brand, to build the brand, to to display the brand as bigger than life. And then there's the intentional creative that is top of funnel, middle funnel, bottom of funnel, cold traffic, warm traffic, and then, you know, ready to purchase. So it does have to shift at some point to have be intention-based.

Evan Lee: So interesting. So I'm now personally curious because I feel fired up just the way that you're talking about it. Um, like being able to foster that culture essentially, right? Like how do you, how do you communicate that to the specific person to be like, no, dig into your bag. Like we want to see something amazing. Are you doing it through a brief and like, if so, what's in that information? Is it a conversation? If so, what are you talking about? How does that look?

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, so whenever I write creative briefs, uh, for any type of person that's doing anything creative, I say, think outside the box. This is your, these these are the parameters of what I'm looking for. You're the artist. I'm hiring you for a reason. I want you to think outside the box. Don't be afraid to give me an idea. But don't take offense when I turn the idea down. And people are like, okay, I like that. And they'll come up with you with, you know, three, four, five ideas. And if you shoot four of them down, but one of them you test, that's all that matters.

Evan Lee: What are some examples of those parameters?

Brendan Bannister: Uh, you know, like I was talking about, um, it just kind of like totally depends on what you're doing, but let's say if you're shooting for a makeup brand, you're doing some UGC scripted creative for a makeup brand, you know, parameter is has to have natural light. You have to be looking at the camera, you know, you have to be, you can't be wearing any, you know, big logos on your shirt, you know, basic things like that. The video has to be one minute long. You have to use this type of hook, you know, etc. These are the parameters. But if you have any other ideas, like please throw them at me. Like I want to hear what you're thinking. And they'll say, oh, I was thinking about doing a shot in the backyard in the jacuzzi. I'm like, perfect. I didn't know you had a jacuzzi. Let's do it. That doesn't make sense for makeup, but you know what I'm saying.

Evan Lee: That's so cool. Um, I get to talk to a lot of people about this kind of stuff, right? And I know there's some teams who are super strict on, we provide the whole script, they do the script, right? And then there's other people like yourself who says, have that freedom, like push some back to me and like be creative at the end of the day. And the really cool thing, Brendan, just about this is because you come from that lens of being the creator, it's like wanting to give them maximum flexibility. So I think that's something that everybody can kind of take away. You might lean because you're a more data-driven person to say, how do I control the situation? But we need to be sure to empower people with the with the right parameters and then just like give them a chance to be like empowered and make the decisions they want.

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, exactly.

Evan Lee: Okay. So let's let's switch gears a little bit with what you were mentioning, um, with your creative ambassador or UGC program and all that good stuff. So you started off the conversation talking about like retainers and making sure people feel valued in their work and it's like you're willing to give them a shot. Let's take a step back, um, a little bit further. It's like, where do you, where do you go to even source these type of creators that you want to work with?

Brendan Bannister: Upwork. I go on Upwork. No, seriously. I go on Upwork. Well, what I'll do is I'll go on Instagram. I'll find a creator that I like that fits my parameters, maybe three of them, so three similar creators. And I'll say, and then I'll go on Google Docs and I'll make a list and I'll put the three creators in there. I'll say what I like about them. And then I'll find someone that I don't like and I'll put that as an example. This is an example of what not to use. I'll go on Upwork. I'll hire someone on Upwork to go and source me 250 or 300 of these creators or 100 of these creators in America or Europe or in geographic location. They have a software that automatically sources them, so they do it in a split second. And then they give me that database. And then I'll go through the database that I get on Excel sheets or Google sheets and, you know, pick the ones I like and reach out to the ones I like with a DM, email, you know, whatever it may be.

Evan Lee: Are you manually sending those DMs out yourself?

Brendan Bannister: Um, usually, it depends, right? You know, sometimes you give them to the client and here's your here's your list. It it just totally depends. DMing takes a lot of time, but you know, if you have the resources, you have to remember right now, I'm I'm on the consultant side, so I'm helping the brands build their teams and kind of giving them ideas of how to do it. Um, so it's it's about, you know, whose time you should you should do it with, but you know, um, yeah.

Evan Lee: Love it. Love it. And then on your end, something that we've chatted about off camera a bunch is just like the idea of building out a creative ambassador program. So sometimes, uh, I'm not sure how people in the chat feel, so I'm really curious to hear your thoughts too, but just like the whole idea of UGC sometimes is again, two ends of the spectrum. It's either we don't get paid enough or it's like it's becoming super expensive and a little bit like like wild out there. And in in between our conversations, I know you've mentioned ways that it's like we can do this in an inexpensive way, but everyone's happy. Like talk to the talk to the people a little bit more around like your process and how you've done that.

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, so another, I'm sorry, another thing that I I see kind of coming up a lot is people confusing ambassadors with influencers and UGC content. And it's kind of like no one, there's no label for it right now. So when I say creative ambassadors, I'm not a big believer in influencer marketing personally, being an influencer as well in the past. Like as a media buyer and as a creative strategist, to me, the most valuable thing is the creative itself, not the influence, the influencer that comes with it. So I'm not really interested in the people that have 200,000 followers and make beautiful content because they're going to be expensive, no matter what. And they're looking for the influence. They're not necessarily selling the content. I care more about the person on TikTok or or Instagram that has 2,000 followers and makes content and that can take direction is willing to be a creative for me, not an influencer.

Evan Lee: That's so interesting. Is it just like, does that tie into, I don't even know how to describe it. Is it an ego thing that you've noticed just through just through these conversations or does it just like you're sorting through a million people and there just happens to be diamonds in the rough? Does that make sense?

Brendan Bannister: Well, I just haven't, you know, I haven't worked with a brand that's really had major success off of the word influencer. One of the brands and I I suggest everyone in this chat to go take a look at it is LSKD, Loose Kids. They're a clothing company from Australia. Um, the guy who built their creative team did a brilliant job of it and the ambassador team. And he didn't go after influencers, but influencers actually came to him. So what he did is he just got creators, photographers, you know, travel people, van life people from all over the world, sent them free gear, and they sent in content. And as they grew and grew and grew over the years and he said, you know, I'm going to send you $200 a month worth of gear and I need 10 photos. They love it. They get free clothes and they get 10 photos of them traveling and stuff like that. And as it grew and grew and grew, it became an influencer team. Now they have influencers reaching out saying, hey, I want to be a part of, you know, LSKD, I want your I want your clothes. And everyone's happy at the end at the end of it. And then of course as they get bigger, then they start, you know, paying massive influencers to be a part of it. But it kind of like starts from just building a creative team that people want to be a part of. And you'd be surprised at how the kind of like the group ideology plays on on Instagram. Like people like to represent things. They like to be a part of something. They like to be in a click and a collective of something. And if you foster that with creativity and with content and with, you know, either paid or free gifts, people love it and gravitate towards it.

Evan Lee: Yeah, wanting to be a part of the community is something that really resonates for me. It's just like they want to be there at the end of the day. It's not just a paycheck. So that starts to make a little bit more sense, right?

Brendan Bannister: Exactly. And if you can give them a paycheck, even better.

Evan Lee: Entirely, entirely. Um, and when we when we think about, when we think about like, uh, to the analysis side of things. So you have the asset that's gone live. Justin asked a question recently. It says, when it comes to creative analysis, how long are you typically letting creative sit in the market before you begin to optimize and iterate? So advising like media buying teams on when those changes need to be made.

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, it it it all depends on the amount of money you're spending. You know, if you're spending $50 a day, you're going to have to let it run for a month. If you're spending $1,000 a day, you'll know in three days, four days, five days. Um, also, you can't, like for example, um, over the holidays, a lot of companies tried to scale new creative during Black Friday, you know, the two or three weeks up to Black Friday. I'm like, it's not going to happen. Like you're literally trying to drive a boat in a storm. So just because it didn't work during Black Friday, doesn't mean it's not going to work in February or March. So you have to think, okay, what's the actual market doing? Am I testing this creative in a good time? Am I giving it enough data to learn? So, you know, when you're working with smaller budgets, if you're if you're testing, if you're starting with a $200, $200 a day budget on on YouTube or Facebook or whatever, I can't speak on Facebook, but on the YouTube side, you can't test five different videos with $200 a day budget because you'd have to let it run for a month or two months. But if you're able to test $1,000 a day, you can test five videos. You have to be cognizant and take the number, at least on YouTube, take the take your daily budget and divide it by the amount of videos that you're testing. And that's how much money has to go to each video at the same time. So if you have $100 and you're testing four videos, each video only gets $25. But if you test, if you test two videos with $100, you're getting $50 of learning per video, theoretically. Um, so it just goes a lot longer.

Evan Lee: Love it. Yeah, touching on so many of these things is just even like stage of funnels important to know. How long do we do we launch before we iterate is important to know. Justin also has another question just digging into, uh, like the team structures once again. So let's say we do hit that point of scale. Remember how you were talking about like those three types of, uh, like creative, which honestly should have their own types of people associated with them. If you're advising on like a structure that you would like to see built, how are you typically building that out? Is it a creative strategist that owns each of those portfolio? Is it only one creative strategist with multiple editors rolling up? What does that start to look like?

Brendan Bannister: I think it it just has to be fluid. Like if you have a very, very talented creative strategist who can oversee multiple different areas and can systematically separate them the different systems, uh, the different types of creative, then yeah, you could have one person doing it. Um, but you know, if you have, if if you don't have someone at that level, you know, maybe you should have, you know, someone focusing strictly on creative ambassadors, someone focusing strictly on, you know, high-level art directed directed credit or creative and then some person focusing on direct response, you know, drive creative that's going to drive revenue.

Evan Lee: So interesting. So interesting. And then when we're talking about the actual structure of teams now, right? Because like traditionally on one hand, we have people who who are running the ads and then we have the creative folks on this side, right? Structurally speaking, who do these editors and additional members roll up into?

Brendan Bannister: Right. So you'd have the creative strategist, you know, theoretically at the at the top of the pyramid. I like to, you know, describe things in in pyramids, but you have you have the creative strategist in the top. You'd have, uh, copywriter, you know, script writers is extremely important. You know, that I if if we have a triangle, I would say the messaging of the creative is at the bottom of the triangle. I don't know how many people are familiar with like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but I model a lot of a lot of that off this. You have you have a triangle like this, the bottom layer would be messaging. Um, and that's kind of like what you build the script around. And then the next layer would be either creative strategist or like an art director or a creative director that would say, you know, here's our intention behind this creative, whether it's a seasonal creative or, you know, it's going to be outdoors or indoors or whatever it is. And then you kind of give the art direction. And then you have the producers and the editors or what kind of like bring the final piece together. And then, you know, when you have the content produced, the editors can chop that up a hundred different ways. So one of the things that's really popular now is you you get your script, you you do it all. Let's just say for example, the script is one minute, you could write five or 10 different hooks. And the editors can chop, can make that video and then chop up, you know, 10 different hooks. And this is where, you know, Motion comes in because you can run these ads against each other for the 10 different hooks and see, okay, hook one and three worked, the other ones don't. So let's make variations of hook one and three and we don't have to change the rest of the video. We just have to change the hook.

Evan Lee: Most definitely. Maximize, yeah, if it works, maximizing your time and dollars at that point, right? And and something I'm always so curious about is to like bring it back to that brand and performance style conversation. In your experience, how does the overlap occur between both of the teams? Because technically speaking, a creative strategist and the team could live in one org, but then the performance side on the other. How do you make sure that they're almost able to act in lock step to be able to produce winning assets? Does that make sense?

Brendan Bannister: Right. Yeah. Um, it's an interesting question. I think it it has to be a, um, collaborative approach between the performance team and the creative team. But when I say collaborative, it can't be kind of like directional based. Like you can't have a performance team telling the creative team exactly what needs to be done. The performance team will have to say, here's what's working. And the creative team has to be able to look at what's working and say, we can copy this and make iterations of it or that's working, here's a theory I have and then you have to and then you test it. And then the performance team will say, it looks beautiful, this worked, but this doesn't work. And the creative team has to say, okay, I'm not going to take offense to the fact that it doesn't work, but I'm going to come, you know, come back with three other options that may or may not work.

Evan Lee: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I love it. And it's so interesting because like you mentioned, you've been doing photography and you've been doing creative work like forever at this point, right? So in your side of things, like you've now been exposed to all areas and all like parts of the spectrum. Why do you think now more than ever it's more it's important for like creative people or creative world in general to be data-driven?

Brendan Bannister: Um, because I think as media buying becomes more consolidated and more AI-driven, it's less about how you press the buttons at the media level, it's more about what you put in it. So you have to be able to understand like how the ads are kind of performing to then give guidance to create those ads. Um, and as as we shift more towards an AI world where, you know, media buying, media buyers will eventually get phased out, it's all on the creative team. And it's those people who can look at the creative details that, you know, Motion provides such as, you know, how long are we drawing users into a video, where they when are they clicking and things like that, which can give guidance to producing more content or making iterations from that content.

Evan Lee: It's so, it's it's actually the perfect segue because when we talk about like being data-driven, it's also a matter of like who does that person actually like need to be who's data-driven? Is it the actual designer themselves or is it someone who's enabling that process? Um, so let's switch gears a little bit. Now, through your experience, you've touched so many different things to speak to starting to build out creative teams and ultimately what that means. Um, the first place that I like to start is as much as process is important is that conversation of brand and performance, right? Like sometimes they're so at odds just in terms of contending focuses for brands and all that kind of stuff. Like first of all, like share your opinion on brand and performance. And then secondly, if I have to ask you the second again, don't worry, but secondly, like depending on where you land, how do you tackle that conversation?

Brendan Bannister: It's a conversation that, you know, we consult for quite a few clients and a lot of the struggle is around letting go of that that kind of like attachment to brand. And you know, I think brand has to be fluid, but also has to be data-driven. So like people are really attached, they have a parameters of what their brand is, but really in the digital era as we go more towards AI algorithms again, you have to be open to changing that. And I think one of the things that I've fought with a lot as a creative, right? When I first started doing video in the in the performance marketing side as a video producer, I wanted everything to be beautiful. I wanted it to have, you know, that artistic touch to it. And I learned very quickly that beautiful doesn't always convert. And truthfully, iPhone converts a lot more. So as a creative, it's something you fight against. As a creative director, you want everything to be so nitpicky, but you know what? There's 12 fonts in the world that just convert better because humans just like them better. And if your font isn't one of those, you know, it's going to hurt your, you know, conversion rate at that video level, at the at the photo level. So you have to be okay, look, I'll have my fancy fonts on my website, but at the ad level, we have to be okay and, you know, just let the data take us where it goes.

Evan Lee: I love it. And when you first learned that, like that realization of, because I think a lot of people go through that. It's like this is so pretty, this looks incredible. It should work, right? Like when did you actually first learn that it's no longer the case?

Brendan Bannister: Um, this is back in, uh, I think 20, 2019 when I was working with William Painter and we were scaling on YouTube and we had some really fancy content that I shot. We had some really fancy content that some of the agencies we work with shot and they were scaling. And we went out and filmed an iPhone video in the rain trying to sell sunglasses and it crushed. And it just blew my mind and I'm like, wait a minute. So this iPhone video in the rain that's, you know, kind of blurry, you can't even hear the audio is doing better than this video we spent three months producing. And it's like, okay, like I got to separate from brand and creative direction and you know, be a little bit more open to the fluidity of, you know, what the ads actually want, what converts, what catches attention.

Evan Lee: It's so interesting because like now we're talking ad level, but in your experience, was there a different process for building for performance creative versus building for like the website and more traditional brand assets?

Brendan Bannister: Great question. Yeah, and again, this is something I've been, you know, kind of trying to teach some of the brands that we work with. Um, I noticed a lot in the younger brands who haven't necessarily cracked scale, you know, people that are probably below 5 million in revenue and run rate, um, maybe even at that level too, but creative has to be, there has to be intention behind your creative. You have to when you when you go and produce it, there has to be an intention. What is the reason for this creative? Am I just making creative because it looks beautiful and because I want to show off my product? Or am I making creative because I want to convert, right? So you can have different levels of creative. You know, there's brand creative that is for the website to make things look beautiful, to launch a new product. But then there's performance marketing creative. And this is where things are really shifting where people are realizing that, okay, the beautiful stuff or the non-intentional creative doesn't necessarily work. And we have to have direct response marketing and hooks and intention behind the creative. Like the creative has to have a specific purpose. Are we trying to show off or are we trying to drive revenue? Because there's two different things.

Evan Lee: Yeah. And speaking to your creator hat when you were going through the process of starting to shoot stuff and go through that process, um, the assets that you made, were there, was there a primary intention that you speak to? Like was it to live on the website or was it to live on ads or are you doing like simultaneously both at the same time?

Brendan Bannister: Um, when we first started out, it was to be beautiful, right? Like the the the hypothesis was beautiful creative will convert. You know, six months, nine months into it, you realize, wait a minute, if we have intention behind it, if we focus on hooks, if we focus on grabbing attention in the first three seconds, it's going to convert better. And then it shifted to having two different types of creative. There's a creative direction creative, which is to show the brand, to build the brand, to to display the brand as bigger than life. And then there's the intentional creative that is top of funnel, middle funnel, bottom of funnel, cold traffic, warm traffic, and then, you know, ready to purchase. So it does have to shift at some point to have be intention-based.

Evan Lee: So interesting. So I'm now personally curious because I feel fired up just the way that you're talking about it. Um, like being able to foster that culture essentially, right? Like how do you, how do you communicate that to the specific person to be like, no, dig into your bag. Like we want to see something amazing. Are you doing it through a brief and like, if so, what's in that information? Is it a conversation? If so, what are you talking about? How does that look?

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, so whenever I write creative briefs, uh, for any type of person that's doing anything creative, I say, think outside the box. This is your, these these are the parameters of what I'm looking for. You're the artist. I'm hiring you for a reason. I want you to think outside the box. Don't be afraid to give me an idea. But don't take offense when I turn the idea down. And people are like, okay, I like that. And they'll come up with you with, you know, three, four, five ideas. And if you shoot four of them down, but one of them you test, that's all that matters.

Evan Lee: What are some examples of those parameters?

Brendan Bannister: Uh, you know, like I was talking about, um, it just kind of like totally depends on what you're doing, but let's say if you're shooting for a makeup brand, you're doing some UGC scripted creative for a makeup brand, you know, parameter is has to have natural light. You have to be looking at the camera, you know, you have to be, you can't be wearing any, you know, big logos on your shirt, you know, basic things like that. The video has to be one minute long. You have to use this type of hook, you know, etc. These are the parameters. But if you have any other ideas, like please throw them at me. Like I want to hear what you're thinking. And they'll say, oh, I was thinking about doing a shot in the backyard in the jacuzzi. I'm like, perfect. I didn't know you had a jacuzzi. Let's do it. That doesn't make sense for makeup, but you know what I'm saying.

Evan Lee: That's so cool. Um, I get to talk to a lot of people about this kind of stuff, right? And I know there's some teams who are super strict on, we provide the whole script, they do the script, right? And then there's other people like yourself who says, have that freedom, like push some back to me and like be creative at the end of the day. And the really cool thing, Brendan, just about this is because you come from that lens of being the creator, it's like wanting to give them maximum flexibility. So I think that's something that everybody can kind of take away. You might lean because you're a more data-driven person to say, how do I control the situation? But we need to be sure to empower people with the with the right parameters and then just like give them a chance to be like empowered and make the decisions they want.

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, exactly.

Evan Lee: Okay. So let's let's switch gears a little bit with what you were mentioning, um, with your creative ambassador or UGC program and all that good stuff. So you started off the conversation talking about like retainers and making sure people feel valued in their work and it's like you're willing to give them a shot. Let's take a step back, um, a little bit further. It's like, where do you, where do you go to even source these type of creators that you want to work with?

Brendan Bannister: Upwork. I go on Upwork. No, seriously. I go on Upwork. Well, what I'll do is I'll go on Instagram. I'll find a creator that I like that fits my parameters, maybe three of them, so three similar creators. And I'll say, and then I'll go on Google Docs and I'll make a list and I'll put the three creators in there. I'll say what I like about them. And then I'll find someone that I don't like and I'll put that as an example. This is an example of what not to use. I'll go on Upwork. I'll hire someone on Upwork to go and source me 250 or 300 of these creators or 100 of these creators in America or Europe or in geographic location. They have a software that automatically sources them, so they do it in a split second. And then they give me that database. And then I'll go through the database that I get on Excel sheets or Google sheets and, you know, pick the ones I like and reach out to the ones I like with a DM, email, you know, whatever it may be.

Evan Lee: Are you manually sending those DMs out yourself?

Brendan Bannister: Um, usually, it depends, right? You know, sometimes you give them to the client and here's your here's your list. It it just totally depends. DMing takes a lot of time, but you know, if you have the resources, you have to remember right now, I'm I'm on the consultant side, so I'm helping the brands build their teams and kind of giving them ideas of how to do it. Um, so it's it's about, you know, whose time you should you should do it with, but you know, um, yeah.

Evan Lee: Love it. Love it. And then on your end, something that we've chatted about off camera a bunch is just like the idea of building out a creative ambassador program. So sometimes, uh, I'm not sure how people in the chat feel, so I'm really curious to hear your thoughts too, but just like the whole idea of UGC sometimes is again, two ends of the spectrum. It's either we don't get paid enough or it's like it's becoming super expensive and a little bit like like wild out there. And in in between our conversations, I know you've mentioned ways that it's like we can do this in an inexpensive way, but everyone's happy. Like talk to the talk to the people a little bit more around like your process and how you've done that.

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, so another, I'm sorry, another thing that I I see kind of coming up a lot is people confusing ambassadors with influencers and UGC content. And it's kind of like no one, there's no label for it right now. So when I say creative ambassadors, I'm not a big believer in influencer marketing personally, being an influencer as well in the past. Like as a media buyer and as a creative strategist, to me, the most valuable thing is the creative itself, not the influence, the influencer that comes with it. So I'm not really interested in the people that have 200,000 followers and make beautiful content because they're going to be expensive, no matter what. And they're looking for the influence. They're not necessarily selling the content. I care more about the person on TikTok or or Instagram that has 2,000 followers and makes content and that can take direction is willing to be a creative for me, not an influencer.

Evan Lee: That's so interesting. Is it just like, does that tie into, I don't even know how to describe it. Is it an ego thing that you've noticed just through just through these conversations or does it just like you're sorting through a million people and there just happens to be diamonds in the rough? Does that make sense?

Brendan Bannister: Well, I just haven't, you know, I haven't worked with a brand that's really had major success off of the word influencer. One of the brands and I I suggest everyone in this chat to go take a look at it is LSKD, Loose Kids. They're a clothing company from Australia. Um, the guy who built their creative team did a brilliant job of it and the ambassador team. And he didn't go after influencers, but influencers actually came to him. So what he did is he just got creators, photographers, you know, travel people, van life people from all over the world, sent them free gear, and they sent in content. And as they grew and grew and grew over the years and he said, you know, I'm going to send you $200 a month worth of gear and I need 10 photos. They love it. They get free clothes and they get 10 photos of them traveling and stuff like that. And as it grew and grew and grew, it became an influencer team. Now they have influencers reaching out saying, hey, I want to be a part of, you know, LSKD, I want your I want your clothes. And everyone's happy at the end at the end of it. And then of course as they get bigger, then they start, you know, paying massive influencers to be a part of it. But it kind of like starts from just building a creative team that people want to be a part of. And you'd be surprised at how the kind of like the group ideology plays on on Instagram. Like people like to represent things. They like to be a part of something. They like to be in a click and a collective of something. And if you foster that with creativity and with content and with, you know, either paid or free gifts, people love it and gravitate towards it.

Evan Lee: Yeah, wanting to be a part of the community is something that really resonates for me. It's just like they want to be there at the end of the day. It's not just a paycheck. So that starts to make a little bit more sense, right?

Brendan Bannister: Exactly. And if you can give them a paycheck, even better.

Evan Lee: Entirely, entirely. Um, and when we when we think about, when we think about like, uh, to the analysis side of things. So you have the asset that's gone live. Justin asked a question recently. It says, when it comes to creative analysis, how long are you typically letting creative sit in the market before you begin to optimize and iterate? So advising like media buying teams on when those changes need to be made.

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, it it it all depends on the amount of money you're spending. You know, if you're spending $50 a day, you're going to have to let it run for a month. If you're spending $1,000 a day, you'll know in three days, four days, five days. Um, also, you can't, like for example, um, over the holidays, a lot of companies tried to scale new creative during Black Friday, you know, the two or three weeks up to Black Friday. I'm like, it's not going to happen. Like you're literally trying to drive a boat in a storm. So just because it didn't work during Black Friday, doesn't mean it's not going to work in February or March. So you have to think, okay, what's the actual market doing? Am I testing this creative in a good time? Am I giving it enough data to learn? So, you know, when you're working with smaller budgets, if you're if you're testing, if you're starting with a $200, $200 a day budget on on YouTube or Facebook or whatever, I can't speak on Facebook, but on the YouTube side, you can't test five different videos with $200 a day budget because you'd have to let it run for a month or two months. But if you're able to test $1,000 a day, you can test five videos. You have to be cognizant and take the number, at least on YouTube, take the take your daily budget and divide it by the amount of videos that you're testing. And that's how much money has to go to each video at the same time. So if you have $100 and you're testing four videos, each video only gets $25. But if you test, if you test two videos with $100, you're getting $50 of learning per video, theoretically. Um, so it just goes a lot longer.

Evan Lee: Love it. Yeah, touching on so many of these things is just even like stage of funnels important to know. How long do we do we launch before we iterate is important to know. Justin also has another question just digging into, uh, like the team structures once again. So let's say we do hit that point of scale. Remember how you were talking about like those three types of, uh, like creative, which honestly should have their own types of people associated with them. If you're advising on like a structure that you would like to see built, how are you typically building that out? Is it a creative strategist that owns each of those portfolio? Is it only one creative strategist with multiple editors rolling up? What does that start to look like?

Brendan Bannister: I think it it just has to be fluid. Like if you have a very, very talented creative strategist who can oversee multiple different areas and can systematically separate them the different systems, uh, the different types of creative, then yeah, you could have one person doing it. Um, but you know, if you have, if if you don't have someone at that level, you know, maybe you should have, you know, someone focusing strictly on creative ambassadors, someone focusing strictly on, you know, high-level art directed directed credit or creative and then some person focusing on direct response, you know, drive creative that's going to drive revenue.

Evan Lee: So interesting. So interesting. And then when we're talking about the actual structure of teams now, right? Because like traditionally on one hand, we have people who who are running the ads and then we have the creative folks on this side, right? Structurally speaking, who do these editors and additional members roll up into?

Brendan Bannister: Right. So you'd have the creative strategist, you know, theoretically at the at the top of the pyramid. I like to, you know, describe things in in pyramids, but you have you have the creative strategist in the top. You'd have, uh, copywriter, you know, script writers is extremely important. You know, that I if if we have a triangle, I would say the messaging of the creative is at the bottom of the triangle. I don't know how many people are familiar with like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but I model a lot of a lot of that off this. You have you have a triangle like this, the bottom layer would be messaging. Um, and that's kind of like what you build the script around. And then the next layer would be either creative strategist or like an art director or a creative director that would say, you know, here's our intention behind this creative, whether it's a seasonal creative or, you know, it's going to be outdoors or indoors or whatever it is. And then you kind of give the art direction. And then you have the producers and the editors or what kind of like bring the final piece together. And then, you know, when you have the content produced, the editors can chop that up a hundred different ways. So one of the things that's really popular now is you you get your script, you you do it all. Let's just say for example, the script is one minute, you could write five or 10 different hooks. And the editors can chop, can make that video and then chop up, you know, 10 different hooks. And this is where, you know, Motion comes in because you can run these ads against each other for the 10 different hooks and see, okay, hook one and three worked, the other ones don't. So let's make variations of hook one and three and we don't have to change the rest of the video. We just have to change the hook.

Evan Lee: Most definitely. Maximize, yeah, if it works, maximizing your time and dollars at that point, right? And and something I'm always so curious about is to like bring it back to that brand and performance style conversation. In your experience, how does the overlap occur between both of the teams? Because technically speaking, a creative strategist and the team could live in one org, but then the performance side on the other. How do you make sure that they're almost able to act in lock step to be able to produce winning assets? Does that make sense?

Brendan Bannister: Right. Yeah. Um, it's an interesting question. I think it it has to be a, um, collaborative approach between the performance team and the creative team. But when I say collaborative, it can't be kind of like directional based. Like you can't have a performance team telling the creative team exactly what needs to be done. The performance team will have to say, here's what's working. And the creative team has to be able to look at what's working and say, we can copy this and make iterations of it or that's working, here's a theory I have and then you have to and then you test it. And then the performance team will say, it looks beautiful, this worked, but this doesn't work. And the creative team has to say, okay, I'm not going to take offense to the fact that it doesn't work, but I'm going to come, you know, come back with three other options that may or may not work.

Evan Lee: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I love it. And it's so interesting because like you mentioned, you've been doing photography and you've been doing creative work like forever at this point, right? So in your side of things, like you've now been exposed to all areas and all like parts of the spectrum. Why do you think now more than ever it's more it's important for like creative people or creative world in general to be data-driven?

Brendan Bannister: Um, because I think as media buying becomes more consolidated and more AI-driven, it's less about how you press the buttons at the media level, it's more about what you put in it. So you have to be able to understand like how the ads are kind of performing to then give guidance to create those ads. Um, and as as we shift more towards an AI world where, you know, media buying, media buyers will eventually get phased out, it's all on the creative team. And it's those people who can look at the creative details that, you know, Motion provides such as, you know, how long are we drawing users into a video, where they when are they clicking and things like that, which can give guidance to producing more content or making iterations from that content.

Evan Lee: It's so, it's it's actually the perfect segue because when we talk about like being data-driven, it's also a matter of like who does that person actually like need to be who's data-driven? Is it the actual designer themselves or is it someone who's enabling that process? Um, so let's switch gears a little bit. Now, through your experience, you've touched so many different things to speak to starting to build out creative teams and ultimately what that means. Um, the first place that I like to start is as much as process is important is that conversation of brand and performance, right? Like sometimes they're so at odds just in terms of contending focuses for brands and all that kind of stuff. Like first of all, like share your opinion on brand and performance. And then secondly, if I have to ask you the second again, don't worry, but secondly, like depending on where you land, how do you tackle that conversation?

Brendan Bannister: It's a conversation that, you know, we consult for quite a few clients and a lot of the struggle is around letting go of that that kind of like attachment to brand. And you know, I think brand has to be fluid, but also has to be data-driven. So like people are really attached, they have a parameters of what their brand is, but really in the digital era as we go more towards AI algorithms again, you have to be open to changing that. And I think one of the things that I've fought with a lot as a creative, right? When I first started doing video in the in the performance marketing side as a video producer, I wanted everything to be beautiful. I wanted it to have, you know, that artistic touch to it. And I learned very quickly that beautiful doesn't always convert. And truthfully, iPhone converts a lot more. So as a creative, it's something you fight against. As a creative director, you want everything to be so nitpicky, but you know what? There's 12 fonts in the world that just convert better because humans just like them better. And if your font isn't one of those, you know, it's going to hurt your, you know, conversion rate at that video level, at the at the photo level. So you have to be okay, look, I'll have my fancy fonts on my website, but at the ad level, we have to be okay and, you know, just let the data take us where it goes.

Evan Lee: I love it. And when you first learned that, like that realization of, because I think a lot of people go through that. It's like this is so pretty, this looks incredible. It should work, right? Like when did you actually first learn that it's no longer the case?

Brendan Bannister: Um, this is back in, uh, I think 20, 2019 when I was working with William Painter and we were scaling on YouTube and we had some really fancy content that I shot. We had some really fancy content that some of the agencies we work with shot and they were scaling. And we went out and filmed an iPhone video in the rain trying to sell sunglasses and it crushed. And it just blew my mind and I'm like, wait a minute. So this iPhone video in the rain that's, you know, kind of blurry, you can't even hear the audio is doing better than this video we spent three months producing. And it's like, okay, like I got to separate from brand and creative direction and you know, be a little bit more open to the fluidity of, you know, what the ads actually want, what converts, what catches attention.

Evan Lee: It's so interesting because like now we're talking ad level, but in your experience, was there a different process for building for performance creative versus building for like the website and more traditional brand assets?

Brendan Bannister: Great question. Yeah, and again, this is something I've been, you know, kind of trying to teach some of the brands that we work with. Um, I noticed a lot in the younger brands who haven't necessarily cracked scale, you know, people that are probably below 5 million in revenue and run rate, um, maybe even at that level too, but creative has to be, there has to be intention behind your creative. You have to when you when you go and produce it, there has to be an intention. What is the reason for this creative? Am I just making creative because it looks beautiful and because I want to show off my product? Or am I making creative because I want to convert, right? So you can have different levels of creative. You know, there's brand creative that is for the website to make things look beautiful, to launch a new product. But then there's performance marketing creative. And this is where things are really shifting where people are realizing that, okay, the beautiful stuff or the non-intentional creative doesn't necessarily work. And we have to have direct response marketing and hooks and intention behind the creative. Like the creative has to have a specific purpose. Are we trying to show off or are we trying to drive revenue? Because there's two different things.

Evan Lee: Yeah. And speaking to your creator hat when you were going through the process of starting to shoot stuff and go through that process, um, the assets that you made, were there, was there a primary intention that you speak to? Like was it to live on the website or was it to live on ads or are you doing like simultaneously both at the same time?

Brendan Bannister: Um, when we first started out, it was to be beautiful, right? Like the the the hypothesis was beautiful creative will convert. You know, six months, nine months into it, you realize, wait a minute, if we have intention behind it, if we focus on hooks, if we focus on grabbing attention in the first three seconds, it's going to convert better. And then it shifted to having two different types of creative. There's a creative direction creative, which is to show the brand, to build the brand, to to display the brand as bigger than life. And then there's the intentional creative that is top of funnel, middle funnel, bottom of funnel, cold traffic, warm traffic, and then, you know, ready to purchase. So it does have to shift at some point to have be intention-based.

Evan Lee: So interesting. So I'm now personally curious because I feel fired up just the way that you're talking about it. Um, like being able to foster that culture essentially, right? Like how do you, how do you communicate that to the specific person to be like, no, dig into your bag. Like we want to see something amazing. Are you doing it through a brief and like, if so, what's in that information? Is it a conversation? If so, what are you talking about? How does that look?

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, so whenever I write creative briefs, uh, for any type of person that's doing anything creative, I say, think outside the box. This is your, these these are the parameters of what I'm looking for. You're the artist. I'm hiring you for a reason. I want you to think outside the box. Don't be afraid to give me an idea. But don't take offense when I turn the idea down. And people are like, okay, I like that. And they'll come up with you with, you know, three, four, five ideas. And if you shoot four of them down, but one of them you test, that's all that matters.

Evan Lee: What are some examples of those parameters?

Brendan Bannister: Uh, you know, like I was talking about, um, it just kind of like totally depends on what you're doing, but let's say if you're shooting for a makeup brand, you're doing some UGC scripted creative for a makeup brand, you know, parameter is has to have natural light. You have to be looking at the camera, you know, you have to be, you can't be wearing any, you know, big logos on your shirt, you know, basic things like that. The video has to be one minute long. You have to use this type of hook, you know, etc. These are the parameters. But if you have any other ideas, like please throw them at me. Like I want to hear what you're thinking. And they'll say, oh, I was thinking about doing a shot in the backyard in the jacuzzi. I'm like, perfect. I didn't know you had a jacuzzi. Let's do it. That doesn't make sense for makeup, but you know what I'm saying.

Evan Lee: That's so cool. Um, I get to talk to a lot of people about this kind of stuff, right? And I know there's some teams who are super strict on, we provide the whole script, they do the script, right? And then there's other people like yourself who says, have that freedom, like push some back to me and like be creative at the end of the day. And the really cool thing, Brendan, just about this is because you come from that lens of being the creator, it's like wanting to give them maximum flexibility. So I think that's something that everybody can kind of take away. You might lean because you're a more data-driven person to say, how do I control the situation? But we need to be sure to empower people with the with the right parameters and then just like give them a chance to be like empowered and make the decisions they want.

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, exactly.

Evan Lee: Okay. So let's let's switch gears a little bit with what you were mentioning, um, with your creative ambassador or UGC program and all that good stuff. So you started off the conversation talking about like retainers and making sure people feel valued in their work and it's like you're willing to give them a shot. Let's take a step back, um, a little bit further. It's like, where do you, where do you go to even source these type of creators that you want to work with?

Brendan Bannister: Upwork. I go on Upwork. No, seriously. I go on Upwork. Well, what I'll do is I'll go on Instagram. I'll find a creator that I like that fits my parameters, maybe three of them, so three similar creators. And I'll say, and then I'll go on Google Docs and I'll make a list and I'll put the three creators in there. I'll say what I like about them. And then I'll find someone that I don't like and I'll put that as an example. This is an example of what not to use. I'll go on Upwork. I'll hire someone on Upwork to go and source me 250 or 300 of these creators or 100 of these creators in America or Europe or in geographic location. They have a software that automatically sources them, so they do it in a split second. And then they give me that database. And then I'll go through the database that I get on Excel sheets or Google sheets and, you know, pick the ones I like and reach out to the ones I like with a DM, email, you know, whatever it may be.

Evan Lee: Are you manually sending those DMs out yourself?

Brendan Bannister: Um, usually, it depends, right? You know, sometimes you give them to the client and here's your here's your list. It it just totally depends. DMing takes a lot of time, but you know, if you have the resources, you have to remember right now, I'm I'm on the consultant side, so I'm helping the brands build their teams and kind of giving them ideas of how to do it. Um, so it's it's about, you know, whose time you should you should do it with, but you know, um, yeah.

Evan Lee: Love it. Love it. And then on your end, something that we've chatted about off camera a bunch is just like the idea of building out a creative ambassador program. So sometimes, uh, I'm not sure how people in the chat feel, so I'm really curious to hear your thoughts too, but just like the whole idea of UGC sometimes is again, two ends of the spectrum. It's either we don't get paid enough or it's like it's becoming super expensive and a little bit like like wild out there. And in in between our conversations, I know you've mentioned ways that it's like we can do this in an inexpensive way, but everyone's happy. Like talk to the talk to the people a little bit more around like your process and how you've done that.

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, so another, I'm sorry, another thing that I I see kind of coming up a lot is people confusing ambassadors with influencers and UGC content. And it's kind of like no one, there's no label for it right now. So when I say creative ambassadors, I'm not a big believer in influencer marketing personally, being an influencer as well in the past. Like as a media buyer and as a creative strategist, to me, the most valuable thing is the creative itself, not the influence, the influencer that comes with it. So I'm not really interested in the people that have 200,000 followers and make beautiful content because they're going to be expensive, no matter what. And they're looking for the influence. They're not necessarily selling the content. I care more about the person on TikTok or or Instagram that has 2,000 followers and makes content and that can take direction is willing to be a creative for me, not an influencer.

Evan Lee: That's so interesting. Is it just like, does that tie into, I don't even know how to describe it. Is it an ego thing that you've noticed just through just through these conversations or does it just like you're sorting through a million people and there just happens to be diamonds in the rough? Does that make sense?

Brendan Bannister: Well, I just haven't, you know, I haven't worked with a brand that's really had major success off of the word influencer. One of the brands and I I suggest everyone in this chat to go take a look at it is LSKD, Loose Kids. They're a clothing company from Australia. Um, the guy who built their creative team did a brilliant job of it and the ambassador team. And he didn't go after influencers, but influencers actually came to him. So what he did is he just got creators, photographers, you know, travel people, van life people from all over the world, sent them free gear, and they sent in content. And as they grew and grew and grew over the years and he said, you know, I'm going to send you $200 a month worth of gear and I need 10 photos. They love it. They get free clothes and they get 10 photos of them traveling and stuff like that. And as it grew and grew and grew, it became an influencer team. Now they have influencers reaching out saying, hey, I want to be a part of, you know, LSKD, I want your I want your clothes. And everyone's happy at the end at the end of it. And then of course as they get bigger, then they start, you know, paying massive influencers to be a part of it. But it kind of like starts from just building a creative team that people want to be a part of. And you'd be surprised at how the kind of like the group ideology plays on on Instagram. Like people like to represent things. They like to be a part of something. They like to be in a click and a collective of something. And if you foster that with creativity and with content and with, you know, either paid or free gifts, people love it and gravitate towards it.

Evan Lee: Yeah, wanting to be a part of the community is something that really resonates for me. It's just like they want to be there at the end of the day. It's not just a paycheck. So that starts to make a little bit more sense, right?

Brendan Bannister: Exactly. And if you can give them a paycheck, even better.

Evan Lee: Entirely, entirely. Um, and when we when we think about, when we think about like, uh, to the analysis side of things. So you have the asset that's gone live. Justin asked a question recently. It says, when it comes to creative analysis, how long are you typically letting creative sit in the market before you begin to optimize and iterate? So advising like media buying teams on when those changes need to be made.

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, it it it all depends on the amount of money you're spending. You know, if you're spending $50 a day, you're going to have to let it run for a month. If you're spending $1,000 a day, you'll know in three days, four days, five days. Um, also, you can't, like for example, um, over the holidays, a lot of companies tried to scale new creative during Black Friday, you know, the two or three weeks up to Black Friday. I'm like, it's not going to happen. Like you're literally trying to drive a boat in a storm. So just because it didn't work during Black Friday, doesn't mean it's not going to work in February or March. So you have to think, okay, what's the actual market doing? Am I testing this creative in a good time? Am I giving it enough data to learn? So, you know, when you're working with smaller budgets, if you're if you're testing, if you're starting with a $200, $200 a day budget on on YouTube or Facebook or whatever, I can't speak on Facebook, but on the YouTube side, you can't test five different videos with $200 a day budget because you'd have to let it run for a month or two months. But if you're able to test $1,000 a day, you can test five videos. You have to be cognizant and take the number, at least on YouTube, take the take your daily budget and divide it by the amount of videos that you're testing. And that's how much money has to go to each video at the same time. So if you have $100 and you're testing four videos, each video only gets $25. But if you test, if you test two videos with $100, you're getting $50 of learning per video, theoretically. Um, so it just goes a lot longer.

Evan Lee: Love it. Yeah, touching on so many of these things is just even like stage of funnels important to know. How long do we do we launch before we iterate is important to know. Justin also has another question just digging into, uh, like the team structures once again. So let's say we do hit that point of scale. Remember how you were talking about like those three types of, uh, like creative, which honestly should have their own types of people associated with them. If you're advising on like a structure that you would like to see built, how are you typically building that out? Is it a creative strategist that owns each of those portfolio? Is it only one creative strategist with multiple editors rolling up? What does that start to look like?

Brendan Bannister: I think it it just has to be fluid. Like if you have a very, very talented creative strategist who can oversee multiple different areas and can systematically separate them the different systems, uh, the different types of creative, then yeah, you could have one person doing it. Um, but you know, if you have, if if you don't have someone at that level, you know, maybe you should have, you know, someone focusing strictly on creative ambassadors, someone focusing strictly on, you know, high-level art directed directed credit or creative and then some person focusing on direct response, you know, drive creative that's going to drive revenue.

Evan Lee: So interesting. So interesting. And then when we're talking about the actual structure of teams now, right? Because like traditionally on one hand, we have people who who are running the ads and then we have the creative folks on this side, right? Structurally speaking, who do these editors and additional members roll up into?

Brendan Bannister: Right. So you'd have the creative strategist, you know, theoretically at the at the top of the pyramid. I like to, you know, describe things in in pyramids, but you have you have the creative strategist in the top. You'd have, uh, copywriter, you know, script writers is extremely important. You know, that I if if we have a triangle, I would say the messaging of the creative is at the bottom of the triangle. I don't know how many people are familiar with like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but I model a lot of a lot of that off this. You have you have a triangle like this, the bottom layer would be messaging. Um, and that's kind of like what you build the script around. And then the next layer would be either creative strategist or like an art director or a creative director that would say, you know, here's our intention behind this creative, whether it's a seasonal creative or, you know, it's going to be outdoors or indoors or whatever it is. And then you kind of give the art direction. And then you have the producers and the editors or what kind of like bring the final piece together. And then, you know, when you have the content produced, the editors can chop that up a hundred different ways. So one of the things that's really popular now is you you get your script, you you do it all. Let's just say for example, the script is one minute, you could write five or 10 different hooks. And the editors can chop, can make that video and then chop up, you know, 10 different hooks. And this is where, you know, Motion comes in because you can run these ads against each other for the 10 different hooks and see, okay, hook one and three worked, the other ones don't. So let's make variations of hook one and three and we don't have to change the rest of the video. We just have to change the hook.

Evan Lee: Most definitely. Maximize, yeah, if it works, maximizing your time and dollars at that point, right? And and something I'm always so curious about is to like bring it back to that brand and performance style conversation. In your experience, how does the overlap occur between both of the teams? Because technically speaking, a creative strategist and the team could live in one org, but then the performance side on the other. How do you make sure that they're almost able to act in lock step to be able to produce winning assets? Does that make sense?

Brendan Bannister: Right. Yeah. Um, it's an interesting question. I think it it has to be a, um, collaborative approach between the performance team and the creative team. But when I say collaborative, it can't be kind of like directional based. Like you can't have a performance team telling the creative team exactly what needs to be done. The performance team will have to say, here's what's working. And the creative team has to be able to look at what's working and say, we can copy this and make iterations of it or that's working, here's a theory I have and then you have to and then you test it. And then the performance team will say, it looks beautiful, this worked, but this doesn't work. And the creative team has to say, okay, I'm not going to take offense to the fact that it doesn't work, but I'm going to come, you know, come back with three other options that may or may not work.

Evan Lee: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I love it. And it's so interesting because like you mentioned, you've been doing photography and you've been doing creative work like forever at this point, right? So in your side of things, like you've now been exposed to all areas and all like parts of the spectrum. Why do you think now more than ever it's more it's important for like creative people or creative world in general to be data-driven?

Brendan Bannister: Um, because I think as media buying becomes more consolidated and more AI-driven, it's less about how you press the buttons at the media level, it's more about what you put in it. So you have to be able to understand like how the ads are kind of performing to then give guidance to create those ads. Um, and as as we shift more towards an AI world where, you know, media buying, media buyers will eventually get phased out, it's all on the creative team. And it's those people who can look at the creative details that, you know, Motion provides such as, you know, how long are we drawing users into a video, where they when are they clicking and things like that, which can give guidance to producing more content or making iterations from that content.

Evan Lee: It's so, it's it's actually the perfect segue because when we talk about like being data-driven, it's also a matter of like who does that person actually like need to be who's data-driven? Is it the actual designer themselves or is it someone who's enabling that process? Um, so let's switch gears a little bit. Now, through your experience, you've touched so many different things to speak to starting to build out creative teams and ultimately what that means. Um, the first place that I like to start is as much as process is important is that conversation of brand and performance, right? Like sometimes they're so at odds just in terms of contending focuses for brands and all that kind of stuff. Like first of all, like share your opinion on brand and performance. And then secondly, if I have to ask you the second again, don't worry, but secondly, like depending on where you land, how do you tackle that conversation?

Brendan Bannister: It's a conversation that, you know, we consult for quite a few clients and a lot of the struggle is around letting go of that that kind of like attachment to brand. And you know, I think brand has to be fluid, but also has to be data-driven. So like people are really attached, they have a parameters of what their brand is, but really in the digital era as we go more towards AI algorithms again, you have to be open to changing that. And I think one of the things that I've fought with a lot as a creative, right? When I first started doing video in the in the performance marketing side as a video producer, I wanted everything to be beautiful. I wanted it to have, you know, that artistic touch to it. And I learned very quickly that beautiful doesn't always convert. And truthfully, iPhone converts a lot more. So as a creative, it's something you fight against. As a creative director, you want everything to be so nitpicky, but you know what? There's 12 fonts in the world that just convert better because humans just like them better. And if your font isn't one of those, you know, it's going to hurt your, you know, conversion rate at that video level, at the at the photo level. So you have to be okay, look, I'll have my fancy fonts on my website, but at the ad level, we have to be okay and, you know, just let the data take us where it goes.

Evan Lee: I love it. And when you first learned that, like that realization of, because I think a lot of people go through that. It's like this is so pretty, this looks incredible. It should work, right? Like when did you actually first learn that it's no longer the case?

Brendan Bannister: Um, this is back in, uh, I think 20, 2019 when I was working with William Painter and we were scaling on YouTube and we had some really fancy content that I shot. We had some really fancy content that some of the agencies we work with shot and they were scaling. And we went out and filmed an iPhone video in the rain trying to sell sunglasses and it crushed. And it just blew my mind and I'm like, wait a minute. So this iPhone video in the rain that's, you know, kind of blurry, you can't even hear the audio is doing better than this video we spent three months producing. And it's like, okay, like I got to separate from brand and creative direction and you know, be a little bit more open to the fluidity of, you know, what the ads actually want, what converts, what catches attention.

Evan Lee: It's so interesting because like now we're talking ad level, but in your experience, was there a different process for building for performance creative versus building for like the website and more traditional brand assets?

Brendan Bannister: Great question. Yeah, and again, this is something I've been, you know, kind of trying to teach some of the brands that we work with. Um, I noticed a lot in the younger brands who haven't necessarily cracked scale, you know, people that are probably below 5 million in revenue and run rate, um, maybe even at that level too, but creative has to be, there has to be intention behind your creative. You have to when you when you go and produce it, there has to be an intention. What is the reason for this creative? Am I just making creative because it looks beautiful and because I want to show off my product? Or am I making creative because I want to convert, right? So you can have different levels of creative. You know, there's brand creative that is for the website to make things look beautiful, to launch a new product. But then there's performance marketing creative. And this is where things are really shifting where people are realizing that, okay, the beautiful stuff or the non-intentional creative doesn't necessarily work. And we have to have direct response marketing and hooks and intention behind the creative. Like the creative has to have a specific purpose. Are we trying to show off or are we trying to drive revenue? Because there's two different things.

Evan Lee: Yeah. And speaking to your creator hat when you were going through the process of starting to shoot stuff and go through that process, um, the assets that you made, were there, was there a primary intention that you speak to? Like was it to live on the website or was it to live on ads or are you doing like simultaneously both at the same time?

Brendan Bannister: Um, when we first started out, it was to be beautiful, right? Like the the the hypothesis was beautiful creative will convert. You know, six months, nine months into it, you realize, wait a minute, if we have intention behind it, if we focus on hooks, if we focus on grabbing attention in the first three seconds, it's going to convert better. And then it shifted to having two different types of creative. There's a creative direction creative, which is to show the brand, to build the brand, to to display the brand as bigger than life. And then there's the intentional creative that is top of funnel, middle funnel, bottom of funnel, cold traffic, warm traffic, and then, you know, ready to purchase. So it does have to shift at some point to have be intention-based.

Evan Lee: So interesting. So I'm now personally curious because I feel fired up just the way that you're talking about it. Um, like being able to foster that culture essentially, right? Like how do you, how do you communicate that to the specific person to be like, no, dig into your bag. Like we want to see something amazing. Are you doing it through a brief and like, if so, what's in that information? Is it a conversation? If so, what are you talking about? How does that look?

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, so whenever I write creative briefs, uh, for any type of person that's doing anything creative, I say, think outside the box. This is your, these these are the parameters of what I'm looking for. You're the artist. I'm hiring you for a reason. I want you to think outside the box. Don't be afraid to give me an idea. But don't take offense when I turn the idea down. And people are like, okay, I like that. And they'll come up with you with, you know, three, four, five ideas. And if you shoot four of them down, but one of them you test, that's all that matters.

Evan Lee: What are some examples of those parameters?

Brendan Bannister: Uh, you know, like I was talking about, um, it just kind of like totally depends on what you're doing, but let's say if you're shooting for a makeup brand, you're doing some UGC scripted creative for a makeup brand, you know, parameter is has to have natural light. You have to be looking at the camera, you know, you have to be, you can't be wearing any, you know, big logos on your shirt, you know, basic things like that. The video has to be one minute long. You have to use this type of hook, you know, etc. These are the parameters. But if you have any other ideas, like please throw them at me. Like I want to hear what you're thinking. And they'll say, oh, I was thinking about doing a shot in the backyard in the jacuzzi. I'm like, perfect. I didn't know you had a jacuzzi. Let's do it. That doesn't make sense for makeup, but you know what I'm saying.

Evan Lee: That's so cool. Um, I get to talk to a lot of people about this kind of stuff, right? And I know there's some teams who are super strict on, we provide the whole script, they do the script, right? And then there's other people like yourself who says, have that freedom, like push some back to me and like be creative at the end of the day. And the really cool thing, Brendan, just about this is because you come from that lens of being the creator, it's like wanting to give them maximum flexibility. So I think that's something that everybody can kind of take away. You might lean because you're a more data-driven person to say, how do I control the situation? But we need to be sure to empower people with the with the right parameters and then just like give them a chance to be like empowered and make the decisions they want.

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, exactly.

Evan Lee: Okay. So let's let's switch gears a little bit with what you were mentioning, um, with your creative ambassador or UGC program and all that good stuff. So you started off the conversation talking about like retainers and making sure people feel valued in their work and it's like you're willing to give them a shot. Let's take a step back, um, a little bit further. It's like, where do you, where do you go to even source these type of creators that you want to work with?

Brendan Bannister: Upwork. I go on Upwork. No, seriously. I go on Upwork. Well, what I'll do is I'll go on Instagram. I'll find a creator that I like that fits my parameters, maybe three of them, so three similar creators. And I'll say, and then I'll go on Google Docs and I'll make a list and I'll put the three creators in there. I'll say what I like about them. And then I'll find someone that I don't like and I'll put that as an example. This is an example of what not to use. I'll go on Upwork. I'll hire someone on Upwork to go and source me 250 or 300 of these creators or 100 of these creators in America or Europe or in geographic location. They have a software that automatically sources them, so they do it in a split second. And then they give me that database. And then I'll go through the database that I get on Excel sheets or Google sheets and, you know, pick the ones I like and reach out to the ones I like with a DM, email, you know, whatever it may be.

Evan Lee: Are you manually sending those DMs out yourself?

Brendan Bannister: Um, usually, it depends, right? You know, sometimes you give them to the client and here's your here's your list. It it just totally depends. DMing takes a lot of time, but you know, if you have the resources, you have to remember right now, I'm I'm on the consultant side, so I'm helping the brands build their teams and kind of giving them ideas of how to do it. Um, so it's it's about, you know, whose time you should you should do it with, but you know, um, yeah.

Evan Lee: Love it. Love it. And then on your end, something that we've chatted about off camera a bunch is just like the idea of building out a creative ambassador program. So sometimes, uh, I'm not sure how people in the chat feel, so I'm really curious to hear your thoughts too, but just like the whole idea of UGC sometimes is again, two ends of the spectrum. It's either we don't get paid enough or it's like it's becoming super expensive and a little bit like like wild out there. And in in between our conversations, I know you've mentioned ways that it's like we can do this in an inexpensive way, but everyone's happy. Like talk to the talk to the people a little bit more around like your process and how you've done that.

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, so another, I'm sorry, another thing that I I see kind of coming up a lot is people confusing ambassadors with influencers and UGC content. And it's kind of like no one, there's no label for it right now. So when I say creative ambassadors, I'm not a big believer in influencer marketing personally, being an influencer as well in the past. Like as a media buyer and as a creative strategist, to me, the most valuable thing is the creative itself, not the influence, the influencer that comes with it. So I'm not really interested in the people that have 200,000 followers and make beautiful content because they're going to be expensive, no matter what. And they're looking for the influence. They're not necessarily selling the content. I care more about the person on TikTok or or Instagram that has 2,000 followers and makes content and that can take direction is willing to be a creative for me, not an influencer.

Evan Lee: That's so interesting. Is it just like, does that tie into, I don't even know how to describe it. Is it an ego thing that you've noticed just through just through these conversations or does it just like you're sorting through a million people and there just happens to be diamonds in the rough? Does that make sense?

Brendan Bannister: Well, I just haven't, you know, I haven't worked with a brand that's really had major success off of the word influencer. One of the brands and I I suggest everyone in this chat to go take a look at it is LSKD, Loose Kids. They're a clothing company from Australia. Um, the guy who built their creative team did a brilliant job of it and the ambassador team. And he didn't go after influencers, but influencers actually came to him. So what he did is he just got creators, photographers, you know, travel people, van life people from all over the world, sent them free gear, and they sent in content. And as they grew and grew and grew over the years and he said, you know, I'm going to send you $200 a month worth of gear and I need 10 photos. They love it. They get free clothes and they get 10 photos of them traveling and stuff like that. And as it grew and grew and grew, it became an influencer team. Now they have influencers reaching out saying, hey, I want to be a part of, you know, LSKD, I want your I want your clothes. And everyone's happy at the end at the end of it. And then of course as they get bigger, then they start, you know, paying massive influencers to be a part of it. But it kind of like starts from just building a creative team that people want to be a part of. And you'd be surprised at how the kind of like the group ideology plays on on Instagram. Like people like to represent things. They like to be a part of something. They like to be in a click and a collective of something. And if you foster that with creativity and with content and with, you know, either paid or free gifts, people love it and gravitate towards it.

Evan Lee: Yeah, wanting to be a part of the community is something that really resonates for me. It's just like they want to be there at the end of the day. It's not just a paycheck. So that starts to make a little bit more sense, right?

Brendan Bannister: Exactly. And if you can give them a paycheck, even better.

Evan Lee: Entirely, entirely. Um, and when we when we think about, when we think about like, uh, to the analysis side of things. So you have the asset that's gone live. Justin asked a question recently. It says, when it comes to creative analysis, how long are you typically letting creative sit in the market before you begin to optimize and iterate? So advising like media buying teams on when those changes need to be made.

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, it it it all depends on the amount of money you're spending. You know, if you're spending $50 a day, you're going to have to let it run for a month. If you're spending $1,000 a day, you'll know in three days, four days, five days. Um, also, you can't, like for example, um, over the holidays, a lot of companies tried to scale new creative during Black Friday, you know, the two or three weeks up to Black Friday. I'm like, it's not going to happen. Like you're literally trying to drive a boat in a storm. So just because it didn't work during Black Friday, doesn't mean it's not going to work in February or March. So you have to think, okay, what's the actual market doing? Am I testing this creative in a good time? Am I giving it enough data to learn? So, you know, when you're working with smaller budgets, if you're if you're testing, if you're starting with a $200, $200 a day budget on on YouTube or Facebook or whatever, I can't speak on Facebook, but on the YouTube side, you can't test five different videos with $200 a day budget because you'd have to let it run for a month or two months. But if you're able to test $1,000 a day, you can test five videos. You have to be cognizant and take the number, at least on YouTube, take the take your daily budget and divide it by the amount of videos that you're testing. And that's how much money has to go to each video at the same time. So if you have $100 and you're testing four videos, each video only gets $25. But if you test, if you test two videos with $100, you're getting $50 of learning per video, theoretically. Um, so it just goes a lot longer.

Evan Lee: Love it. Yeah, touching on so many of these things is just even like stage of funnels important to know. How long do we do we launch before we iterate is important to know. Justin also has another question just digging into, uh, like the team structures once again. So let's say we do hit that point of scale. Remember how you were talking about like those three types of, uh, like creative, which honestly should have their own types of people associated with them. If you're advising on like a structure that you would like to see built, how are you typically building that out? Is it a creative strategist that owns each of those portfolio? Is it only one creative strategist with multiple editors rolling up? What does that start to look like?

Brendan Bannister: I think it it just has to be fluid. Like if you have a very, very talented creative strategist who can oversee multiple different areas and can systematically separate them the different systems, uh, the different types of creative, then yeah, you could have one person doing it. Um, but you know, if you have, if if you don't have someone at that level, you know, maybe you should have, you know, someone focusing strictly on creative ambassadors, someone focusing strictly on, you know, high-level art directed directed credit or creative and then some person focusing on direct response, you know, drive creative that's going to drive revenue.

Evan Lee: So interesting. So interesting. And then when we're talking about the actual structure of teams now, right? Because like traditionally on one hand, we have people who who are running the ads and then we have the creative folks on this side, right? Structurally speaking, who do these editors and additional members roll up into?

Brendan Bannister: Right. So you'd have the creative strategist, you know, theoretically at the at the top of the pyramid. I like to, you know, describe things in in pyramids, but you have you have the creative strategist in the top. You'd have, uh, copywriter, you know, script writers is extremely important. You know, that I if if we have a triangle, I would say the messaging of the creative is at the bottom of the triangle. I don't know how many people are familiar with like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but I model a lot of a lot of that off this. You have you have a triangle like this, the bottom layer would be messaging. Um, and that's kind of like what you build the script around. And then the next layer would be either creative strategist or like an art director or a creative director that would say, you know, here's our intention behind this creative, whether it's a seasonal creative or, you know, it's going to be outdoors or indoors or whatever it is. And then you kind of give the art direction. And then you have the producers and the editors or what kind of like bring the final piece together. And then, you know, when you have the content produced, the editors can chop that up a hundred different ways. So one of the things that's really popular now is you you get your script, you you do it all. Let's just say for example, the script is one minute, you could write five or 10 different hooks. And the editors can chop, can make that video and then chop up, you know, 10 different hooks. And this is where, you know, Motion comes in because you can run these ads against each other for the 10 different hooks and see, okay, hook one and three worked, the other ones don't. So let's make variations of hook one and three and we don't have to change the rest of the video. We just have to change the hook.

Evan Lee: Most definitely. Maximize, yeah, if it works, maximizing your time and dollars at that point, right? And and something I'm always so curious about is to like bring it back to that brand and performance style conversation. In your experience, how does the overlap occur between both of the teams? Because technically speaking, a creative strategist and the team could live in one org, but then the performance side on the other. How do you make sure that they're almost able to act in lock step to be able to produce winning assets? Does that make sense?

Brendan Bannister: Right. Yeah. Um, it's an interesting question. I think it it has to be a, um, collaborative approach between the performance team and the creative team. But when I say collaborative, it can't be kind of like directional based. Like you can't have a performance team telling the creative team exactly what needs to be done. The performance team will have to say, here's what's working. And the creative team has to be able to look at what's working and say, we can copy this and make iterations of it or that's working, here's a theory I have and then you have to and then you test it. And then the performance team will say, it looks beautiful, this worked, but this doesn't work. And the creative team has to say, okay, I'm not going to take offense to the fact that it doesn't work, but I'm going to come, you know, come back with three other options that may or may not work.

Evan Lee: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I love it. And it's so interesting because like you mentioned, you've been doing photography and you've been doing creative work like forever at this point, right? So in your side of things, like you've now been exposed to all areas and all like parts of the spectrum. Why do you think now more than ever it's more it's important for like creative people or creative world in general to be data-driven?

Brendan Bannister: Um, because I think as media buying becomes more consolidated and more AI-driven, it's less about how you press the buttons at the media level, it's more about what you put in it. So you have to be able to understand like how the ads are kind of performing to then give guidance to create those ads. Um, and as as we shift more towards an AI world where, you know, media buying, media buyers will eventually get phased out, it's all on the creative team. And it's those people who can look at the creative details that, you know, Motion provides such as, you know, how long are we drawing users into a video, where they when are they clicking and things like that, which can give guidance to producing more content or making iterations from that content.

Evan Lee: It's so, it's it's actually the perfect segue because when we talk about like being data-driven, it's also a matter of like who does that person actually like need to be who's data-driven? Is it the actual designer themselves or is it someone who's enabling that process? Um, so let's switch gears a little bit. Now, through your experience, you've touched so many different things to speak to starting to build out creative teams and ultimately what that means. Um, the first place that I like to start is as much as process is important is that conversation of brand and performance, right? Like sometimes they're so at odds just in terms of contending focuses for brands and all that kind of stuff. Like first of all, like share your opinion on brand and performance. And then secondly, if I have to ask you the second again, don't worry, but secondly, like depending on where you land, how do you tackle that conversation?

Brendan Bannister: It's a conversation that, you know, we consult for quite a few clients and a lot of the struggle is around letting go of that that kind of like attachment to brand. And you know, I think brand has to be fluid, but also has to be data-driven. So like people are really attached, they have a parameters of what their brand is, but really in the digital era as we go more towards AI algorithms again, you have to be open to changing that. And I think one of the things that I've fought with a lot as a creative, right? When I first started doing video in the in the performance marketing side as a video producer, I wanted everything to be beautiful. I wanted it to have, you know, that artistic touch to it. And I learned very quickly that beautiful doesn't always convert. And truthfully, iPhone converts a lot more. So as a creative, it's something you fight against. As a creative director, you want everything to be so nitpicky, but you know what? There's 12 fonts in the world that just convert better because humans just like them better. And if your font isn't one of those, you know, it's going to hurt your, you know, conversion rate at that video level, at the at the photo level. So you have to be okay, look, I'll have my fancy fonts on my website, but at the ad level, we have to be okay and, you know, just let the data take us where it goes.

Evan Lee: I love it. And when you first learned that, like that realization of, because I think a lot of people go through that. It's like this is so pretty, this looks incredible. It should work, right? Like when did you actually first learn that it's no longer the case?

Brendan Bannister: Um, this is back in, uh, I think 20, 2019 when I was working with William Painter and we were scaling on YouTube and we had some really fancy content that I shot. We had some really fancy content that some of the agencies we work with shot and they were scaling. And we went out and filmed an iPhone video in the rain trying to sell sunglasses and it crushed. And it just blew my mind and I'm like, wait a minute. So this iPhone video in the rain that's, you know, kind of blurry, you can't even hear the audio is doing better than this video we spent three months producing. And it's like, okay, like I got to separate from brand and creative direction and you know, be a little bit more open to the fluidity of, you know, what the ads actually want, what converts, what catches attention.

Evan Lee: It's so interesting because like now we're talking ad level, but in your experience, was there a different process for building for performance creative versus building for like the website and more traditional brand assets?

Brendan Bannister: Great question. Yeah, and again, this is something I've been, you know, kind of trying to teach some of the brands that we work with. Um, I noticed a lot in the younger brands who haven't necessarily cracked scale, you know, people that are probably below 5 million in revenue and run rate, um, maybe even at that level too, but creative has to be, there has to be intention behind your creative. You have to when you when you go and produce it, there has to be an intention. What is the reason for this creative? Am I just making creative because it looks beautiful and because I want to show off my product? Or am I making creative because I want to convert, right? So you can have different levels of creative. You know, there's brand creative that is for the website to make things look beautiful, to launch a new product. But then there's performance marketing creative. And this is where things are really shifting where people are realizing that, okay, the beautiful stuff or the non-intentional creative doesn't necessarily work. And we have to have direct response marketing and hooks and intention behind the creative. Like the creative has to have a specific purpose. Are we trying to show off or are we trying to drive revenue? Because there's two different things.

Evan Lee: Yeah. And speaking to your creator hat when you were going through the process of starting to shoot stuff and go through that process, um, the assets that you made, were there, was there a primary intention that you speak to? Like was it to live on the website or was it to live on ads or are you doing like simultaneously both at the same time?

Brendan Bannister: Um, when we first started out, it was to be beautiful, right? Like the the the hypothesis was beautiful creative will convert. You know, six months, nine months into it, you realize, wait a minute, if we have intention behind it, if we focus on hooks, if we focus on grabbing attention in the first three seconds, it's going to convert better. And then it shifted to having two different types of creative. There's a creative direction creative, which is to show the brand, to build the brand, to to display the brand as bigger than life. And then there's the intentional creative that is top of funnel, middle funnel, bottom of funnel, cold traffic, warm traffic, and then, you know, ready to purchase. So it does have to shift at some point to have be intention-based.

Evan Lee: So interesting. So I'm now personally curious because I feel fired up just the way that you're talking about it. Um, like being able to foster that culture essentially, right? Like how do you, how do you communicate that to the specific person to be like, no, dig into your bag. Like we want to see something amazing. Are you doing it through a brief and like, if so, what's in that information? Is it a conversation? If so, what are you talking about? How does that look?

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, so whenever I write creative briefs, uh, for any type of person that's doing anything creative, I say, think outside the box. This is your, these these are the parameters of what I'm looking for. You're the artist. I'm hiring you for a reason. I want you to think outside the box. Don't be afraid to give me an idea. But don't take offense when I turn the idea down. And people are like, okay, I like that. And they'll come up with you with, you know, three, four, five ideas. And if you shoot four of them down, but one of them you test, that's all that matters.

Evan Lee: What are some examples of those parameters?

Brendan Bannister: Uh, you know, like I was talking about, um, it just kind of like totally depends on what you're doing, but let's say if you're shooting for a makeup brand, you're doing some UGC scripted creative for a makeup brand, you know, parameter is has to have natural light. You have to be looking at the camera, you know, you have to be, you can't be wearing any, you know, big logos on your shirt, you know, basic things like that. The video has to be one minute long. You have to use this type of hook, you know, etc. These are the parameters. But if you have any other ideas, like please throw them at me. Like I want to hear what you're thinking. And they'll say, oh, I was thinking about doing a shot in the backyard in the jacuzzi. I'm like, perfect. I didn't know you had a jacuzzi. Let's do it. That doesn't make sense for makeup, but you know what I'm saying.

Evan Lee: That's so cool. Um, I get to talk to a lot of people about this kind of stuff, right? And I know there's some teams who are super strict on, we provide the whole script, they do the script, right? And then there's other people like yourself who says, have that freedom, like push some back to me and like be creative at the end of the day. And the really cool thing, Brendan, just about this is because you come from that lens of being the creator, it's like wanting to give them maximum flexibility. So I think that's something that everybody can kind of take away. You might lean because you're a more data-driven person to say, how do I control the situation? But we need to be sure to empower people with the with the right parameters and then just like give them a chance to be like empowered and make the decisions they want.

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, exactly.

Evan Lee: Okay. So let's let's switch gears a little bit with what you were mentioning, um, with your creative ambassador or UGC program and all that good stuff. So you started off the conversation talking about like retainers and making sure people feel valued in their work and it's like you're willing to give them a shot. Let's take a step back, um, a little bit further. It's like, where do you, where do you go to even source these type of creators that you want to work with?

Brendan Bannister: Upwork. I go on Upwork. No, seriously. I go on Upwork. Well, what I'll do is I'll go on Instagram. I'll find a creator that I like that fits my parameters, maybe three of them, so three similar creators. And I'll say, and then I'll go on Google Docs and I'll make a list and I'll put the three creators in there. I'll say what I like about them. And then I'll find someone that I don't like and I'll put that as an example. This is an example of what not to use. I'll go on Upwork. I'll hire someone on Upwork to go and source me 250 or 300 of these creators or 100 of these creators in America or Europe or in geographic location. They have a software that automatically sources them, so they do it in a split second. And then they give me that database. And then I'll go through the database that I get on Excel sheets or Google sheets and, you know, pick the ones I like and reach out to the ones I like with a DM, email, you know, whatever it may be.

Evan Lee: Are you manually sending those DMs out yourself?

Brendan Bannister: Um, usually, it depends, right? You know, sometimes you give them to the client and here's your here's your list. It it just totally depends. DMing takes a lot of time, but you know, if you have the resources, you have to remember right now, I'm I'm on the consultant side, so I'm helping the brands build their teams and kind of giving them ideas of how to do it. Um, so it's it's about, you know, whose time you should you should do it with, but you know, um, yeah.

Evan Lee: Love it. Love it. And then on your end, something that we've chatted about off camera a bunch is just like the idea of building out a creative ambassador program. So sometimes, uh, I'm not sure how people in the chat feel, so I'm really curious to hear your thoughts too, but just like the whole idea of UGC sometimes is again, two ends of the spectrum. It's either we don't get paid enough or it's like it's becoming super expensive and a little bit like like wild out there. And in in between our conversations, I know you've mentioned ways that it's like we can do this in an inexpensive way, but everyone's happy. Like talk to the talk to the people a little bit more around like your process and how you've done that.

Brendan Bannister: Yeah, so another, I'm sorry, another thing that I I see kind of coming up a lot is people confusing ambassadors with influencers and UGC content. And it's kind of like no one, there's no label for it right now. So when I say creative ambassadors, I'm not a big believer in influencer marketing personally, being an influencer as well in the past. Like as a media buyer and as a creative strategist, to me, the most valuable thing is the creative itself, not the influence, the influencer that comes with it. So I'm not really interested in the people that have 200,000 followers and make beautiful content because they're going to be expensive, no matter what. And they're looking for the influence. They're not necessarily selling the content. I care more about the person on TikTok or or Instagram that has 2,000 followers and makes content and that can take direction is willing to be a creative for me, not an influencer.

Evan Lee: That's so interesting. Is it just like, does that tie into, I don't even know how to describe it. Is it an ego thing that you've noticed just through just through these conversations or does it just like you're sorting through a million people and there just happens to be diamonds in the rough? Does that make sense?

Brendan Bannister: Well, I just haven't, you know, I haven't worked with a brand that's really had major success off of the word influencer. One of the brands and I I suggest everyone in this chat to go take a look at it is LSKD, Loose Kids. They're a clothing company from Australia. Um, the guy who built their creative team did a brilliant job of it and the ambassador team. And he didn't go after influencers, but influencers actually came to him. So what he did is he just got creators, photographers, you know, travel people, van life people from all over the world, sent them free gear, and they sent in content. And as they grew and grew and grew over the years and he said, you know, I'm going to send you $200 a month worth of gear and I need 10 photos. They love it. They get free clothes and they get 10 photos of them traveling and stuff like that. And as it grew and grew and grew, it became an influencer team. Now they have influencers reaching out saying, hey, I want to be a part of, you know, LSKD, I want your I want your clothes. And everyone's happy at the end at the end of it. And then of course as they get bigger, then they start, you know, paying massive influencers to be a part of it. But it kind of like starts from just building a creative team that people want to be a part of. And you'd be surprised at how the kind of like the group ideology plays on on Instagram. Like people like to represent things. They like to be a part of something. They like to be