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Brain Driven Brands
From 1,000 Ads to 12: How Smart Brands Are Winning Differently
00:35:31
This episode of Brain Driven Brands is a wake-up call for every founder, media buyer, and creative who’s been told the secret is more ads, more volume, more work. Sarah, Nate, and guest Kevin (Head of eCom at High Camp Flasks) pull back the curtain...
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome back to Brain Driven Brands. It's me, it's Nate. Joined by Co host Mrs. Levenger.
- [00:09]
B
And so weird. Mrs. Levenger.
- [00:12]
A
Sorry. Levenger.
- [00:13]
B
That's fine. No, that's better. Yep. Levenger talked about this before that. I love the last names like yeah.
- [00:18]
A
Just Lagos and Levenger. Coming at you.
- [00:21]
C
I've only ever been called Luby pretty much my entire life.
- [00:23]
B
Have you really? Love you. I've never. No one ever uses my last name.
- [00:27]
C
So we got the four Ls, Legos, lavender and Luby.
- [00:29]
B
Yes.
- [00:30]
A
That's a law firm. Sure is that get be on the wrong end of a lot of lawsuits.
- [00:37]
C
Those strong arms.
- [00:38]
A
I do think it's a guy thing. We decided that last time. Right. Like guys get called by their last name and girls don't 100%.
- [00:44]
B
Which is weird if you think about it because like I. I know some women who have been best friends since like sandbox kindergarten days and not even they will call me Levenger. They just Sarah, which for one thing I hate my name. For the record, Sarah doesn't really love her name. You can't make a nickname out of it and that bothers me. I will always just be Sarah. Yeah, Always hated it. You can be a Nate and even Kevin. You could be a Kev. I don't know if you like the name. You don't like the Kev. Okay, no Kev or Kevin. It's a nickname thing for me. But I will say I. I'm in a predominantly male dominated industry so oftentimes people are just.
- [01:18]
A
I had a notice.
- [01:18]
B
Yeah. Oh yeah. You didn't know that? I didn't notice these things. Mostly dudes. Most people either call me Sarah or just don't call me anything.
- [01:26]
A
Yeah.
- [01:26]
B
Which I find really interesting. So people call you Legos?
- [01:29]
A
Yeah. About in the industry at conferences. Yeah.
- [01:33]
B
Nobody calls me Livinger. Is that like a weird.
- [01:35]
A
All right, well just a guy thing. And let me actually be more accurate. Nobody calls me Lagos because they don't know how to pronounce my name. Everyone calls me Lagos, which is incorrect.
- [01:44]
B
I find that really interesting because it's spelled like Legos. Why do people say Lagos?
- [01:48]
A
That's weird.
- [01:49]
B
Anyways. All right.
- [01:50]
A
Anyways, we are joined by a guest today who we haven't introduced yet. Kevin. Kevin, Director of E. Comm. Head of E. Comm for High Camp Laugh.
- [02:00]
B
You've been in a couple episodes with us before. But I'm excited to chat about this particular topic today because I feel like you and I have like, similar thought process going on at like opposite ends of the nation. So I would love for you to start just by telling us like what, why we probably start with what brand you're building, what you're working on, like what your role is and, and then we can walk through what your experience was in 2025. Cause I think you got some really interesting things to share today. So.
- [02:28]
C
Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I'm the head of E Commerce kind of marketing for High Camp flasks. We are kind of a drinkware adjacent, we like to call it fortified barware. Very high end, integrated indoor, outdoor stylish, very engineered products for wine, cocktails, spirits, mixing, hosting, you know, like we like to call ourselves like a great brand for the modern host, that kind of thing. And yeah, like we had a really, really big year last year. It was amazing. Super fun ride. Kind of like we're able to kind of get over that hump of being kind of like a side project, so to speak.
- [03:04]
B
Yeah.
- [03:05]
C
And then this, this year has continued. You know, we've seen some success. But I think, you know, we're. There's obviously like, I think as everyone's experiencing a bit of growing pains going on. I mean and like the reality is like growing pains are just always going on. So I don't know why like we're all of a sudden like, oh, 2025 is tough. And like it's been tough in very unique ways. Certainly like not ways that, that I was expecting. And you know, I think like we've gone through this like evolution this year specifically, you know, like everyone, we're very meta dependent but we all. I also just like think we're really good at making content for meta and so it's like, it's like we love doing that. Right. So it's not just because we think meta is the best for the business. It's because like, it's just really fun to do. But you know, like this year I, there's been this like this underpinning narrative amongst the ecosystem that I've been, that I've listened to, you know, as a like consumer of this ecosystem that's like volume, creative volume. Like you got to be ripping a thousand ads, loop ads is the greatest.
- [04:06]
A
Is the greatest, the dumbest takes I've ever heard.
- [04:08]
C
Yeah. And like, I'll be honest, like I bought into it at the beginning of the year. Like I bought into it. We tried to spin up and we're a very small team. Like we're, you know, me and one growth strategist. And a couple, like create a couple like freelancers. Right. Like, it's not like we're this big hive mind, but I'm really.
- [04:25]
A
Ads were you making like at the peak?
- [04:28]
C
Oh, you know, we tried to get to this place where we could like crank out a couple dozen a week.
- [04:33]
A
And that's so much more reasonable than whatever.
- [04:35]
B
Yeah. I was gonna say I thought it was gonna be hundreds. Cause that's what I see on volume. Interesting.
- [04:40]
C
Yeah, I mean like a couple dozen a week, you know, like having like meaningful, you know, and probably even a little more than that once you kind of like spread it out amongst all of our campaigns. Right. Like we have three kind of three hero products, three hero campaigns running. So we're trying to like, you know, support those with like a decent weekly or bi weekly update. And like it sucked.
- [05:05]
A
Like it's just a system that creates more work and more volatility.
- [05:09]
C
Yeah.
- [05:09]
A
Like there's no pros. I, I couldn't find any pros to it at all.
- [05:14]
C
No. And, and like as much as anything, we, we, you know, like it distracted from the more important stuff.
- [05:20]
B
Yeah.
- [05:20]
C
In a small team. Like, to me this is like almost a bandwidth challenge. And like. Okay, let me take one quick step back on the big hypothesis. Why I reached out to you, Sarah. I was like, make less ads. I think we're reading too deeply into Meta's company line around creative volume. And the reason is, is we aren't the, we aren't the only ecosystem running ads on Meta. There are barbers running ads on Meta. There are massive enterprise companies running ads on Meta. And I can almost guarantee you a bunch of these old enterprise Companies have like 12 ads on Meta and they're spending whatever a million dollars. But if they actually took the thing seriously, want increased creative volume beyond 12, they'd probably be spending 5 million a month on Meta. Right. Like, we have to like keep the context of this bigger entity. But we've all kind of like, I mean, this is just like my little tinfoil hat take. I want to clarify that my tinfoil hat take is going to say Nate's.
- [06:21]
B
Going to like it.
- [06:21]
C
It's like some people, some folks in the community are who are very, very talented and skilled, skillful, have been able to spin up better ad creating machines than I could. Good for them. And they're like, but then Meta's saying volume and I'm good at making volume. And it's all great and one grand and wonderful and volume is the answer. And like it just doesn't work for Me?
- [06:42]
A
Yeah. Increase your monthly retainer as a creative agency.
- [06:47]
C
You know what I mean?
- [06:49]
A
Volume's a great answer to that problem.
- [06:50]
B
Is how does it get if you're an agency.
- [06:53]
A
Yeah, but.
- [06:54]
C
And like. Yeah. And so yeah, I just think like. And then my last piece of tinfoil hatism is like Meta is successful if they make their platform easier to use. There is no way they are looking at mid market brands like ours, like Original Grain, like anyone and saying you need to make a thousand ads a month, bud. Creative is the hardest part of this whole ecosystem by tenfold. The button pushing is actually relatively easy at this point and. But you need a thousand great creative ideas to be successful. I just don't buy that. That is like agree. Where they're trying to put.
- [07:31]
A
If that's what they wanted, they'd make it easier to upload one ad. Thank you for 12 minutes. Because you.
- [07:37]
B
Why are you not optimizing for that then?
- [07:39]
A
Yeah, first of all, we could end the pod right now if you wanted to. Killer monologue on what's going on right now. And I want to touch on something that you said about how distracting it can get from the other tasks in your business. And this is what nobody talks about when it comes to all these new shiny tactics, platforms, channels, whatever. There's an opportunity cost to doing all of this stuff and people cost. Yeah.
- [08:05]
C
Like this is how you burn out people.
- [08:06]
A
100 and like myself included. Yeah. If you're, if you're a sub 100 million dollar a year brand, which 99.88% of us are like, you don't have the bandwidth to do this nor should you spend on it. There are so much more high impactful tasks to do. Go work on your website, go write better copy and offers, go do research on your customers, go develop better products. Like there's so much more impactful things you could be doing than saying we're going to create a thousand ads a month because a creative agency says it's a good idea.
- [08:40]
B
Yes. Or because Meta says that you have to. And that's the scariest part I think is there's such a, there's such a feedback vacuum because it's all coming off of Twitter and there's no context. Like are you sure that volume was what actually did it for you? Is that the only thing that you changed in your ads was just volume? You kept all the ads the same and only change the like the frequency numbers of it. I don't buy this idea that it's just volume that's creating these like, wins for people. I also don't know that those wins are sustainable. Sustainable, because I've seen way too many ad accounts now that have thousands of ads inside of them. And. And they're coming to Sarah being like, I don't know how to manage this. Like, nothing's working, but we have to keep doing it. I'm like, why?
- [09:22]
C
I'm just really glad to have heard that. Because, like, I was like, someone please reinforce my thought on this, because can't be the only one. And that's, like. It was, like, almost like a cry for help. Well, tell me it's okay to think like this.
- [09:33]
A
Yeah, well, and, like, I think it gets so overwhelming that, like, the marketers end up losing sight about what's going on, because at that point, you have to be so focused on, like, what? Well, are we spending on all the ads? Do we have an account structured that can support this amount of creative. And you lose the point of, like, hey, how much of that product did you sell?
- [09:51]
B
Yes.
- [09:51]
A
Like, is any of this working? Is any of this driving the business results you want to see? Or are you so focused on, like, we got to optimize the ad account and not actually optimizing the fucking P and L. But it's easy.
- [10:02]
C
Like, the promise is sweet there at the end of the volume. Of the volume, you know? So, like, you have to go and find it out for yourself whether it works. And for the most part, yeah, I think for most of us, it probably doesn't work as well as it feels like it should. And so it's like, what do you do? What's the alternative? I guess is the question that we've been kind of, like, tinkering on for the last couple months.
- [10:23]
A
Yeah. And I'll say for us at og, like, we did double the amount of ads we launched this year, but we also doubled in size and we were advertising more watches. And again, that double amount was like a couple dozen a week. It's like, we're not going crazy on it. And we made sure, like, each one was good, which I think gets lost in this conversation, too. It's like, you probably produce some good ads, too. Not just a lot of them, but, like, for us, like, we got new winners to scale, and, you know, there are some losers, and that's fine. But, like, yeah, we just didn't feel like more volume unlocked anything.
- [10:57]
B
Yeah, I would agree. 100. Especially when it comes down to it, what are you actually giving up? Right. We talk about, like, the time cost, the personnel cost, those type of Things. But I am very, very concerned about the fact that, like, over half of those ads, I would say a good majority of them get turned off immediately if they don't make any sort of, like, dent in the ad account. I've heard people have turned them off within four hours. They test them for, like, a second. I'm like, that is. Made it into the algorithm yet? Are you kidding me? They turn them off because they're like, we've got 30 more ads to load today. That one didn't do anything. We might as well load it.
- [11:32]
A
We've gotten so spoiled as advertisers to expect to launch an ad and have it get a sale that day. Like, that's. So if you think about how humans work, it's bonkers.
- [11:43]
C
Well, so this is where we've kind of, like, pivoted to, and we're moving. Like, I haven't almost entirely given up of the concept of winning ads, and I'm trying to build structure around winning campaigns, and I love what. What that looks like. And honestly, like, that ladders up to, like, a winning ad account. I'm starting to see, like, again, I don't have the time. I'm busy, dude. I don't have the time to, like, really data analyze this, like, in a massive way. But, like, I can start to see, like, the kind of, like, interlocking effect of different campaigns depending on how you structure it. So, like, we're now looking, like, approaching things. When we talk volume and diversity, it's literally like, okay, do we have a hero asset in this campaign that's just cranking reach, right? Like, that's just. We call them our hero assets. They're typically high reach, high, high conversion. And their CPA is a little bit higher than, like, the average, but they just rip reach, and, like, you run them for months, and they're just more and more and more and more people. And then underneath all that, that's where we are. Like, okay, who are our Personas? Who's missing? Who's. Like, what's. What stage of the purchase funnel are they? And, like. And do. Are we hitting all of those, like, the purchase funnel, the Persona underneath? And, like, those ads are typically, like, half our CPA cost, but. But they're not spending a ton. And it's just like. And then all of a sudden, we have this big, beautiful campaign that can run forever, right? And, like, you. And then there it's like, okay, well, how much more do we need? Like, this is the one driving the bus. And then. And so that's kind of how we started to orient around. And then now we planned that and, like, we literally are about to launch a product. And I was like, I think we only need 12 ads to launch this thing, to get off the ground and launch this thing. Like, and it's, you know, something that could potentially do this reach engine. You know, we know we don't know how to brief that perfectly yet, but, like, when we see it, it's like, yep, that one's gonna crush.
- [13:35]
B
Yeah.
- [13:35]
C
And, like, I feel like if you don't know, if you can't make it an ad and be like, that one's gonna crush, then, like, I don't know, spend a little more time looking at creative.
- [13:46]
A
We've started to, like, go into the campaign thing. Sarah knows about how we are starting our Christmas campaign on October 1st this year. And before everyone comes at me for being a hack. We're not. We're not calling out the sale yet. We're not even pro saying anything about Christmas or Black Friday or anything. But we are starting a series of content that we're going to put in ads that is designed to get females primed to gift their husbands a watch for Christmas.
- [14:12]
C
Dude, we're doing the same thing. Very. A little different approach, but, like, saying.
- [14:15]
B
Oh, I love it.
- [14:16]
A
And it's like, why? Why is that rare in our space today? Like, why is it crazy to think that someone isn't looking at something today? This goes, oh, Christmas is in a couple months. Maybe I'll get that for him. And like, why are we not playing into that? Because that is going to be so much more impactful and so much more valuable than on November 29th when we're all competing for the same wallet share. I want the purchase decision to have been made already. They're still going to wait till Black Friday to buy it because they're sheep. But I want the decision to be made weeks earlier.
- [14:48]
C
100.
- [14:49]
B
Yeah.
- [14:49]
C
Yeah. It's so funny. I just feel like, well, this is like my other tinfoil hat that I've been kind of noodling on for a while. It's like, I just, you know, having done this now for not quite a decade, but, like, long enough, Right?
- [15:03]
A
We've all been doing it for long enough.
- [15:05]
C
Yeah. And, like, feels like. It feels to me that, like, for most brands, most categories, especially, like, durables, like, what we're in, you know, kind of the growth hacky era is over. This, like, button push being the best button pusher is like, no, like, that arbitrage is basically gone. Right. And so what remains. Well, what remains is you have to be an incredible marketing storyteller on the like. But, like, fit that to the audience's preferences on that channel. That is meta. Right. Like, your storytelling on meta doesn't look like your storytelling in a billboard doesn't look like. We all know that, but it's like, well, that's the hard part. So, like, the next era is entirely built around how you treat meta like a billboard or like TV placements and like, how you build this kind of, like, journey. Exactly like you're talking about Nate. Like, how you build this journey starting on October 1st to close. Close the deal on, you know, November 29th. It's not like we need to hit target ROAS. Like, I don't even know my ROAS, quite frankly. I don't know what my ROAS is. I don't. I haven't looked at it in a year and a half, you know, Dude.
- [16:19]
A
And like, it's. It's really just been meta. That has ruined the industry of marketing because, like, we all got addicted to it. And it sounds like you started running ads for me of 2016. 17.
- [16:32]
C
Yeah.
- [16:33]
A
Like, yeah, yeah. Spent a dollar make 12. And you were like, oh, good day. Like, yeah, great. And like, that, I think, spoiled us too. And by the way, we were running the worst creative to unoptimized landing pages with no offers. Like, we were doing nothing. Right. And it was just.
- [16:46]
C
Yeah, that's a button click arbitrage. It was just like all these. It was. All these eyeballs were like, oh, neat. Click the button. Buy the thing.
- [16:53]
A
I think the last few years have been a. A much needed culling of the herd. And like, hey, no, no. We gotta understand people a little bit. We gotta be good marketers, good storytellers. We need to have good products. That wasn true last decade. Yeah. No, I am, like, welcoming this correction to the industry and something that we've been thinking about. I'm glad you brought up TV and billboards and everything else, because I'm not thinking about campaigns, just about reach or impressions anymore. I've been thinking about it, like, audience saturation. Like, I don't want to just reach the most people. I want to reach the right Personas a hundred times.
- [17:34]
B
Yeah. On as many different places as possible.
- [17:37]
C
Yeah.
- [17:37]
B
Like, not just on social. Yeah.
- [17:39]
A
If. If I'm the Target demo for OG Like, I want OG to sponsor every podcast I listen to and every YouTuber I watch and everything I watch on TV. Like, I think for the right demo, we should be unavoidable and we should hear their lives so often.
- [17:58]
B
That's. Oh, God.
- [17:59]
A
And I think that's way more impactful than being, like, let's sponsor 15 different niches of podcasts and influencers. Like, no, go super hard on one.
- [18:07]
B
Yes.
- [18:07]
A
Until you're doing 300 million a year.
- [18:10]
B
Yes.
- [18:10]
C
Well, what I've been kind of, like, encouraged by on this kind of personal journey slash realization is it's fun to try to get good at marketing. Like, it's way more fun. It's, like, way more fun to do that, and it's way more fun to teach other people to do that than.
- [18:24]
A
It is the meta wall.
- [18:26]
C
Hey, could you spin up 27,000 AI creatives? And, like, I just. This should be fun. And, like, I'll be honest, it hasn't been a ton of fun for a bit. Like, yeah, well.
- [18:38]
A
And, like, what I think is so important about marketing this way too, is, like, it'll actually teach you something about the brand and about the market and about what you should build into. Like, when we run different tests about copy and offers, we learn what our customers really value. You don't learn anything when you hack the meta algorithm about your customers, about what they want, about who they are, about when they want to buy from you. You. So, like, I think it creates, like, a much more positive feedback loop to make sure you're building your brand the right way in the future. Because, like, you can get some quote hack that'll work out for a month, but, like, we're getting learnings now that'll shave the brand for the next decade. Like, I've always thought about it, like, you can get good at an ad channel that's worthless. Once that ad channel matures or declines or dies, you're really good at marketing. You can win on any your channel. And, like, yeah, I think that's where the haters of this episode are gonna be. Like, I scaled an account with a thousand ads a month. Yeah, great. You guys are probably good at marketing too, if you get good at the fundamentals. I can grow a brand any method you want me to. I can use app lovin or Facebook. I can run a thousand ads or 10 ads. If we're good at this, the tactics don't matter that much. And if you're good at it, the tactics, like, you'll succeed at any tactic you try.
- [19:59]
C
Yeah. Yes. And, like, the reality is, if you make a thousand ads, like, you're gonna probably strike one or two gold.
- [20:06]
A
Gonna run into a winner.
- [20:07]
C
Yeah, exactly. And that's totally Fine. Again, like, I don't really have fundamentally have a problem. I'm with that direction other than, like, I just. I was like, I can't be the only one who feels this way. Like, please, Sarah, is someone else gonna tell me?
- [20:21]
B
I have a fundamental problem with it. Mostly just because it's. It's burning out the people in the industry. It's burning us out. And I don't think people realize, oh, you burn out. We just, like, brush it off. We'll just find someone else. We'll hire more people. We'll get a different agency. No, no, everyone is burnt out. Everyone. Not just, like, this specific person or this specific agency. All of us are so freaking drained. The ads that we're producing are naturally higher in cost because we can't come up with good ideas. You're causing way too much burnout from the people who are having to generate this amount of, like, creative. And over time, this is just going to decrease the amount of, like, performance we can get out of this, which is ridiculous. Aren't we going after cheap ads? What is going on?
- [21:05]
A
I know. It's so crazy to me that the whole conversation, not ours, but, like, in the ecosystem this year has been like a race to the bottom on, like, creative costs and, like, so bad. And like, we had an internal goal at the beginning of this year to be, let's spend the most money we've ever spent on creating content.
- [21:22]
B
Thank you.
- [21:23]
A
Let's make it really good. Let's make better content than we ever have before. And, like, it's worked out pretty good for us.
- [21:29]
C
So, yeah, I mean, we just had this. We had this, you know, recent product launch, a special edition. And like, this was like, right after like, the total just abusing of Q2. And like, you know, it was like, okay, our product. How can we fix this process went into with a slightly different process. Still kind of on the. On the verge. There's. And like, what we came up with I thought turned out amazing. Like, it was the best feeling ads. Ad campaign I think I've ever launched in my career. Kudos to my team for helping me make it happen. And like, I think we hit a lot of the KPI we wanted to. It felt really good. But then like, dozens of wholesale inquiry in the door. Right? Like, it's like, you know, and like, people were like, wow, they got. I could tell that they got like in our comments and stuff. Like, people got immersed in this ecosystem that we launched that like, you were talking about Nate and like, and then they were like, yeah, I own a store in south. In Charleston, S.C. that's a great product. Like, let me just reach out to them and see what happens.
- [22:27]
B
Quality. Oh, they responded really, really well.
- [22:31]
C
Oh, that's all we got to do. You know, like. And so, you know, I think it.
- [22:36]
B
Is though, that is all you have to do is just get good. Get it high quality enough that people recognize that you're different. You're not going after short term. And people, especially on the wholesale retail, they want higher quality products on their shelves because they know they sell well. Quality over.
- [22:52]
C
It's interesting. You know, it's funny and like, launching that campaign not to like, get back on my tinfoil hat. I have a lot of tinfoil hat opinions about this world you should share.
- [23:01]
A
Do they expand off of E. Comm, like moon landing, 9, 11, that kind of stuff? Because we should do another episode about.
- [23:07]
C
That if you're potentially. Yeah, they definitely. They definitely like go, yes, they go to like interconnected this. But yeah, we launched this campaign and.
- [23:17]
A
Sorry, I completely threw you off there.
- [23:19]
C
Yeah. And I'm like watching. I'm watching the thing, watching the algorithm play out, right. You know, It's a single ASC, whatever. I don't know, 40 ads or something like that, whatever. And like, the spend immediately goes to like these great beautiful statics and at super high frequency. Immediately it's like, oh, okay, it's going to clean up the scraps of everyone who's engaged with the brand already. Like, day seven completely flipped. It found its like Reach the hero, Reach creative, which we were so shocked when we launched. It's like, we got this piece of creative. We're like, that's the winner that's gonna take us home. But for the first week, it didn't do anything. And then like day seven, all of a sudden, the algorithm flipped in this. I didn't touch. We didn't touch this thing. Like, we just let it run and then off goes this Reach machine. And the next weekend's even better than the weekend we had priority as like the thing figured it out. And then it just started peppering in and we just started peppering in that. Oh, you know, we're kind of missing like this social native look that kind of has this vibe. Let's drop that in. Immediate spender. Like, and it's just like, I think the algorithm, again, I'm a little bit of a tinfoil hat guy, but I think like, the algorithm wants us to market like this. I don't think they want us to just like cram crap into it. Like I think, yeah.
- [24:32]
B
Which is so funny because like this is the exact playbook that like the biggest brands in the world use.
- [24:38]
C
It's like, hey, who know? I think, I think it wants us to do it the right way, despite what they're saying out of the mothership. And this is not like a meta tinfoil hat thing. I'm just more like, I think it's fun to watch this.
- [24:50]
A
Yeah. I think like if I, if I was staying another year at OG or like wherever I end up, I think like, I think we'll run 12 campaigns next year and I'm going to launch 20 ads on the first of every month that revolve around this one campaign. Maybe mid month will iterate on a couple of them. But like, why are we doing more than that? Why are we throwing like the most random ideas weekly at a designer when it's like, what if you just built out 12 really great campaigns and executed them well for higher month? Because to your, your point about that one not winning for a week? People take longer than a week to make decisions. Our 7 day click attribution window is a flawed method of judging an advertiser and an advertisement's effectiveness. And like, especially for products that aren't a direct impulse to buy. Which means I think if you're more than 30 bucks, you're not like, you need time to let this develop and I'd rather be okay, we're going to take the month of April, go after this angle super hard, and by the end of that month we might have an early indicator of whether or not this campaign's like a winner or not.
- [26:01]
C
Yeah, totally. The edit function, I'll say like the injecting like an edit function in our ads process, meaning like, no, just don't launch that one. It's not good enough. Has been awesome. Yeah, it feels really good.
- [26:13]
B
Prioritization discard more than you say yes to. I would say. Yeah. Call those ideas before you get them into the ad account because a lot of them really are just not good spenders, not good performers.
- [26:23]
C
Yeah.
- [26:23]
B
Might as well just kick them out before we even spend money on them.
- [26:26]
C
Yeah, well, it's. You can kind of learn from it too. It's like, well, we're consistently editing this type of ad ad out because we just don't feel it achieves what it doesn't. It's like a, not a net value add to this, you know, this winning campaign structure we're trying to build. And so it's like, okay, then let's stop Making that kind of ad. It's that easy. That's like one less ad. Great.
- [26:47]
B
You imagine, like, all the people listening to this podcast going, wait a minute, I can choose to not run an ad.
- [26:53]
A
Right.
- [26:54]
B
Because that's not a thing right now.
- [26:56]
A
Right.
- [26:56]
B
You run all of it. You run every single idea that you've ever had in your life.
- [26:59]
A
That's so funny. So we. So we have our. Our designer would upload everything to a folder weekly. And then there's subfolders. One is ready to launch. One is do not launch.
- [27:12]
C
Like, don't.
- [27:14]
A
And like, that folder by this time of year, like, is full. And yeah, it's crazy to me that people launch everything. Everyone just happens to be a winner. And, like, Sarah is aware of this. Like, Chris kills our ads. Like, they're so good.
- [27:29]
C
Those are a lot of inspiration I pull from. Yes.
- [27:32]
A
Appreciate that. Yeah, no, the team, like, kills it. Every. Everything looks great, but there are things that I don't think fit. Like the campaign that we're on. And yeah, it's crazy to think that people are just launching every single ad. Everyone deserves dollars.
- [27:49]
B
Yeah. Because they don't know. They don't know which one is going to win. They can't tell because marketer wise, they don't have the skill set to see it. They can't tell if this ad is going to work or not. So they just. They randomly throw it in and, like, hope for the best. And I'm like, oh, no.
- [28:04]
A
There's too much algorithm worship in our industry. Like, we think the algorithm knows all. And it's like, I can point to a dozen examples this year of Facebook spending all of our money on one or two creatives and overall business performance sucks.
- [28:17]
C
You know what's funny is we've seen.
- [28:18]
A
The algorithm is not right all the time.
- [28:20]
B
No.
- [28:20]
C
We've started turning off top performers for periods just for funsies. Like, because we want to. We want to try that, dude.
- [28:26]
A
Like, I think it's one of the most impactful things we do in the ADA account is, like, when performance dips below a level that we don't like, our move is turn off all the top spend.
- [28:36]
B
Turn it off.
- [28:36]
C
Yeah.
- [28:38]
A
Get others to spend. Because if those ones are taking 80% of the budget and business is declining, then those ads aren't doing their job.
- [28:45]
C
Yeah.
- [28:46]
A
I don't care what the in platform roas, cac, click through, rate anything is. Turn it off. It's not working for the business.
- [28:52]
C
Yeah. Interesting. That's so funny.
- [28:56]
A
I'm so glad I'm Not. Me and Kevin are best friends, by the way.
- [28:59]
C
Super glad I'm not the only crazy person. I felt it for the last six months or so.
- [29:05]
B
I think everyone is. We're just not talking about it.
- [29:08]
A
Like there are times where like I'm in conversations with expert media buyers and agencies and stuff and I say things that I think they dismiss of like, oh, that's too simple. This redneck doesn't know what he's talking about. And I'm like, you're spending all your money on one ad and business isn't going well. Turn off the ad. I don't know, it doesn't seem like a hot take to me. Try something else.
- [29:34]
B
The ability to notice the obvious. Now that's a skill set I think every single marketer should learn how to do. And both of you very clearly have learned how to do it. But yeah, act on it. That's it. That's marketing.
- [29:45]
C
Totally. And to me it's like just the most exciting part of the next several years in this, in this channel and just like marketing, you know, I don't know what the state of like E commerce is as like a standalone business model. I think there's plenty of debate around that. But it's like, well, we get to now build these great brands, like great brands. That's the opportunity ahead of you is not to just like find, find this like growth hack, AI driven strategy. And to be fair, like, I am the most AI forward person you'll probably ever meet. We just don't use, yeah, like just, we don't use it like on this like final step creative, creative process. I'm not trying to like bet dog on AI. I just think that like taste is so important and like people that like operate with taste for the next 10 years are going to be the winners. Whether you're spending a meta, YouTube, billboards, whatever, and like kind of this like growth hacky little arbitrage moment that we've experienced for the last 10 years is we can just send it out to pasture and say, that was fun. Learned a lot. That's how I got a job. Like, thank you for that era and like now let's go be like great marketers. I was a consultant until this year and then, then basically my consultancy got bought out to run this brand that we exploded. So it's like, so this is my first year in the trenches and a. The trenches are hard.
- [31:02]
A
I will tell you. You picked a year to get into the trenches.
- [31:05]
C
To be honest, like, everything is actually pretty good. It's like it's not what we thought, but we were coming off like the biggest sugar high ever in end of 2024.
- [31:14]
A
Yeah. And we had, We. We had like a very similar journey where, like, we did not get like a Covid bump it OG 2023 was like, really strong. And then last year, the forecast we set at the beginning of the year for like our annual revenue, we ended up doubling it that year. Like, we just grew, like, crazier than we ever expected. And like, everything we did worked. And then this year, at times like 79, growth has felt like a failure.
- [31:44]
C
And it's like, dude, we're on the exact same trajectory, which is like 79%, dude.
- [31:50]
B
Like, that's a really good growth here. Holy God.
- [31:54]
C
That's totally it. It's like, well, I said we were going to do 150.
- [31:57]
A
Yeah.
- [31:57]
C
And I'm like, well, that's on me, dummy.
- [32:00]
A
Yeah. It's like, well, yeah, when the goal is 120%. Yeah, I guess that does feel like a failure.
- [32:04]
C
Yeah.
- [32:06]
B
Okay. Okay, so last question on here to kind of wrap. What is your top three, Kevin, for like, people who are listening to this, who might be stuck on this volume game or have the same kind of thought of, like, I don't think this is the right way to do it. What's like, here's the top three things you should know or what you should take away.
- [32:20]
C
I think look to your organic feed, man. We are just loving, loving looking at organic feed and finding creative there.
- [32:28]
B
I love it.
- [32:29]
C
To me, like, I'm so incredibly bullish on organic content right now. Like, and it's the most fun. It's like the most creative. So, yeah, that's for me. For us. Big one. You know, again, like, figuring out the edit function.
- [32:42]
B
Yeah.
- [32:43]
C
You know, it sounds like Nate has an even more sophisticated one. We're just kind of discovering it. But, like, like, figuring out the edit function of. No, that ad's just not good enough. And how do we.
- [32:52]
A
And then.
- [32:53]
C
And then like integrating that edit function at the beginning stage of the process. Like, no, that just. Idea just isn't good enough. Let's just bag it, not waste our time. And then the other one is, I don't know.
- [33:02]
B
We only need to be open to.
- [33:04]
C
We don't even need three, I guess, like, be open to the idea of, like, making less creative and looking elsewhere. Elsewhere. I mean, it's. I fell into the trap of feeling we had to just like ramp volume. And quite frankly, it did. It was part of the reason we were so successful in the prior year. And so we kind of just continued that trajectory and. But it just. It wasn't the answer, you know, like, and more importantly, like, I think just because, like, it's just more fun to get good at marketing in a different way than just like shotgunning and spraying. Praying marketing.
- [33:43]
B
Like, enjoy your job again. You should enjoy your job.
- [33:47]
A
And like, it. The whole volume thing, to me, it just feels like step nine.
- [33:53]
B
Yeah.
- [33:53]
A
Of like, hey, yeah, you can do more once you get really good at it. Once you understand your customers well, once you have a proven offer that, you know, converts, like, then sure, do more. More is great. But, like, you can't do step nine before you do steps one through eight.
- [34:10]
C
Totally.
- [34:11]
B
Kevin, thank you so much for joining us. Oh, this was such a good episode and I feel bad cutting it, but we're like, already 40 minutes into this. I'm like, we could just talk about this all day long. Where can people find you? Do they want to follow your journey?
- [34:24]
C
I go buy a flask@highcamp.fl.com.
- [34:26]
B
Yes.
- [34:26]
A
Nice. That's a company man right now.
- [34:28]
C
Or. Or, you know, like, come find me on the trails of red rocks. I'll be up skiing Loveland this winter. Uh, I'm occasionally chirp on LinkedIn, but mostly don't have enough time to be like a proper content producer.
- [34:42]
B
You're busy making good luck.
- [34:43]
C
An X. An X or Twitter or whatever. Like, I'll randomly rip off something there, but if you can't find me there, then that's fine.
- [34:51]
B
I love it. Thank you for joining us. This was a lovely conversation. Oh, we're gonna have you back again just to see how you guys are doing. Maybe after Black Friday, we'll come back and we'll say, like, okay, how did your campaigns do? Because, yeah, this is going to be the year for, like, good campaign work. Thank you everybody. That was lovely. Great show. Thanks for coming. Appreciate you guys listening. If you want to follow me, I'm Sarah Levenger. Anywhere you consume content, he is Nate Lagos. Anywhere you consume content as well. If you like this show and if you like this episode, go ahead and like, subscribe. Share with a friend. Drop us a review when you have a minute. We would appreciate it. Otherwise, have a great week. We'll see you next time.