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- [00:01]
A
Brands need a who now, not just a what. If you do it once every few weeks or once every month, you're not going to be associated with the who is the brand at that point. I want to do a podcast specifically about founders content. I do a lot of audits for brands and something we constantly see is founders underutilizing themselves. If you're sort of like this mid level brand looking to really scale across paid socials, you yourself as a founder are such a critical piece of that puzz. People who click on founders ads are more interested in the story itself than the product at that specific moment. People love this. I've seen it work across verticals. This drives me up the wall. Don't use your Like.
- [00:58]
B
Ready to Rapidly generate Winning ad ideas in 2025 motion, the creative analytics platform used by brands like Hexclad, Vuori, True Classic and Jones Road Beauty, just released their explosive new report on what really works with meta Ad Creative. This report is more fact than feeling, featuring never before seen insights from Motion's analysis of $100 million in ad spend, a survey of 500 plus ad experts, and deep dive interviews with some of the most elite performance creative teams in dtc, including experts like Nick Sharma and Sarah Levenger. What's inside the seven biggest creative trends for 2025, including how humor is making a come comeback in Ad Creative, the rise of earned nostalgia, and the ad trends that will help your brand stand out this year. This report is packed with real ad examples, new data and novel techniques from making AI enhanced creative concepts to bleeding edge creative ideas for advanced teams. Get your free copy now@motionapp.com creative trends and start rapidly creating ads that get attention and scale. It's all killer, no filler. I'm Eric and I'm back with Abes, leader on the Pilothouse Creative team to discuss a topic near and dear to a lot of founders hearts and that is sort of how to define your brand and how to build a brand that can, you know, help create halo effects across other parts of your business, including ads. I thought, you know, we're talking actually a lot with Aves right now, but potentially even starting a new podcast. As everyone knows, we have the the world's best email and retention podcast, but Aves has been such a consistent V on this podcast. We love the idea of her starting another one. So with that in mind, I'm going to kind of just fade into the background here. I may be I may have a here a question or a comment, but I just thought we could Kind of let you rip with your topic of choice today.
- [02:48]
A
Cool. Thanks Eric. Yeah, I'm going to just like I was saying before, do what I usually do, which is talk to myself about ads and branding out loud. So this will be fun. But yeah, I want to do a podcast specifically today about founders content. I do a lot of audits for brands and something we constantly see is founders like under utilizing themselves almost. I think a big part of that is we used to think of brand as like a thing and almost an entity by itself. I was, when I was thinking about notes, thinking a lot about like in the 90s when a brand would evoke a feeling or emotions and you would associate a brand with who it would hit with. So you were thinking about your ICP a lot. You were thinking about your Personas and like what is the brand experience where today it's more about finding an actual face for your brand in a different way than it has been in the past. Like we used to have a mascot and I had a note in here, but like nobody wanted the copper tone baby to like gritty on their phone. Like that wasn't a demand that we had of brands until really the past couple of years and now it's like you need to have a face that you can recognize with the brand. Thinking about like Duolingo has obviously executed this very well where that owl is just part of their brand. There's other brands who have like just someone really plucky on their warehouse team that you see them in content that they're posting every single day. Other bigger brands will hire a creator to do this. But if you're sort of like this mid level brand looking to really scale across paid socials and use organic channels and paid ads to do that, you yourself as a founder are such a critical piece of that puzzle. So that'd be really cool because I also know if you're a founder, you're probably very busy. So doing like a really rapid fire piece today on just really easy ways to get this work going is as easy as like grabbing your phone and filming yourself talking about the brand, but thinking about how you can be a little bit more strategic about it. And yeah, like I said, it's so different now in terms of what we think a brand is thinking about. The like interview that we did with Eugene Healey where we're talking about the death of the Millen millennial brand and the brand itself, it can't be like a faceless entity that's putting on this faux earnestness in emails. It's like, hey, fellow millennial, love that thing too. I'm thinking a lot about on TikTok right now. People are making fun of those Millennial burger restaurants where the burger is like $26 and the fries are $10 and it's just like exposed brick. And that over earnestness that came from Brooklyn in like 2010, it just doesn' and you need to have like an actual face and sentient being almost that you can associate with the brand. I think that's because of a couple of different things. Number one, you need more content now across different platforms. So I'm talking about organic and paid media. You just need more content in general. And it's to like not beat around the bush. It's just a lot cheaper to do that yourself than to find a content creator who's going to be that person for you. It also mitigates some risk. Like we all love that Duolingo owl, but that girl could quit duolingo at any time and then they've lost their main sort of hub and idea to make that content. So doing it yourself kind of mitigates the risk of externalizing that process. And then also it just makes a lot more sense if you yourself are the face at least on like the digital kind of forefront of the brand. Obviously, I'm not saying you no longer need to have a mascot or branding. I'm just saying that when we're talking about paid ads and organic, there needs to be like a human point of contact. It's getting really important. So couple of really quick and easy tips to get this work going. Because again, like I said, I see a ton of people come in when I'm auditing them and they have this really cool thing that they've invented. Nobody's ever made this product before and they've never run a founders ad in their life. And they're like a kind of usually weird, quirky person who just thinks like, I'm not the stereotypical content creator. I'm not maybe part of the ICP myself. So why would anyone want to hear from me? And it's so interesting whenever we hear that story because it's like that's exactly why people want to hear about what you've done. It's interesting, it's different. It's not just like another shell company. It's not a drop shipper selling them something. It's like, I'm a guy, I made this thing. It's pretty exciting to me. And letting yourself geek out about it is really cool. So yeah, a Couple of really fast, easy tips to kind of get yourself going with this content right away. I would say number one, mostly on the paid side, try to avoid any selfish touch points. This is something I know old school salespeople would say like, no selfish touch points. I'm not just going to call a client and say like we have a sale or something like that. It's like if you're selling eggs at a very elevated price and you happen to know that this older person loves te little Faberge eggs from Moscow, you're probably going to call them when you get one of those in, not something else. So trying to limit those very selfish touch points, which in ads it tends to just be sale focused or pricing focused. But if you're the face of the brand, the founder, you want to make sure that you actually have something to say. I would also warn you against thinking that just being the founder is enough to not be categorized as a selfish touch point or selfish content. It has to be interesting outside of that. So one type content, probably the most popular is obviously brand story. Who else is going to tell that but you? It's like the most foundry angle possible, but really walking through why you created this brand, pointing out if it is a proprietary piece of tech, if you've recently invented it, how it changed your life, and really considering keeping it short is very important. I say this all the time, but short form content is in. Obviously if you are a person who uses paid socials, you are using reels and stories. If you are, please write in to dtc. But you're probably not sitting on your feed watching like two minutes of an ad. I don't really think that's happening. If it is, write in, tell us what ad you did that in. I'd love to know, but try to keep it as short as possible. We talk about hooks a lot on all killer, no filler as well. You got about five seconds, I would even say three seconds to make someone interested in what you have to say. So really think about how you're going to utilize that first three seconds. I also understand that a lot of the times as founders you're not used to being that type of content creator. So that's probably the like. If you're going to walk away from one thing, think about that book and just try to make it as exciting as possible. Another really short, easy thing to do is adding like throwback pictures as a green screen. People love this. I've seen it work across verticals. Like if you were making the product yourself in your Grandma's kitchen, you have basically a money printing machine in your back pocket. If you've never put those pictures on the Internet, people love to look at that kind of thing. It's very like endearing. And again, it's different from what we typically think of as an ad. And if you think about the current environment, you look at any ad library, there's this weird mixture of what is obviously content made by AI, very polished branded statics. If you're out there with a picture of you, like I said, in your grandma's kitchen, whipping up the first prototype, it's a really different thing to be spending money on. And people like different, they want to see something interesting. So, yeah, throwback pictures. If you're doing a video form using a green screen, even just running them sized correctly as an ad does really well with the right copy. And I say just really try to get to the heart of your business. So what is the reason that your business exists is kind of how you should start thinking about this and then go a layer deeper into how would I explain this to someone on TikTok? How would I explain this to someone on Instagram? Don't use this. Drives me off the wall, pisses me off. Don't use your like motto as a brand, as a hook in your content as a founder, because that doesn't really achieve anything more than getting a regular old content creator to come on and talk about, you know, I love this new mug, I just bought this. It has the same level of sincerity. If you're just talking about the same talking points, really make sure you're repurposing things for the setting which is either paid socials or organic. And then the last tip on this sort of brand story type of content is try to find a hero product. You should know what it is if the founder, but explain the brand through that hero product. So using my like imaginary mug company, if I sell mugs and I also sell like coffee filters and all these different kind of adjacent things, I'm probably not going to try to just explain the entire company at one time. Instead I'm going to say I love coffee, but I can never have enough. So I invented like a 2 liter mug and that is a great way to like represent the brand because the brand probably has to do a lot with making an abundance of coffee, making a lot of coffee coffee. But it's also not too broad for someone to understand and we're not getting away from actually selling something especially important on paid socials. So just some quick tips around A brand story, I'd say if you're thinking about this first tip which is just non selfish touch points. Other types of content that work really well would be product news. So if you're dropping new prints or patterns, really easy to grab a selfie style video of yourself in the warehouse and just say I'm here today packing these up. We've got got like five new prints, super easy to do sale content, again works really well if it's like side of the desk, warehouse, any kind of us versus them content I've seen do really well with a founder because who would be better to do that than you if you've made this product? And then on the organic side, really leaning into silly trends every once in a while I think is something that's really exciting and fun to do. As a founder. Everyone loves to see a middle aged dude doing something that looks a little uncomfortable for them. It doesn't really suit what you think they're going to do. I'm thinking of those like usually real estate or car dealerships when they have people who look quite different from the regular person you'd see maybe making reels or TikToks, but doing trends that are super current. It's not necessarily going to be a great thing to do on paid and it's not necessarily going to immediately drive sales, but it is going to get eyeballs to the brand, which is really important and it is going to create some kind of connection between you and the brand, especially if it goes a little bit viral. So I wouldn't spend like all of your time thinking up how you can go viral on these platforms, but if there's something that seems fun to do, I recommend just kind of jumping on it, giving it your best drive. It's a little rough. It's like that's sort of the charm of this founder's content. So yeah, that's the last one. Definitely for organic only don't run it on paid, but just kind of stay open about those viral moments. Second, like overarching tip is aimed at organic, which is being consistent on organic channels is really important and so posting constantly is the only way you're going to unlock growth on these channels. And not everything you post is going to hit right away and not everything you post is going to hit eventually. But I think what really matters is laying the foundation. That's how I try to explain it to people. And like I mentioned at the top, if you're doing some of this content yourself and you're kind of putting yourself in the position where you are a majority of the videos being posted, the benefit to that is that you're owning that. So you're not getting someone else to do it. You're mitigating the risk of someone leaving. And I'd recommend kind of working backwards. So be realistic. That's my professional word of the year 2025, realistic. Be really honest with yourself. How often can you make a video? Do you have people on your team who are able to concept these for you, give you a brief, and you can just bang them out? Do you kind of have to own the creative process? Be really realistic with your time, because like I said, not every piece of content is going to result in immediate dollars. But that doesn't mean that it's something you can just not do. So make sure that you think about your actual time commitment and then kind of work backwards from there and figure out who else can be posting. Can we add B roll in those days? The aim should be, and this always really freaks founders out, the aim should be once a day, every day, you post something. Depending on what your kind of brand is, the time of day will change, but most of the time, once a day, every single day of the week is when you want to be posting. So like I said, work backwards from what can I manage? Is it two funny little videos? Is it four? What can I actually do and set aside time for in my week consistently, and then work backwards from there just to make sure that you're really hitting on that consistency, because you can start doing this content right, but you're kind of avoiding my original point, which is brands need a who now, not just a what. If you do it once every few weeks or once every month, you're not going to be associated with the who is the brand at that point. So consistency, second biggest tip, mainly across organic, but it works on paid too, right? Because if people start seeing you and they know that you sell the really big mugs and Christmas time is coming up and they see your face, they're going to just click on that ad and buy the mugs because it's a high intent period, and they know you by this point. So it has benefits to both organic and paid. The third and final kind of quick tip is bringing it to the post click experience. This is also something, if you've ever listened to me talk on this podcast, you have heard me say, but if you formulate an ad, that's all about how I created this company, and this is the story behind how I created my company. And then you Send that traffic to a pdp, you are like burning money, basically throwing it out the window, doing whatever you want to do with it, but you're not using it efficiently. Because if you think about that as a concept, you're basically meeting someone in the street and you're saying, oh my goodness, I invented this company. Do you want to learn more about how I did that? And then the person says yes. And you don't give them any more information. Which is actually absurd if you think about it in like a person to person point of view. But that's exactly what you do when the landing page does not match the pre click content. So when you have these founders ads, creating a founder's specific landing page is definitely the way to go. I have to say, I've never once while auditing seen a brand come to us with a About us page that is equipped to sell products as well. And realistically it shouldn't be. If that lives on your website and that is where you want people to go just to find out more about the company itself, you don't want to be making a big sales push. But the way we think about landing pages in general at Pilothouse as well as founders Pages is we want to be making the sale somewhere. We're not not creating landing pages just to show someone a cool video. Like we're either trying to capture a lead or capture a sale. So our founders Pages are going to explore that story and lean more into that brand storytelling, giving it more details and sort of color than just an ad. Especially like I was saying, you've got like three seconds. So we'll go into detail, but we're also doing it with a specific point of view, which is to ultimately sell whatever the product is. So you're going to go through this journey, click on the ad, you're excited to learn more about this. We're going to give you a little bit more of that information, but we're also going to make a compelling case to either capture that sale or the leads, like I said. So definitely just being conscious that people who click on founders ads are maybe more interested in the story itself than the product at that specific moment. They're very top of funnel typically these types of founders campaigns. So really thinking about where are we selling them, making sure that you're not just wasting this new traffic. Because like I said before, if you're running a picture of you in grandma's kitchen making your first prototype, that's probably going to generate a lot of clicks. So just being prepared when you're going into it with somewhere to send them. That actually makes sense. Instead of just being another PDP or homepage play where they're getting to something, it's not talking to what they're interested in. It's just kind of a big waste. So, yeah, those are my three quick tips. I literally, I'm almost making this podcast out of frustration because people keep coming to us and they have the coolest founder story of all time. And I've seen it, it literally happen where they go ncac, we can't figure it out, how do we acquire more customers? And it's like you're kind of sitting on a pot of gold, which is yourself. And I've seen brands where literally that is kind of our takeaway from the audit have their biggest months ever in the past six months because we started running founders content and founders funnels with them. So it's not like a small potatoes type of thing could fundamentally change what you're doing on paid socials. And it's just yourself, you don't have to go find your perfect creator. You don't have to go kind of figure out a new platform. You just have to start filming videos yourself. And you can unlock pretty intense scale.
- [20:42]
B
Amazing. And everyone's looking for halos, everyone's looking for synergy. You know, putting creating more value than the sum of its parts. And this kind of funnel is going to create more brand equity. Right. If they connect with you and your story about building the product, that's a real leg up on brand affinity and potentially loyalty to that brand, I would imagine.
- [21:04]
A
Totally. If that's your first. Exactly what you said. If that's your first experience. Instead of an ad that says like warehouse sale on now, like obviously you're gonna think like Avery and her mug company. Love that. You know, whatever the video was or whatever the story was is gonna be at the forefront of your mind. And you can really like in some of the examples I walk through, like architect, what you want that brand story to be sort of through yourself. Instead of like I said previously, where it was like, like mood boards and mascots. Now we need like an actual living person to associate with the brand. And I think the sooner you start doing it, the better too. Like you're kind of, you're looking at a trend cycle. If you start doing it now, you're still within the early adopters. So in like five years time, I'll probably be on the same podcast, like talking about the millennial brands being dead, talking about the, the brand heroes being dead. Who knows what the next thing will be. But now is a really good time to do it it because you are still in that kind of early adopter phase.
- [22:02]
B
And if you're looking for brands who do it really well. As you were talking there, I just keep thinking about Brock at Frostbuddy and the way, you know, on the podcast he did with us, he just talked about how he just tells his brand story over and over again in different settings, maybe through different products, through different lenses, he's got different hero products. But he really. Don't be afraid. Like, if you feel like even maybe, oh, I did my founder story. I told that. It's like, like social is such an ephemeral feed that you. No one ever sees all your videos. And so don't be afraid to pound it again and again, just like you would if you were at a conference or something and you were at a booth and everyone was kind of coming up to you. Don't be afraid to repeat yourself.
- [22:44]
A
Yeah, yeah, that's a big one too because like I said, a lot of the times it's not going to hit. So chances are not a lot of people see it. And even when it does, we're also been been kind of toying around with this. We're entering this era, especially on TikTok, where people don't really care anymore. Like, you see brands set up a page and they post the same type of B roll clip over and over again with like POV. You just found this hat on TikTok and that's all they post. And people don't care if they like the hat. They will interact with the video and buy the hat. There's no more like kind of perfectly curating your feed to be something that's like a whole cohesive experience. It's all about like single placement, single kind of mom. Did that video hit, did it not? Can we repeat that? And nobody's like scrolling through an entire ad library to be like, whoa, Brock did this video five times. Like, nobody is doing that anymore.
- [23:36]
B
At the same time, though, on Organic, I think of the podcast we just launched last week with Soberish with Kim from Sober Ish. And she was just talking about how she just has this ongoing dialogue on her organic feed where you're meeting her husband and you know who her husband is. If you follow that brand and there's different characters that pop in and there's different situations and it's like, it's a real opportunity to storytell in a way that's, yeah, kind of generate brand affinity. Make people care about your story, care about your life, and want to be part of what you're doing.
- [24:05]
A
Yeah, just as long as you like, include the brand too. And you don't even have to do it every time. Like, sometimes you truly don't. Sometimes it can just be something funny. And then sometimes, you know, maybe you're doing something funny and you're holding the product. It doesn't always have to be like hammering home, like you saying like, like, here's my husband. Here's just like what I do in the day. Here's me going to the office. Like things that people interact with and get excited about external to brands are probably a good idea to try as a brand.
- [24:34]
B
I can't wait to see when someone takes this to heart and they do like the, the, like some crazy situation, then it's like freeze frame. Bet you're wondering how I got here. Like they do in movies. I'm just waiting. I really want to see. I want this podcast to launch a thousand founder stories. So if you haven't done this and you are going to do it, just do it. And then send us a link because we'd love to see it. We can promote it for you. We can get your name out there. We want to see your founder story thanks to this podcast, Aves. That was killer. No filler.
- [25:04]
A
Thanks.
- [25:05]
B
Well done.
- [25:05]
A
Short and sweet.
- [25:06]
B
And. And if you think Ave should have her own podcast, send us a note about that too, because we, we would like to see more of this in an ongoing way. And I love coming up with podcast theme songs. So I bet we come up with a great one for yours.
- [25:18]
A
Nice.
- [25:24]
B
Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you're not getting the D2C newsletter, you can subscribe for free at directtoconsumer. Co. And if you want to learn more about Pilothouse's all killer no filler services, take off to Pilothouse Co. I'm Eric Dick and this has been the DTC podcast. We'll see you next time.