Ep 625: Brand Salience for DTC: Turning Creative Into Your Targeting Layer

Summary

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DTC Podcast Ep 625: Brand Salience for DTC: Turning Creative Into Your Targeting Layer

Date: July 3, 2026
Host: Eric Dick (DTC Newsletter/Podcast)
Guest: Rafael (Head of Strategic Growth and Partnerships, Pilothouse)

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Overview

This episode dives deep into brand salience and the evolving role of creative strategy in direct-to-consumer (DTC) marketing. With the Andromeda change transforming Meta’s ad ecosystem, creative now acts as the true targeting layer—meaning what audiences see determines who sees the ad. Host Eric Dick and Pilothouse’s Rafael explore how brands must rethink their creative and messaging to build memorable connections, scale efficiently, and maintain strategic focus, illustrated by real-life examples and actionable tactics.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Andromeda Change: Making Marketers Good Again

• What Changed:
  • Meta’s Andromeda update shifted targeting from manual, granular controls to an algorithm that rewards relevant, memorable creative ([00:30]; [04:29]).
  • The days of relying on platform-based targeting and bad creative are over; message relevance is now the key lever.

“The Andromeda change is forcing marketers to become good marketers again… post Andromeda, Meta seems to be forcing brands to think about how do you create relevant ads instead of just being able to push bad creative in front of the consumers.” — Rafael [00:30]; [04:29]

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2. Salience: Building Memorable Brands

• Definition:
  • Salience is “how do people remember you, and when?” ([06:16]).
  • To be considered, brands must ask: who do I want to be remembered by, and for what?
• Example:
  • Volvo’s salience: "quiet luxury and safety," so that when a customer thinks of upgrading from Toyota, Volvo is easily recalled ([06:16]).

“Car brands need to build salience around a price point and a benefit amongst a specific group of people… building those memory structures.” — Rafael [06:16]

• Another Example:
  • Vessi Shoes – striving to “own the rain,” so people associate their brand whenever it rains ([07:51]).

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3. The Dangers of ‘Pray & Spray’ Creative

• Key Problem:
  • Brands, especially post-scale, often deliver too many disparate creative messages without strategic cohesion ([10:04] – [11:28]).
  • This dilutes memory structures and confuses customers, reducing efficiency.

“Their structure is by product, not persona, so new customers are getting 14, 15, 20 impressions—all different messages… it doesn't create saliency about what you do, it just creates saliency about what you sell in a non-efficient way.” — Rafael [10:04]

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4. The Importance of Feeling Seen in Ads

• Human Insight:
  • People are more likely to act on ads where they see themselves reflected ([12:09] – [13:36]).
  • Being “seen” builds tangible relationship and trust, turning customers into brand believers—and, with retention, into advocates.

“When you feel seen, you remember that relationship. That’s the power of being relevant—you’re making somebody feel seen.” — Rafael [12:35]

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5. Shifting from Platform-Led to Brand-Led Strategy

• Operational Shift:
  • Scale requires pulling back decision power from the ad platform and instead using brand understanding to structure campaigns and creative ([15:01] – [16:52]).
  • Many brands misallocate media spend based on platform metrics rather than business realities.

“There’s a need to shift from the platform owning decisions to the brand taking back the decisions… structuring your accounts in a way that replicates your business model instead of structuring your accounts in a way beneficial to platform metrics.” — Rafael [15:01]

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6. Simplicity and Message Focus at Scale

• Scaling Challenge:
  • As brands grow, message volume can’t just increase endlessly—unit economics and reach break down ([16:59] – [18:40]).
  • Need to distill to “the simplest message that appeals to the broadest number of people but also drives conversions.”

“Imagine you have one tank of gas, but you’ve purchased twelve cars… all cars just go a short distance. That’s what happens if you spread a budget across too many messages.” — Rafael [18:40]

• Iconic Example:
  • Heinz's "Pass the Heinz" campaign: Implied messaging, leveraging consumer memory structures ([19:24]).

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7. Creative Diversity vs. Creative Consistency

• Diversity Reframed:
  • Not just multiple variants, but tailoring message to different personas, funnel stages, and platforms—all rooted in the same core memory structure ([21:09] – [24:39]).
  • AI-driven platforms use creative elements (visuals, cues) to align audiences.

“If I want to sell somebody a chair, how is my chair relevant to a 25-year-old versus a 50-year-old? … Build creative where both can see themselves in it—those are the targeting inputs.” — Rafael [22:07]

• Practical Model:
  • Think: Persona x Funnel Stage x Platform = Salient, relevant, and diverse creative that doesn’t lose focus.

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8. Iconic Branding Examples

• Red Bull:
  • Extreme sports content builds memory structure around energy and “gives you wings” ([26:11]).

“Red Bull gives you wings. The sensation you get… it’s all constructed so well you remember the early 2000s ads.” — Eric ([27:09])

• AG1 (Athletic Greens):
  • Built salience around “daily essential nutrition—one and done,” using category entry points (travel, influencers) and continuity in packaging, messaging ([32:16]).

“They built a memory structure around daily essential nutrition… even if you eat like shit all day, you’re covered.” — Rafael [32:46]

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9. Key Steps for Brands Seeing Diminishing Returns

• Pause and Reassess:
  • Don’t keep pushing what used to work at earlier stages ([27:53]).
  • Understand business life cycle and be open to restructuring.
• Audience & Message Segmentation:
  • Clearly define new vs. existing customers; tailor creative and spend accordingly ([28:45]).

“When you hit a ceiling and what worked in the past stops—don’t keep pushing. Step back and assess, realize you’ve hit a different life stage.” — Rafael [27:53]

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10. Evolution, Not Revolution—The Cycle of Divergence & Reconvergence

• Natural Brand Flow:
  • Brands can expand “hooks” (e.g., protein for coffee lovers, then matcha), but eventually must re-simplify message for scale ([29:56] – [32:07]).
  • Inconsistency kills trust; smart, natural evolutions are key.

“Every time you become inconsistent, you have to build a new memory structure… if someone’s always changing their identity, you’re less likely to trust.” — Rafael [29:56]

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11. The Psychological Base of Saliency

• Reference:
  • The documentary "Century of the Self" and the work of Edward Bernays are cited to illustrate the psychology behind mass market memory construction and emotional levers ([35:51]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “People remember not what you say, but how you made them feel.” — Rafael [12:35]
• “The higher you go, the simpler your message becomes… It’s about delivering that simple, distilled message that builds memory.” — Eric [14:21]
• “That’s the power of having a single message: you can build equity and create a compounding effect by building that salience.” — Rafael [16:59]
• “Every human has this experience. When you feel seen, you remember that relationship.” — Rafael [12:35]
• “The most important thing about saliency is continuity… Smart, natural evolutions—but never inconsistency.” — Rafael [29:56]
• “If you’re always changing your identity, you’re less likely to be trusted—that applies to brands just as it does to people.” — Rafael [29:56]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:30: The Andromeda shift & return to strategic marketing
• 04:29: Creative becomes targeting; persona-based creative
• 06:16: Salience explained—how memory structures work
• 07:51: Vessi’s quest to “own the rain” and brand salience
• 10:04: Audit insight: Dangers of excessive, unfocused creative
• 12:09: Human psychology—being seen in ads
• 15:01: Operational shift: Brand-led vs. platform-led structuring
• 16:59: Messaging simplicity for scaling brands
• 19:24: Mad Men & Heinz: Ubiquity through implied messaging
• 21:09: Creative variety through salience and segmentation
• 24:39: Persona and funnel stages as creative diversity inputs
• 26:11: Red Bull: Memory structure via branded content
• 32:16: AG1’s category entry approach and memory structure
• 27:53/28:45: Steps for brands hitting the “growth ceiling”
• 29:56: Consistency and natural evolution in brand messaging

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Actionable Takeaways

• Audit your creative: Is it persona-based or simply product-based? Is your audience seeing too many disparate messages?
• Define your salience: What do you want to be remembered for, by whom, and when?
• Distill your message: At scale, pick the one or two things that make your brand memorable and focus creative around them.
• Strategic diversity: Use audience, funnel stage, and channel as lenses for tailored creative that maintains consistent salience.
• Brand consistency: Continuity in message builds trust—evolve, but don’t completely pivot unless strategic reasons demand it.
• Segmentation: Define new vs. returning customers, and tailor both creative and measurement (ROAS, etc.) accordingly.

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Final Thought

Brand salience is your most valuable ad targeting layer. In a world where platforms reward relevance and memory, creative strategy is the most potent way to cut through noise and achieve efficient, scalable growth—by making people feel seen, understood, and remembered.

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Contact Rafael at Pilothouse for a salience audit or tactical support: [e-mail]

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Transcript

[A]

Before we jump into today's all killer no Filler episode, a quick word about who makes this show possible. The DTC podcast is brought to you by Pilot House, the performance agency behind some of the fastest growing DTC brands in the world. Creative media and customer journey all under one roof. Performance and brand without the trade off. Every Friday we hand the mic to a Pilothouse operator to break down what's actually working in their space right now. Want a team that treats your growth like their own? That's Pilothouse. Head to Pilothouse Co. And now on with the show.

[B]

The Andromeda change is forcing marketers to become good marketers again. Meta seems to be forcing brands to think about how do you create relevant ads instead of just being able to push bad creative in front of the consumers that they want. Salience for me is how do people remember you and when if we want to be considered for a purchase as a brand, you have to think about what are the groups of people that I want to be remembered by and what do I want them to remember me for? When you feel seen, you remember that relationship, right? So that's the power of being relevant, right? You're making somebody feel seen.

[A]

Quick word from Paramount Ads Manager. If you've been living in paid social, you already know the problem. You're paying more every quarter for an ad somebody scrolls past in half a second. Paramount Ads Manager puts you somewhere totally different on TV's biggest shows across Paramount, CBS, CBS Sports, Pluto TV and more. Paramount Skydance content makes up about 1 in 5 of all streaming minutes viewed in the US and Paramount plus drives 21% higher ad attention than other streaming services. And it makes sense because these are non skippable full screen spots running right next to the shows people actually sat down to watch. No scroll, no skip, no little square buried in a feed. Just your brand in front of someone who's paying attention on the biggest screen in their house. Sign up [e-mail] get your brand on TV's biggest shows by tomorrow. It's all killer, no filler. And I am here for the very first time ever with Pilothouse's head of Strategic growth and partnerships, Rafael. How you doing man?

[B]

Doing great. Apologies for the odd setup. My kiddo decided to build a fort this weekend and he would not let me take it down so it fits right in.

[A]

I just feel like it's part of the creative constructs that we're going to be talking about today that you're you' just making visual for all of our podcast Viewers, give me your background a little bit, because in our pre call, I thought it was really interesting the way your career has kind of merged like the traditional worlds of agency and performance, and that's really what you're doing at Pilothouse now. So give me the 32nd rundown.

[B]

Yeah, 100%. I think prior to joining Pilot House and really helping on the partnerships and integration side, I spent close to a decade working on traditional creative agencies. Some of the ones that you see quite often at Cannes Awards like Rethink, Anomaly, no fixed address, et cetera. And the last four or five years, I've really been working as an operator in internal scaling brands. And one of the things that has been awesome about joining the Pilot House partnership team is really being able to take the philosophy of blending some of those maybe disparate philosophies and pulling them together. So it's been really fun bringing in that operational mindset as well as combining some of that traditional brand thinking with the technical expertise that our teams provide here at Pilothouse. So that's been kind of the backdrop

[A]

and utterly essential is something I'm realizing through our conversations and conversations I have on this podcast all the time is no longer, I say this way too much on the podcast, but no longer can you just sort of hit the scale button on Meta and have it find all your right customers again and again. You need to be helping it with a lot more of the strategic thinking that comes from the agency world. And one of the things that I wanted to kind of focus this talk on today was the statement that again, we've said on the podcast a million times, which is creative is the new target and creative is targeted. We've been saying that for five years. And you laid it out for me in a way that just made really strong sense about why this is the case and what that actually means and how to go about building your creative strategy out to make sure that you're taking that into account. So maybe walk me through that concept a little bit.

[B]

Yeah, what's it called? I think I'm going to maybe share a phrase that we use internally quite a bit. I think post Andromeda, when that phrase got popularized leading up to some of the algorithmic changes. We often say now that, you know, the Andromeda change is forcing marketers to become good marketers again, if that makes sense. So long gone are the days where the media buyer had complete control of who you could target. Right. You can go into Meta's back end, figure out what are they interested in, what are other pages and brands that they follow. And then as long as you kind of set some key spend parameters, it's going to force push kind of your spend against that core consumer so you're able to reach them. I think post Andromeda and this makes a ton of sense why they're doing this. But post Andromeda meta seems to be forcing brands to think about how do you create relevant ads instead of just being able to push bad creative in front of the consumers that they want, for lack of better words. So what's it called? The platform is forcing people to think about Persona segments and then build them into the actual creative as a way to target people. And I think that is a big pragmatic shift that is truly forcing marketers to think and leverage more traditional methods. Again, you know, going back to the madman days and just thinking about who's my consumer, what's the proposition I provide? How do I create a ad or advertisement that kind of captures their attention in that moment?

[A]

And what was the term you brought up? A word. I'm a big word junkie. Love words. And I know the word salience. I've heard it. But you used it in this concept of traditional advertising. Talk to me about what salience is.

[B]

Yeah, I think salience for me is ultimately how do people remember you and when, if we want to be considered for a purchase as a brand, you have to think about what are the groups of people that I want to be remembered by and what do I want them to remember me for. I'll use a automotive example. Right. So I'm sure if you watch TV or Super Bowls, et cetera, you see car commercials all the time. Right. There's a, you know, there's a reason why car manufacturers are spending millions and millions of dollars on TV advertising is because they want to build salience ultimately with a car purchase. You know, it's so complicated. You have to be one of the three brands for the car model class that a customer remembers when they're ready to make that purchase in order to be even in the game. Right. Like a consumer is not going to go through every single car brand, every single model class. That's way too much work. So car brands need to build salience around a price point and a benefit amongst a specific group of people. You know, that's why, for example, Volvo is known for quiet luxury and safety. Right. Understand style. They're kind of like in the cusp of the higher end, higher end market. You know, they know who they are and they're Building saliency and memory around that, really focusing on the sedan structure, etc. Right. So when somebody in that segment or category thinks, hey, I want to upgrade from my Toyota, they think of Volvo potentially as a level luxury vehicle. So it's really building those memory structures. Once he starts hitting a bit of, bit of scale.

[A]

It reminds me of the talk that Tony, Tony from Vessi gave at one of our events one time where he talked about when it rained. He wanted people to think Vessi, he said he wanted to own the rain, which I thought was a lofty goal, but that it kind of gets at the kind of strategy. We say the word strategy all the time when it comes to how important, you know, your creative needs to have strategy. And really that strategy needs to be working towards salience.

[B]

Yeah, 100%. And that's where the consistency comes in. And then I'll jump to a couple more examples. You know, prior to joining Pilot House in this role, I was leading marketing and brand and creative performance and creative services at A9 figure Global fashion brand. Right. When I joined in, you know, the memory structure we're building was we were performance apparel rooted in denim. Right. So it's like, hey, if you're thinking about buying Lulu, buy us instead. You know, we're made from jeans, it's different. But is it the right memory structure? From my perspective, no. Because ultimately who's going to choose between a pair of jean shorts and a pair of like polyester workout gear that's lighter to go on a run or a hike? So we made a very simple shift. We said, hey, we are denim or a jeans wear brand that's actually rooted in an outdoor lifestyle. Right. So basically classic American Apparel for people that live an outdoor lifestyle. So even just flipping the order and building the memory structure as a denim brand who creates apparel that feels like athleisure changes how people remember you. And that simple flip was one of our biggest levers of growth, you know, and building that memory structure around that, you know, and that Vessi example that you mentioned is brilliant. You know, like, hey, if I live in a wet coastal market, you know, everything that vessel sells is made for me, reading the memory structure, they're not just selling the shoes, they're associating apparel to rain.

[A]

And so when we, you know, you're on the partnership side now, so we get brands coming in all the time and you're looking at everything. You're auditing their creatives, you're auditing their strategy. What are you finding is the missing piece or like what are people missing when they come in in regard to this process?

[B]

I think it depends on the life stage. You know, I don't think there's actually a right or wrong philosophy or like approach to how you grow your business. It's just there are a couple proven principles that work depending on the stage of your business. So I'll give you an example. You know, we're gonna, you know, in about an hour I'm gonna be jumping on a call with a prospective clients. They're big nine, nine figure brand that's scaled quite nicely and then their efficiency is dropping. The shorthand is when looking at their core account is they've grown a business by being really great at creating viral wellness products, but they're kind of using that structure even though they become a mid nine figure business. So what's happening is in their account structure. For example, it's structured by product, not Persona. So their new customers are getting 14, 15, 20 impressions, all different messages. So to that point around, you know, saliency, a customer can't remember what they're about because they're getting 14 to 20 messages about six, seven, eight different products before actually forming an opinion, you know, and that creates wastage and also it doesn't create saliency about what you do, it just creates saliency about what you sell in a non efficient way. Because you're kind of praying and spraying everything to everybody. Yeah.

[A]

And there's the opportunity that can actually affect you negatively if you, if you're not positioning yourself as a cohesive option for your correct avatar. If you're kind of all over the place, if you're not thinking about things strategically, you could actually have be having a negative impact even with all you have this idea of diverse creative and I've got lots of different kind of creative. But if you're not doing it strategically with salience in mind, you could be actually turning off your avatar.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. Because you're serving things that are not relevant to them and then also changing the impression, you know, that they have. Let's say, you know, a young 25 year old came for a product that they care about and then they're getting served ads showing a, you know, 50 plus year old because you're generally praying, praying and spraying.

[A]

Yeah, let's go back just even back to the very beginning. This is something that we kind of take for granted I think. But ads perform better when you are reflected in them, you know what I mean? Like this goes back to the very, this is basic about like memetic structures or whatever. But when you're out there looking for any given thing that you want to buy, the more you see yourself in an ad, the more likely you are to make a purchase. Is that correct?

[B]

Yeah, 100%. I mean, the simple way that I used to put it when I let strategy teams on some of those agencies was, you know, it's a simple idea. Right. Ultimately, you just follow the human philosophy that people remember not what you say, but how you made them feel. So to your point around the importance of seeing yourself reflected in the ad, every human has this experience. When you feel seen, you remember that relationship. Right. So that's the power of being relevant. Right. You're making somebody feel seen at the end of the day. Like one of the fun parts about figuring out how to crack the creative code is ultimately just building relationships at scale. Right. How do you feel? Build trust ultimately by offering value and then helping the other person see themselves in the relationship you're trying to build. And ultimately, once you build that relationship, you're creating a believer, not just a customer. And a believer is going to always do more for your business than a customer will. That's just transactional. Right.

[A]

And then you can get them through retention into an advocate. You go from a believer and into an advocate and then your, your own marketing channel even.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. And then they kind of do that for you and you're kind of spoon feeding them the story and the hook, you know, so you can see, to go back to your specific question around what are some of the challenges you're facing? So those brands that are really going from that high eight figure, mid to high eight figure, into that nine figure and above, you have to outgrow the tendency to overdevelop, pray and spray and go through volume and start thinking about, how do I win the customer versus sell the product? And I think that's quite a shift to make. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. Well, talk to me about that. What, what, what does this process look like for a brand that maybe has come in and has been in this mode more where it's like you're just making creatives and seeing if the system takes them. You. So you're. So this idea of spraying and praying, you're kind of coming up, maybe you're doing a lot, you have high creative volume, maybe you even have high creative diversity. But talk about how you take a brand who, who's doing that and then refocusing them. The thing that I find interesting is it's like the, the higher you get in this process, it's, it's like the simpler your message becomes or like the more distilled your message becomes. So how do you take brands that maybe have a lot of diversity and really help them focus to saliency?

[B]

That's a really good question. Maybe I'll start with like the operational shift. I think the main operational shift is simple, hard in the sense that there's a need to shift from the platform owning the decisions to the brand taking back the decisions, if that makes sense. So, like, you know, the general philosophy when you're smaller is all revenue is good revenue. So you kind of let the platform chase and find revenue. Once you hit a certain scale, that actually works to your detriment because you're not building saliency because saliency needs focus. You're kind of just wiggling out. Right. So that's going to create a limiting factor. So I think it's shifting the operational philosophy that, hey, the platforms know best, and then having confidence that, hey, we built a business up to this point, we know who our customer is and why we are winning in market. And then structuring your accounts in a way that replicates your business model instead of structuring your accounts in a way that is beneficial to platform metrics. So one pragmatic example of that would be oftentimes, I see there's often a spend discrepancy between what do you actually sell most versus what products are going into your media budget. There's a discrepancy, right. So you're spending 20% of your budget on your product, that is selling 80% accounting for 80% of the revenue. And then in platform, you're spending 80% on your budget, that actually accounts for 20% of your revenue. So it's not aligned because it looks platform efficient. So being able to have a holistic business understanding and starting to structure your business where your business is leading, the structural decisions around how your platforms are structured.

[A]

Once you've shifted this operational mindset, you know, to be working towards salience, to be working towards strategy, what do we do next?

[B]

Yeah. So once you have that in place, I think the other brilliant part I think about your question was, I think you asked, how do you get down to a simpler, simpler message? I think that component is really, really important. Because if you're like a $1 million business, right, you only need a small number of customers. Right. If you are a $500 million business, the pool of customers, you have to appeal to get much larger. If you're investing in 50 messages and trying to reach a larger pool. That gets quite expensive. So you know what creative agencies get paid a lot of money to do is figure out is what is that simple message that appeals to the broadest number of people that will also drive conversions because then you can build equity and create a compounding effect by building that salience. So that's where the kind of unit economics break, Right? Another example of having to shift the tactics in game. If you're sub 10 mil or 20 mil, it's okay to spend maybe track towards 4 ROAs or 3 ROAs and you're spending 25, 20 to 30% of your overall budget in marketing and advertising. Right. Your unit economics work is still profitable because small business, you probably have product advantage, not a ton of competition. Early adopters are looking for you, so you can convert them pretty easily. But once you scale past that 20, 30 mil, other competitors come in. There's copycats that are taking your base product and making it better. So there's increased competition. So you're going to have to adjust, improve distribution at wholesale. Like, you know, it just doesn't scale out the same way. So if you're distributing that shrinking pool of media dollars as a proportion of your total sales and putting it into 20 messages, you're not going to reach enough people. Right? So that is the power of having just one salient message on the calls that we have, our prospective clients. The analogy that I use is, right now imagine that you have one tank of gas, but you've purchased 12 cars. And you have to divide up the gas tank between 12 cars. All cars are just going to go a very short distance. You're not going to get to your destination. Right? So the game changes. You have to basically pick the car you want to make it to the end of that destination. And that's where the power of having that single message allows you to do that.

[A]

It's. And the higher up you go, it makes me think of the famous Mad Men episode where he's pitching Hines, which is funny because they actually just started using this campaign, I think last year. It basically made the product implied, it made the. It made the customer actually do the work to picture the product in their own mind. Like it was basically just showing the things that you would always put Heinz on, but it would have it without and it would just be like, you know, like past the Hines kind of thing. And it would. You don't even need to show the product because you've done such a good job with saliency. You have such a good Refined message that all you have to show is the settings where you'd normally have this product and have it without. And then the customer does the implicit work themselves, which is going to be more powerful.

[B]

Exactly. Makes the link, you know, funny you bringing up that example because I've worked at the agency that does that work for about close to five, five years. It was the first creative agency I've worked on. Yeah. And yeah, they're really leaning onto the idea that, you know, Heinz is ubiquitous with ketchup. Right. So I think the first execution was like a man on the street style where they went this, they went around, they were like, hey, can you draw a bottle of ketchup? No signals or anything? And people drew the classic Heinz bottle with the logo without any prompt. Right. So I think that's where the power of that message really, really comes through, is when you're able to understand how to connect with the broadest number of groups, broadest number of segments and people that will find value in your product with a single message that you can build equity and saliency in. And then that again, builds up memory structure. So when somebody's thinking about your product, they consider you, then you're in the game.

[A]

Can we go a level deeper? Because I think like, creative diversity, creative being the new targeting, like, how do you use saliency, saliency or memory structures to translate into the actual kind of creative diversity that Andromeda requires? Now, I think one of the points we didn't make early on is you said you understand why Meta is making this such a priority. And I think that's because it's a real understanding of attention being the cur, you know, the currency of our age. And if you've got all these advertisers that are just slamming out, you know, spraying and praying messages, that's not going to. Even though it might create the right purchase signals, you know, with the right kind of tracking and targeting, it's not going to be necessarily a good experience for the attention of that user. So I think first and foremost it makes sense why Meta is kind of making these changes. And just, I guess, how do you think about applying saliency to the creative making process?

[B]

I think at the end of the day, like any digital platform, like any traditional media platform, like the super bowl monetizes attention. Right. I think, like, Meta's advertising revenue is majority of their revenue and profit. It's like, what, 200, $250 billion globally is a ginormous business. So in order to keep people on platform you know, they need to provide relevant content. Imagine like subscribing to TV channel and just getting junk ads all day and no content. You know, people are going to start unsubscribing and then, yeah, they're not going to be able to sell advertising. So ultimately, you know, my belief the shift to Andromeda was to ensure that brands were taking back ownership for creating great ads. And what that meant is going back to your original point is how do you make that advertising relevant? So the person can see themselves in the ad, which then means that they're going to be more engaged in the ad again, attention. And then secondarily they will feel like meta provides good content. Right. So it creates a bit of a win win situation. And then what that requires, as we think about creative diversity, isn't necessarily variations of colors, copy text blocks, you know, like making these little minute tactical variations is really thinking about if I want to sell somebody a chair, you know, how is my chair relevant to a 25 year old versus a 50 year old? And then translating that benefit in a way that makes sense to them and then building a piece of creative where the 25 year old sees themselves in it as well as the 50 year old, because those are the targeting inputs where their AI system will take the elements, whether it's the visual cues, let's say in the ad it's an older gentleman versus a younger gentleman and then they'll use that as the inputs for who to target.

[A]

Makes sense. And there's all sorts of different lenses you can. Well, there's not all sorts, but there are definitely key lenses that you kind of can put in front of this process. So you've got your avatar, then you also have their purchase stage. Right. So you're looking. Then you can kind of apply these lenses over your Salience model or your memory structures essentially. And in focusing on different parts, you know, using different lenses, essentially you can create a myriad of diverse creatives. So you've got the, the purchase funnel part, you've got your memory structure part, you've got your avatar part, you've got your platform part. These are all different ways that you can use to sort of create ads that have salience and then that have consistent salience but are diverse at the same time.

[B]

Yeah, 100%. And maybe we can, what's it called, Use, you know, build on an example that we started like, let's say with Volvo, you know, and we're thinking about like, you know, quiet luxury and safety as kind of the components that Volvo is Known for, to your exact point, maybe for a younger segment because Volvo's made, you know, a lot of advancements on their brand. Maybe it's known for a bit more of the entry level luxury side. But let's say the older segments, maybe there's a lagging perception that they're known for utility and safety, not yet luxury. Right. So when you're building awareness amongst the 25 year old, it's just, you know, again, highlighting that message in cue that hey, if you're that type of person who has ambition, wants to succeed, you know, but don't, you know, you don't want to be overly flashy, this is the car for you because that's what they're known for. But maybe for an older segment it's, you know, as they build awareness, they got to make that transition that, hey, we're not just about safety and being pragmatic. You know, look at our design chops. Again, same message, but to your point, tailored to the consumer segment and the stage of the journey. So, you know, oftentimes performance agencies get stuck where they're like, hey, we've tried every variation. We don't know what piece of creative we want to build next. But if you're able to anchor your creative strategy around the Persona around and then create a campaign structure that creates distinct goals and messaging for each stage of the customer journey, then the permutations are almost endless.

[A]

I keep thinking about the example of Red Bull, which I think is interesting just because they're the, like, it's sugar water with caffeine and it's this, it's this really basic thing, but they've built out this whole content arm around extreme sports or, you know, which is just like. And if you think about it, the salience there is like Red Bull gives you wings. It get it sort of, you know what I mean? It gives you the same sort of like sensation if you're going to have a Jagger bomb at a, at a bar as you might get, you know. Exactly.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I think that they've done such a good job of like seemingly very disparate things in a way. Right. You've got motocross over here, you've got their crazy like cart going into the water thing that they do or whatever. You've got the guy jumping from low earth orbit or, or whatever. They just do all these, these really like high octane things and that just makes you think, okay, well that's the sensation I get when I, when I have Red Bull, when. Because it gives Me, wings and the way that all kind of comes together just makes a ton of sense.

[B]

Yeah, 100%. And the fact that you still remember the ads from the early 2000s, you know, when they launched, you know, they, they've done a really good job of building that memory structure.

[A]

You know, I think these, these are topics we can kind of continue to revisit as you become a regular on the, on the all killer no filler podcast. But for people that are listening who maybe have gotten by by you know, creative diversity or iterations on creative or maybe maybe even just like one angle that's worked really well. What process do you recommend for a brand that maybe finds themselves in that position? They're seeing diminishing returns, maybe on, you know, their margins getting tighter, their, their, their scale is capped. What's the process besides coming to work with Pilothouse that, that you'd advise a brand take?

[B]

I think the most important thing to keep in mind when you hit a ceiling, right, is once you hit a ceiling and what's worked in the past stops working, don't keep pushing, you know, like take a step back and assess and realize that you've hit a different life stage of your business. You know, I think that's, that's the number one component being able to understand that, you know, it happens to everybody and happened to multiple times to any brand within a business. So just taking a step back and being open to restructuring what has once worked and thinking about a different way to approach things because creative volume through optimizing one messaging angle is not a wrong thing to do if you're a sub 10 million dollar business because there's many brands that get there with that. But once you get into multi SKU and you get competition, that's really not going to work. So being able to pause and assess the reasons why that is happening I think is probably one of the most critical pieces. The other key piece, I think one of the most pragmatic things that we're seeing right now is that a lot of brands, they don't clearly define new customers versus existing customers and then they trust in platform roas to make optimizations. So what we tend to see quite frequently is a lot of brands have, you know, many different stages of revenue where they come to us with a very distinct problem, which is our new customer, sorry, existing customer revenue is outpacing our new customer revenue. And that's because you're strictly relying on platform metrics to make your optimizations without having strict audience definitions between those two key pieces. And Unique strategies to capture new customers versus nurture existing ones because the platform is going to ultimately chase performance and it's a lot easier to get sales from an existing customer because there's that built trust.

[A]

Do you have different, you know, when it comes to saliency, are you thinking about saliency different for old customers and new customers or it just depends on your, your business phase?

[B]

I think the most important thing about saliency is continuity because every time you become inconsistent, you have to build a new memory structure. This might be too simple, but like I think of especially brand marketing as like relationship building, right? If you meet somebody who is constantly changing their identity, you're less likely to trust. That's the exact same thing for brands as well. So you have to make smart, natural evolutions. And I think that's kind of the hard part because there's no formula, right. I think, you know, one of the things that's most exciting about working on brands that are kind of scaling versus being fully mature, you know, compared to my ex big creative agency days, is that there's no built in formula, right? Like you're building a business and you kind of need to survive. You make the decisions as is and you kind of have to figure out an art to kind of bridge that message positioning into that next stage. So that's a really interesting human problem to resolve. One example, I'll give you one quick example of a client we're working with grow really quickly to close to eight figures, doing a clear non flavored protein powder. And they grew it on one hook. You know, you can dissolve it into your coffee but that quickly reaches a ceiling. How many people are looking for protein powder that drink coffee and that's the exact routine that they want to run. They kind of saw this big spike and flattened, came to us, talked to them. We're like, hey, simple thing, that format is working. The next easy transition would be, is at different occasions, Matcha, you know, smoothie. You know what I'm trying to say? It's like a simple, simple evolution, you know, now you can go after Matcha drinkers or that don't drink coffee. If people don't like caffeine, maybe there's like a, a smoothie, you know, but all those things kind of link to a active wellness lifestyle regardless, right? So, but then at some point the dollars are not going to stretch because they're going to have to focus on reach that they're going to have to have a consolidated message, you know, so you can kind of predictively see These like cycles where you diverge and then you have to reconverge over time. So yeah, that's another pragmatic example.

[A]

Are there any brands that you hold up as just like sterling examples of messaging and memory structures? Any brands that you're just a big fan of out there?

[B]

Yeah, I think there's so many to point to, but I think like one of the ones that are, you know, within this ecosystem and space and it might sound a little dated really, you know, AG1 because I think they did really good job on two things. One, I think they did a great job of building memory structure around daily essential nutrition. One and done shop that you are basically able to drink and you get your baseline covered. So even if you eat like shit, pardon my language, all day.

[A]

Doordash all day.

[B]

Exactly, yeah. You know, you're covered, you don't have to worry about it, right? So that simplicity, I think they were able to build a category and even if you look it up now, like you can type in like essential nutrition efficacy of, let's say it's an, there's like scientific studies around it, right? So they've really changed how we think about nutrition and they built a memory structure around, around that and there's like a whole knock on effect of other brands that have come out of the that memory structure that they built. And then I think the other thing that I think they did quite brilliantly was thinking about a smart category entry point that's aligned with the tactical channel that they picked. When they first started, they did two things. You know, they built memory structure around efficacy through their partnerships with the scientific community and those podcasts. And secondarily they own what I refer to as a category ended point. What is the human occasion that happens in your customer's life that triggers them thinking about you? And if you remember the early days of their influencer and partnership structure, they really relied on travel influencers, food bloggers who are traveling around the world, you know, that lived a bit of a nomadic life. They kind of showed how they were able to live that life with that routine, but still get everything that they need to take care of themselves. So travel, you know, the travel carry on again, conceptually came all together and that's how you build trust, right? The message, the category entry point, the product packaging, you know, the guy, you know, I don't know if you remember the promo, but everybody got the little travel kit and also the sample, the little travel satchel packs, right? And then all the influencers that they activated on were really Travel oriented and focused.

[A]

You know, that's super smart because everyone's traveled. Everyone loves traveling. Everyone knows how hard it is to get your nutrition when you're traveling. The other piece I love that they did was the hat, the gift, the free with purchase hat. Because anytime you can, you can get a customer to start wearing your CPG products hat. It's like, feels like a win, and then it becomes a signaling device to be like, I'm, I'm a healthy. I'm a person who gets his nutrients in a way. Right. Like, I'm making healthy choices. I'll wear the hat to prove it.

[B]

Yeah. And then you, you become a walking billboard. Right? Like when you're at the airport, somebody's probably putting on a hat because, you know, they have a travel day, they were up early or, you know, didn't have time to do their hair. So they're just wearing if they, if

[A]

they're lucky enough to have it.

[B]

Thanks, Raf. Billing, saliency and, you know, a reminder of, of that brand. And again, that moment, that category entry point, which is, hey, I'm traveling, I'm at a routine. I'm not sticking to my nutritional schedule. You know, I can pick up some ag one. You know, as competition grew, they've obviously evolved their approach. They went from capturing early adopters to not being, you know, appealing to a broader group of people, you know, and now they got to play a different game. You know, there's like Ima coming in with David Beckham now leveraging kind of celebrity power. So instead of now being the brand for kind of those innovators, they got to think about, how do you win the mass market game to continue to grow?

[A]

Super interesting, man. Have you ever seen the movie Century of the Self? I've never actually talked about it on this podcast, I don't think.

[B]

Not at all.

[A]

Yeah, it's a, it's an Adam Curtis documentary that you can watch on. It's a BBC documentary you can watch on YouTube. And it's the story. I think you'd really like it, actually. It's the story about how Freud's nephew, who's named Edward Bernays, who wrote, literally wrote the book Propaganda, he moved to the United States and started the world's first PR marketing firm. And he tells these stories about. They're kind of devious a little bit, but these stories about, like, how these cigarette companies came to him and said women aren't smoking. And it's a big problem for us. It's a huge part of our market. We want them to start smoking. So he held a suffragette rally where women were getting the vote, and he had them light up their torches of freedom. At the end of it with. For all the news cameras he got, Duncan Hines was like, women aren't using our, our instant cakes. And he's like, have them add an egg. And they're like. He's. They're like, they don't need to add an egg. He's like, but this will help them feel like it's more theirs or something. Right. It's a crash course on that sort of like, deep level of psychological saliency you can aspire towards as a brand.

[B]

Yeah, 100%. And I think, you know, the fun part is ultimately, I think if you focus on making good relationships with people and generating value, I think it's like, it's a skill set and a superpower that can be used for good, you know, because ultimately you're trying to get across value and create a win, win situation, you know, for everybody. Yeah, I think that's, that's what keeps the fun, you know, because at the end of the day, everybody says in life is about people. If you're able to figure out ways to create value both for the brands and the end users, I think, yeah, there's no fun or drop in the world.

[A]

Love that. Well, if you're in our audience and thinking about saliency, you just talk to Raphael. Send him an email at Raphael G at Pilothouse Co and he'll explain to you how he was named after the coolest turtle and give you some some tips on saliency and discuss your brand with you. Thank you for coming on the DTC podcast today. Raf. This was awesome.

[B]

Awesome. Thanks. Thanks for the time and yeah, looking forward to talking shop with anybody that's interested in connecting. So, yeah, do reach out. And that's G, not Gi, just Raphael,

[A]

the letter G. Letter G. Yeah, Raphael G. I'll put it in the show notes. Good luck on your call this afternoon. I'm sure you'll nail it.

[B]

Appreciate it, Eric.

[A]

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 D to C podcast. We'll see you next time.