Podcast Summary: Marketing Operators — Episode 100: "The Big Rocks We’re Focusing on for 2026 Growth"

Date: February 24, 2026
Hosts & Guests: Connor Rolain, Connor MacDonald, Cody Plofker, Marketing Ops Lead at Ridge
Theme: The 100th episode centers on the "big rocks"—major marketing operations and growth initiatives the trio and their brands are focusing on as they head into 2026.

Episode Overview

Celebrating their 100th episode, the hosts of Marketing Operators reflect on their journey and dive deep into the most significant, strategic projects (“big rocks”) that will fuel growth in 2026 for their respective brands: Ridge, Jones Road Beauty, and Hexclad. The discussion revolves around scaling marketing operations, AI and workflow tools, creative strategy evolutions, cross-team testing, refining retention as a "product," creator activation, TikTok Shop strategies, and the nuances of influencer and YouTube marketing.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Celebrating 100 Episodes & Workflow Tools

• The team kicks off with personal anecdotes marking the show's milestone and discusses their favorite note-taking and AI workflow tools—Granola and Gemini summaries—as ways to improve meeting productivity and information sharing.
  • Quote (Connor McDonald, 02:42): “Granola is like so much better than anything else. ... You can just go to the transcript and control-F and find anything you want.”

Timestamps:

00:00–04:04 – 100th episode milestones, gratitude, and workflow tools

2. Creative Strategy in 2026

• Creative strategy’s role is shifting to be AI-enabled, with an emphasis on hands-on learning, live instruction, and job opportunities for creative strategists.
  • Quote (Cody, 05:14): “It's also super hard to find great creative strategists these days. It’s still a new role and one that's extremely important.”
• Motion’s new live course for creative strategy gets a plug, highlighting the need for current, applicable learning environments.

Timestamps:

04:51–06:33 – The evolution of creative strategy and Motion’s educational offerings

3. Building Scalable Marketing Operations

• Ridge's Evolution:
  • Ridge scaled from infrequent, stressful launches in 2019–2020 to executing 2–3 major launches a week in 2025, mostly by standardizing processes, fine-tuning tasks in Notion, and introducing a project manager.
  • Quote (Marketing Ops Lead at Ridge, 07:57): “We went from absolute operating in absolute disarray to… launching two or three of those level of campaigns or product launches every single week.”
• Slack Hygiene & Cross-Channel Communication:
  • The importance of public Slack conversations and effective channel/thread management is emphasized, along with streamlining tests and sharing learnings regularly across teams.

Timestamps:

06:33–13:51 – Defining and optimizing marketing operations at Ridge; comms hygiene and documentation 13:51–15:15 – Ownership of postmortems and single source of truth

4. Project Management & Team Buy-in

• A dedicated marketing project manager is crucial for high-complexity environments. While simpler setups may self-manage, scaling brands need coordination and buy-in to make the system work.
  • Quote (Marketing Ops Lead at Ridge, 18:09): “It’s just so much easier…totally want someone in that position [PM] making sure that all the tasks and the items are created and we’re hitting deadlines.”

Timestamps:

16:58–20:30 – The central role of project management and task creation 20:30–22:57 – Process improvements: postmortems, cross-team testing, reducing launches to focus on evergreen infrastructure

5. Testing as a Growth Lever

• Teams at Ridge and Jones Road are systematizing testing, assessing how many “house” and zero tests are feasible and impactful.
  • Quote (Cody, 24:52): “Teams that experiment X number of times per year have like 17% lower CAC than teams that don’t.”
• KPIs for test volume vs. testing for the sake of it—more important to document, share knowledge, and ensure experiments are applicable to future launches.

Timestamps:

22:58–26:12 – Setting expectations and KPIs for test velocity 26:12–29:54 – Testing culture: more valuable, repeatable experiments across departments

6. AI’s Role in Marketing Ops

• Despite AI being a hot topic, Ridge’s marketing ops are prioritizing process refinement over adding more AI tools—though other teams are focusing on AI adoption.
  • Quote (Marketing Ops Lead at Ridge, 31:33): “I just like to tighten the bolts on what we've got… I don't have any urgency around inserting AI into that process in the short term.”

Timestamps:

30:00–31:54 – AI’s practical fit (or lack thereof) in day-to-day marketing ops

7. Becoming Creator-Obsessed & TikTok Shop Execution

• Jones Road’s Strategy:
  • Aggressive push to activate more creators across more channels with TikTok Shop as a key focus, even as logistics and approval processes cause delays.
  • Quote (Cody, 35:51): “...We’ll probably launch by the end of this month...just doing everything we can to just barrel it through and push it through.”
• Scaling Creator Programs:
  • Aim to onboard 10–20 creators initially, run open castings, and develop an internal studio.
  • TikTok Shop Mechanics:
    • Most revenue comes through “GMV Max”—boosting creators’ organic posts with paid. Approvals, FBT, and 3PL setups remain hurdles even for experienced teams.
    • Live shopping events and large-scale affiliate seeding are critical tactics.
      • Quote (Marketing Ops Lead at Ridge, 41:21): “90% plus of your TikTok revenue should come from... GMV Max.”

Timestamps:

34:01–39:24 – Launching TikTok Shop and building creator programs 39:24–45:32 – Navigating TikTok Shop’s complexities and paid vs. organic strategies

8. Retention as a Product

• Personalization & Automation:

  • Move past generic blasts to build scalable, personalized experiences—leveraging segmentation, behavioral triggers, and first-party data (via quizzes and tools like Revamp and Outer Signal).
  • Understanding buyer intent and cross-category behaviors is key for scaling up LTV and personalized experiences.
  • Quote (Marketing Ops Lead at Ridge, 55:46): “…what I’m actually way more excited about at this point is how do we identify by sending a relevant high value message even if it's just to a few hundred people.”

• Quiz Data & Persona Journeys:

  • Using quizzes and data enrichment to tailor post-purchase and on-site merchandising (product kits, personalized bundles).

• Volume vs. Segmentation:

  • Optimize for flow and campaign volume; only segment deeper if engagement metrics warrant it.
    • Quote (Connor McDonald, 66:25): “My advice...is always optimizing for volume with the assumption that your open rate and click rates are really good.”

Timestamps:

45:32–66:35 – Deep dive into retention: triggers, events, quiz data, segmentation logic, and infrastructure

9. Influencer Marketing: YouTube's Organic and Paid Playbook

• Organic vs. Paid:
  • Should budgets shift from Instagram/TikTok to YouTube organic sponsorships? Paid integrations with major YouTubers lead to ongoing, latent visibility—especially for product categories with high “show-up” rates (eg. cookware).
  • Quote (Marketing Ops Lead at Ridge, 71:15): “…pay to get in...product seeding probably works also. The 80/20 here is going after the biggest people, paying to get in the videos, and then knowing that some of that will just become sort of a latent attention and impressions over time.”
• Patience for Attribution:
  • Revenue from YouTube can be less attributable and delayed; must commit for 3–6 months, expect a slow build.
  • Optimize for creators activated and measure long-tail organic pop-ups of the product in channel content.

Timestamps:

66:39–75:11 – Should you pay for creator integrations or double down on organic seeding? 75:11–76:07 – Measurement challenges, patience, and final insights

Notable Quotes

• “We went from absolute operating in absolute disarray... to launching two or three of those level of campaigns or product launches every single week.”
  — Marketing Ops Lead at Ridge [07:57]

• “Teams that experiment X number of times per year have like 17% lower CAC than teams that don’t.”
  — Cody, Jones Road Beauty [24:52]

• “I just like to tighten the bolts on what we've got… I don't have any urgency around inserting AI into that process in the short term.”
  — Marketing Ops Lead at Ridge [31:33]

• “My advice...is always optimizing for volume with the assumption that your open rate and your click rates are really good.”
  — Connor McDonald [66:25]

• “If you sponsor creators... you’ll probably have 8 of them just use your cookware for the rest of the year.”
  — Marketing Ops Lead at Ridge [70:54]

Episode Flow (Quick Timeline/Headings)

• 00:00–04:04: Episode celebration, tools for productivity (Granola, Gemini)
• 04:51–06:33: Creative strategy and AI’s impact on advertising
• 06:33–13:51: Building efficient marketing ops systems; go-to-market planning
• 13:51–15:15: Postmortems: who owns the recap and learnings?
• 16:58–22:57: Project management’s role in scaling, process tweaks
• 22:58–29:54: Testing: KPIs, sharing learnings, and prioritizing velocity
• 30:00–31:54: Is “AI Everywhere” the answer? Process vs. potential
• 34:01–45:32: Creator strategies, TikTok Shop ambitions, overcoming hurdles
• 45:32–66:35: Retention as a product: personalization, lifecycle journeys, data enrichment
• 66:39–76:07: The YouTube question: organic vs. paid, patience, and performance tracking

Takeaways for Operators

• Build and continually refine your marketing operations system—focus on task clarity, cross-team alignment, repeatable meeting cadences, and knowledge sharing.
• Testing velocity correlates with lower CAC; prioritize process and volume, but always document and synthesize learnings.
• Transition retention from batch-and-blast to lifecycle-driven, segmented, and event-triggered flows, but beware over-segmentation at low volumes.
• Move fast on new channels like TikTok Shop, but plan for delays and coordination challenges—most revenue comes through creator-driven campaigns, not brand storefronts.
• For influencer programs, paid integrations with the right creators can seed long-term organic presence, especially on YouTube. Commit and measure over the long haul.
• AI is only as valuable as the problems it solves in your process. Tighten fundamentals before chasing automation for automation’s sake.

Memorable Moments

• Slack Hygiene Real Talk

  • “I would like to have more public conversations. ...I kicked out basically everybody from [the partnerships] channel. …Now it’s a much more intimate group of 8.” — Marketing Ops Lead at Ridge [11:39]

• Testing as Team Culture

  • “You should always have a house test live. You should always have, you know, totally... and struggle with the number, but...” — Cody [24:52]

• Agency and Platform Logistics Woes

  • “It’s just, it’s just killing me how long things take to get set up...actually the logistics, and as soon as we decided we were going to launch, they hit everyone with the whole FBT thing.” — Cody [34:35]

• AI Not Just for the Sake of AI

  • “I should be talking about quadrupling my workforce with autonomous agents or something. But no, not the case right now.” — Marketing Ops Lead at Ridge [31:45]

This episode is a rich, tactical look at how modern marketing operators are structuring their teams and strategies for sustainable—and resilient—growth as they look to 2026, with actionable lessons for brands facing similar operational challenges.