From Organic Creative to Paid Performance: The New Flywheel

Summary

Marketing Operators Podcast

Episode: From Organic Creative to Paid Performance: The New Flywheel

Hosts: Connor Rolain, Connor MacDonald, Cody Plofker
Guest Contributor: Ariana
Date: February 10, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the evolving dynamics between organic creative and paid performance content—what the hosts call "the new flywheel" for modern marketing. Drawing from real brands, their own hands-on experience as operators, and emerging trends on platforms like TikTok and Instagram, they lay out how brands should be thinking about creator-driven marketing, the diminishing role of traditional influencers, and actionable steps for building high-volume, native content machines that feed both organic channels and paid media accounts.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The End of Influencer Marketing and the Rise of Creator Marketing

• Ariana kicks off by saying influencer marketing is “basically completely dead” and the new game is creator-driven marketing—high-volume, native, and less about traditional influence, more about scalable creative from every corner of the internet.
• Cody expands: Reach is no longer guaranteed or based on follower count. “It’s all downstream of seeding, really… Whether it’s affiliate on TikTok shop or it’s just your IG, you’re going to get some funnel conversion rate of this is how many packages I sent out, this is people that posted, and then this is how much revenue they drove as an affiliate.” (00:06)
• Connor summarizes the new reality: “As long as they pass my instantaneous sniff test, it doesn’t matter who it’s coming from. If they have an interesting point, I’ll look at it and I might even act on it.” (00:19)

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2. Why Organic and Paid Creative Must Merge

• Cody describes a shift: old rules around paid and organic are blurring—algorithms demand both be creator-led, authentic, rapid, unpolished, and adaptable.
• Connor details workflow changes: “We had our first meeting with our content team and our paid media creative strategy team… One of the big ones was building out some sort of workflow, some sort of flywheel where we are every month going back, looking at our top performing organic creative and then basically… make it more of a paid concept.” (07:27)
• Cody on the necessity: “It should be one process or at least under one roof… you really have no idea what’s going to work so you just need so much value.” (11:32)
• Notable Example: The board at Cody’s company had to be taught the social “new normal”—algos, volume, lo-fi content, and realness—before greenlighting major investment away from feed-centric, aspirational content to rapid, creator-driven campaigns (14:36).

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3. Modern Content Flywheels: How to Operationalize

• Brands excelling: Komfort on TikTok Shop (massive affiliate activation), Groons on paid social, Duolingo on organic. All win with volume and creator-centric approaches (11:32).
• Cody’s plan for Jones Road:
  • Hire a senior creative strategist.
  • Run creator competitions/trials.
  • Test multiple content pillars (episodic, lo-fi, founder-led, replies, behind the scenes, etc.).
  • Data-driven: Use tools like Outer Signal to spot high-potential creators already buying/interacting with the brand (30:31).
• Cody on execution: “We'll hire a bunch of creators to run some of these accounts, test some things… Whoever's successful, we'll hire them full time… It's got to be just super experimental.” (26:07)
• Testing & Iteration: “Maybe only 10% of the social posts are going to be a one-for-one ad. But it's super cheap to produce all of this organic content… If we do enough of it… this is just our new brand awareness channel that we're just trying to use the algorithms to crank scale.” (44:36)

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4. The Strategic Importance of Algorithmic / Creator-Volume Content

• Ariana identifies two strategies:
  • Commercial/product-oriented affiliate content that’s highly attributable (Comfy, Goalie, Kitch).
  • Content-first, episodic/brand-building content (Duolingo, Cluly, built).
• Both are needed, but most DTC brands will get more ROI from the former: “You're going to generate more value from the long tail of creators generating product-oriented content. It becomes more likely to feed the paid media flywheel...” (70:18)
• Cody: “Instead of paying somebody 20 grand for one piece of content because they have followers, it’s better to take that budget and spray and pray a little bit.” (00:58)

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5. The Measurement Challenge—KPIs for the New World

• Connor & Cody debate metrics:
  • Brand search uplift is great but hard to attribute.
  • Track views, engagement, and EMV (engagement^reach); but accept much will be “gut” and learning-driven (41:10).
  • “We’re not trying to measure it as a direct performance channel… we just want to crank scale.” (44:01)
• Ariana’s caution: Some content is great for views, but may never yield performance ads: “We had… someone owning TikTok, we were doing on the street interviews, we drove millions of impressions. They weren’t becoming good ads at any sort of significant rate. And then the value of those impressions was questionable in my opinion.” (43:11)

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6. The Evolution of Seeding, Affiliate, and Briefing

• All forms of “seeding” and affiliate/creator activation are converging: “Micro-influencers, affiliate, and product seeding are just flavors of activating a long tail of people. What I care most about is creating massive amounts of content.” (57:01)
• Mass, not perfection: “How are you getting product into thousands of people's hands turns into a really effective way to create great content.” (59:10)
• Connor on briefing: Briefs must be sharper and more performance-oriented if you want organic content to feed paid flywheels: “Even we had an extremely low hit rate in terms of organically seeded product to ad. But we saw it… If we, if we continue to refine that process, I could see solving what I want to by simply better briefing…” (57:01, 59:40)

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7. Retiring the Old Influencer Playbook

• Consensus: “Influencer marketing” as a standalone term is outdated; it's all creator marketing now.
• Ariana: “I just think that [traditional influencer marketing] ultimately completely goes away and it becomes, as you said Cody, creator marketing. Because this idea that you’re going to partner with 50 people who are influential… just feels inherently less scalable or like long term scenario or outcome.” (61:55)
• Cody: “Followers are almost meaningless. I’d rather do the TikTok Shop approach… The main focus has to be on this creator approach.” (64:10)
• But—exceptions endure: Podcasts and long-form YouTube still foster deeper influence because of more sustained attention (64:55).

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8. Which Brands Should Invest in Capital B “Brand” Content?

• Connor asks: When does it make sense to do high-production, narrative or episodic brand series, à la Yeti or Huckberry?
• Cody: Only if you can truly drive audience/interest at scale and have the infrastructure/talent for it. “Some is just a subjective choice... Like, are we good at it? …Are we going to put $300k into this thing and get 2k views per video like most brands?” (68:04)
• Ariana: For most, the probability of success lies with performance and affiliate content, but some brands (with the right DNA, resources, and ambition) can and should build for both.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “Influencer marketing is basically completely dead. It becomes creator marketing.” – Ariana (00:00)
• “Reach is no longer guaranteed… it’s all downstream of seeding.” – Cody (00:06)
• “You don’t know what’s going to hit: organic, paid, social. The main focus has to be on this creator approach.” – Cody (00:44, 64:55)
• “Let’s take a bunch of awesome… organic content. Let’s take the top stuff… launch it in the ad account.” – Connor (00:50, 52:34)
• “Instead of paying someone 20 grand for one piece of content because they have followers, it’s better to take that budget and spray and pray.” – Cody (00:58, 55:57)
• “The value of a follower is so diminished… As long as [content] passes my instantaneous sniff test, it doesn’t matter who it’s coming from.” – Connor (00:19, 65:38)
• “You have to be at the right journey in your company. I literally had a four hour board meeting to teach our board how social algorithms work…” – Cody (49:10)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:00 – 00:44: Opening shot at influencer marketing; the rise of creators and the collapse of follower-based “influence.”
• 07:27 – 12:54: Merging creative teams, the need for a structured flywheel, and brands doing it right.
• 14:36 – 16:36: Social's algorithmic shift and why polished, feed-based content is dead.
• 18:09 – 21:48: Distinguishing product-led affiliate content vs. “content-for-content’s-sake.”
• 23:50 – 26:07: Structuring internal teams for content volume, competition, and experimentation.
• 41:10 – 44:36: KPIs, brand search, the value (and challenge) of impressions as a metric.
• 52:34: Affiliate/creator content as the new paid media flywheel.
• 61:55 – 64:55: Why influencer payouts are obsolete; “it’s all about creator democracy now.”
• 68:04 – 70:18: Does Capital B brand content matter? Only at the right maturity—and with the right skills and narrative power.

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Summary Table – The New Content Flywheel

| Old Model (Influencer) | New Model (Creator/Algorithmic) | |----------------------------------|------------------------------------------------| | Select few with massive followings| High-volume, diverse, “micro” creators | | Followers drive reach | Algorithm selects content, followers matter little| | Polished, planned, aspirational | Native, “lo-fi”, experimental, volume-based | | Direct measurement, performance | Mixed KPIs: impressions, engagement, learning | | Paid big for individual content | Spray and pray—low cost, high iteration |

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Actionable Takeaways for Listeners

• Dismantle silos: Combine or highly coordinate organic and paid creative teams.
• Volume wins: Create 10x more content, expect only a small percentage will feed paid media.
• Recruit creators, not influencers: Run trials, use customer data, hire creators in residence for ongoing content.
• Brief smarter: Don’t rely on “organic magic”—intentionally brief affiliates and creators to test value props, overcome objections, and fit your content into your paid funnel.
• Let algorithms guide you: Use views/engagement as proxies, but smartly iterate on what the algo and real people latch onto.
• Don’t neglect brand—just be realistic: Episodic/capital B “Brand” content works only for brands with resources, narrative, and a platform fit.

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Memorable Moment

Ariana checks the pulse on “influencer marketing:”
“I was listening to a podcast and they were using the term influencer marketing and I just felt like that's basically completely dead...” (00:00)

Cody, on the new doctrine:
"It's all downstream of seeding really... Rather than paying somebody 20 grand for one piece of content because they have followers, it's better to take that budget and spray and pray a little bit." (00:06, 00:58, 55:57)

Connor, the media consumer POV:
“As long as they pass my instantaneous sniff test, it doesn’t matter who it’s coming from. If they have an interesting point, I’ll look at it and I might even act on it.” (00:19, 65:38)

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This episode is a must-listen for any marketer grappling with the new rules of organic and paid content, where creator democracy, agile teams, and algorithmic speed have replaced the world of followers, big names, and polished campaigns.

Transcript

[Ariana]

I was listening to a podcast and they were using the term influencer marketing and I just felt like that's basically completely dead.

[Cody]

Reach is no longer guaranteed. It's all downstream of seeding really. Whether it's affiliate on TikTok shop or it's just your IG, you're going to get some funnel conversion rate of this is how many packages I sent out, this is people that posted, and then this is how much revenue they drove as an affiliate.

[Connor]

If I'm getting served some piece of content and as long as they like pass my very gut instinct, like instantaneous sniff test, it doesn't matter who it's coming from. If they have like an interesting point, I'll look at it and I might even act on it.

[Ariana]

So influencer marketing, I just felt ultimately completely goes away and it becomes creator marketing. Because this idea that like you're going to partner with 50 people who are influential, I think just feels like a inherently less scalable or like long term scenario or outcome.

[Cody]

You don't know what's going to hit the viral, whether it's organic, whether it's paid social. The main focus has to be on this creator approach.

[Connor]

Let's take a bunch of awesome, fun, uniquely positioned organic content. Let's take the top stuff, maybe put some light touches on it, launch it in the ad account.

[Cody]

Rather than paying somebody 20, 20 grand for one piece of content because they have followers, it's better to take that budget and spray and pray a little bit. Right.

[Connor]

All right, we're back for another episode of the Marketing Operators podcast. We got all three hosts today. Cody Connor, how are you doing?

[Ariana]

Good morning.

[Connor]

Good morning. Come on, those are little.

[Ariana]

You're a little delayed. Good morning there, Cody. You feeling good?

[Connor]

Rested?

[Cody]

Well, I'm just trying to make sure I'm not cutting you guys off. You know, sometimes on the pod, I, I jump in there too quick. So I was like letting you get it in first. Didn't know if you were going to say something after. Good morning.

[Ariana]

No, I appreciate that. I've got a quick question for you guys. Do you, you both take groons?

[Connor]

Y.

[Ariana]

How many gummies do you eat? Like what? Like there, it comes with like eight gummies.

[Connor]

Do you go like two at a.

[Ariana]

Time or do you go four at a time or something?

[Connor]

Oh, not four. Four is a psycho move. I'm trying to, I'm trying to enjoy those grins. It's a good experience.

[Ariana]

I'm going, dude, the sugar gruns are delicious.

[Cody]

The sugar crack.

[Connor]

I, I had some for the first Time last week when I was staying at Jason's place in la. Oh my God, those sugar grooms are wildly tasty. They taste like the Scooby Doo gummies.

[Cody]

So you're so I do.

[Connor]

Go ahead, Cody.

[Cody]

See, I did it. I did it again. I ain't trying to. So I do, I do groons and I do immune because you know, got. Got two young kids always sick. So I, I like. They're like my like nighttime desserts usually. That, that plus I have a little something else. So I'll usually do groons first and then immune. I don't, I don't. I think I do individual. I'm trying to savor it. Yeah, yeah.

[Ariana]

All right, I respect that. I just gotta. I'm not a groom subscriber. Hopefully Connor Daltz will still answer my text after this. But I, I got a couple, they sent like a package to the office so I had some of those and I was just slamming eight gummies at once.

[Cody]

Just full.

[Connor]

Are you like, are you like savoring them? Like, like kind of letting them sit there? You was chomping away and like within 10 seconds.

[Ariana]

No, just chomping away.

[Connor]

Yeah, they're gone. Okay.

[Ariana]

Just clearing them out. Did you put any, did you put any other. Do you, do you often ask for like D2C Darling brand products as gifts?

[Connor]

I'm just like, I just really nerd out on like all the food products that are out there and like all the health and wellness products out there. I already bought a bunch of Booz Goose. I don't know if you guys have been eating Boozcoose, but that's been my, my new go to in the morning. I'll do, I'll do boozcous, cottage cheese and eggs and I'll tell you what, that will set you up for a successful day right there. Have you guys tried the Booz Goose yet?

[Ariana]

I haven't tried it yet, but that does sound like a protein packed breakfast.

[Connor]

Oh, it's great. Look, get a little fruit in there and you are like you're set for the next like five hours. You don't need to eat till like 2 or 3pm after a breakfast like that. Dude, Boost Goose is great bar from no commerce and DSK launched this. He's a, he's an Israeli guy so he, it makes a ton of sense that he took like childhood staple of his. Couscous is a very common Israeli dish and he proteinified it and it is really good. It's high protein, high fiber, no gluten. I think it's like three ingredients. It's like. I think it's chickpea based and it is, it's really good. I've been very impressed with it. It's been. I'll usually make like a box or two early in the week and then I'll just use it throughout the week for my breakfast usually or, or other random stuff. So yeah, 100%.

[Ariana]

Also just shout out bar for cool brand, cool event and no commerce software. Great product. He's just, he's spanning the whole spectrum.

[Connor]

He's got the brand, the SaaS, the events. All he needs to do is start an agency and he'll be hitting the four the four triangles of E Com.

[Ariana]

I'm sure it's coming up.

[Cody]

And a podcast. Don't forget about podcast.

[Connor]

Oh, he's got a podcast too. That's right.

[Cody]

No, I'm just. Oh, does he?

[Connor]

No, he does have a podcast actually. He does. This guy doesn't sleep. Yeah, this he and. And the guy's got an insane and insane non ecom life too. So I don't know. I don't know how he does it. All right, we got an awesome episode today, all about organic and paid social content. Thank you to the sponsors, Motion Rich panel, Pression, AI after Sell and Revo. If you're liking the marketing operators, make sure to like subscribe, leave a comment, ask a question and share with your marketing buddies.

[Cody]

SA. One thing that's become really obvious this year is creative strategy is changing. It is no longer just just about make better ads or even make more ads. You have to have AI in your workflow. You have to understand all the right best practices today. And the leverage point is how you think about the creative.

[Ariana]

And that's where a lot of teams are struggling. People are still learning creative strategy the same way they did years ago through trial and error, intuition. And there hasn't been a structured way to learn that role properly.

[Cody]

It's super hard to find great creative strategists these days. It's still a new role and it's one that's extremely important. But there's a lot of self learning. It's. And so that's why the training in the space is so important and Motion is a huge leader of that. And they're launching a new free course and community launching in March. This is going to be a new way that people can really master creative strategy.

[Connor]

And what I really like that this is, this is all taught live. Things are changing so, so fast, so rapidly right now that courses that were recorded six or eight months ago. Like, those are all outdated by now. The course won't just be listening to people talk about ads and you will actually be hands on in this course. So you're building concepts, you're actually making creative, you're testing it, and you're ultimately learning how to make decisions when things don't work out the first time.

[Ariana]

And the instructor lineup is legit. There are creative experts from brands like Caraway, Calm, Harry's, Space Goods, Happy Mammoth and agency leaders and founders from Scaled Brands. They're teaching what they're doing right now, not what worked three years ago.

[Cody]

There'll also be some potential, I'm supposed to say internships, at least for Jones Road. I'm going to say job opportunities. You'll have the ability to sign up and learn more. But we will be interviewing a few candidates as part of this partnership with Motion, which I am so excited about. The course is live, it's free to register, seats are limited. If creative performance is part of your job in 2026, then this is worth paying attention to. We'll drop the link in the show notes.

[Connor]

All right, well, we got some, some paid media content topics to discuss today, so let's get into it. I know, Cody, you've been, you've been thinking a lot about like content flywheels. You've been talking a lot about like combining organic and paid social into the same team. You know, I also have been thinking a lot about this and we had our like, first meeting with our content team and our paid media creative strategy team last week just to go through like some of the high level rocks for paid media creative this year. And one of the big ones was building out some sort of workflow, some sort of flywheel where we are like every month or every couple weeks going back, looking at our top performing organic creative and then basically writing, having the paid media creative strategist take that and write an edit brief to make it more of a paid concept. We have a lot of like, as I've been just kind of going through our organic, you know, social feed on Instagram myself, we have a lot of content that I think could like with some subtle tweaks, could be a lot more product focused, a lot more ad like ad friendly and just like positioning the product as the hero of the ad. You know, I have, I have some examples here that we can maybe link in the show notes. But Cody, I want to ask you, because you're combining organic and paid social creative teams that you, you've told us that before. Can you tell us, tell us more about this? Like, first off, why are you doing it? And then ultimately, what are you hoping to accomplish in terms of creative output for your ad accounts that you're not. That you just don't feel like you're. Like, you're probably currently getting. And that's why you're making this change.

[Cody]

Yeah. And so definitely one of the goals is to do. To. To do that. I'm not 100% sure that, like, exactly how it worked. Like, I do think there will probably be separate. I don't know what you call it, like, like teams under a team. So I think we're gonna have one creative strategy lead, kind of like. And actually, dude, by the way, I was literally thinking about, like, asking you this morning. Cause I was like, I feel like you have one head of Content and you're, you know, like where me and, and, and Connor, like Ridges Creative strategy has been on, like, the growth team.

[Ariana]

You.

[Cody]

I know that you've gone in the direction of having, you know, it all on your creative team. Right.

[Connor]

And so yes and no, we have, we do have a Head of Content and he leads up all things production. And then we still have a. Well, they're not ahead of creative strategy. They're creative strategy manager. And that woman leads up all things paid media creative strategy. And then there's just like, as you. That role reports to you, the, the latter reports to me. And then. And then like our Head of content is like my brand marketing counterpart. So he reports into the CEO, I report into the president, Jason, and then there's just like, obviously tons of collaboration between Alyssa, who's our creator strategy lead, and Matt, who's our Head of Content.

[Cody]

Okay, cool, then I was a little off on that, but. Yeah, but it seems like you. You probably leverage and utilize that like, creative team slightly more, you know, than. Than most. I just found it was very disjointed when it really should be one process or at least under one roof, even if it's like, you know, so I think we're going to hire a. Either a, you know, senior Director of Creative Strategy or a VP of, you know, creative Strategy. And then I can see how there's maybe two different workflows or two different teams, you know, under it. But I don't think it has to be exclusively that. Like, I think there's a few things that are leading to it. One is our. The biggest investment we're going to make is organic, you know, so maybe, maybe I'll start there of like, what our Organic plans are so we've, we've. It's funny because like this is like I, you know, had a board meeting like last week, two weeks ago and like normally don't talk about marketing at all. Board meeting. Normally it's like finance and like hey, here as our, our budget and stuff like that. But it was like I needed to get like everyone bought in to like big changes that we're going to make. And I think we've just been very behind on our organic social approach. Right. And we just have been so focused on paid and like I think a lot of brands are, are not great at organic social, but there's a lot that are really great. Right. And I think I used a few examples and actually none of them were organic social. They were just ones that are doing really good on social. Right. And comfort was one obviously.

[Connor]

Right.

[Cody]

And like they're probably playing this like new wave, like algorithmic earned media approach better than everybody. Right. Rather than hiring, you know, celebrities or influencers, they're, they're partnering with essentially anyone and doing just like, like content creation at scale. They're doing earn TikTok shop primarily but it's just like so much content and so much creative, you know, for an earn perspective and you have no idea what's going to pop off. So you just need so much value, you know.

[Connor]

So for that, Cody, is that like are they doing a bunch of activations with TikTok Shop affiliates and that's what's driving a ton of content and a ton of impressions and reach.

[Cody]

Yeah. And then they'll obviously, you know, get gain awareness. Yeah to non TikTok shop and then gain content flywheel and stuff like that. But like I, I think the, the reason like they're just playing the algorithm correctly, you know and they understand it's, it's not just one piece of content, it's like volume and you really have no idea what's going to work so.

[Connor]

They'Re doing it there.

[Cody]

I think there's a lot of brands that are doing it really well on paid social. Like I think groons does it really well. I use them as an example. I think you know, rise does it really well. It's just like just super high volume creator LED approach, you know, nothing novel that we haven't talked about before, you know. And then I think there's you know, brands, I didn't have a specific case study but there's brands that are doing it really well organic social where it's just like very high volume organic social approach like Obviously Duolingo is like known for that.

[Connor]

Right, Right.

[Cody]

They're kind of like. It's funny because like they, they're head of social left and they kind of were like, all right, this is a time to maybe take a little less unhinged approach. And their stock got hit and their CEO literally in the earnings call was like, hey, this is one of the reasons why growth is slower. Which is like so funny.

[Connor]

Yeah.

[Cody]

But so there, there are a lot of brands and happy to share more where like they're doing really great stuff on organic social. And I think we have not done a great job on organic social, but I also think even our paid social creative is behind. And again, these algorithms change so quickly. And obviously we talk about Andromeda all the time. But even on the organic front, what I find, and this is again, I'm gonna say other brands are guilty of this, but Jones Road is the most guilty of this. It's the biggest focus for me is are still creating for an error of social and even of marketing that doesn't really exist anymore, which is just like millennial few years ago. Like feed based, follower based environment algorithm. And so that's like the Warby Parker is a glossier, is a Casper where like you could just post a. You get a lot of followers, build this beautiful brand, aspirational brand, and you could post this, this, you know, beautiful image and, and it gets shown to your followers and get a lot, a lot of likes. Like that just world doesn't exist anymore. I think a. From a culture perspective, people don't want that perfect aspirational thing. This is unless you're a luxury brand. Like people want the realness. Like if you look at these brands that are breaking through, like they're very unpolished. It's just iPhone stuff moving around. Like, you know, it's, it's a lot of founder videos, you know, building in public, whatever it is. And then also for the algorithm, it's is, you're not, you shouldn't be creating content to reach your followers. You.

[Connor]

The.

[Cody]

The biggest lie that I ever saw was when Adam Mosseri, this was like four years ago, was like, hey, we're, we're becoming TikTok. We're gonna, you know, do the feedback stuff. And then remember, everyone got really mad and they're like, hey, we're actually not going to do that. Right? But they still did it. Like, they did it. And like TikTok is every. Like everything is TikTok, you know, like more or less. Like followers really don't matter on TikTok, they still matter a little bit on Instagram, but much less than they used to. So I just think we're behind and so we're, we're not getting the same amount of reach. Our content is not that relevant to people. It's, it's this pretty stuff that it's like, you know, we got to realize what people are on social for and they're not necessarily to, to buy and shop and engage with stuff like at least maybe certain people are in your bottom of funnel, your existing customers are. But like our goal is to grow and it's to essentially reach new audiences and it's. I almost feel like social in this new environment where it's not just follower based. It used to be very different and I'm almost done, I promise. But it used to be, I used to feel like organic social and paid social were so different where like, you know, paid social has to talk about hooks, you have to talk about pacing, like stuff like that, gaining attention. We talked about ADA and organic social is just like, oh, what do we want to post for the brand calendar and stuff like that. Like what do we want to, you know, and like they didn't talk hoax. Like now organic social needs that. Like if you look at organic social content, it's also all like creators, right? The best content that you're going to find is creators. We're in the creator economy. That's how what people want to see. They don't necessarily want to engage with brands. Ironically, the brands that I think are doing it the best are creators first, right? There's a lot of brands or founders or creators and I think like you see this in sass, right? You see like Cluey and stuff like that and like all these viral things. I just think there's this new wave of brands that are growing really quickly that get the current culture we're in and get the algorithms and then we have these washed up brands like myself who are not getting it. So long story short, that's why we're making tons of big changes and I really think organic social is at the forefront of it.

[Connor]

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[Ariana]

I've got, I've got one question for you here Cody because I, I think you brought up like two in my mind, pretty distinct examples. You have the comforts, the goalies, the kitches, the people crushing it on tik tok shops where they're social strategy is, you know, they're getting mass posts from affiliates in a very organic native way and they are generating intent and driving revenue like almost on an attributable basis. They're like immediately like putting that into the ad account.

[Connor]

Then you bring up TikTok shop. Are you saying?

[Ariana]

Yeah, sure. But like it could be, could theoretically be any platform. I think like just the idea that their social strategy is through creators. It is very native but it's still very like commercial oriented.

[Connor]

Yeah.

[Ariana]

Then you have other examples like a Cluly or a Duolingo or Cody, last year you were talking about like doing comedy skits potentially like just kind of optimizing just for views. Centering the product is not all that important. It's more content first. Where like do you think there's a distinction to make there? Do you think I'm just making it up and if so which are you prioritizing?

[Cody]

No, that's a really good question. Both. The answer is both. But no, we're going to be on TikTok shop. The thing is like I try to be really real about our, our strengths and our weaknesses. Like I don't think we're going to be the, we need to be on TikTok shop because I think we want to be creator first. We want to have that discord group and I don't think you can really build that without it because like that's where the creator attention is right now because that's where the money is and the opportunity for the best creators. But I don't think we're going to be the biggest beauty brand on TikTok shop. We're not willing to discount that aggressive. Like we're not going to play that game that hard. But I still doesn't mean we can't dabble in it and get some value. So I'm just trying to be like realistic about it. So we're going to do it, we're going to prioritize it. But not the number one for organic social. We're, we're, we're going to prioritize. That's going to be a really big one. We are. I'm kind of building out, we're building out our social strategy right now. Like yeah, the, the, that style you're talking about like the episodic stuff like, like room built does this like roomies where like there's like some brands that are doing like TV series, right? Short form TV series that put as one idea. It's not how we're going to really prioritize it. The ones that I'm obsessed with are. Let me, let me check. I have it open. All right, so one, one I'm obsessed with right now. I tweeted about them the other day. La La Land Cafe. Have you guys seen this company, their coffee shop?

[Ariana]

I've just seen you talking about them.

[Cody]

So they have a TikTok and again it's not about followers but has, you know, 6 million followers. It has hundreds of millions views. They, their main strategy is just doing this thing where it's called drive by compliments. And they just have creators who just have a phone and drive by and they're just like, hey, you look so good today. Or they're like, hey, are you, you know, like, hey, did you fall from heaven? And like you just see people feel good and smile, right? And then sometimes they'll hand out samples. They've got, you know, now they've raised a bunch of money. They've got like 15 locations, like in Nashville. Like they have a line out the door. Like they're crushing it. And their strategy is this is like organic lo fi comp, you know, compliments. So like there's multiple approaches, but I think that's like one. It's just like, it's the whole thing of every, every commerce company needs to be a media company, right? But it's not like a media company, like, hey, we need to go and build this, you know, into the gloss. Like that style of media is kind of over. You know, it's just like, so where is the attention now? It's, it's short form social, you know, and there are, I, I mean we've talked about it like you guys have talked about Huck. Barry does some really good YouTube stuff. Like, I think that's harder to do. And then one other one that I'm, you know, really bullish on right now.

[Connor]

Is following so many pages right now. By the way, this is great.

[Cody]

I'll send you a bunch. What was it? There's this one. So the account is Olivia Unplugged and she was a, she's a creator again on a separate handle. Not the main. For a mental health thing, I think. Opal, I forget. And she's like, she's like a creator who's like the face of the brand essentially. The way I'm almost thinking about it is like, it's like, you know how like a lot of brands will do founder content, we'll do Bobby content, but like you're not going to get her like all of the time. It's almost like a press secretary, like how Donald Trump has Caroline Levitt like the press secretary. It's almost like because it's again, we're in the creator economy and so many people, people, it's so much easier to relate to a person than a brand. And that's why these creator brands are doing so well. And you know, there, there's the opportunities of, yes, let me go hire a creator, a Marquez or, or something like that, this giant creator. But it's also like, can I make a creator kind of like, you know, can I like get somebody who's like, not necessarily has a following which can just like their entire job is just short form social and they're just going to communicate out things out. So there's multiple like ways that we're going to try. Like a lot of it's going to be testing. But I think the key is like understanding the algorithms, right? Understanding what performs at style, content which is that kind of lower. I almost think it's that lo fi content or that TV show like produced. But it's not like just brand content. It's all, it's all content and not just like selling stuff and trying to use the algorithm to our advantage.

[Connor]

Who's doing the. Who's a good example. So La Land is a good example of like they found this con, this really lo fi native like content pillar is like what I would call that. And they found out that it's working and now they're really leaning into it Also. Very interesting. If you go look at La La Land cafe on Instagram versus TikTok, it looks totally different. So they clearly have like a different strategy for each. I think it's TikTok where they're doing that like that compliment stuff, right Cody?

[Cody]

Yeah. Which I think they should be doing. I think people treat Instagram too differently and I think Instagram is more TikTok than people think. It's not a hundred percent. Yeah, yeah. And the, the other thing, this is part of it. This is like Gary Vee strategy that he, he gave us some feedback on a few months ago. It's like, it's volume. You don't know what's going to work. Right. It's lo fi stuff and followers don't matter. And so you can have a great piece of creative from a brand new account with no followers. And if people like it and share it and watch it, that's gonna be shared to more people. And it's just shots on goals. So don't have one brand page you post from, have 10 different handles that you post from and then hire creators to post from a bunch of them.

[Connor]

So. All right, I've, I, I got a lot of follow up questions. First one is quick one. Who's, what's an example of a brand that's doing more of like the episodic stuff? Did you say Built?

[Cody]

Yeah, what's. Yeah, it's Bill. It's like the, it's anchor John saying it's like the, the, they're like a credit card thing that you can pay your rent with. There's this called Roomies.

[Connor]

What was that last one?

[Cody]

So their, their series is called Roomies.

[Connor]

Oh, I see. And the brand is called what?

[Cody]

Built. It's like Built Rewards. I don't know how you'd find it.

[Connor]

Yeah, I think it's B I L T. Yeah, Built.

[Ariana]

But Cody's right.

[Connor]

It's a, it's a credit card that.

[Ariana]

You pay your rent with and get Rewards on it.

[Connor]

Oh, yes. Okay, I'm gonna check this one out. So, so Cody, you said you are, you're building your organic social strategy right now. So I wanna, I wanna like ask you two questions. One is about the, the how and the first one's more about the what, what is, what does that look like when you guys say you're, you're building your organic social strategy? So are you basically doing, are you basically kind of coming up and outlining like what are the different pillars of content? So you have the Lang Cafe, one of their pillars is this drive by basically doing that right now for, for Jones Road and saying like, oh yeah, we're going to do more socially native content. It's going to be unproduced, it's going to be more like off the cuff type stuff. Are you basically coming up and ideating with your team right now on like, here's the five different content pillars that we would want to put out there and then you'll, you'll start executing against it. See which ones are getting the most, the most impressions, reach, etc.

[Cody]

Yeah. Are you able to see this? I'm sharing my screen.

[Connor]

Yes. Yep.

[Cody]

All right, cool. So yeah, that, that's kind of where we're in the process of, is that once we kind of aligned on the strategy, which is like, hey, you know, this is kind of how social has changed and how we're kind of behind. It's like, all right, how would you do it? What we will probably do and we're going to work with an agency that we work with is like eventually again it's going to be all in house. We just don't have like the team right now is we will hire like a senior creative strategist. So this person kind of like you have a director of content, like any real content, right? That's for social. They'll do, you know, because again, I, I think it's even for paid social stuff which we'll talk about like how that weaves in. It's like it's all social and they got to get the platforms, so we'll do that. We'll obviously have like, we want to have creators in house and what we're going to do is do like a competition or trial or we'll hire a bunch of creators to run some of these accounts, test some things because it's got to, it's got to be just super experimental. Like I can't tell you which one of these things is going to work, you know, and then eventually as part of that competition Whoever's successful will hire them full time, you know, and have one of them be one. So here's like, these are just ideas. Like, so this is like the episodic, like, you know, video series. We're not going to start with this one. This is like just one potential idea. I think it's harder to produce. We probably would hire a production company. Like, this is like you're making a TV show, you know, but they're very short, harder to do, probably riskier, more upfront investment. Like, it's just an idea. If this other stuff is successful, we can do it in addition. But we're not going to start with that lo Fi native just trying to take our organic social and get it better. So it's like what are the different. The same way you'd think about paid social creative strategy. Like, what's your toolbox? Like, what are your formats? You know, I think we should be doing more lo Fi get ready with me education. But you know, the examples, they have better hooks, they have better pacing, they're lower fi. Just this like talking selfie style, you know, clips. Like, and I'm not saying it's all gonna work, but you just test it, right? Like things that I think we should do, we should show more of our Personas in real life. We should show. And some of these are brands I think are doing it well. Like bubble replies. Right. Like that should just be a part of your content strategy where every week we're doing, you know, we have a creator or somebody like that social manager who's doing, you know, comment replies. This one I love. I see them on TikTok all the time. It's just like some, this barbecue spot. I think they're in Florida or somewhere and they literally just have a camera behind the scenes and they just show this guy who's the owner just being super nice to people and like it makes you want to go. And it goes super viral.

[Ariana]

So do you see this one? So I like this one. Would you say this is closest to like truly what you. What UGC is supposed to be like? It ultimately it probably feels the most like your customers just creating content about you.

[Cody]

Which one? The middle one.

[Ariana]

The middle or sorry, this, this bucket here. Lo Fi.

[Cody]

Oh, this will be like our main Instagram a little bit. So it probably. But it'll be a combo of I think like brand creating stuff. Creators. Right, okay, that's. Or whatever. And then there's a few founder examples. So I just wanted to have a few.

[Ariana]

Got it, got it, got it.

[Cody]

Okay. These are like founders who are talking about the, the brand. Some of that will be Bobby and then some of it is like also like, you know, Bobby's busy. I can't get her all the time. Like just like 40 hours a week.

[Connor]

Right.

[Cody]

But it is a volume game. Like can we hire this, is that Olivia and Plug. Like can we hire somebody who's creator in residence? You know, and they, whether it's on our main Instagram or other ones, like they, they just are like the press secretary. They just communicate out everything, right. They show behind the scenes of, you know, everything that's going on. They're just like the face. It's almost like a community manager. Like we have a Facebook group, right? Like 80,000 people and like, you know, we don't post in there as Jones Road. We're like, hey, I'm Cody. Hey, I'm whatever. Like they know people from the brand. It's like it's community. So like this person would be a big part of the strategy. And I think a lot of these brands have done it really well with you know, founder led content. But there's also creator face LED content as well.

[Ariana]

Sure.

[Connor]

So will you be. I want to, I want to ask about how that like the creator led stuff will come to life. So will you actually be introducing. So you're going to, it sounds like you're going to bring on a bunch of different creators on, on contracts. Actually, let me, let me back up one step. How are you even like finding these people? How are you, how are you attracting these creators to start producing this content?

[Cody]

We're going to this. So this is more in the works right now. So like I'm, I'm happy to share as much as we can, but we're going to run a competition we're going to do. We just started Outer Signal by the way, which would love for you to chat there. Do you want to share what Outer Signal is? Because I think this is really cool and has been helpful.

[Connor]

Yeah.

[Ariana]

All right. This episode is brought to you by beloved sponsor Revo. What is Revo? They are a retention platform for Shopify plus customers. They do accounts, loyalty, referrals, membership, cashback wallet passes and so much more. Stuart Cheney is the founder. He's very public on Twitter. Building best in class retention features, powered by AI, quicker and with higher quality than anybody else in the business. We are lucky to have them as a sponsor. Revo is working with some of the best brands in DTC like Ridge, Hexclad, True Classic, Dr. Squatch, Portland Leather, Fenty Beauty and hundreds more that are on Shopify plus and want to provide better experiences for their customers. I think retention is going to be a huge trend in 2026 and beyond. All the effort that we put into incrementality and acquisition will eventually get diverted to retention so that we can continue driving incremental sales and Revo as an account solution. A big part in that. If you want to become a Revo customer, go to Revo IO. And right now, all Shopify plus brands get wallet passes 100% free on the platform. Tell the marketing operator sent you.

[Connor]

Yeah, so outer signal. It basically, it's a very. It basically scans all your Shopify order data and it can tell you when high profile people are buying from you. So it could be like an influencer with X number of followers. You. You can also set certain filters. So for us, like, I want to know when a chef buys from us because I think they can probably make it the best ad. I want to know when like people that own real estate companies or like own multi properties buy from us because I want them to like put Hex cloud in all their homes. So it's just like gives you all this cool insight on who's buying from you and will ultimately hopefully lead to like some really good partnerships.

[Cody]

Yeah, it's. It's really cool. The Persona stuff has also been really helpful. I think it's actually been the best.

[Connor]

Oh my God. I was so blown away. Like some of it, it was like a really aligned with stuff that we had already outlined as Personas, but then it gave us a bunch of other Personas that I was like, oh man, this. I've never like, thought about this Persona in our customer base before, but it made so much sense.

[Cody]

Yeah. Yeah, it's cool. And it's. I've struggled and spent a lot of time here to try to come up with the next Personas for each new people. I think the hard part is like, I felt like there's an in between where like, if you're looking at review data, like you're kind of getting what you already have. And then if you're trying to like explore new Personas, you're kind of making it up. I think this did a good job because, like, it found things that we weren't speaking to, but people were already buying. And it was like, hey, this Persona is 10% of your customer base.

[Connor]

Yeah.

[Cody]

And it's like if you're not speaking to them, so that's. I think that's really cool. So that'll Be a way we do it. We're going to run competitions of. We'll post on LinkedIn, we'll post jobs, we'll post it on social. Like, hey, we're hiring creators. You know, like, we'll create content saying we're hiring creators.

[Connor]

Are you saying you're, Are you saying. Sorry to interrupt, but you're. But because just the outer signal piece, you're saying that you're gonna, you're gonna use outer signal to understand when creators are buying from you. And then you'll just reach out to those people and be like, hey, we're doing this thing. Like, are you interested?

[Cody]

Yeah, because, you know, if they obviously already love the products and brand, like, and are creating content about us. So we'll look at just, you know, whatever, you know, we use nectar, but people use archai or tribe. Like, we'll look at that for who's already talking about us. Do we think any of them could be a good fit? We could coach up. Are there, are there customers that, you know, we don't. We didn't realize, you know, but now we know without our signal.

[Ariana]

So that.

[Cody]

And then recruiting kind of posting, you know, on social, and we'll have people apply and try and we'll put people on a freelance retainer with some performance incentive and, you know, if they perform well, we'll. We'll hire them full time.

[Connor]

That's so cool. I love the, I love the approach. So then, all right, so now once you've. Do you have a number in mind that you're going for? Are. Are you gonna basically try to like, assign one creator to one piece of con, like one content style? Is that how you're gonna like, ultimately test a lot of different things?

[Cody]

I think so, yeah. Like, very Persona led. Right. And so, yeah, I think we'll have my goal right at the end of it. Like, you know, Taylor Holiday said, like, a video editor should be your most expensive play. I want this creator in residence to be like one of our most expensive of employees. Like, I want to get somebody who's so good who's like, you know, pretty senior that, like, is like the face of, I don't want to say our brand, but like the face of our social at least. You know, and, and is just that person who's on our Main Social and TikTok who's like running that. But then obviously we want multiple accounts and handles and some of that will be Persona driven. Right. Like, so if you've got, you know, I'm trying to think there's Brands that do this. Well, I'm trying to find examples. It's hard to kind of find them. But, you know, let's say it's like a, like a Netflix, right? Like they have a bunch of different handles where they have a main Netflix social handle and then like they have a handle for each show, you know, so they'll have like an Instagram page for each show and then they'll have like. And I think you guys have. Right. Or you'll have like hexclad EU or something like that.

[Connor]

Yeah, we have it by country.

[Ariana]

Yeah.

[Cody]

So it'll be. Ours will be maybe a little more like by Persona. Right. Or maybe it's just by whatever style. So we might have, you know, Jones Road at work. Jones Road. Right. Because one of our, one of our Personas from Outer Signal is the busy professional, the executive. We might have Jones Road moms, because that's one of our Personas. We might have Jones Road compliments. And maybe that's just our content style, like because of the algorithm and how it works. It's just shots on goal, you know, and it's just creative, creative volume.

[Connor]

So. Well, as far as how this could evolve over time, you're going to test, you're going to bring on creators, you're going to test a bunch of different content types, you're going to see which one works. Are you then going to use that data? So let's say, like, you got your, your compliments, like it's a native video of like someone giving someone a random compliment and that. And that's the pillar that really works. Is that the signal then to say, hey, maybe we should pull this out into like Jones Road compliments and make it its own, like, kind of page and sub brand within Jones Road beauty?

[Cody]

Yeah, I think so. Yeah. It's using the algorithm to get insights and kind of as a form of creative testing. Right. The same way that we think about social creative testing. Right. Because the traditional way, like when Gary Vee talks about it, like the traditional way most big companies and agencies are doing things is like, you know, they're gonna, they're gonna start. They start with a TV spot and like they kind of just assume or guess and I'm sure they have much more sophisticated ways to do it, but of like, what the creative should be, and they're amplifying that creative, they're putting money behind that creative, like by default without, you know, testing it. And like the way these algorithm algorithms work. Right. It's the same thing as using CBO or ASC is like the algorithm can kind of put spend and put reach behind what performs well. And so we can, I think, use the algorithm to our advantage to see what people are resonating with. And again, I know there's a huge difference between engagement and conversions, but I do think that there's a Venn diagram where there's a pretty significant overlap of what styles of content or value propositions people are engaging with. And then I think a small amount of that stuff we can just run as an ad. We're doing that now. I can try to find some examples. But like the one thing that's working well on our organic Instagram, we do have some higher production quality videos. They're very close up beauty application stuff. Right. And, and, and those are performing really well in terms of reach and engagement. And so we started, you know, testing those as ads. We'll launch them as is, we'll put a VO on them and we'll change the hook and you know, tbd, which one does well. But overall, like that works there. So there's some, you know, relevant. So sometimes you can just take it as an asset, upload it and see how it performs. And I think you'd be surprised. More will work than you think. Sometimes you can edit it. All right, this is a good video, but we need a little bit more of a Dr. Hook. We need a little bit more B roll. Whatever it is, you can edit it. And I think that's where maybe you have a separate team under one creative strategy team. Maybe that's a paid social editing team or something like that, or paid social creative strategist. And then the third one is like, all right, there's an insight here that we can unlock. Maybe we can't produce content because this is too engagement baity. Right? It's like the compliments thing. It's not necessarily whatever it is, but there's some insight that I think we can learn from this. And the algorithm is telling us where the people are telling us, right? Is it algorithm or is it people? Some. There's some level of engagement that seems to be resonating with people. Let's go brief creators based on that insight to make ads for us. And then my, my hypothesis is like all this money that we're spending on creative testing, millions a year just goes into content testing. And then I think we need our, hopefully our hit rate is higher when we actually put spend behind it or gets live in the ad account.

[Connor]

Dude, I'm. This is so exciting. This is like such, like an innovative like, cool, fun new way to approach content in, in paid media. And yeah, I'm like, we're very, very creator led. You know, we, we invest heavily there in organic social. And I'm, I'm like, you're making me even more excited to like get a meeting set up with our, our organic social person and our lead creative strategist is to talk about like, what do we need to do to get more of this in the ad account and tested. So I'll definitely start because you guys.

[Cody]

Yeah, you guys have such good creative. Like, just start. Here's what, here's how we started like a month back. Just set up a slack channel between your organic and paid teams and have your organic social person share anything that's performing well and just be, hey, here's how many views it's getting. This one's doing really well. And just send that to your, whoever your, your growth team is. That's been like the small. When I realized like a few months ago, like these teams were not talking, they had like no idea. And I would see stuff, you know, because I'm in both channels and I'm seeing it and I'm like, can we send that to our growth team? Like, I think that would do well as an ad. And like we had that, we had a street interview that did well for organic social for Black Friday and that was one of our top ads for Black Friday.

[Connor]

Dang, that's awesome. What are you weighing? Like what, what are you. So you're, you're like, you. Obviously there's, there's views, there's like straight up reach. Like, are we reaching more people? Then there's engagement. What's your, what's your KPI on organic social? Are you using like a combination? Like do you have some sort of. I know we've talked about like EMV before, which is like a combination of engagement and, and reach. What's your, what's your main KPI? You hit on both of them. But like how are you actually calculating or is it just like gut, the kind of gut feel.

[Cody]

It's a good, good, good question. I, I want to define it a little bit more the big one for I think a lot of our marketing investments that we're going to make is, is brand search, are more people searching for us. But I think that's hard to kind of isolate to just social if we're also doing brand events and we're doing, you know, TikTok shop as well. So it's hard to kind of isolate it. So I do Think we'll probably have to figure out, you know, views. Is there some type of like more granular signal that we can get? Like we'll obviously have link in bio and a lot of stuff and we like social traffic up, but it's not, we're not trying to measure it as like a direct performance channel. That was so. I think.

[Ariana]

Yeah, well, I was going to say because that's the thing that just social, so funny. And it's obviously like the, the new meta is like approaching organic, social, taking it more seriously. You've got all these like up and coming brands like absolutely crushing it. That's why I get hung up on the distinction between, if I could get on a small soapbox here, the distinction between what I was talking about earlier. You have brands doing social really well. We'll just throw organic and paid out the window. They're doing social really well. It's extremely product oriented. It immediately becomes performance oriented. Paid stuff. You can almost immediately begin to promote it. And those are the brands that we're talking about. Comfort Goalie, they are going from affiliate, affiliate posting. The TikTok becoming a partnership ad. And it's just like a seamless experience. Then on the other side of it, you have the brands that I brought up earlier and there are some good examples here. Some of these like signature series things where it's great organic, it's great content, people want to consume it, it'll get served in algorithms, people will engage with it. It doesn't generate enough intent to immediately turn into a paid ad. At least that's my concern. And Ridge went down this path years ago. We had, we had someone owning TikTok. We were doing on the street interviews, we drove millions of impressions. They weren't becoming good ads at any sort of significant rate. And then the value of those impressions was questionable in my opinion. So one thing I liked about what you said, Cody, was the, like the handoff in between that actually you might have organic concepts that are getting impressions, getting engagement, you like it for whatever reason and then you're putting it through some sort of little process to make it maybe more performance oriented. So what you're describing, and correct me if I'm wrong here, but there will be times where you're really optimizing just for impressions and engagement on social and that's the main KPI in many ways. And then you'll just be creating with that as a KPI, you'll be creating more content and you basically just have more assets available to the performance team when they need to actually edit these things down into ads and not only will you have more content, but you might have just more ideas on the board. There's more creative stuff happening if they're optimizing for a different sort of KPI. Would you agree with that distinction and maybe where you guys are landing somewhere in between?

[Cody]

Oh yeah, 100%. I think that's a good way to think about it. So like if you're producing paid social assets for paid social, you get a one to one. Hey, this asset can be used for paid social like perfectly right. I think with like the comfort TikTok shop style, it's pretty good because those are all persuasion assets for social and they're all direct response like most of those you can use. As long as it's not like here's a TikTok shop exclusive or something like that. Right. With this approach, probably 10, and I'm just making it up, probably less than 10% of the social posts are going to be a one for one ad.

[Ariana]

Right?

[Cody]

But it's also super cheap to produce all of this organic content. Right. It's like if a creator is posting three times a day on a contract for five grand a month, you're paying. What? I'm just making it up. You're paying you know, $50 per, per video. And so even if two of those, if a creator is doing 60 videos per month and two of those either take off and perform well or, or you know, are ad worthy, like there's still some in there. But then you, you get maybe, maybe you only get a few ads, Maybe it's only 10% of the social person ads but you get obviously a lot of the reach. Right. I. My hypothesis is there's value too if we do enough of it that like you know, instead of spending on tv, right? And we're just pulling our TV budget down and this is just our new brand awareness channel, totally top of funnel channel that we're just trying to use the algorithms to crank scale like the same way Comfort's trying to do TikTok shop.

[Connor]

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[Ariana]

Okay, so yeah, I like that point. And this leads me to something I heard recently. I was listening to a podcast with Oren, Oren John and what he was saying was and I actually like the simplicity of this take but he was just like all that matters is impressions. It doesn't matter how integrated your product is. He's like just get your content served in the algorithm so you can generate brand awareness, et cetera, et cetera. And I guess I like, I can appreciate that to a certain degree but at least how we're thinking about it at Ridge is I. It's not the first thing that I would like to do. Like I would prefer, I think there are certain brands and I'll go back to like this is why we see B2B SaaS doing like brand awareness social stuff so well is like for them literally it's just about getting in front of people. They're signing big enough contracts, they're trading at high enough multiples that it all comes out in the wash. If you're getting out in front of enough people then like your acquisition will begin to work. And that's like I think Cluly tried to take that approach and, and that's why built credit cards did it so well. There's a lot of ramp does it really well right? It's like you wouldn't expect that but it's like the, the contracts are worth so much and they trade at such a high multiple that like that is an Approach that totally pencils. I don't think it would work for Ridge. I think there would be latent value. Like I do think the awareness is something that we would benefit from, but I don't think we could possibly like build an acquisition funnel around it or it just, it seems much harder for me to believe. So my point is going to be that we're going to be prioritizing the comfort, the goalie approaches, which is a lot more product oriented, a lot more volume oriented. You're always going to be able to create more affiliate content at scale than signature series on your organic social channel. And then just because of like the ease at which it can feed into a paid funnel, like that just feels like the right approach for a lot of more doctor oriented D2C brands. And I, I could also hear the argument that Jones isn't even at that point. I'm thinking about, like, I'm thinking about it from a listener perspective as well. It's like you guys have stores, you're doing hundreds of millions of dollars a year. You could very well say we want to be doing just awesome signature series content and getting distribution there and building brand awareness. I think for a lot of people. And at least what Ridge will be prioritizing is that second less sexy doctor oriented approach.

[Cody]

Yeah. And I think it's likely better for, for most it's, it's more similar to Dr. Like you're getting revenue. Right. Versus like this stuff is like, is it working? Like, I don't know, like, I think you have to be at the right journey in your company. I literally had a four hour board meeting where I had to go through all this stuff and teach our board, like how social algorithms work. Because I had to like explain the rationale for the investment that I want to make, which is like, hey guys, I need a million plus to spend on this and I need to not evaluate it for 12 months. And like you can't do that for a lot of places and companies. That's just, I think the right approach for us right now. But I think usually it's like, no, I need to see some traction in the first few months and like, I can't, I can't take brand awareness to the bank, you know.

[Connor]

Totally.

[Ariana]

And I bring that up because you mentioned shifting budget from tv, which you might think of as a brand awareness channel, to this signature series. You know, it doesn't really matter whether it's high quality or lo fi, but just like this less product oriented organic social content is like, that's a Perfect trade off. That makes a ton of sense to me. But like, like it makes the most sense for brands who are also spending money on TV as brand awareness, right? It's like, it's, it's significantly different than if you're at $8 million a year trying to double year over year.

[Cody]

I also, I also flew to LA last week to, to go to this TikTok shop event essentially. So like we're doing that as well. We're totally like dual pathing it. But I, but I agree with you. It's just that makes more sense I think for, for most and I think, I think that's great that you can get a brand awareness channel to be break even or profitable on day one like that, especially for a bootstrap brand. Like, you know, a lot of us are like, yeah, that's how it should be done.

[Connor]

So we're kind of talking about two flywheels here. We're talking about, hey, let's take a bunch of awesome, fun, uniquely positioned organic content, let's take the top stuff, maybe put some light touches on it, launch it in the ad account and then Connor, you're saying you guys are investing more in the TikTok shop affiliate content flywheel? Because that by default is more, more direct response because these creators are like, they get paid by posting videos and getting directly attributable sales through their TikTok shop. So that just by default by like nature of what is happening there is going to just already be more. More Dr. So you guys, right, Are you saying, are you investing there now Connor? Is that more? Because this is a bit, this is a big one for hexcloud this year where like we just started investing into more tech talk shop content. It's never going to be a massive part of our, of our like revenue pie, but I don't care. Like we're also tracking impressions and volume of content and we've also been rolling out, we've had, we have some like unique like content we're trying to achieve in social right now to address some of like the common issues people have with their hexcloud products. And I've been so pumped up. Like these are single page briefs but the content that we're getting from these TikTok shop affiliates, like it is so good at addressing this issue that people are having with our product because they know how to make problem solution content. So I'm so jazzed about getting hopefully like hundreds of pieces of that indoor ad account this year and I don't know like what kind of touch ups it's going to require or not. We need to figure that out. But are you doing this already or is this something that you're planning to do more of in, in 2026 like the TikTok shop flywheel to paid account.

[Ariana]

So I would actually even broaden the definition from TikTok shop. What I'm saying is I'd like to activate at scale small creators posting content about us. And that could be, that could be product seating which we did a lot of in 2025. That could be smaller influencer deals. Just like hey, we will pay you to post. Like I'm not at all opposed to that. That and then, and then TikTok shop's probably an example of like what can become a really positive sort of self fulfilling process.

[Connor]

Right.

[Ariana]

And I talk about this a little bit also because I don't think ridges all that advantageous. One of the reasons why I think Comfort's affiliate program can be so successful is because they have a fantastic product for it. Right. They have extremely strong value props. It's an extremely large tam. And then they are 60% off and, and you know there's always 20 left in stock or whatever. Right. They've pulled out all the stops when it comes to direct response. So when someone posts about them, they've done everything they can so that when that person drives impressions, those people will actually convert. Ridge is a little bit different. We're selling $100 wallets at full price most of the year and it's like we are not an impulse buy in the same way that Comfort hoodies might be. So our it requires far more touch points and far more time for someone to decide to purchase a Ridge wallet. Whereas Comfort hoodie, their affiliates are rewarded as quickly as possible. And because they're getting rewarded because their impressions are being monetized at such a high rate, they are incentivized to continue posting. And that's the, that's like the actual flywheel that gets built and Ridge will have to figure out what that looks like because I don't think if I drive, if I'm an affiliate and I drive a thousand impressions for Comfort and I drive a thousand impressions for Ridge, I'm going to make more money posting about Comfort. And until we can figure out like how do we keep them incentivized to keep posting, then it ends up just looking like mini mini influencer deals which is again, I'm not opposed to. What I care most about is creating massive amounts of content. So I think we're just going to try to like see that to its logical end and we'll explore a different couple paths in doing that.

[Connor]

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. I mean this is the, I mean the whole like just massive reach on content through creators has been part of the hexcloud strategy for like three years now. And like we're, we're seeing it compound and the amount of impressions we're getting in tagged social content like we were. We're at 1.5 billion total according to archive and just tag social content through. And that was through like November and that was up from like 750k the year before. Up from like 400k the year before. But it is so crazy. If you look at like, you know, we'll create all sorts of collections and archive. When you go look at like the Tick Tock shop, like collection of creators versus literally anyone else, like, it's just so, it's so stark. The difference between what like The Instagram, you know, 50, 000 person, like food page, chef recipe page is posting versus the tick tock shop. I am like selling products all day long. It's just very, it's so different, which is very interesting to like track. So I'm excited to see how we can kind of use each differently this year. But we have this issue, right? Like we're not going to get no affiliates going to make, I don't know, a fourth or half of their of their take home from us this year. It's just like we don't have the product that lends itself to that.

[Cody]

So how. That's a good question. How are you guys thinking about this strategy, this you know, algorithmic crater thing? Like we're saying the same thing. It's just one's organic, one's affiliate, right? There's obviously paid, but like rather than paying somebody 20 grand for one piece of content because they have followers, it's, hey, it's better to take that budget and spray and pray a little bit, right? Because you don't know what's going to hit go viral. Whether it's organic, whether it's paid social, whether it's, you know, whatever. It's like, it's the volume approach. How does that change how you guys are thinking about both paid influencer, like Ridge? Like, obviously you guys have done a lot of YouTube and you know, as well as like seating, like are you still thinking of doing the same amount of seating to, you know, just creators, influencers, you know, with, with no obligation to post or do you think you'll Just really lean into and focus on, you know, the affiliates more.

[Ariana]

So I don't think our current strategy is we sponsor a lot of YouTube channels and a lot of podcasts and I don't think that changes. I think there's still a lot of value there. And that's just a, it's, it's, it's so much longer form.

[Connor]

Right.

[Ariana]

Like these people are listening to 20 minute YouTube videos or 90 minute podcasts and we're getting 60, 120 second ad reads like it's just a different sort of impression. So we'll continue going down that path. How does it affect seating? Like my point is like seeding and TikTok affiliate and people call them micro influencers. That's all the same strategy. That's all just how are you activating this like long tail of people? And, and my point is we're going to explore those agnostically. Like well, and, and honestly they'll probably just look more like one another. For instance, we did a lot of product seating. We see the thousands of, of product this past year. We, it's not that hard for us to make that an affiliate program and just try to incentivize those people more or even just more strategically brief the people that we're giving the product to so that we can get more content that might feed into our, you know, paid media system. Because even we had an extremely low hit rate in terms of organically seeded product to add. But we saw it like we saw creators doing interesting stuff. We had people going into Best Buys and shopping them there and that made its way into our ad account. Like there were small examples of it. But if we, if we continue to kind of like refine that process, I could see, I could see what I'm trying to solve, I could see solving what I want to by simply better briefing product seating. Like a TikTok affiliate doesn't have to play any role. Micro influencers doesn't have to play any role. It could just be that. So that's kind of, my point is just like whatever that system looks like and it's big and hairy and like I just, I hear people talk about it all the time and I think it's really easy to conflate different strategies and different goals. But like, that is as clear as I can currently articulate what we're going.

[Cody]

To try to do. Yeah, it's all downstream of seating really. Whether it's affiliate on TikTok Shop or your IG, you're going to get some funnel conversion rate of this is how many packages I sent out. This is people that posted exactly how much revenue they drove as an affiliate. It just might be more efficient on the shop side than on meta side, like on like an Instagram.

[Ariana]

Right?

[Cody]

Yeah.

[Ariana]

And then, and then, and then just the affiliate piece is obviously extremely impactful because someone's going to want to get rewarded for good content. So they're going to follow the briefs or they're going to look at examples. You know, a couple weeks ago Cody talked about giving people insight into what TikTok videos are trending. Like people will care more if they have upside. And that's where product seating literally just like how are you getting product into thousands of people's hands turns into a really effective way to create great content.

[Connor]

What you said about you, you dropped a note on like more strategic briefing of the, of the creators. I think that Cody, to your initial question. I think that's going to want to, going to be one of our biggest changes this year is we have like, like non stick for example. That is like one of the, the most common issues that people have with hexclad and it usually comes down to like you didn't season your pan the right way. You are probably using too high a heat and people hear non stick and they're like, oh, I don't have to use any oil. So. And so it's like, you know, you still have to use some oil. So we are now through TikTok shop creators actually giving them more specific and then, and then sometimes it's just like hey, we just like your, we just like your content. We'd love to send you some product, get your feedback and we don't brief them at all. Right. We're just like sending them very organic and now we're starting to shift towards. No, we're actually giving you a brief and like we want you to specifically talk about non stick and how you get the best out of the non stick and like what you should do and what you shouldn't do. We're starting to brief people more on you know, there's a lot of quote unquote hybrid pans popping up now. So we're starting to brief people on like how to talk about our like what it means for us to be like the original hybrid pan and like really drilling down in the techno like the technology behind our product versus like the other quote unquote hybrid pans which a lot aren't actually hybrid pans, like printed, not laser etched. So we're starting to do that more and get more which I think will only fill the, the paid media content flywheel. Even better by having more briefed out styles. So I think that's the, that's the biggest or one of the biggest changes at least for in for our like product seating across all channels this year.

[Cody]

There, there, there is a little different and like Sean talked about this in like some, some group chat like a few weeks back, like with the way the social feeds are changing, being less follow based, like there's definitely a difference in you know, this is comforts approach. And like they're like, hey, we don't care how many followers you have. We don't care about like, like there's not a correlation between revenue drive or even virality of content and followers. And the traditional influencer way is like, hey, you know, you're so and so with a million followers. I'm going to pay you 20 grand for this piece of content like because reach is no longer guaranteed. I just think that style of, of thing is, I don't want to say going away like we're still going to do it, but maybe it's going to be, you know, it's going to be a certain percentage of budget and we're maybe not going to kind of continue to grow that and I think a bigger focus is going to be a little bit more on the creator democracy democratized volume approach.

[Ariana]

Totally. So that was actually the point that I was going to make. I was listening to a podcast and they were using the term influencer marketing and I just felt like that's basically completely dead where like, like people don't even the ide. The idea of influencer marketing 10 years ago or whatever was you had people creating content for people they didn't otherwise know and like building influence. Like I really like this dude who you know, lives out of his van in, in Colorado or whatever and like I'm going to be influenced by the things that he tells me. But it was way more like it felt like 10 years ago social media out large. Like people were more selective. You were literally just choosing to follow maybe a few hundred or a few thousand people. Now it is like there is still influence involved but I'm being influenced by whoever gets served up in my algorithm, algorithmic feed. And therefore it's less like, it's less like Persona driven. It's. It's less like this person has influence and more like this person every once in a while can create content that happens to influence people. And it just like so influencer marketing, I just felt that was that was the thought that I had the other day as I was like, I just think that ultimately completely goes away and it becomes something like you said, Cody Creator, marketing or just like whatever we want to describe that as. Because this idea that like you're going to partner with 50 people who are influential I think just feels like inherently less scalable or like long term scenario or outcome. All right, so I've got some interesting numbers to share from Ridge from our beloved sponsor Rich Panel. We switched our support stack at Ridge to rich panel about 15 months ago and our cost per ticket has dropped over 70%. That means same team, same volume and over $500,000 in annual savings. CSATs have not changed. We've been sitting at 96% week after week. So the automations did not come at the cost of customer experience. Our last platform talked a lot about AI, but nothing was really changing under the hood. Rich Panel is genuinely AI first they came in, they rebuilt our workflows and we were live in under two weeks with basically no lift on our side. And they're about to roll out a returns portal which for us is huge because if they can do the same thing for returns as it did for customer service, that would be sick. If you want to cut down your support costs now and save on returns platform with an AI first platform, talk to Rich Panel. Go to richpanel.com demo tell them Connor from marketing operator sent you and they'll.

[Connor]

Take good care of you.

[Ariana]

Thank you.

[Cody]

I agree. I'm just trying not to throw the baby out with a battle bar. Like there's still value in it, right? Like you know, like YouTube for example. Followers or subscribers probably matter more on YouTube long form than they do on TikTok. You know, like I would never pay for a TikTok post and pay a, you know, an agree upon flat fee for a TikTok post at this point because the way that the algorithm works and followers are almost meaningless. Right. So I'd rather do the TikTok shop approach there Instagram. There's some level or maybe stories make sense to do it and we still see decent performance based on, you know, some stuff like that. But it's just, it's not going to be the only thing we do or the only strategy I think like the, the main focus has to be on this creator approach versus like a follower or somebody who's got influence.

[Ariana]

I agree. And, and maybe it comes down to like I bring up YouTube and podcasts because I do think those people end up accruing influence because they, they have attention for so long. It's 20 minute videos, it's 90 minute podcasts. Like, it is just inherently like there's more of a connection between their content and the listener, from my perspective. And then it's the social stuff that feels like it's become increasingly like ephemeral and algorithmic driven. So it's like that is where you end up losing influence quicker. You've just like, via attrition. If you had a hundred thousand followers eight years ago, it's like that means so much less today than a hundred thousand followers on YouTube, actually. Like, if you're still producing videos and getting views, that is, you've still, you've maintained your influence at a higher rate, I think.

[Cody]

Totally agreed. Yeah.

[Connor]

Connor, you, you bring, you bring something up that's really interesting from, from like a media consumer standpoint. And I feel the same way. Like, it's not. I don't have like three or four people and I get all my, like, health and wellness or food advice from those people. It's like as long as anyone is. If I'm getting served some piece of content and as long as they like, pass my, like, very gut instinct, like, instant sniff test, it doesn't matter who it's coming from. If they have like an interesting point, I'll look at it and I might even act on it. So whereas maybe five, ten years ago it was like you had your three or four people that you were following showing up in your feed and it's like, now I'm getting like, recipes from hundreds of people in like health and wellness routines from hundreds of people. So it's in it. And like, that's how I consume media. It sounds like that's how. How you guys consume media. So it only makes sense for a brand to like, take the offense on. Totally take advantage of that, which is what we're ultimately talking about this entire episode.

[Ariana]

100%. So.

[Connor]

All right, so quick, quick ender. At what point do you think it makes. So we're talking a lot about like, organic content to reach tons of new people organically, but then also feed the paid social creative flywheel. At what point does it make sense to invest into like the. The Capital B brand episodic style content that like, we're starting to do. Huckberry does and has done for a long time. Yeti does and has done for a long time. I think there is some, like, like Ariana said, you shouldn't have community, just have community. Like, you should have community if it makes sense. Like half Days there's a big problem which is like skiing can be daunting and inaccessible. It's expensive like it. There's a lot of details to figure out. So it makes sense that they have a community to form around that problem. And I think it's kind of the same with like the three brands I just listed. Like there's all, there's narratives to be told around our product and brand and our culture. But like generally like when do you think it makes sense to start investing in that stuff that's pro like that. Like I do not ever expect open to close to fill a paid social flywheel. Like it just probably won't happen. We've done, we've cut some ads from it but like that's never going to be a huge part of our flywheel. So that really is like, it's serving that capital B brand for us. And I do think there's value in it. I think it's going to be really hard to measure, but I think over time that stuff does have a really positive impact on, on the business and your, in your brand's perception. Do you guys have any thoughts about like when to start doing stuff like that?

[Cody]

Yeah, I do. I definitely do. I think you're right on a lot of it. A is some is just a subjective choice. It's like, hey, like we think this is important. We think this is, you know, a non measurable thing. I think some of it is. It's again, it's always just being realistic about like your strengths and stuff. Like, like, are we good at it? Can we get views on it? Is it going to be, you know, are we going to put 300 grand into this thing and get 2k views per video like most brands, most brands, if they did that and made a YouTube series, like that's what they're going to get. That's a terrible waste of people's time. We have tried to do stuff before and I've gotten that right. So it's like we're not, we're not good at that currently. Doesn't mean we can't be in the future, right? You guys are pretty good at that. First of all, you have Gordon, you have chefs, you have, you have the funds to invest in things like that. You also have a director of content who, that's his background. So like I've seen you, you know, on YouTube, you guys do very well, right? And you also have obviously like a product that that makes sense and you can kind of weave that into brand stories as well as have the product, be the hero of it, even if you're not talking about it. But I think you have to have your point of view. Like how do we want to show up as a brand? What are we trying to do? And like are we actually going to get views on whatever platform farm is going to be?

[Connor]

Yeah. And so far so good. We got like 600k on the Gordon one. Obviously Gordon drives a lot of that. But even our second one that was featuring Nancy Silverton who is very much, much, much less famous than Gordon obviously. Like we're sitting at 100,000 views on that one. And that was seven days ago. And you know this is the second episode. So I'm feeling, I'm feeling pretty good about the organic performance so far.

[Ariana]

Totally. You know I, I'll just, I, I agree with Cody. I said earlier at Ridge we're extremely biased. I like the performance oriented end Lala Coffee. There's lots of brands that do the episodic stuff. The like capital B brand stuff. More detached from product, less doctor and it can totally help grow your business. So I think it goes back to Cody's point around like what are your strengths? My bet would be like if you played it out a hundred times, you're going to generate more value from the long tail of creators generating product oriented content. It becomes more likely to feed the, the paid media flywheel, et cetera, et cetera. That's what my bet would be. But I don't think there's any like you shouldn't do it unless you're a 20 million or something. Like I, I think there people can pick and choose your spots depending on their strengths.

[Connor]

Yeah, yeah. I mean that was part of Huckberry's DNA from totally started out as a. Not with the long form YouTube series but I mean they did like Huckberry was initially conceived as like a, a blog. It was like it was like a travel adventure blog. So that's been in their DNA for. Since the beginning. So yeah, I guess the other thing.

[Cody]

Yeah, the last thing I would say. Yeah I would, I would look and almost see like tally up the number of brands that have been built a certain way. Right. Like how many brands have been built off Facebook ads? A lot. And maybe that's not the best way to do it now because it's a lot harder. So maybe you got to go take that shop. There's a lot of brands that are being built on TikTok shop right now. Right. How many are built on organic social. Like, like not a ton of nine. Figure brands. Again, I'm not saying we're going to be purely organic social, but like, but there are definitely good case study stories of, you know, smaller brands starting out and, and getting organic social to really pump for them. Especially now with the algorithm. Right. How many brands are, are launched from blogs? Well, like, yeah, there was Huckberry. There was, there was into the gloss, but into the gloss also pivoted and that's no longer a, you know, that's no longer a thing. So I would just look at that and like, like it's much harder to do and there's many less. Right. Like that have gone from doing that. And so I would, I would say play the probability game and you know, probably go crater led like Connor is saying.

[Connor]

All right, that was a fun episode on organic and paid social. Super fun. All right, that is a wrap on this episode of the Marketing Operators. We had a really fun, jam packed episode talking about all things organic and paid media creative and how they work together. Thank you to the sponsors Motion Rich panel Pression AI after selling Revo, if you're liking the marketing operators, we would really appreciate it if you could subscribe, like comment and share with all your marketing buddies. Thanks.