Motion's Creative Strategy Summit: Why AI Creative Strategists Will Become the Highest Paid MarketersWhy AI Creative Strategists Will Become the Highest Paid Marketers (Bonus Episode)

Summary

Podcast Summary:

Marketing Operators - Bonus Episode: Motion's Creative Strategy Summit
Title: Why AI Creative Strategists Will Become the Highest Paid Marketers
Recorded: October 17, 2025
Hosts: Connor Rolain, Connor MacDonald, Cody Plofker
Moderator/Guest Host: Reza (CEO of Motion)

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Main Theme

This episode, recorded live at Motion’s Creative Strategy Summit 2025, explores the explosive growth and transformation of the Creative Strategist role in marketing. The conversation focuses on the crucial intersection of creative, performance, and now artificial intelligence (AI), arguing that the most valuable marketers of the future will master all three. The panel dives into how AI is reshaping creative work, what defines a top-performing creative strategist, and the evolving feedback loops between creative, go-to-market, and overall business strategies.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Rise and Evolution of the Creative Strategist

• The Creative Strategist role emerged to bridge the gap between creative and performance/analytics functions within growth marketing teams. Initially rare, it has become critical for D2C brands.
• AI introduces a new dimension, requiring creative strategists to now bridge creative, performance, and AI-driven execution.
• Quote [03:14]:
  “The Creative Strategist was the role that was meant to bring those two worlds together and act as this hybrid person… someone who could bridge those two worlds.” – Reza

2. Creative Strategist as a Company-Wide Mindset

• Even those without the title are often practicing creative strategy at an executive level—allocating capital, setting direction, and focusing on creative-first thinking.
• Quote [06:30]:
  “I’m not writing briefs day to day, but I think I’m like a capital allocator of creative strategy.” – Cody

3. Feedback Loops: Ads, Data, and Product Strategy

• Feedback loops have matured from just tracking creative performance to informing product and market decisions.
• Top brands validate new products and ideas through paid ads before full market launch (“Kickstarter model”).
• Quote [15:31]:
  “Paid ads are actually one of the best ways to actually validate a new product, even if you don’t have that product yet… there’s probably no better way to actually, like, get quick, instantaneous feedback.” – Connor

4. What Makes a Top 1% Creative Strategist?

• Must excel in producing, launching, and reading content performance (“the flywheel”).

• Balance between strong content creation and data-driven analysis is key.

• Project management, consumer psychology, platform savvy, and staying ahead of trends/platform shifts are also vital.

• Quote [18:48]:
  “Top 1% creative strategists... are amazing content producers. They can come up with great ideas, write briefs, direct content, and also understand the data and make decisions based on it.” – Connor MacDonald

• Project management and organization are as essential as creative or analytical talent, especially as creative output scales.

• Many great strategists come from creator backgrounds or learn on the job, given the nascent, fast-growing nature of the role.

• Quote [24:07]:
  “Our creative strategy lead at Hexclad… is so dialed operationally… She knows how to manage the flywheel. That’s a very important skill.” – Connor

5. The Role of AI in Creative Strategy

• AI accelerates the convergence of creative and analytical skills, allowing individuals to fill gaps in their expertise.

• Templetizing creative workflows enables AI integration—brief writing, concept ideation, translations, and data analysis are increasingly AI-powered.

• Human taste, judgment, and curation remain irreplaceable—even as AI automates more of the workflow.

• Quote [41:46]:
  “A lot of AI will be utilized to create really mediocre content. The best creative strategists are going to understand what role they need to play in order for the content to remain top tier.” – Connor Rolain

• Rapid AI changes require ongoing immersion and adaptation.

• Ultimately, the highest paid will be those who combine AI leverage with high-level creative judgment and taste.

• Quote [42:54]:
  "Taste is the word basically... needing to be able to apply taste to what the AI systems produce becomes, that's like the human skill." – Reza

6. Market Size and Thinking Bigger

• Understanding TAM (Total Addressable Market) and scaling strategy is increasingly important. Creative investment should focus on efforts with real growth potential.
• Not every product or channel is worth scaling; historical data and strategic judgment guide resource allocation.

7. Advice for Beginners

Timestamp [34:38]

• Take action and iterate quickly—learn most by launching ads and getting real feedback.
• Don’t get paralyzed by perfectionism; “get more shots on goal” even by iterating on existing content before always creating new.
• Master both the creative and the analytical sides (at least at a competent level).
• Project management and being organized in multi-ad production is crucial as you grow.

8. Common Mistakes and Pitfalls

Timestamp [45:12]

• Over-reliance on others for data interpretation; every creative strategist should develop basic analytics fluency.
• Getting lost in data and losing sight of “the creative part.”
• Focusing on small iterations instead of bold, significant creative swings.
• Blindly copying bigger brands or trends without adapting to unique business needs.

9. Trends and Predictions for 2026

Timestamp [49:59]

• Watch out for a glut of “AI slop”—the future will value creative curation, refinement, and human taste over mass, mediocre AI production.
• Expansion beyond core influencer niches will unlock new audiences.
• Brands need to think wider for partnership and influencer strategies, not just within their traditional verticals.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the future of the role:
  “The creative strategist is going to continue to grow in importance… the companies who build that feedback loop [between ads and business/product development] will do really well in the era of AI.” – Reza [13:49]

• On platform shifts:
  “They need to know how short-form content is taking over and how algorithms and feeds are working… The ones that are doing well are keeping up with how quickly the platforms and industry are changing.” – Cody [22:06]

• On leveraging AI:
  “Generally, there’s no reason to be writing anything from scratch these days… Brief writing, concept writing, concept ideation—so helpful for stuff like that.” – Connor MacDonald [39:00]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:03 – Reza introduces the summit, creative strategist evolution
• 06:03 – Panelists embrace “creative strategist” label and discuss org structure
• 09:17 – Ads-first creative strategy & whole funnel messaging
• 11:03 – Persona-centric strategy, go-to-market, and the importance of feedback
• 14:10 – Feedback loop between creative and business decisions
• 18:48 – What makes a top 1% creative strategist?
• 27:04 – How market size informs creative and product strategy
• 34:38 – Advice for beginners in creative strategy
• 36:21 – Integrating AI: rapid change, templates, and workflow
• 45:12 – Common mistakes to avoid as a creative strategist
• 49:59 – 2026 predictions: AI risks, human curation, and influencer expansion

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Conclusion

This episode paints a comprehensive picture of where creative strategy stands today—and where it’s heading. The most successful marketers will be those who operate at the crossroads of creative, performance, and AI mastery; who leverage rapid feedback loops; who can discern signal from noise amidst “AI slop;” and who are relentless in adapting to—if not setting—the pace of change in the digital marketing landscape.

If you want to win as a creative strategist, double down on developing both creative and analytical skills, stay deeply embedded in AI advancements, and never lose your edge for taste, organization, and bold experimentation.

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Transcript

[A]

Thank you.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

Hey everybody. My name is Reza. I'm the CEO of Motion and I'm very, very excited to be here with all of you today. This is Creative Strategy Summit 2025, the fourth one of these that we've done. If this is the first one that you're tuning in for, you're in for a treat. And we've gathered the best in the business to help you learn what it means to become the best Creative strategist in the world. Motion has a special commitment to the Creative Strategist role. When we, when we did our first summit four years ago, no one even knew what this role was. And today it's one of the fastest growing roles in marketing. Every single D2C brand wants to hire a Creative strategist. And since then, Motion has always had this belief that the Creative Strategist role was going to become the most important role in marketing. And, and we committed to serving this role since the early days. But we believe, and I'm excited to tell you why we believe, that the Creative Strategist story is actually just getting started as much as it's grown over the years now. Like for example, 17,000 people registered for this event. We have tens of thousands of people who subscribe to our newsletter and want to learn more about what the Creative Strategist is. So you could see that there's an insane amount of momentum around this role over the last few years. But we believe very strongly that the story around this role is actually just getting started. And every single year that goes by, the Creative Strategist role will become even more important. The reason for that is that when you look back at the, at what gave birth to the Creative Strategist is around this problem that existed in growth marketing teams where there was this divide between the creative team and the performance team. So if you had, for example, a creative person who was very analytical and you had a growth person who was very data driven, the challenge was that when creative started to become a really important part of paid advertising, there was this really big divide. And so the Creative Strategist was the role that was meant to bring those two worlds together and kind of act as this like hybrid person who is as creative as they are analytical, which in some sense is like this unicorn type of person that happens very rarely, but that's who the Creative Strategist was. It was someone who maybe came from more of a performance background, but felt like they could go into their kind of creative side and bridge those two worlds. And that was like a really Big pain point and a challenge for a lot of companies. And the Creative Strategist came in to solve that problem. And just when it feels like, you know, the Creative Strategist started to master these two very opposing disciplines and start to become very good at it, you now have this third point of mastery that the new Creative Strategist needs to, needs to develop. And that's AI. And so when a lot of people talk about the role of AI and how that's going to shape organizations, they generally talk about it in this idea of collapsing of skill sets. So before you might have like two, three or four different people who each have specialized roles, but AI is going to allow people to be a lot more leverage so that they can do more and more things just with like a single individual. And so the Creative Strategist has this really amazing opportunity to bridge the gap not only between the creative side and the performance side, but also be the person at the company who brings in AI into, into, into the, into this workflow. And when the Creative Strategist does this, they create so much value for their company and for themselves in their own careers. And, and the thing that they need is, you know, even in the early days to bridge the gap between performance and creative. That's not an easy thing to do. And in the same way, we actually don't believe that AI is this easy thing that you can plug into and say, oh, now that there's AI, the job is going to get a lot easier. We actually think it's going to get harder before it gets easier because there's a lot of mastery involved. But the Creative Strategist is the perfect role to do that because they've already been this like cross disciplined, hybrid individual. And so our commitment to this role is like, since day one, we tried to build the best product in the world to support this job role. We tried to build the best content that we possibly got to help to help the Creative Strategist stay at the top of their game. And that commitment stays true to today. So like, you know, Motion has now grown to 65 people. We've raised over $40 million in capital. And usually when a company gets to this stage, they start to like branch out into different functions and roles and try to do more things for more people. But every year at the Creative Strategy Summit, it's kind of like our renewed commitment to the community of creative strategists that motion is still 100 focused on this role and building tools and content for this specific community and so excited to kick this Day off. We're starting the session with three people that I admire and respect quite a bit. You'll notice that this is a. This is a day about creative strategy. And we're kicking off with three executives, neither of whom have the title creative strategist in their job title. But the thing that I want to talk to all of them about and kind of jam with this community on is that the role of the creative strategist actually starts at the top. And so I want to make the argument that the three people that we're about to invite on stage, Connor, Connor and Cody, are actually three terrific creative strategists, even though their job titles are executives and leaders. And so if we can invite our three elite creative strategists onto the stage, would love to kick off with a conversation with all of you. Because when we talk about the creative strategist role, it's kind of a mindset. It's not just exactly, you know, a job role. And so waiting for one more. Mr. Cody, welcome to the party. What's going on, guys? How are you?

[C]

We're great.

[A]

So that was not rehearsed. I called you all creative strategists. What do you think about that? Does that make sense? Do you guys, like, accept that title? Do you, do you reject my. My labeling of you guys as a creative strategist? What do you think about that? Every time I talk to all of you, I'm just like, these guys are creative strategists. They just, their title says something different.

[C]

I think that's accurate. I think we all started as more hands on keyboard creative strategists. And I still think we all do a lot of creative strategy work in our day to day.

[B]

I totally agree. I also think it's funny you said you guys had your first summit four years ago and like, the creative strategist role wasn't even invented. So I think at some point, I've been at Ridge for nine years, so someone had to be serving the creative strategy function. And yeah, I think I. I sat in that seat at least for a bit.

[D]

Yeah, I'm not, I'm not writing briefs day to day, but I think I'm like a capital capital allocator of creative strategy. Like, I'll make calls and decide of, like, guys we could really like. I'm actually at, at Meta right now for like a creator summit, and I'm just like, hey, guys, like, we should allocate and lean much more into partnership ads or something like that. So definitely still, still very involved in.

[B]

Driving strategy Cody, if, if, if someone made you write a brief today, would it be good?

[A]

I would use AI so yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, one of the things that's happened over the years as we've talked about the creative strategist role, I've noticed a lot of people get tripped up about the org chart and the org design and who has what title and, and do I need to hire someone with this title or that title? And I think like, you know, when teams grow to your size is like you, you all have like dedicated people at the company with the title creative strategist. But I really do think it's like this skill and hat that everyone wears at the company, particularly like the growth marketing leadership to view go to market strategies in a creative first lens. It's like in some sense what I mean that like you guys are elite creative strategists. Like generally when you think about anything go to market, you, you kind of think about it as like, how are we going to tell that story? Who are we going to tell that story to? And like all of that is, you know, part of creative strategy. Obviously there's like channels and, and, and that sort of thing. But when you, when you guys talk to your teams about just like growth and growth marketing, how do you think about the balance between how much of the conversation is centered around some kind of creative strategy versus like other dimensions and like, how do you, how do you guys think about that?

[B]

You know, I'll take a first pass here. I think a lot of we've been thinking a lot about go to market at Ridge. We have probably 10x the amount of new products and campaigns we've brought to market. So it's, it is a function within the business that we've had to refine over the last two years. And what I would say before you get to like the true creative or content piece of it, we need to nail like what the message is and who it's for. And then I think the creative strategist is really putting it through the lens of okay, we've got, you know, this product or this offer at this price point for this person. Now how do I, how do I push that through the lens of how will this work across paid social or like, where do I need to create content that will perform in some way? And I, I think it's like, and the only reason I bring it up in that order of operations is because I think there are some, some constraints a little bit at least the way we've structured it at Ridge. And like what Are the inputs and then what is the creative strategies kind of producing from there?

[C]

Yeah, I mean, I think I, I.

[A]

Saw you guys do some like different tactics with your, with your creative these days. Some were like really high polished different like brand campaigns. How do you, how does that fit into, into the way you, you guys do things?

[C]

Yeah, I mean we're, I mean everything's coming from like an ads first lens. Like anytime where we are talking about like a new product category, for example, that we're going to build acquisition around. It's like I like starting with the ads because if you can really understand the angles and the messaging arcs that you're going after in your ad creative, everything else sort of follows suit. Right. If you're saying, hey, here's the three angles that we're really going to hit on and here's all the different ways that we're going to hit on them. Like we have three core messages and within each core message we're going to do comparison ads and partnership ads and like hype reels with text overlay. Like all those asset types can feed into that one core message. Everything else follows suit. Right. If you know exactly the angles and the messaging arcs of your ads, your landing page copy almost takes care of itself. Your email copy almost takes care of itself because you have to have a congruent funnel. So you can't be messaging like a certain angle or value prop in your ads, but then not have it be congruent in your lander in your email. So we are, we always are taking a very like ads first approach. Anytime we're thinking about creating like net new content, whether it's for sales or just like an evergreen concept or it's a like new product go to market. Like we are very often leading with the ad creative. So in that sense, like oftentimes your creative strategists are the ones not only developing the ads and like the ideas for the ads, but they also kind of almost indirectly end up developing the messaging for the entire funnel. So I think it's, I think it's incredibly important to like lead with the ad angles you think are going to do the best and then let that fall like kind of drip into the, all the downstream parts of the funnel.

[A]

Cody, what about you guys?

[D]

For us, we're trying to do everything as Persona as like the centerpiece. And so as we have new products or launches, it's like Connor said, who is it appealing to? What are the value props? And then while that's not just paid social creative strategy that really permeates out to everything. And so that gets us really, really like focused on what we're trying to do for Influencer which obviously then really goes into ad creative and partnership ads and and e common landing pages. And so for us the biggest thing is reaching new audiences with different Personas. And so every launch that we have that's what we're trying to think about and like that's at the center and then trying to make sure we have like a very similar strategy that's across channels. But yeah, creative strategy is definitely a giant part of that one.

[A]

One of my theories that I've been thinking about recently, I'm curious to get your guys take on it is that when we were talking about all this several years ago, I remember Connor, we talked about before Motion was a product, we were looking at the spreadsheets and so on that you guys were using at your company on bridging the gap between creative and data and the goal there was trying to create this feedback loop. It's like some things happen over here and then those are valuable inputs for something that we're trying to do over here. On the creative side if the feedback loop of like what's actually happening on the media buying side that it was very challenging to optimize creative. And it's funny to think about now because like you know, it's a solved problem now. Like when most people do creative like they obviously have the data associated to that creative's performance but that was not a solved problem early, early on. And so the way that I've been thinking about the feedback loop today, it's very similar. What Connor, you said is like how do, how is there a feedback loop between what's happening on the go to market side and what the business is actually doing right. So like if you think about things like you know Cody, you mentioned that Personas are a really big deal as you launch new product and so on. One of my theories is that as the, as things get more competitive with AI, the loops are not just around like what kind of creative are we going to produce. It's like what kind of products are we going to launch, which kind of markets are we going to go into? And a lot of that signal is going to come from like what's working on the advertising side. And so it's like if you find signal on this kind of Persona is working well or this use case seems to be getting a lot of attention like I think a lot of teams are going to take that feedback loop back into their product strategy and be like, we're seeing real signal on this. And I think in the era of AI, it's going to be the companies that do the best are the ones who are going to able to tighten the feedback loop between what happens on the advertising side and what happens on the business side. Which is kind of why our prediction is that the creative strategist is going to continue to grow in importance, is that if you're, if you're able to inform not just like what creative should we make next, but like here are the markets that we should go into as a company, then that's like incredibly valuable. And the companies who build that feedback loop will do really well as like I just spits out creative in an easier way. It can't just spin up a new product line. Right. Or like open up a new market for you. Like those are the edges that companies are going to have.

[B]

I absolutely agree with that. Yeah, yeah, I'll take a quick pass at this. And I say this all the time. You know, our paid media and Performance Creative team are really on the front lines of determining what is resonating with who and why. So we're, we have a, I'm missing our go to market call right now, so I have to catch up with the team later. But we have a big launch next week and we have a handful of value props associated with it. And a lot of our creative strategy on the launch of New Silhouette comes down to, hey, this is what we think will work. And this goes back to my point around inputs through the lens of Performance Creative. Now we're serving impressions and we're getting feedback around that and we're able to do the data analysis and we say, hey, these are the three value props or the two Personas that we think this new product Silhouette will work with. Let's push that into market these ways.

[A]

And then.

[B]

You're absolutely right, Reza. That is the most valuable information we get to feedback and help inform our merchandising calendar for, you know, later next year or something like that.

[D]

Yeah. And like piggybacking off that. Like in order for any product expansion, product launch to really like drive meaningful results for our business, it has to be an acquisition product. Like we're, we're really trying to take these swings that are going to expand our total addressable market. And who better to report on the, the acquisition and like the potential and like value props to the rest of the team than the people who are actually closest to like seeing how consumers are interacting with ads and what's resonating with them. So totally agree on that.

[C]

And Reza, we, Connor and I actually talked about this on yesterday morning about like, paid ads are actually one of the best ways to actually validate a new product, even if you don't have that product yet, right? If you're like, if you're, if you have a prototype or something and you're trying to say like, hey, should we bring this to market or not? Like, we think this could be an acquisition product, but we don't know. Like, there's probably no better way to validate whether or not you can actually acquire someone profitably on that new product that you're thinking about bring to market than ads. Because you can just act like you're selling it, see what your CAC is and then follow up with people that order and say, hey, like, we ran out of stock. Like, we refunded you entirely. But there's probably no better way to actually, like, get quick, instantaneous feedback on a, on a brand new product without, without being like, oh crap, we just dumped, you know, a million dollars into producing this thing and then we launched it and our CAC is like, what, our AOV is on it and we think we have a good ad stack and we're like, oh shit, now what? Like, that's not the way to go about it. The way, the way to do it is to validate it before you do that. You know, it's the Kickstarter model, right? Like, don't go and produce a bunch of inventory, see if you can actually get people to pay for it and then use that to fund the inventory. It's really the same thing when you're trying to validate a new product in paid ads. So, yeah, we chatted a lot about that yesterday on our show, so it's very top of mind.

[A]

Nice. If anyone here is not familiar with the Marketing Operators podcast, let's get a link in the, in the chat. I, I would be surprised if not every single person here is subscribed to you guys. But for those who don't know, the three gentlemen here host the podcast. How, how often do you guys release? Every week. Yeah, so it's one of the best podcasts in the industry and so you should 100 subscribe to it. One of the reasons that we wanted to kick off with you guys and you know, the, the, the, the title of this session is Helping people become a top 1% creative strategist. And I want to go in a little bit more because, you know, for people in the audience, they might be you know, working at a company or they could be working at an agency serving brands, like, doesn't matter. The question becomes like, how can you become better at your craft? You know, and the answer is in something like, create more value for the company that you're working with. And, you know, who better to talk about how a company measures value than you guys? And so, like, I want to unpack a little bit for anybody who's like, maybe in the weeds working on ads, realizing, like, wait, the work that I'm doing in ads is kind of downstream of these like, really important, high leverage business things that if the more I understand them, the more I can execute well when I'm in the trenches, like doing work on the creative strategy side. And you know, we talked about some of that, which is, you know, the feedback loop of like, what is this business trying to achieve right now? And how does the work that we're doing on the paid ad side help achieve those goals? Can you guys think about, you know, when you're working with creative strategists on your team or external partners, how do you, how do you, what does a top 1% creative strategist feel like to you guys? Like, how would you describe someone who's like, all right, you know, here's 10 briefs that you can go and execute these days versus like, damn, that was really well done. What's, what stands out to you guys as, as top 1% elite creative strategist?

[C]

Yeah, I can, I can kick that one off. I think if you like, if you dumb down the, like what a creative strategist does and like the feedback loop they're following, it is produce ads, launch ads, read data, and then you start at the top again. Produce ads, launch ads, read data, produce that. You know what I mean? Like, it's this always on Flywheel. That's just like a big feedback loop. I think the top 1% creative strategists can like, the absolute best they can. They're amazing content producers, right? They can produce really compelling ads. They can come up with great ideas, they can write great briefs. They can, they can be on set, like directing that new content. They can work with influencers. They can just make great ads. There are great content producers, period. I think you often see that. But people that aren't as good in the data, you often see people that aren't as good at, as producing, but they're great at the data in the top 1% are doing each great. Like if, if you want to be top 1%, you need to do what I just said, but you also need to understand, like, how to understand if that ad's performing well or not well and how to, like, make decisions based on that. So you can take educated swings. When you are, like, doing this iterative process where it's like, all right, this is working or not working. I'm going to do this next because of that. And then there's also, like, there's the net, new swings, right? Like, hey, we don't have any data on this, but I just have a feeling this can hit and I'm going to take a swing there. So I think, I think the best creative strategists are able to like, really manage the entire, like, circular kind of flywheel that is that, like, produce ads, launch ads, measure ads, produce ads, launch ads, measure ads. I think if you're, you don't have to be right. Like, you can always have people on your team. Like, if you have great media buyers, they can often fill that gap. If, like, you're not that data driven and you're not super good at analytics, I think it's just knowing where you have strengths and weaknesses. And I still think you, if you're not super analytical, but you're a great content producer, I still think you can be a top 1% creative strategist by, by knowing that and, like, placing the right people to fill in any gaps that you might not be as strong at.

[B]

I'd love to piggyback off that a little bit. Connor. I have an extremely similar answer to Connor. What I will add is I think hiring a. Hiring a top 1% creative strategist day is extremely hard. You had the graph up earlier, Reza. We think we're at the very beginning of hockey stick growth for the creative strategist role, which just means there's probably way more demand for the role than people who are experienced in it. The first, you know, creative strategy summit was only four years ago. There's just effectively that much time for anybody to have really become 1%. So what you really want to be looking for is who has the underlying skills that will help them become 1%, even as the, you know, market for creative strategist, 10Xs or whatever. And I think that comes down to an analytics and content. So we hired our first performance creative strategist. That's what we called them at ridge back in 2021. They were a photographer, and then we wanted to vet for some sort of, like, analytical skill. And at the time they were, like, doing their own taxes and were really comfortable in spreadsheets. And I'm like, I think that's, I think that is the combination of skills that we're looking for here. They've been at Ridge for four and a half years now, are extremely successful. I think they're a top 1% strategist. So I think looking for those underlying skills is really important. Same answer as Connor. Just thinking about it over a little bit of a timeline.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

So it's, it's so challenging because you, there are so many different skill sets and you could say the same with like a growth marketer, but you have to be really good at, you know, a bunch of different things. You have to, first of all, you have to know, you have to know consumer psychology, you know, copywriting, you need to know some project management, you need to know leadership. If you have a team, like there are so many things, right. And so it's, it's a very challenging role. But it's also why creative strategists are very valuable to teams and can get rewarded and compensated for that. I think the two biggest things is they need to know, you know, psychology. Like, they need to understand what consumers care about and they have to really understand platform shifts. They have to also be an expert on social. They need to know, you know, how. They don't need to be a meta ad expert, but they need to know how short form content is taking over and how algorithms and feeds are working to understand what people are getting in their feed. So they need to know that, you know, the, what's trending, the popular styles of content that are being shown to people. And they need to know that what creative diversity is and that you need to make all of these different styles of content. The biggest thing I'm seeing with just creative strategy teams and just teams in general, the ones that are doing well are keeping up with how quickly the platforms in the industry is changing. And it's so much and so rapid. But the top 1% are on top of those changes.

[A]

You mentioned.

[B]

I was gonna, I was gonna add one thing there just because Cody brings up a great point around understanding social being so key, because I also think you're gonna have to pick and choose what, what talents and skills you're looking for. You're not gonna hire someone, especially at any sort of junior level, who has all the skills. Cody just mentioned understanding social also super, super high value, largely unique skill. Some of my favorite creative strategists I've worked with are creators themselves. We've got a person on the team that's got like 3 million followers across Instagram and TikTok and it's like, oh yeah, enough that we could bring him internal and teach him systems and teach him briefing and because he gets content, he'll be successful.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[C]

You hit on something like the project management piece is like so important. Like the flywheel is so crazy. Like you might have 25 ads in production, all at different stages. Like our creative strategy lead at hexclad is she's a great creative strategist. She's a. She's really good with analytics too. But she's so dialed operationally. She's very organized. She knows how to manage the flywheel. I think that's a very. Especially as you hit scale and you need to be playing this volume game that is like you gotta be super organized to manage that because there's so many moving parts to the creative production flywheel. And I think that also is like a very important skill that the top 1% have.

[D]

Yeah, it's so not a one size fits all. And there's definitely different walks of life that the person can come from.

[A]

Well, and it's like a lot of what people talk about with AI and I think we see this in different industries and in the software side, there's this idea that, you know, really great designers who previously couldn't write software, now with AI are able to like tap into that other skill set that used to be very foreign to them. And so I think it's where AI starts to become a really interesting skill to master, both as like one of the three, but also as a way to help folks like get to the other one quicker. So if I'm like a data person and I don't know anything about creative, often you can just go back and forth with AI and realize that maybe it's not even as hard as you thought and things get a little bit more demystified. And so it feels to me like there's a lot of this idea of collapsing different skill sets that become really valuable for the top 1% creative strategist. You mentioned, Connor, the project management piece, which I think is also critical because if you have all these moving pieces, they really do need to get organized. One of the pieces, like speaking about these cross discipline, multi skill set, like needing to be able to understand different things. Cody, you mentioned this idea of addressable market and I think brands of your sizes kind of just take that for granted because it's so critical as you want to start to get to larger and larger scales that I bet you guys think about TAM and addressable market quite a bit. Can you talk a little bit about for maybe creative strategists who are a little bit more zoned in on producing ads and trying to make it convert? How does the idea of like, okay, but what's the actual market size for this product? Like, someone might join a company and they're an amazing creative strategist, but like, the market size or the market demand for the product that they're selling might be limited in some capacity. And like, you know, when people are trying to get ads to scale, sometimes the issue with that scale is that, like, the addressable market of that audience is limited and they kind of need to think about it that way. How do you guys think about market and market size when it comes to different product lines? And has that always changed? Has that always been there? Or is that something that you think about more and more as, like, the company gets bigger? Oh, go.

[C]

Yeah, go ahead, Cody.

[D]

Yeah, we, I mean, we. Beauty is a huge market, so we're, we are in a huge market. So the thing that we've seen is that I think we've, like, for us, it's like the creative supply chain has been the biggest challenge with us being purely a direct consumer brand. Like, the one thing that limits our market size is being direct consumer. Not in wholesale or Sephora. We just, like, that's a choice. We don't, we just, we don't want to be. And so for us, we need to reach new audiences that are online. And for us, we've seen creative be. The biggest thing is if we have an underdeveloped creative pipeline or, you know, we're not speaking to enough people, we'll just show ads to the same people. Like you've heard it over and over. Creative is a targeting, but it's, it's totally true. And so for us, the biggest thing is not that our market is not big, but just the way the algorithms are working today. It's like you make your market so much smaller if you're only speaking to a certain section of it. And I think like, brands like Loop Earbuds have done like, probably the best job in the world of this is they've expanded what their potential total addressable market is with Personas and with, with creative strategy beyond what most people would. I think.

[C]

Yeah, we operate with this goal setting framework called the Pyramid of Clarity, which is very similar to OKRs. And we have a strategy this year that is only plant seeds that can turn into giants. And I developed that strategy because I noticed that I felt like A lot of our team's time was getting taken up with channel rollouts or just overall tactics that, that might provide performance, but like, probably never going to scale. Like, Cody talked about this, I think in a previous episode as well. He's like, I don't want my team spending time trying to roll out a channel that's only going to get us to a thousand dollars of spend per day. Like, we take that strategic lens on everything we do. So, like, I'm not going to launch ads around kitchen tools. Do I think we could make kitchen tools work in the ad account? Absolutely. It's a 250 set of kitchen tools. We have the margin, we have the price point. But at the end of the day, like, I just doubt that product line is ever going to get above a few thousand dollars per day and spend. So, like, why would I not spend that time making the next cookware ad that's going to get us an incremental, you know, $200,000 or $300,000 of spend? So we're always, that's not just with paid, but like literally everything we do has to be able to pass through that strategy, that strategic lens. If the answer is no, this will never. This is not a seed that could turn into a giant. We just won't do it. Even if it could get us like an efficiency win at a small scale.

[A]

Can you talk a bit more about that? How do you get to that point to realize that it would be capped at this kind of scale or spend? What's the steps that you go to try to understand where the limits could be?

[C]

Yeah, I mean, I think you have to lean on your historical data a lot. For us, TikTok has never been a major part of our mix. It's a part of our mix. Right. But it's like, it's not anything higher than 10% ever. And we never got, We've never gotten it to anything higher than 10%. We've tried. We haven't, we haven't succeeded yet. So at least for now, because we have that historical data to lean on, we have decided that we are not going to spend a ton of time producing like a bunch of net new TikTok first content because we think we're better off producing like Facebook and Instagram ad first content that then might port over well to TikTok. That could change. Like, I, I still think there's value into like taking like sprinting at it and seeing if we can get that mix. But that's an example. We made that decision based on the historical data that we do have, not everything you have historical data. Sometimes you just need to trust your gut, right. And be like, I, I just don't think kitchen tools are going to work as an acquisition product. Other times it's like the tick tock example.

[A]

Tell me more about that one. Like the kitchen tools, like how, what's, what's the thinking there to know that like it's unlikely to scale.

[C]

It'S just a niche product. You know, it's like not everyone is going to want to buy a really expensive set of kitchen tools. That's point number one. Point number two is that actually fits in really nicely with an, with an already established funnel of ours, which is our 12 piece set funnel. So like why would I go build a new acquisition funnel around the kitchen tools when I can just insert this product as an upsell strategically within a funnel that already exists? Like that's going to drive way more acquisition revenue on that product for us than building its own funnel ever is. So it's just like what's that opportunity cost between the two? We know the 12 piece sets, our hero product in the six piece sets, the next one. So why not just set it up in those funnels that already exist? And that's probably a better use of our time and a lot lower lift than building net new funnels around this product.

[A]

Really cool. Connor, you guys have been doing a bunch around how many people in the world are going to buy wallets? I feel like guys joke about this every now and then. The market size for wallets is insane and I feel like you guys will not stop until everyone owns a ridge wallet or what's the thing.

[B]

Yeah, well, yeah, just some quick math. There's like 300 million people in the U.S. half of them are men. So we've got another like 140 million wallets to sell. Something like that. We're looking for 100 penetration. But no, we've thought, obviously wallets are a tough category because one guys typically only own one and then ours is guaranteed for life. So every time we acquire new customer, it's actually I think slightly more difficult to acquire the next one. So we've thought a lot about product expansion and category expansion. So the way our business is structured is we have really our three scalable categories. We have everyday carry, we have travel, we have rings and or we call it jewelry. And we have hero products within that wallet, luggage, wedding bands. Now what I'll say quickly is I think to a certain degree there are economies of scale to producing creative like If I have a new product, I think the hardest ads to make from a time perspective are probably the first 10. If I need to make five more, it doesn't require 50% more energy. So you want to be from a business perspective creating products where you can benefit from economies of scale, even at the creative level. For instance, then you get into like, because what you want to avoid is building a bunch of products and all of them need 10 unique ads. And then you're spending the hardest ads to make. You've given yourself the task of creating six or seven or eight sets of them. That is not a scalable strategy. So you want is fewer scalable ones. That's what we're focused on. That comes down to having a decent sized tam, having good economics, and then understanding kind of the funnels and acquisition engines you need to build to support those.

[A]

Super cool. I've seen a ton of questions roll in. So we only have 20 minutes, 20 minutes left. So I'm going to start to get to some of the Q&As. I would say at this point because there are so many. Try to go and look at the list and upvote the ones that you think are most speak to you so I can prioritize those and then I'll just pop it onto the screen here and whoever wants to, whoever wants to, if I can figure out how to put it on the screen.

[C]

Are these in the chat or the messages tab?

[A]

You know, there, there is a real Q A that Melissa showed me how to use it. Now it just says answer.

[C]

I found it.

[A]

There used to be a share button next to the answer button and now it just says answer. So I'm just going to read it out until we figure out how to put it up on stage. The first question from Angie was, what's the three main pieces of advice or tips you would give to a beginner creative strategist?

[C]

Take swings. Like the best way to learn is by doing right. Like go like have ideas quickly, act on them quickly, get them in the ad account, get spend behind them. Like you learn the most by actually building ads and launching ads. You know, I think it's easy to like kind of sit in analysis paralysis or so like decision paralysis where like trying especially early on you're like, well I don't want to make like you worry about failing too much, right? It's like, no, just trust your gut, you know, make some ads, launch the ads and like you will that there's no better way to get better at doing creative strategy or media Buying or just growth marketing in general than, than doing right, like even, even spending time listening to like something like this or like our podcast, like, yes, that's helpful. But you're really going to learn when you actually like go in action and operationalize the things that we're talking about or you're listening to. So it's a simple one. It's just like go make ads and launch them.

[B]

I'll add one maybe additional point to that. So our experience at Ridge was for many years we produced a lot of content. So we had this very large bank of content, but we had spent very little time iterating on that content. So when we hired our first Creative Strategist In 2021, we probably spent the first eight months just iterating on existing content. And that can actually, even that can speed up the feedback loop a little bit. You obviously have the constraints of not producing new creative, but I think people underestimate how many new variants and new messages and new ideas you can test by without ever producing a new piece of content. So I'd also say that it's like you could just get more shots on goal by eliminating the need to be producing as much content because that will just slow you down, at least initially.

[A]

Love it. Okay, so this question, I actually really love this question personally because one of the. Hang on there it is. One of the things that's been interesting to see as like running a tech company is just how fast AI is moving. And so many of my peers running tech companies, the way that they've been iterating and improving on AI tools has been insane. And I've seen a bunch of stuff that are like, yet to be released, both from Motion and from just like generally software companies that every single person is just really in for a treat on just how crazy these tools are about to get in the next couple quarters. I would say Motion ourselves have like some really big product drops that we're announcing this quarter around AI that I think literally every other month some really big advance happens. So the answer to this question, I would say Kisti and before I pass it on to the others, that the answer to this literally changes every day, right? Just earlier this week, OpenAI released this agent builder that no one had ever seen before. And now, I mean there were agent builders prior to that. But iterating and work and seeing what's available and how fast these things move and change and evolve is what I would say is the number one way to integrate it. Is that because in the next six months these Products are all about to get so much better. And so like dabbling with them is, is really important, but they're also valuable today. And so I know, I know people have like implemented in their, in their workflow. So I'm curious, how have you guys seen AI integrated into your workflows at your companies?

[B]

You know, I'll, I'll take a pass at this one. I think I picked this up from you, Reza. But what we've found extremely helpful and I think will remain helpful like throughout. Some of the rapid changes and progression in AI tooling is just aggressively templatizing what we do. Thinking through in the, you know, discrete steps of what a creative strategist does. And in each of those steps there are different templates. So like briefing for instance is like yeah, we have a number of different types of briefs and even prompts within those briefs so that when we need to be producing them with something like a cloud or a ChatGPT, we've already kind of codified our thinking around it and we found that to be very scalable. And I do the same thing outside of creative strategy specifically, but when we're producing marketing summaries or I'm doing channel briefs or something like that, spending the time to properly document and templatize what I want done has been extremely helpful and I think will just allow us to continue to adapt quickly.

[C]

I think, I think anything, anything writing based, right? Like, I feel like generally there's no reason to be writing anything from scratch these days. Like I'm not saying it's not a blind use of it, right? But like I think brief writing concept, writing concept ideation, like so, so helpful for stuff like that. The actual like editing of creative isn't quite there yet but like it's getting there. Like we're using a lot of like AI driven tools for like dubbing and like translations. It is very helpful for that especially because we don't have like fully built out international like localized teams yet. And then like data analysis, right? Like you know, you can download these spreadsheets and upload them to chat GPT from directly from North Beam or Ads Manager and be like, yo, tell me what, what ads are working and, and like which ads aren't working and like give me some reasons why. Like that, that used to take hours and hours and hours of time like of a lot of manual sifting through data and pivot tabling and all that and it just is like instantaneous now which is like so valuable and so, so much more efficient than it Used to be, yeah.

[A]

Maybe the last point I'll mention on this before we go to the next question is a constant reminder that, sorry, there are no shortcuts in the sense that to become an elite creative strategist and to make the most use out of AI, to expect that AI is going to make you a great creative strategist, I think is like flawed thinking. It's more that the people who are amazing, incredible creative strategists, once they start to use AI more, they create leverage in their work. And so to me, the best place to start, if you want to think about, like, how to integrate AI into the workflow, is thinking kind of going back to like, what makes a really great creative strategist, starting there and grounding yourself there. And it's almost like every single person, no matter what role they're doing, it's hard to imagine anything that we do at work anymore that isn't almost like, what's the first thing that I could do that's like AI native to this problem? And so I think the combination of like, AI should basically, like, court it. Anything you do at work and how do you become an elite creative strategist? And then because everything is changing so fast, like the, the progress of like, technology with AI, like we're not. Humans are not very good at understanding exponential growth. And the pace at which things are happening there is like literally insane. And so that the skill to develop is how to keep up with all of it. And the best way to keep up with all of it is just be like, immersed in everything AI with regards to your work. But, but can I respond to that?

[B]

Yeah, please, because I think that's a fantastic point. I was actually even thinking how do you integrate AI in your workflow is funny because so much of it can be automated at this point. Like, you could write a brief in Claude, you give it to VO3, edit it some other way, and it's like, that is almost entirely automated by AI. There's someone like, shuffling the content in between those tools. But let's say it's more or less like full stack AI created the. The question quickly becomes how do you integrate humans into the workflow? And that's where. That's where I actually think it is. Super interesting. And I think we walk the line sometimes. Or maybe I'll. I'll talk about this from a broader perspective. I think a lot of AI will be utilized to create really mediocre content. And the best creative strategists are going to understand what role do they need to play in order for the content to remain top tier. Because I just see many examples of content devolving into something that just looks AI generated and you know, use term slop and things like that. And it's like, and being a great creative strategist is moving away from just getting the job done and producing content, which I think was extremely difficult for a really long time and will become more of a process of like curating and refining and having a little bit more taste and quality.

[A]

Taste is the word basically. Like if, if you get something out from AI and let's say it's just copy, right? Or an idea or something and you can't tell whether this is good or not and you'll, let's say you get excited by it and then like run a campaign around that. That's not productive. You know, it's like needing to be able to apply taste to what the AI systems produce becomes, that's like the human skill. Which is again the reason why we believe the creative strategist continues to get more and more and more important. Even though there's all this demand already. There's like, we find it very hard to imagine a world where the amount of great creative strategists equal the amount of demand that there are for them. Which is also why we believe the creative strategists should probably end up being one of the most highest paying roles in marketing if they do a really great job because it's a revenue generating job. And ultimately when a lot of the execution becomes more automated, the people who can have the best judgment around what to do create so much impact for their organizations that it becomes insane. And so like, you know, the focus is almost more around doubling down on what, what makes a really great creative strategist is actually more important than the skills of like fiddling with AI. The AI thing is more like, you know, we're, we all work in tech. Like we use a lot of tools in our day to day. It's like how do you use Google Docs? Or how do you use like notion? Like AI is the same thing. Like imagine saying how do you incorporate Google Docs into your workflow? It's just like it's everything, it's everywhere. It's like kind of immersed in it. What do you mean? It's like what are we using Google Docs for? That's the right question. So keep doubling down on being an elite creative strategist and dabble with AI and then the rest will, the rest will sort itself out as motion and many other companies race towards, like, building you some of the best tools that are going to blow your mind in the next few months. So I'm very excited. We're going to reveal some of them today and, and, and talk about what we have cooking, which is very, very exciting. Okay, so we have another question. This is a great one. We've talked about some of these up. No, sorry. We have the opposite of this question, which is what are some of the most common mistakes or pitfalls that you've seen creative strategists make that they should watch out for?

[C]

I can take this one. I think you need to be careful about, like, even if you're not an analytics person, I think you need to be careful about like, dumping that totally off to someone else. Um, Cause I feel like if you are, you don't want to be in this place where you're like, fully reliant on like, another person needing to be the one to give you the data or the insight. I think that's like, sort of a dangerous, like, place to maybe position yourself in. Like, even I think you can get to a certain level that will make you like, orders of magnitude more dangerous on the analytics and data side. But I've seen that in the past where, like, there's no desire or urge for the creative strategist to understand the data because they have, like, maybe a really good media buyer that's really good with data. But then you get to this point where like, all you're really hearing from that person is like, oh, this did or didn't work. But then you're like, not really digging into the. Well, what data points are you. Do you have that is making you say that? And I think, like, you want to be able to understand like, like, what is thumbstop ratio? What is outbound click rate? What is Kakaro as? Like, what is average? Like, if you can just like average video watch time or like 50, 50% video views, if you can just understand how to measure and read those five metrics, you're going to be like 10x more effective as a creative strategy. You don't need to be like a master wizard and like exporting data and creating pivot tables and all that jazz. Like, lean on your data analysts to do that. But like, you have to have some level of ability in the analytics. So I would just caution and not, like, don't shy away from it, right? Like, lean into it. You can get to a minimum level of like, analytical skills as a creative strategist in a few months. If you just commit to like learning and like connecting with the right people and how to, how to read the data. And if you have good media buyers, like chances are they're more than down to like train you up on that stuff because that's less work for them to like package up this data and deliver the insight. Like I'm sure they would prefer if the creative strategist could directly do that stuff. So I just, I would recommend people don't, don't shy away from that piece of the job.

[B]

Yeah, go Cody.

[D]

I'm sorry, number one. And this is like super cheesy sounding cliche, but it's like forgetting about the creative part. I think there is kind of, based on what Connor's saying, like it's so easy to get so consumed in the data and kind of just be, you know, thinking about how do I get this hold rate longer, how do I improve my thumb stop? Things like that. Like that's, you know, in the whole like explore versus expand framework or exploit versus expand. Like I think there's. It's so easy to spend so much time just looking at data. How do I make this ad a little bit better that it's. And there's again so much on your plate that it's hard to sometimes zoom out and like think really creatively. And I think a lot of your bigger wins are going to come from like really being creative and, and being willing to try some new things. And I think on that note, one of the biggest mistakes I see a lot of teams making still is a lot of little iterations and Meta is starting to be very clear about this, that it really requires much bigger changes, much bigger variations to be meaningful. And so I think there's a lot of time spent in that that could be better spent on much more impactful big swings.

[C]

Cool.

[B]

I'll hit some quick ones. I loved Cody's first point. We went through a period of time where we got too hung up on number of deliverables and when the ultimate goal of the business is to produce results. So ultimately everybody has to be centered around that, whether it's as creative strategist or the director of growth, the CMO or whatever. The other one that I was going to say was, I love copying. Like I'm a huge, shamelessly, I'm a big fan of copying, checking out other brands, ad accounts, et cetera, et cetera. But there is a productive way to do it and there's an unproductive way to do it. And I think many creative strategies may fall into the bucket of just following the big trendy brands, the people with bigger budgets, the people who are unprofitably acquiring customers. You need to understand what is unique about your business, who are interesting comps in your industry, out of your industry, and being really thoughtful about where you're pulling ideas from, because I think that can easily kind of get lost.

[A]

So coming up, coming up on the end here. One of the things about the creative strategist in our industry in general is that it's so bleeding edge because everyone in the, in this industry is so smart and always trying to like, outsmart each other and find the next edge and basically, you know, scale on new things before it happens. And so I'm curious, when you guys think about heading into 2026, what are some like, predictions or hot takes or just like perspectives that you have that you think are underrated right now that will probably go into next year and be like, yep, I knew I was right about that. Anything come to mind?

[B]

Mine is the go ahead. Mine's the, the slop one that I think we're maybe too hung up on. Like, hey, the AI can now produce content. We're getting really excited about that. Probably some point next year it's going to be about, oh, it's, it's actually, we got to, we got to reel this in a little bit. We need to be applying way more taste and refinement.

[C]

I think it's expanding outside of your. I think, you know, I think partnership ads and influencer ads are, they work just as well as they did, you know, four or five years ago. I think the only difference is that you have to like, take bigger swings and like, be more thoughtful maybe about the creative that you, that you're producing with these people. I think my, my big bet, and we have some data to support this, is that like, brands need to expand outside of their core niche more when it comes to influencer, and that's where they're going to reach new audiences and really unlock new partnership ads performance. Like everyone, every man in the world probably has a wallet of some sort, right? So there's really no limit on like the type of influencer like Connor can be working with Marquez, like a tech influencer, but he could also cut a deal with, you know, Josh Jacobs, the running back for the packers or the quarterback of the Bills. Like, all three of those could probably work just as well as, as one another. And all three will probably reach an entirely different audience that has very little overlap with one another. So I think more brands need to be thinking like who are the who are like the non traditional influencers that are in a totally different category, but it still makes sense that this person would be using and promoting my product.

[A]

Love it. Appreciate it guys. Always amazing talking to you guys. Reminder everybody. Tune into the Marketing Operators podcast. You'll get smarter by watching it. Thanks so much for spending time with us.

[B]

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[C]

Speak the same language.