Performance Creative: Velocity, AI Tooling & the Paid-Organic Relationship With Dara Denney

Summary

Podcast Summary: Marketing Operators

Episode: Performance Creative: Velocity, AI Tooling & the Paid-Organic Relationship With Dara Denney
Hosts: Connor Rolain, Connor MacDonald, Cody Plofker
Guest: Dara Denny
Date: February 3, 2026

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Overview

This episode dives into the evolving landscape of performance creative in e-commerce, with expert insights from Dara Denny, renowned creative strategist and YouTuber. The discussion focuses on the rise of creative operations and velocity, the merging of paid and organic content strategies, in-house versus external creators, the integration of AI tooling throughout the creative process, and the strategic deployment of both lo-fi and hi-fi content.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Dara Denny’s Background & Creative Strategy Evolution

• Dara summarizes her decade-long journey as a media buyer, creative strategist, and now boutique agency co-owner and consultant. She emphasizes her experience both as a founder and leading agency teams.
• She describes her role as threefold: agency partner, content creator (notably on YouTube), and soon-to-be brand founder, aiming to approach growth and creative from all angles.

  “Now I like to say I have three jobs... I am a partner/co-owner of a small boutique agency... I also consult, mostly on creative operations... and I'm a content creator serving D2C and small business owners on YouTube...” (06:31)

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Macro Trends in Performance Creative (08:18–10:10)

• Dara outlines historic "buzzwords" in creative strategy:
  • 2023: Creative Strategy
  • 2024: Diversity
  • 2025: Volume
  • 2026: Operations & Velocity
• Current focus: How quickly teams can get great ideas and creative into the ad account is now the competitive edge.
• In-house creators are becoming widespread as brands aim to translate creative ideas to ads within hours, not weeks.

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In-house Creators: Operations, Economics & Diversity (10:10–15:31)

• Brands are increasingly hiring in-house creators for daily, rapid-response content creation instead of relying solely on external creative strategists or UGC vendors.

• Compensation for creators can range from $3k–$5k/month for daily video output, showing in-house creative can be viable even for smaller brands.

• Creative diversity risk (using the same face repeatedly) can be reduced by:

  • Testing different settings, ideas, and formats with the same creator.
  • Hiring multiple in-house creators as the brand scales.

  “You can get by on a single creator for quite a while just by testing unique ideas, formats and settings... For bigger brands, you might need two or three...” (13:11)

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Creator Activation at Scale vs. In-House (15:31–17:39)

• Brands at $1M/mo. should focus on nailing one reliable in-house creator; at higher scale, success comes from activating large numbers of creators (e.g., 5+ in-house, hundreds of affiliates).
• Example: Tabs Chocolate and recent “darling brands” running content flywheels with hundreds or even thousands of creators.

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Briefing and Coaching Creators (17:39–21:42)

• A strong, clear creative diagnosis is key before briefing (e.g., “we need more visceral images; our language is too clinical…”).

• Briefs should provide guardrails but let creators own execution, especially if incentivized by performance.

• At advanced scale, creative strategists and growth teams merge roles―sometimes a “curious, competitive” in-house creator can handle both strategy and creation.

  “This creator started as a marketing assistant, never made content, but is now quasi-strategist/creator... She analyzes her content, wonders why it’s not #1, then immediately makes more.” (21:42)

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Paid vs. Organic Creative: The Convergence (41:27–47:36)

• Paid and organic teams are merging as quick, trend-relevant content is prioritized everywhere.

• Top-performing organic content increasingly repurposed for ads, with high-performing “brand formats” and UGC variants.

• Senior creative leadership is now tasked with overseeing both streams for unified strategy, format testing, and optimization.

  “There are less differences now, because follower feeds are dead… You get rewarded for merit… We’re seeing a lot of success taking our best organic content as ads.” (41:47)

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AI Tooling in Creative Operations (27:23–36:03)

• Key AI tools discussed:

  • Poppy AI: For creative research, mind-mapping, and auto-generating hooks.
  • Claude, ChatGPT: For copywriting and brainstorming.
  • Motion: For AI tagging and strategy workflow.
  • AirPost: AI-powered creative editing and ad-ready content.
  • 11Labs: For AI voiceovers.

• The biggest AI time-savers: Briefing, research, and rapid ad upload (up to 100 ads in 10 minutes using ad manage or custom tools).

• However, core creative decision-making and concept selection remain manual (for now).

  “If it takes you 4–5 hours to write a brief, that’s a red flag. It should be 1–2 hours tops now…” (27:34)
  “We’re using AI for research, copy, briefing, and uploading… but ‘roadmapping’—what ideas to actually pursue—is still hard to automate.” (27:34)

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AI-Generated UGC: Debated & Cautious Approaches (32:59–36:37)

• Strong skepticism around fully AI-generated UGC/avatars for brand creative:

  • Human authenticity is still valued and AI avatars can trigger user backlash.
  • Some “body swapping” and AI augmentation of organic content shows promise for settings and diversity.

• Final consensus: Real people and authentic settings remain essential—AI helps with process, not replacing faces.

  “People get really up in arms when it's clearly AI… Reality is still the default of what performs and doesn't trigger that response that something is fake.” (33:21)

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The Paid-Organic Flywheel: Creative Strategy & Measurement (47:36–66:10)

• Workflow for organic-to-paid creative:

  • Organic content posted daily by creators.
  • High-performing pieces flagged via Slack and quickly edited, recut, or posted as ads.
  • Ongoing analysis shapes future briefs, messages, and creator selection.

• Measurement tactics:

  • Paid team can’t merely use “ROAS”/CAC for new upper-funnel creative; metrics like CTR, new user rate, time on site, are vital.
  • Coordinated campaigns deploy both upper- and lower-funnel content, measuring outcomes with incrementality modeling and attribution tools.

  “You have to re-train your buying teams... these ads serve a different purpose. Some upper funnel creative brings new users, and pays off in LTV, not just immediate ROAS.” (59:58)

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Creative Type & Spend Breakdown: Lo-Fi, Hi-Fi, Partnerships (67:22–76:36)

• Diverse mix is now standard: partnership/influencer ads, hi-fi content, lo-fi UGC.

• At large scale, 40–60% of paid spend now goes to partnership ads; some brands run almost entirely on lo-fi UGC.

• Higher production (“hi-fi”) content is getting less expensive, and brands select creators for both their influence and production skills.

• Core insight: Diversity across style (hi-fi/lo-fi), setting, and messaging is critical for ongoing performance.

  “You need it all and you need multiples of each thing… More on all.” (72:19)
  “For brands with a premium positioning, there’s a subconscious link between hi-fi video and premium product.” (74:33)

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Volume vs. Quality: The Infinite Debate (72:43–73:54)

• Brands need lots of ads (“volume”), but also creative diversity and high “quality.”

• Key: Don’t just produce variants; ensure conceptual and production diversity.

  “You need a lot of ads. They have to be different. And they have to also be good.” (73:08)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Dara, on AI and creative operations:

  “If it takes you four to five hours to write an amazing brief... that should be down to one to two hours tops now.” (27:34)

• On the convergence of paid and organic:

  “We are even seeing a lot of success taking our best performing organic content as ads... Four years ago that was wild.” — Cody (41:47)

• Dara, on the in-house creator transition:

  “Our in-house creator started as a marketing assistant... now she’s analyzing her content, wondering why she isn’t number one, and making content so they can launch in ad accounts by end-of-day.” (21:42)

• On volume vs. quality:

  “You need a lot of ads... They have to be different and good.” — Cody (73:08)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Dara’s Background & Roles: 00:13, 06:31
• Creative Strategy Macro Trends: 08:18–10:10
• Hiring In-House Creators: 10:10–15:31
• Creative Briefing & Diagnostics: 17:39–21:42
• AI Tools in Creative Workflow: 27:23–36:03
• Authenticity vs. AI Avatars: 32:59–36:37
• Merging Paid & Organic Teams: 41:27–47:36
• Organic-to-Paid Workflow: 47:36–66:10
• Creative Diversity: Lo-Fi / Hi-Fi / Partnerships: 67:22–76:36
• Final Advice—Focus for 2026: 77:10

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Final Insight & Takeaway (77:10)

Dara’s closing advice:

“Really, truly understanding your different audience segments is the big thing I’m focusing on right now... Make sure you’re developing content to pressure test all segments to see which actually perform best for you.”

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For listeners pressed for time: This episode is a must-listen for anyone responsible for e-commerce creative, strategic media buying, or integrating AI into marketing ops. It provides pragmatic, operational advice and fresh thinking from some of the sharpest operators in the D2C and performance creative ecosystem.

Transcript

[Connor]

And we've got a very special guest today. Performance creative extraordinaire. Best YouTuber in e. Com. I'm crowning her now. We've got Dara Denny here.

[Dara Denny]

Thank you so much. It is honestly such an honor to be here.

[Connor]

What's your background in creative strategy been?

[Dara Denny]

I've spent the last 10 years as a media buyer, creative strategist and also leading growth and performance creative teams. I was primarily on the agency side throughout my career even though I actually got started as a founder which many people don't know.

[Connor]

Where do you think the opportunities lie today?

[Dara Denny]

You know if in 2023 like the buzzw was creative strategy, 2024 was diversity. Last year for 2025 was volume. This year absolutely is all about operations and velocity.

[Cody]

A lot of brands are hiring creators and actually not hiring creative strategists. Right.

[Dara Denny]

I have heard of a few of brands doing this. I don't want to generalize and say that specifically is a trend, but I have talked to a few recently that only have in house creators. All of the people that I interviewed for ad spend, nearly all of them said that like their percentage of partnership ads were anywhere from like 40 to 50%, sometimes more.

[Cody]

Well, that's why the volume ver quality thing is like guys, you need both. You need a ton of volume and ads have to be really good. That's like going to be an endless debate.

[Connor]

If you were to leave people with one piece of advice based on all the brands you talk to, what would you say people should be focusing on moving forward? All right, we are back with another episode of marketing operators and we've got a very special guest today. Performance creative extraordinaire. Best YouTuber in e. Com I would say I'm clowning her now. We've got Dara Denny here. Dara, thank you for joining us.

[Dara Denny]

Thank you so much. It is honestly such an honor to be here. I feel like it's funny. I've like met and like hung out with all you guys and almost like professional like ways like Connor. I know I interviewed at Hexclad ages ago. Cody, I've talked to you about Jones Road like tons of times. Connor. No offers from Ridge Wallet. What's up with that?

[Cody]

Yeah, that's just your woman's line could have done so much better had you brought Dara on.

[Connor]

Oh yeah.

[Dara Denny]

I mean, I know, damn, it could.

[Connor]

Have only gone up. Our women's line was a complete failure. So yeah, m miss on my part. I didn't realize that. Did you interview at both Jones Road and Hexcloud.

[Dara Denny]

Not at Jones Road officially. Cody and I have just like talked a number of times over the years and I went with a competitor for a while with lg. So. Yeah, well, you seem to be doing.

[Connor]

Really well, but if you're ever looking for work. Yeah, we'll. We'll hire you on. On the spot.

[Dara Denny]

Amazing.

[Connor]

Connor, Cody, how are you guys doing?

[Unknown (possibly another team member or guest)]

Good. Yeah, really good. Still praying for snow in Colorado. Still not getting any. But uh, the E. Comm life is good. The snow life not so good. So it's a little mixed bag right now, but yeah, overall pretty good.

[Connor]

Love to hear it.

[Cody]

Good man. It's been. Been a while. It feels like it's been a while. It's been just a crazy start to the year. Been like so heads down. So busy. A lot of changes we're trying to make. So yeah, business is fun.

[Connor]

We'd love to hear it. You guys will be happy to know I. This morning I was listening to the Dylan Ander episode. So it's going to be like I've. I've heard you guys speak for like three and a half straight hours this morning, but. Great.

[Cody]

What did you think of was good?

[Connor]

You know, I feel like we're slowly seeping into the like true Dr. Shereen's been saying Dr. Goats and Drop ship demons. We're like slowly adopting their practices. So you guys kind of dabbled in that. You're talking bsl, you're talking info, products, all sorts of.

[Cody]

Oh my God. We should have. Yeah, we should have somebody on one of those like ecom dropshipper guys. Like we should have one of them on the pod.

[Unknown (possibly another team member or guest)]

Russell Brunson or something.

[Dara Denny]

Like John Lewer's an og. Like, totally. You need to get like like a drop shipper guy.

[Cody]

Yeah. Like one of these like E. Comm. Like, like we're on like we're big on DTC Twitter. There's like E. Com Twitter. That's different. And we need like, we need like one of those people.

[Connor]

Totally. We could be. We can bridge the gap. We can cross the aisle, I think. And it's. It's already kind of naturally happening.

[Cody]

But yeah, Connor, Connor texted me like twice during that episode. He's like, dude, Dylan just has so much crazy energy. He's so confident.

[Unknown (possibly another team member or guest)]

I'm like sidebarring with Cody and my imac imessage. Like I. I love Dylan's energy. He is like, he has. He has a very contagious energy that I just don't know how and how you cannot like It Connor. I was listening to the, the Danny Young IMA Titans episode this morning. So I also am going on like I'll, I'll be on like hour three or hour two of, of of operators content this morning as well. So we, we're, we're really, we're really smashing it in this morning.

[Cody]

Totally.

[Connor]

Totally. But cool. Let's, let's jump in on, on creative strategy stuff. But before we begin, I want to thank our sponsors, Motion Rich panel, Pression after Cell and House.

[Cody]

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.

[Connor]

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 also super hard to find great creative strategists these days. It's still a new role, um, 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.

[Unknown (possibly another team member or guest)]

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, you will actually be hands on in this course. 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 and the.

[Connor]

Instructor lineup is legit. There are creative experts from brands like Caraway, Calm Harry, 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 will 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 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]

Okay, so Dara, you've been maybe just give us like a really quick background for those. For the very few of our listeners who might not be familiar. What's your background in creative strategy been before we jump into some of the latest trends and what you're seeing work today?

[Dara Denny]

Yeah, absolutely. So I've spent the last 10 years as a media buyer, creative strategist and also leading growth and performance creative teams. I was primarily on the agency side throughout my career even though I actually got started as a founder, which many people don't know. I had an E commerce brand about 10 years ago in Brooklyn, New York. I met two of my co founders in a bar right after I moved back to New York after having a career in humanitarian like development which was just a total opposite of where I am now. But I always like to tell people that now I like to say I have three jobs. So number one, I am a partner slash co owner of a small boutique agency. It's not something I talk a ton about just yet, but we work with a handful of brands. I also do a little bit of consultancy on the side, mostly weighing in on creative operations which is really the big like topic of discussion for brands now, like really trying to understand how they can increase their creative velocity. I'm also a content creator. I've been serving the D2C and small business owners really for the last five years on YouTube primarily where I started making media buying tutorials and really have transferred now into more performance creative tutorials and how you can actually develop content that converts at scale on meta. And the third one which I haven't talked too much about either is soon to be brand founder towards the end of this year. So I will be launching my own brand which I'm really really excited about. I'm really really pumped to back in that head space and really experience like growth on more of a 360, like in a more 360 way. I love being on the product development side so just really pumped to like get into that space again.

[Connor]

Awesome. Love to hear it. So jumping to like creative strategy today to your point, you're in the weeds with brands. You're creating content about trends in the industry. My like very high level question to start is like what are you trumpeting today? What are the bigger trends and in the industry and what are you Spending, you know, where do you think the opportunities lie today?

[Dara Denny]

Yeah. Yeah. So you know, if in 2023, like the buzzword was creative strategy, 2024 was diversity, last year for 2025 was volume, this year absolutely is all about operations and velocity. So like, how quickly can you get great ideas and content into the ad account? So a lot of the work that I'm focusing on doing is okay, like how can we actually make amazing, like develop amazing creative and more quickly getting, getting it into the ad accounts. So some of the big trends that I know, the brands that I'm partnering with are working on too are things like number one, getting more in house creators. That is often like the biggest thing that is on docket right now is, hey, how can we get an in house creator so that we can have an amazing idea in the morning and then be launching that at the end of the day? I actually just interviewed one of a Brown, she's a marketing exec for adspend, which is a series that I'm doing with Meta, and she was telling me that they don't even have a creative strategist anymore. They just have an in house creator and they're able to have these amazing concepts in the morning. The creator goes to work throughout the day, even edits them and they're launching that content same day. So a lot of what I'm looking at is again, just like, let's get those great creative ideas into the ad account as soon as possible. What are those bottlenecks? What are the ways that we can do that?

[Cody]

I love that so much. We've talked about that a bunch and I think, you know, I don't know if you guys have that. I. That's awesome. I definitely have follow up questions, but that's so cool to hear.

[Connor]

Dude, let's do it.

[Unknown (possibly another team member or guest)]

Actually been a big focus of ours.

[Dara Denny]

Yeah, let's hear it.

[Unknown (possibly another team member or guest)]

So first off, we've, we've like inherently always hired creative strategists that are also creators so they can do like they are. I mean these people are creative strategists, right? Like they. And like we've hired like Alyssa and Paige, who are our two leads. Like they can pick up the camera and shoot whenever they want to, but like, I don't want them doing that all the time because they have a lot more that they need to do. Like, like you're talking about run the run the massive creative flywheel that's like always needing more and more output. But we actually hired a, a freelancer this year that has just an army of creators. So whenever we need a certain like shot or whether it's a fully fleshed out ad, and we can also be like, hey, we want this to be like the Persona that is like featured in the creative. This person is like they have access to all these creators. So like trying to get at what you're hitting on Dar, which is just like the not having to go through like an influencer or like it's going to take two weeks for them to get the, get the brief and then like ask questions and it's just like the, the, the turnaround times too long. So we're, that it's, it's good to validate that. We're, we're moving that direction. I think a lot of, I mean, I know Cody is, Cody's talked a lot about that and in the last few months I had.

[Cody]

So yeah, because I've said this, I was at the meta performance marketing roadshow and they were showing like, you know, it's their product updates, they have like Instagram reels, trends. They'll show like what topics are trending. And I was like, I would love to have creators just like full time see that daily, right? Shoot something that day. They look at maybe some organic post it, see how it does. Because I'm like, I mean, you know, but like the, the UGC production process, there's like seven people involved. You have to approve creators, you have to approve scripts. There's multiple rounds of edits. It takes two weeks and it's like you, it's like, yeah, just you could post and shoot that day and get so much more out of it.

[Dara Denny]

It's, it's where like great creative ideas go to die. And I also believe too, you don't need to always like use a creator to validate those great ideas. Like something that we do a lot on like the agency team is like, okay, if the strategists come to me with a great idea and you know, their first thought is, oh my God, we have to hire a creator. So it's going to be like three weeks until I ever see that content. I like, it's always like a moment about taking a step back and being like, okay, is there another way that we can pressure test this? Is there another way that we can use AI potentially to, you know, generate those hooks, generate that messaging so that we can at least pressure test this idea before we go down the pathway of it taking two weeks to have an idea validated. That's way, way too long in 2026 to have your idea validated. So the in house creators are a very great way just to even pressure test those initial ideas same day in many cases.

[Connor]

So one of one of my questions here you mentioned maybe it was 2024 in your timeline, the focus on diversity is having in house creators.

[Dara Denny]

Like, is it going to like nuke your creative diversity because you're using the same person all the time? I hear that quite a bit.

[Connor]

Yeah, totally. Let's. That's my question.

[Dara Denny]

Yeah, yeah. In my experience I have not seen that as long as you are number one paying attention to the different types of setting this creator is using more than just actually having like a creator, like the same face all the time in the ads. And like, yes, I have seen fatigue by using the same person over and over again. I have found that for some brands that are smaller than you guys, like you can get by on a single creator for quite a while just by making sure that you have, you're testing really unique ideas, unique formats and unique settings with them. But I do know that at your size, like brands are starting to hire not just one internal creator, but oftentimes two or three. And something that I think is interesting to note too is like a lot of times brands will think, oh, these creators are going to cost me like you know, a six figure salary. But we've been able to hire creators for smaller brands that are anywhere from 3k to 5k per month and they're making at least one video per day. So there is a way that you can do it on a little bit more of a smaller budget to pressure test this and also just bring on more people.

[Cody]

Where are people finding these creators and like what are compensation models? Are they like, are there any incentive built in or they're usually just like salaried.

[Dara Denny]

Yeah, there's, there's an incentive built in and like typically the model that we've seen work really well with brands that are, you know, really just starting to hit like seven figures per month and then like scaling beyond that is okay. They'll find a creator that they really like on TikTok. Maybe they'll, you know, hire them for a few ads and if they end up performing well, they'll then pressure test this idea of hiring them to create one piece of content per day. Sometimes they'll have them even generate their own TikTok account which is like, you know, how Tabs Chocolate was able to scale and grow really, really well. I still see that type of strategy working well today. The, in terms of like what the incentive percentage looks like, like if it's able to go viral on organic, but also do really well on paid. Sometimes they just do like a lump sum bonus. Like hey, like. Or it'll be more of like an affiliate structure. I've seen both.

[Connor]

So one of the thing that we've been talking about a lot, you're talking about velocity of getting creative ideas into your ad account. You mentioned in house creators makes total sense. I want to talk about AI, but not yet. And then you just mentioned, you just mentioned tabs and I think tabs is actually Tabs is such an interesting like case study in my mind because I do think Oliver was, was years ahead of the like, yeah, it felt like he was doing massive product seating. He didn't have like two in house creators. I think he had like hundreds of people creating content.

[Dara Denny]

So many. Yeah.

[Connor]

And now like I joke about this all the time but like the true darling brand right now is someone like a comfort. Or you talk about goalies like creative production systems and they're activating thousands of creators. So I'm just curious, like where do you think brands should be prioritizing it? Today is a matter of scale. If you're at seven figures a month, if you're hitting $1 million a month, you should be focusing on in house. And then if you're hitting nine figures, you should be thinking about activating hundreds. Or like how do you balance the, the means to this velocity of content?

[Dara Denny]

Yeah, that's a good question. When thinking about like the smaller brands, it's absolutely just being able to like get that initial first creator that you have high confidence is like working and producing content that is ultimately scaling your ad account. I think when you get to someone that's more at your size. At lg for instance, like we were also hiring like creators to do live shopping. So that was like an additional aspect too of hey, we're not just like looking to like have someone make a p a single piece of content. But it's also are they able to activate like other types of channels? But I do think, yeah, like it. I would almost think it's better coming from you guys. Like at that level you probably are going to have to hire a lot more. At LG in the end, we had about like five creators on rotation. Some of them weren't full time, but we did have I think two or three that were ultimately full time. Split across just making content but also doing the live shopping activations.

[Connor]

Totally. Okay. And then my other question here, and this one's really self serving because we're we're trying to figure this out right now. And it probably looks the same whether you're quarterbacking like 50 creators or you have like three in house creators. But what are your suggestions or guidance around like briefing those people? How are they can. How are they continually getting new ideas that align with what the brand needs or the ad account needs or whatever else? How do you connect those dots?

[Dara Denny]

Yeah, you know, something that I always think about when working with a brand in general is like giving a brand a diagnosis on like what I think their overall creative strategy needs. Right. So this could be, you know, a little bit more broader even than the like activating of creators or multiple creators. But what is like the bigger idea that like you think that you need to succeed right now? So I'll give you an example. Right. Like we recently onboarded a brand and the big diagnosis that we had for them was two things. Oh, and they were, they were a dandruff brand. And I said, okay, they really need to add in a lot more like visceral images. That's going to be something that's going to really help hook people. But they also really need to dumb down their language when they're developing creative. It was way too clinical. So if we could develop creative that had a lot more of that visceral imagery that hooked the user, but also used language about that talked about their problem in a way that was way more upper funnel and not so clinical than like we were going to be able to grow their business. And. And we were. So I think it is really about taking like the step back and being like, what is the bigger, broader strategy that you need to help guide that briefing process initially?

[Connor]

And that's what's going to the creator. Hey, we're looking for visually striking stuff with like this general type of language, light guardrails. And then you let the creator kind of. Yeah, they're good at.

[Dara Denny]

Yeah, exactly. And I think too for like when it's be like when talking about this very specific instance, like having a creator at this bigger activation, I do think it's like put the guardrails in place. But if you are incentivizing them based on an affiliate structure and like, you know, for them to either get views or get sales, they're going to know how to do that.

[Cody]

Best question on that. So you said, I think you said earlier that a lot of brands are hiring creators and actually not hiring creative strategists.

[Dara Denny]

I have heard of a few of brands doing this. I don't want to generalize and say it's like it's a, that specifically is a trend. A lot of brands have both creative strategists and in house creators. But I have talked to a few recently that only have and have.

[Cody]

So the ones that don't, are they sharing the creative. Because like what you gave just now on this dandruff brand was like really good creative strategy insights. You're like hey, this is a strategic thing that I think we need to move the account in this direction. Right. Like, like is that the growth team that's then doing that and that's just like growth teams roles are evolving. Is that creator or.

[Dara Denny]

Well see this is the thing about creative strategists. Like I do think they belong on the growth team. So like is it coming from the growth team? Is it coming from like the, the creative strategy team? Like creative strategy should be on the growth team. Like from my perspective. So like in terms of brands that don't have that creative strategist, that's where it does get like a little, a little murky and is generally coming from more of that like growth leader then who kind of straddles the world between creative strategy and growth and understanding that it's pretty much all one in the same.

[Connor]

I also imagine it comes down to the skills of the in house creator. Right. Like we, we have a number. Our most of our creative strategists have like hundreds of thousands of followers across social. Like they could totally be our in house creators if we needed. We've decided to extend. I, I think we're getting more leverage out of them if they're briefing it to other creators. But like conceptually they have both the strategy piece and the content creation skills. So if you do have that, I could imagine it being a single role.

[Dara Denny]

Yeah. The brand that I talked to most recently for ad spend, the number one thing that this like marketing leader identified was that this creator was just had a ton of curiosity and also competitiveness. Like she needed to be number one the ad account. She had never really made content before. She started as like a marketing assistant. Right. But now has like grown into this role that I would say is more quasi creative strategy slash creator. She just spends the bulk of her time, you know, analyzing her content in motion, like wondering why she's not number one and then like going out for the rest of the day making content so that they can launch that like creative in the ad account by the end of the day.

[Cody]

That's so cool. I love that. Is, is this video live yet or not yet?

[Dara Denny]

Not yet. Not yet. And it's not even the next one. It'll be. It'll be in March. Sorry, guys. Dart, I'm like giving the plot away.

[Unknown (possibly another team member or guest)]

Can I ask you about something you. You hit on a few minutes ago? You. You said that. And this is something again that we've been talking about that I'm trying to get going at hexcloud. Cause I think we. We don't leverage a lot of our. I think just we underutilize content. I think that's a problem across most brands. Like, most brands have too much content and, and not enough u. So you mentioned that like, like, you look at Comfort, for example, right? They're huge on TikTok shop and they have tons of affiliates that are producing amazing Dr. Content. And these TikTok shop affiliates are inherently good at Dr. Content because they need to sell stuff in order to get paid. So now they have the, like, what's happening? All right, they're getting social impressions, they're getting TikTok shop revenue, and then ultimately they're getting content for their ad account. So basically they're, they're like achieving three different objectives, but it's all the same thing. And I think that's so like that you. You hit on that. And I think that's something we're trying to do a better job of. But do you feel like the best brands are doing that when it comes to like, filling their. Their paid media creative flywheel? Like, are they. Are they like killing two or three or four birds with one stone and it ultimately turns into great content as. As, like the final stage here? Or do you see. Or is it mainly brands are like, nope, this is just content for paid. Like, that's, that's the only thing that we're trying to get out of this.

[Dara Denny]

You know, in my experience, it has been pretty siloed to date, but I do think the best brands are able to either knock three birds out of one stone, like you said, or they are starting to lean into an AI solution like Air Post. So AirPost is like a brand. It's an. A new AI company that was created by John, who. Who's like the CEO and founder of Ready Set, so that he has like a deep expertise in performance, creative, but essentially just awesome guy.

[Cody]

I really like John.

[Dara Denny]

Yeah, John. John's the best. Like, I've known him for years, but like, you know, a year and a half ago he flew me out to LA to look at his like, AI creative studio. And like, essentially what they do is like, they Tap into a brand's content library. Also their own like proprietary content library because they've shot over 300,000 clips and then they also have their own AI creative editors to be able to make performance creative. And it is the closest thing that I've seen be able to create content like a video editor and creative strategist. So if you're not developing this complicated backend system with TikTok shops and like those creators and like activating affiliates, I also see brands starting to be like, okay, wait, but like how can we also use AI to make use of all that content that we have?

[Unknown (possibly another team member or guest)]

So the workflow then becomes we have a lot of TikTok shop affiliates creating content. We're going to plug that into a tool like AirPost. AirPost is going to be able to turn that into ad account ready content. And that's the flywheel. Yep, exactly. Yeah, I love it.

[Dara Denny]

And they make anywhere like their, their output is anywhere from like 20 to sometimes like like 60 ads per week. So like could also get you really good volume.

[Connor]

All right, I want to give a shout out to Rich Panel because they've quietly become one of the most impactful tools we use at Ridge. You know how SaaS companies love raising prices for the same product every year? Our old support platform did that one too many times. So we made the switch over to.

[Unknown (possibly another team member or guest)]

Rich Panel and the results have been fantastic.

[Connor]

Our SaaS bill dropped by about half and once they rebuilt our workflows with automation self service routing, our cost per ticket fell 70%. Same team, same volume, totally different outcome. BFCM this year was our smoothest we've ever been. We've done the most amount of sales, we had the most amount of queries, but with routing we had a lower cost per ticket and our NPS scores have never been higher. The team handled everything without the usual panic and our CSAT has been sitting around 96% every week. And what I really like is that Rich Panel isn't just software. They bring a playbook, they rebuild your workflow, set up your AI, handle migration and training and you can be live in under two weeks. The lift is basically zero on your side and they're launching returns portal soon, which I'm really excited to test because returns are one of those sneaky P and L items everyone ignores until it begins to cost you real money. If you want to cut support costs in half and run a leaner, more efficient operations, head to richpanel.com demo and they'll take care of everything. So. So on the topic of AI, like what other tools are you using? Or like how are you leveraging it in workflows today?

[Dara Denny]

Yeah, so I'm going to share my screen actually, just so that we can.

[Unknown (possibly another team member or guest)]

Like visualize on the marketing operators.

[Dara Denny]

Excellent. So like when I am thinking about creative operations, like as a whole, it's like generally going down into these steps. Right. So if we zoom in on research, like my number one tool is Poppy AI, which I've actually used a lot in the past for like helping to develop my own content. So an example of Poppy AI, like essentially it's like a mind mapping tool that connects directly to Claude, where you can put in like a client's website, like all their reviews. And I still like to do a lot of manual reviews for the brands that I work on. Like, there's just something about doing manual research that like is really able to like stick in my consciousness and like those big ideas come to life better. But I can also like plug in some of my own content or my own sops from the agencies. Yeah, like, you know, sometimes like, maybe, you know, I've, I have so much content and like IP over the last few years that like, yeah, like I've done every single year I do like a video on hooks and like just being able to plug that in and be like, okay, like generate like a hundred hooks now like using like the IP that I've made over the years and like being able to get that, like, that's, that's huge just to have a base camp. So like I love using Poppy for my own content but also to like begin the creative strategy, like research portion using CLAUDE for copywriting, like chat GBT as like a sparring partner. I'm loving motions like AI tagging. And then like I have this little icon here for just like small agents or workflows that we're building ourselves. So like for this one it's like oh, like, you know, for all of our clients we always have like, you know, five viral videos that are delivered to our slack channels every morning, like based on, you know, a few keywords or a few creators that we want to follow just so that we can see if there's something like we should action on. Now I think the part about like creative strategy that's really hard to AI is road mapping, AKA like choosing what amazing ideas you're actually going to execute on. I haven't found a great way to, to do that yet and I find that that's where it's still really manual, but briefing is really the big one. That I've seen like be affected over the last year. And in fact, like, this is one of the questions that I always ask when I'm consulting with brands like, how long does it take you to write a brief? And if it's still taking you like four to five hours to write an amazing brief with a script and a storyboard, like, like that is something where I'm like, ooh, like that should be down to like one to two hours tops now. So we have a workflow right now that really helps spit those out for us once we're able to input like our ideas and then tweak the, the actual script on the back end. Creator store saying, I have a quick.

[Connor]

Question on, on the, the briefing step here. I listened to a podcast with Andrew Ferris and Jess Boggan that was really good. Would, would recommend it and, and Andrew was talking about really co formats and like almost codifying like the, the, the brief that then they need to send out to creators. So I'm curious, what is that? Like, what does the AI ification of briefing look like for you?

[Dara Denny]

Yeah, yeah. So we also have really boiled down like this like the core formats of like the different briefs that we have. So we like have essentially a different brief in this AI for every single type of like format that we would want to execute on. So we have like a core brief for like a stand like problem solution type of ad. We have a core brief for like a David and Goliath style ad, which is something that's been working for all of our accounts recently as well as even for, for different types of image briefs. Like we have that all baked into like our like our like AI workflow so that we're really just able to like write in the like idea, write in some like brief like backgrounds of the script and in some cases like I'm even just verbally saying it with whisper flow because sometimes I'm like a lot more able to just like talk about it and then like have that brief, that brief like spit out and ready to go, like zooming out like a little bit more too. Like the creator sourcing again is like connected to this agent which or workflow which is just helping us like you know, source the creators that are of the moment but like maybe have smaller follower counts but are creating great content in the niche that we're trying to serve. And terms of like post production, we are like using a lot of 11 labs for AI voiceover. I'd say that's like probably the number one actual like production thing that we are using when it comes to AI in terms of like you know in arc ads or AI avatars we really are not utilizing those as much. Sometimes we'll use them for hooks or testing in the different demos but not a ton.

[Cody]

And then that's the part I'm most bearish on. Like I'm. I. We have built a lot of AI stuff copy brief stuff like that analysis the actual production of especially ugc. It's one thing to use AI for like some of like the more. More produced stuff. Like I've seen people make some really good TV commercials with like B roll but like trying to fake up human ugc. I'm just, I don't think that's the way.

[Dara Denny]

I don't think that's the way and it makes people really really angry. I actually, I think it's really interesting how like up in get when they see things that are very clearly AI There was actually and it's. It's interesting to like look at the luxury fashion industry too. Like when they very clearly use AI in their content how like really up in arms people tend to get. So I think you know even especially for like D2C brands like I don't think that we're going to see or people are going to want AI avatars like in content. Like even when I as a user like am told oh this is like an AI avatar. Like it's like the interest goes off like it just reads like people are being marketed to and they don't like that. I don't like that.

[Connor]

I, I will take the other side of that I think over like, like just. Well look I, I think this is what I would say and I'd recommend people kind of play around with this. There's a number of compliance issues and that's been discussed on X a lot. Like can you even have a tutor? Sorry a testimony from an AI avatar. Like lots of questions there. We've been doing a thing where we. We've started with like organic TikTok videos. We'll take screen grabs from it. We'll load that into Hicks Higs field. We'll do a body swap. So Higfield has body swap format where we put somebody else in that format and that kind of addresses what you were talking about earlier Dar where it's like you really just need like dynamic places. Like we got a video of like or we were able to produce a video of someone like walking around an airport talking about the luggage and it's like trying to source a creator who's Going to, to an airport to do that, it's like extremely hard to do. So when you think about not only velocity but like diversity of setting, it's just like extremely powerful. And I really think, like, I've seen some videos that are just like, I could not tell the difference. I. I'm like, if you told me this was a real person, I totally believe you. So that it's a hacky process now, but I just think it gets that much better over the next, you know, three months, six months.

[Dara Denny]

But my challenge to that is like, I could see, yes. Like, I could see like the, the video that you're talking about. Like, oh, like we're just going to like take this person and like put them in an airport. But I would almost like argue that. I wonder if even like a yapper style confessional, like talking about a time this girl was at the airport, like, could potentially be better. Like, I think that there's like a way to make it real for people and like, totally. That reality is still like the default of what it performs and doesn't like trigger this like inherent response that we have that like something is AI or not real or fake.

[Unknown (possibly another team member or guest)]

So I agree.

[Connor]

The way you described less risky, I could totally believe performs better. There's still like a, what I describe maybe is like a, like a. There are room, there's room for improvement, there's room for further optimization and like, and for a brand like us where it's like, there's just steps to it where it's like, oh, we could produce this sort of like AI generated visually. Dynamic content might not be the best version of what we could do. The yapping style video could be better, but it's just like there's a lot more to explore that than writing it off as like, oh, yeah, I don't think this is really going to get there. That's my take and that's. That's partially inspired.

[Dara Denny]

I'm a bit of an apologist. Like, I will. I'm like always willing to be swayed. You know, I don't think. I think my like, strength in this is like, I am willing to like, see the results and like, I'm curious enough about it.

[Cody]

Connor, I just texted you. But if you would be willing to send a loom on that process, I would be eternally grateful. Yeah, good.

[Connor]

Good. Dude, it's. Yeah, it's, it's very cool. You guys will find it very interesting. But no, that, that's super helpful. Dart. Thank you for, for breaking down the process.

[Dara Denny]

There is one more Part of the process though that I do think is important, which is just the actual uploading of ads. Like if you still have like a media buyer or someone manually uploading Ad Creative. That's also another like red flag for me now.

[Cody]

Like, what do you use for that?

[Dara Denny]

So I have been using ad manage, but a lot of the brands that I've talked to have just built their own custom AI that are uploading their own Ad Creative. So that's where I see especially brands of your size going just like getting that developed.

[Cody]

We're building, yeah, we're trying to build it right now. So we have a, a static process where we have essentially research and I built a lot of this with. We have research, copywriting is like as easy to do and cloud. Like we're very, very close on like AI static generation where it's like taking our products but adding different formats and stuff. Stuff where like to the point where five clicks of a button we can get, you know, it's all fed by outer signal Personas, but we can get 80 ads done in like an hour. To the point where like it's, it's. So I laugh about it, but literally uploading is the barrier right now.

[Unknown (possibly another team member or guest)]

Right.

[Cody]

And we'll be able to automate that. But it's like I find it so funny that like that's the barrier to like the blocker, to actually uploading all this volume.

[Dara Denny]

Yeah. And that's why it is like even though I am much more on the performance creative side, I like, my audit like always goes beyond like to the uploading process because I'm like, what are you doing here? So if like people are still doing the manual upload, I'm like, damn, like you can upload like a hundred ads in like 10, under 10 minutes now with, with AI and you should.

[Connor]

So this was, this was one of Cody and I's predictions for 2026 is just the, the brands that embrace volume and velocity are the ones that are going to win. And that's like, it just feels like there are more tools than ever versus the mass creator, affiliate activation, comfort or the like, hey, we're going to produce a thousand static AI generated ads and we're just going to load those all.

[Unknown (possibly another team member or guest)]

Up into the account.

[Connor]

So I'm super curious. I, I also predict Meta will perform. I think Meta will be a larger share of budget year over year because I think like everything they're doing with Andromeda and like the benefits of diversity and brands finally embracing that, I think it'll be a good year for Facebook, everybody running D2C brands and running creative strategy for those DDC brands has a wonderful 2026. What do you guys think?

[Dara Denny]

I think it's going to be a good 2026. Honestly. I think if you have like dialed in your ops and like you're getting great content out the door, like I think it's going to probably be the best year maybe even since like pre iOS 14 for brands.

[Connor]

There we go. I like the optimism.

[Unknown (possibly another team member or guest)]

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[Connor]

Okay, so we almost touched on this earlier. I know Cody wants to talk about it. Cody, your big thing this year is merging the organic and paid teams. We talked about hiring in house creators. We talk about activating the the you know, affiliates at scale. Cody, I'd love like a quick update from you on on where that process is at and then I'D love to, love to hear from Dara as far as like how brands are approaching that.

[Cody]

Yeah, so we, we kicked off yesterday actually we're starting with an agency but we're kind of building our team to do it and building. We even took over some more space here to like build out like an internal studio because that's our goal. What I noticed. One thing I noticed is, and I know you guys have heard me say this a bunch, but Dara is like the same issues I think we had on organic social or same unpaid where it's like things take too long, there's too many approvals, it's not keeping up with the platform changes, trends, algorithms, things like that on organic and paid. And I think there are less differences now because you know, follower feed is dead and things like that. So you just get rewarded for merit. So we are even seeing a lot of success taking our best performing organic content as ads. And like that was like wild a few years ago, but I hear about it more. Meta is saying with Gem that they're even you know like using organic signals in the auction. And so we are going. You know, Gary Vee calls it the brand formats model, but it's essentially what you described. Like tech companies call it's. They call it ugc but like having ambassadors, creators that are posting on a bunch of different accounts once, twice, three times a day. Not about followers, just seeing what takes off. And then it's either you, you directly run some of those as ads if, if they have the right elements, some of it you edit and you're like, hey, this needs a little snappier hook or something like that needs to be Dr. Ified a little bit. And then some of it is just, it's just a learning of like, hey, this messaging seems to work, but it's not really about the product but like what can we learn from it? So that's our approach and goal and it's going to be all, all under one like very senior creative strategy leader. And then we'll have obviously different paid and organic teams, but it'll be one, one motion, one flywheel.

[Dara Denny]

And I'm curious too, you said too that you were hiring like a, almost like a chief create like creator as well, right? Is that who you're talking about as like this chief creative strategy person or is it. Are they two different.

[Cody]

I was thinking about it kind of like, kind of like almost like a slight face brand. Kind of like how Ridge has like Marquez Brownlee or something like that. But I don't think we Will. I think we'll get like a VP of creat creator and, and they'll kind of oversee like really everything creator. It's almost like they'll be like, they're almost like creative director but for like any creator content, if that makes sense. Or they're almost like VP of marketing. But there's like, you know, you have your like brand style marketing your growth and like creator. But yeah, like anything kind of creator underneath them.

[Dara Denny]

Okay. Okay. Yeah, I, I haven't necessarily heard of any brands doing that, but I think it sounds interesting.

[Cody]

Well, but you said, but you were saying before with these creators, right? Like the in house creators, like some of them are posting organically. They're kind of, you know, doing once a day and it's not just going ad. Are you seeing that?

[Dara Denny]

I've seen it on like a smaller scale. So like one of the like brands that we worked with that had an in house creator who was posting to her own like brand, own handle every single day. Like we, we had that flywheel with her. Like she would post one to two times a day, sometimes three. And oftentimes if something would go mega viral, we would immediately take it, put it up in the ad account. Sometimes we'd swap out the hooks on it. Other like we would completely change it up or even add things to it and like create a compilation. But like, that is something that I've seen work really well at a smaller scale than you guys. I was just more thinking about like your top down, like your like team approach.

[Cody]

Yeah, yeah, that would be different, but I think like just the general organic to paid kind of pipeline. Like are you seeing those get closer together together?

[Dara Denny]

Yeah, absolutely. And I think too it's like, you know, taking a step back from like the talk about the algorithms and GEM and Andromeda. I think too it's just the demand for like what we want and expect out of content is so much higher. Right. Like, I think sometimes people wax poetic about like how easy it was to run like Facebook ads a number of years ago, but like fail to realize like, oh like the platforms have changed. Like what we also like demand and like expect from. These platforms are so much different. What used to be like a social platform is now fundamentally like an entertainment one. So like it makes sense to me that the paid strategies are also going to like change in ebb and flow with that. And the problems too that like you guys have at like the level of scale that you're at, like a lot of it is just the nature of trying to reach net new customers. So it also makes sense, sense that hey, if you can get something that is going to appease like the organic like algorithm gods and like reach those new audiences by its like in that hyper competitive market, it's very likely to also do well. On social. It's not always one to one but like those are bets that I would take nearly every single time.

[Unknown (possibly another team member or guest)]

Cody, can you speak to like that workflow a little? So like, because it sounds. Because you're, you're going to be casting a super wide net, so someone's got to be like, like all right, I know all the content that's going live. I'm checking in on it and I'm saying, whoa, these three pieces of the 50 we launched in the last two weeks like had the most views, the most engagement. Okay, now we're going to like either put that directly in the ad account or we're going to edit it. Like what's that, how's that workflow kind of shaping up at Jones Road Beauty? Because that's what I'm like looking at our, at our you know, reels right now and just looking at the ones that have the most views. And like what I think we probably need to do is recut it and then have a lot of the. Because a lot of his creator LED ads is actually have them do a new VF go that's like more product focus, more value prop focused and because a lot of the stuff that takes off is like really engaging meals. So I was like how do we position the product a little bit more as the hero of that. But I'm curious like what your workflow is and how that would translate to like what I think we, we need to do at, for our like organic to paid workflow.

[Cody]

Yeah. So I can tell you today and I can tell you kind of what we're working on. Like we literally just kicked off for this big program like creator recruitment, you know, this week. So like we're kind of building team, working with an agency to do it now and kind of share. So what we'll try to get to is, is like organic and paid social are under like not, not media buying but strategy are under one person who's just like social creative strategy. And it's not organic and paid. And there's like two branches, right. And you have, you know, you're, you're paid in organic under them. And I think the, the strategic component, like the very strategic component about you know, what DAR is talking about, like how content style is changing what you know formats, things like that as well as like audience development research on them. Like that's really all under one roof. Roof because like you shouldn't have a separate like strategy of who you're trying to reach or things like that on, you know, on organic and paid. And then a lot of the testing initially will be organic and whether that's creators on retainer in house, that's going to be the biggest component of it. But it'll be, you know, different Personas doing different kind of testing formats that are posting hopefully two times a day, four times a day on a TikTok account or something like that. You know, there's got to be somebody who is responsible for or you know, I think with any creative strategy, like the feedback loops as you guys know are so important. So analyzing that, hey, this seems to be working. Let's, let's double down, let's iterate like hopefully that's like a strategist on, on that side and then kicking that over to growth team and just having like a boom, hey, it gets 10,000 views, 20,000 views. Like maybe AI can do that, but like automatically that kind of gets booted over to the growth team and then they can decide, hey, do we want to launch it as is, do we want to edit it? Do we, Is that just a good learning? What we do currently is the person who's running our organic social. When we get a reel that does well, it goes in a Slack channel. We call it social, paid and organic. It's just like, hey, this did well. These are, you know, our stats on it. Let me know if you want. And then usually what happens is our grow team will tag in like our creative strategist or something like that. Creative strategist will, will or like senior editor will request you, you know, like the project file and then they'll, they'll edit it. And kind of what I think we do now is we'll, we'll make a few variations, we'll run it as is, and then we'll do like two different, like variations with a different hook.

[Connor]

Lately every market I talk to says the same thing. Budgets are tight, goals are higher than ever, and I have to prove what's working, not just report it. And that is the new reality of marketing. If you can't afford to rely on guesses or platform reported reviews results, you need clear causal proof of what's actually driving growth. And that's exactly where House comes in. Incrementality testing is the new scientific way to measure true impact to see what's moving the needle and what's just noise so you can reallocate spend based on fact and not faith. Cody, Connor and I all use House for incrementality testing and it's become a core part of the modern measurement stack. They're now working with more than 40 of the top 100 D2C brands, which shows just how quickly this approach is becoming the new standard for serious growth. Team House helps you run real experiments across your channel so you can answer questions that actually matter, like which channels are truly driving incremental revenue? How much should I really be spending on Meta, Google or YouTube? And what's the halo effect of my ads on Amazon or retail sales? What sets House apart is the combination of rigorous science and marketer friendly design. The math under the hood is complex, built on causal inference and experimentation. But the platform itself is simple. You can choose your questions, launch a test in minutes and get clear, actionable results you can actually use. Plus, every customer gets a dedicated measurement strategist, someone who's lived in the world of growth and knows how to translate data into strategy. They'll help you design smart tests, interpret the results, and build a repeatable culture of experimentation across your team. With House, you aren't just buying a tool, you're buying the growth marketing team that can help you make the most of it. In a world where every marketing dollar is under a microscope, you need to know what matters with House by going to House IO operators. That's H A U s IO operators and start allocating your budget with conf confidence. One one question I have for you and this one's really funny actually. Do you think the organic algorithm is a good indicator of the type of content that you'll want to pay attention to from a paid perspective? And the reason I think that's funny is it gets down to like should you test ad creative in a CBO or something like that, right? Like we're talking about like at times Meta might misdistribute ad spend across ads or like or media buyers for a long time maybe were skeptical about like hey this ad only got $5 in media spend. We're going to reach that problem. You have a hundred people posting and you're only going to pay pay attention to the ones that get the views. Is that actually a good indicator of what is quality content and what will work in the ad account? So do you, do you have a perspective on that Cody? About like what is that filtering process?

[Cody]

I think not one to one for sure and I think that's Some of the pushback on this, like, I'm never saying it's. It's one to one. Like, yeah, but I think there's some overlap. I think there has to be some subjectivity. It's like, hey, this was like a trending meme that we got a ton of views on. I'm like, that's not great. You also could look at it as metrics. Like. Like, I think, right, you can go very upper funnel. Complete engagement entertainment. Right? That gets a lot of views. But your. You know, your. Your ratio of views to comments is maybe not as great, because maybe it's. You're. It's. It's. It's like, it's. It's the organic equivalent of doing, like, a clickbaity hook and getting a super high thumbstop, but not the quality you want. Like, I think there has to be that subjective component to it and be like, hey, we didn't mention the product. It's a trending thing. Like, yes, it did well organically. So I think there's not that. There's probably a Venn diagram where there's like a 30, 40% overlap would be my guess.

[Dara Denny]

Yeah, I agree. But I do take organic indicators more. I use them. Like, something we talk about on my creative team is, like, what evidence something has to perform. Like, when we are developing a road map for a client and, like, we take. We tend to take organic indic as better evidence than, like, oh, this ad was running for 400 days on foreplay. And I was actually recently really surprised with an, like, an ad creative test that we did for one of my brands that the idea, like, concept came from a super viral TikTok. And when I saw it, I was like, this will never work on page. Essentially, the concept was this. It was, you know, like, different lip glosses for, like, a Zodiac, right? So, like, we're working with a bed sheets brand. So we were like, oh, let's do, like, different bed sheet colors for, like, for the Zodiac. And I was like, this is never gonna work. This is an organic concept. And I also just think it's stupid. And it ended up actually crushing and working really, really well on pain. And I was like, ooh. Because, like, in my head, I'm thinking, what are we, like, targeting, like, you know, like, Capricorns and Aquarius because they're at, like, the top and, like, that's what's showing up first. But. But the comment section was crazy. And it was also a little bit of, like, the rage bait that got people because people were Getting angry, saying something like, Aries. Why would you put Aries with, like, something beige? That's crazy. And I'm like, actually, that is crazy. So I am, like, I agree with Cody on, like, the Venn diagram aspect, but I have been surprised lately with concepts that I used to deem as only good for organic.

[Cody]

I'm hearing that more and more. Definitely that, like, yeah, because I've talked to some people about it and they're like, no, you should actually post everything that has done well because you'd be surprised. So I am hearing that. I just. I think I'm trying to temper the skepticism and pushback that I get when I say it, because there's so much like, no, that's not going to work. There's a difference.

[Dara Denny]

Yeah, And I think, too, like, to Connor's point earlier, like, for a brand like Hexclad, like, I heard you talking, like, oh, like, I have to get, like, the product in there sooner. Or, like, talk about, like a, like a value prop or something. Like, like, I think with your product, it's, like, so visual. Like, it's so. And like, you're. You're showing food. It's, like, also so appetizing. Like, you actually don't have to sell if you're, like, showing something delicious. Like, that was something we learned with this betting brand too. Like, they had so much amazing content and all that we really had to do was, like, show it. And, like, we were able to borrow a lot from Super Top of funeral viral TikTok strategies that I was surprised did as well. Well, that they did. I have an example of one, actually, that ended up, like, we ended up iterating this thing to death, but was really just, like, crushing it for them. Like, just this type of content. But again, they had the amazing initial production that did really well for them. But this, like, POV style, like, pov. Pov, you found the best place to get colorful sheets. Yeah, but we've also done, like, pov.

[Connor]

That'S a good ad, but that's also.

[Cody]

A good organic TikTok.

[Dara Denny]

But like, some of the other ones we've done, I would say I'm like, ah, I didn't think they would be. It was almost a little too top of funnel. Like, pov, you found out how to make your room a safe space. So, like, people don't even really know it was about the, like, the ad account. But we strategically chose that type of language because we found out that a majority, like, a big chunk of our audience were millennials who were Single. So like like diving into this idea like of oh okay. Like these are people who are protecting their piece. Like how can we like reach them before they're thinking about like the bed sheet question but they're just thinking about like the, the personal safety question.

[Cody]

So, so, so agree with so many things. I mean yeah, it's actually interesting. It's like yeah, you don't want to go too top of funnel but you also have to be so part of the reason I think this organic thing doesn't work for a lot of brands and we're very guilty of right now most brands are not good on organic. Like most brands have kind of neglected did organic especially with like D2C brands that are really into paid.

[Dara Denny]

Yeah.

[Cody]

And are kind of not doing the modern approach which is like reels first, TikTok first like non follower stuff. So I think that's like a huge caveat where it's like if you just post pretty images that are like bottom funnel, like that's also not what paid needs as well.

[Dara Denny]

Yeah like I one of the brands that I was most scared for was like an eight figure brand like in hair care that I talked to like a few months ago and they were like yeah, we just like completely stopped doing organic social. Like we haven't posted since like you know, March of last year. And I was like holy. Like you are the like that archetype of a brand is like the one that I'm most concerned for like moving into this new era because and it's not even with the like what you said earlier Cody about like Jen taking like insights from organic like that's absolutely happening and it's happening not just from your account but like people who are buying from you or potentially interested in your product how they're also interacting with other brands, ads or content. But I think like if you, it's almost getting to the point that if you can't like be out an organic auction it's going to be even harder. It's going to be harder for you to beat out a paid auction as.

[Connor]

Well for these like highly engaging sort of like organic first videos. Does the performance in the ad account look significantly different than something more doctor Focused? Like I'm thinking, thinking do you see a lower conversion rate because it's more top of funnel but like the click through rate's just so much higher that it ends up coming out in the wash. I'm curious if there's any like general trends you see there.

[Dara Denny]

Yes, sometimes like the click through rate is truly insane. Like that ad that I showed you, like we had a concept that was really similar to that that had like a 60 cent CPC which like I just like truly have not seen in a long long time. So like I will say too like coming like looking at it from media buying fundamentals. Like there are a number of brands too where I've seen this type of content work really really well if they have a little bit more of like an old school funnel based approach with their media buying. So like really segmenting out their like their retargeting their remarketing their their like testing from their scaling and then addition like additionally adding like reach and traffic like you know if they're doing decent with that and then you add the top of funnel content onto that like it's it. I've seen it work again and again but I don't necessarily recommend that structure. It's just like what I've seen as like a creative partner.

[Unknown (possibly another team member or guest)]

Cody, I'm curious how you're like approaching this because you have to train your because if you just let your media buying team continue to buy the same way that that they've been buying like they're probably going to turn this at these ads off. Like this does require a different, different lens of like what is like outbound click through rate. What is the first time website visit rate even looking at like if it is if those things are higher than like your more doctor stuff and like you are seeing that ROAS and CAC and like the classic performance metrics are lower. Like even looking at like time on site based on UTM like it does require some like pivoting in thinking that like I know like, like at our at hexcloud we would definitely have to spend time with our buyers saying wait no no this is serving a different purpose. Like we, we have, we've had these conversations with, with creators. We're like this one creator was way more upper funnel. It was a totally new audience. The one day click was much much much lower than like our account average. But now that we've like ran with this creator for 56 months and you go back and you look at the growth from one day click to LTV ROAS it's like it over doubled. It had over over 2x growth from one day to LTV whereas our account wide was like I don't know 1.5x growth. It's like that just there's a fundamental shift in how you think about about buying media and the metrics that you need to buy based off of when you're, when you're shifting to these strategies and I, that's the conversations I need to have with our media buying team as we start to launch some of this organic content is like we can't measure this the same way we measure, you know, the native UGC product focused ad. It's just fundamentally different parts of the funnel.

[Cody]

I, I think yeah, a hundred percent agreed. It's not exclusive to us. Like I think David Herman does a really good job of that and talking about of like not every ad needs to be and meta starting to talk about it more of like an ecosystem and like or applevin will as well. It's like don't shut off your top spending ad. You know, even if, if it's getting a lot of spend, even the performance doesn't look great. Like even within a campaign you have a funnel. But then you know, outside of that. So Connor, our roadmap right now like is, is it kind of proving that out? Because I think we have hypotheses that like you know, like yeah, the Dr. Metrics don't really mean incrementality. Like for example we tested a, and I wouldn't say tested but for Black Friday we had a campaign that had like view optimization as well. And one of the top spending ads was like, I think it was like a, like a short form gift, 75, 80% new visit rate but poor north theme row. It's like is that good? Is that bad? Like I am of the belief that that's probably good and that did a great job bringing in net new users. And I think you know, maybe we should look at time on site and stuff like that more or like right now we're just wrapping up a partnership test because you know my hypothesis attribution looks pretty good. Like pretty comparable to others. I think it's probably much more incremental because like you said it's doing a much better job bringing in new users and stuff. So in general I think that's our roadmap and where, where I get really concerned is making decisions on just like a, like a UTM or something like that. But I agree that more, more, more so even with this.

[Dara Denny]

Yeah. Which is why sometimes with like our brands that are like, are facing that scenario, we'll even map out the creative roadmap where it's like okay, like, like we could just do a whole bunch of this like banger top of funnel content but we'll like split it down the middle where it's like okay, we'll do this top of funnel content that we know is like you know, ending in purchases like after a few weeks. But like is really getting a lot of people on site and then we'll end up doing something that's a little bit more doctor focused just to like remain competitive like with the internal creative team essentially. So it's like kind of fun. It's like inside baseball.

[Unknown (possibly another team member or guest)]

Like yeah, this is where I like looking at like the like doing the UTM filter and then looking at like in a server side analytics tool and then looking at based on just that utm, what's like the product view rate, what's like the active cart user rate and then comparing that to benchmark because those are obviously signs of intent. Like that's, this is what we're doing in some of our international markets right now is we're really shifting a lot of our spend towards upper funnel. We're seeing big growth and user and new users to site conversion rates down pretty drastically because like inherently we're sending a much colder audience to site. But I'm looking at like growth in add to carts, growth in checkouts initiated as a leading indicator of quality of audience. And I'm like feeling pretty confident that when we roll out our next offer in this market we're going to see outsized growth. So it's kind of the same thing here is like just instead of doing it on like a whole market, you're just trying to look at that specific ad and there's probably 10 ways you could cut it up, you know, across GA and an edge mesh like tool and like North Bean. There's so many ways to, to look at it and validate it. But you need to have that framework in place. If you don't have the framework or the way of thinking about it, you're probably going to turn off the ad.

[Dara Denny]

Yeah. And like my question for that is then like if you are doing those different optimizations like in the media buying, are you also thinking about like your creative strategy and like the specific creatives that you're putting for those more like upper funnel like optimizations or are you just kind of doing it like more broadly or like whatever's performing best, like broadly in the attic.

[Unknown (possibly another team member or guest)]

This market has been mismanaged to say the least. So like for, for us what's, what's driving this much more upper funnel audience is simply evergreen video and static creative in a purchase optimized campaign. Which sounds like very straightforward and obvious but like we were just running a lot of spend into branded search, a lot of spend behind offer sale ads which inherently is going to reach people ready to convert. So for this market it's been like yeah again evergreen stuff under purchase conversion campaigns whereas with our like like what.

[Dara Denny]

Performed well under a purchase conversion campaign you're like sending to us exactly.

[Unknown (possibly another team member or guest)]

And then like looking at the delta and like first time visit rate total percent or first time visits and then obviously optimizing within that campaign to see like what is driving the best CPAs. Whereas our other like more mature markets where we're running view content stuff it is a lot more like brand forward upper funnel higher polish like top so that there we are really aligning the the creative with the objective where it's like this is a view content campaign. We're not going to expect this to drive a great roas and we're going to just serve really engaging brand forward content in that campaign. Prescient helps brands turn peak season wins into predictable profitable velocity. Powered by a suite of proprietary machine learning models and a causality first validation layer, Prescient reveals what actually drove Lyft. It combines surveys, it combines multi touch attribution and incrementality and then it forecasts where your next dollar of media will drive real incremental profit. Top brands like Coterie Guess, Hexclad, Jones Road Beauty, Mary Ruse and many more are using Prescient to quantify halo effects across Shopify, Amazon retail to refresh forecast daily and a surface explainable recommendations so their teams know exactly where to reinvest. Prescient uniquely tracks halo effects and ad impact across both platforms revealing where to dial back and where to double down. This is actually one of the very first problems that Hexclad onboarded with Prescient to solve is understanding the total impact across both dot com and Amazon over ad spend. Precious models are benchmarked against $6 billion in ad spend. So the recommendations you are getting aren't just theory, they've actually been tested against billions of real media dollars dollars and if you are ready to see where your next dollar media will drive the most profit visitors to forecast your growth with pressing.

[Connor]

So so we've talked a lot about what I I think you guys could me if I'm wrong creator generated user generated content Conor had a question. They're seeing a lot of success with hi fi content in the in the hexcloud ad account but Dara I'm just curious curious for brands that you're working with like what's the split between maybe video and image and we we focused a lot on the creator video Stuff is that the majority of spend, like just in, in terms of type of content or however you want to define it, like production style. Like what are you seeing the split and has that changed at all over the last year?

[Unknown (possibly another team member or guest)]

Two years?

[Dara Denny]

Yeah. I'd say that I've seen more percentage of spend going towards hi fi content in recent months. But I suspect that it's not so much a factor of it actually performing well. I think it's because that production of content is actually getting a little cheaper to produce. So you know, like for instance, Caraway, like when they're working with creators, they actually like choose their creators in part based on the type of production level that they offer. So like I don't work for Caraway, so I don't want people to think I'm speaking as like someone who's working there. It's just like based on the video that I did with them but like they were able to get a pretty decent like percentage of their spend through these creators that had this more hi fi content production like capability which I did think was like a really interesting way to hack it in terms of like the percentage breakdown of like lo fi to hi fi content. I mean I've seen accounts run that were spending a million, 2 million with just lo fi. But like I do think it is important like create a diversity question to be able to eventually add that hi fi content. I'm actually curious Cody, like what percentage of your like account is like more of that higher end percentage? Because like I feel like you do have more of those like capabilities with your studio.

[Cody]

Yeah, we, we have definitely been stronger on it and I think have some reason why it's probably been less of focus. Mainly we just haven't been shooting as much and prioritize the time with Bobby. So we're trying to get back to that. But I think it has helped and I think for where we are positioned as a brand and more expensive, slightly luxury which is, I mean hexclad is as well. Like I do think there is, there is some, I don't want to call it brand but like there is some positioning of that that does invoke trust that that helps performance. So we have had a lot of success with it. We have also right now we're very heavy on partnership ads as, as you know. So I think that's like a bigger percentage of them. But like we've never gotten like UGC to work like direct response. UGC has like never worked in our account like almost never. Partnership ads work incredibly well. So like but, but they're with, you know, I think there's just a level of credibility and then obviously Bobby, professional stuff works well. So one of our goals is to combine them and as we do as we find kind of larger creator, you know, partnership ads that perform then actually doing more of like an in house production with them and kind of turning that into like a larger campaign.

[Dara Denny]

Yeah, with nearly all of the people that I interviewed for ad spend, so five brands, nearly all of them set that like you know, their percentage of partnership ads were anywhere from like 40 to 50%, sometimes more so like 40 to 60%. Like all five of these brands are like running a significant amount through partnership ads. The interesting thing about Caraway is I'd say like 10 to 15% of that is actually more of their higher end content. Now the big difference between like Cody, you and Caraway of course is like Caraway way like really did like really does lean into more of those like micro influencers and like UGC creators. And like that's like the bulk of where like they're pushing their spend. Even though, and I know that this was like something you guys wanted to ask about their split between like their actual influencer partnerships versus like their UGC program. Like they do obviously good, good, great traction out of their. Some are bigger like celebrity activations. But like the high five versus lo fi like question is, is like really different for everyone. But it is like a big like thing that I look into in terms of like okay, like when was like what type of production do you have? Like do you have your product like being able to show it in like multiple different use cases, multiple different settings. Like as much as I am scanning for like hi fi versus lo Fi, it's actually more about the setting that I'm like analyzing for a lot of these things too.

[Cody]

Would you especially I like Caraway scale. Like would you argue like that's what somebody should have. It's like it's not just one, it's not just like hey we should just have high fi or lo fi. It's like maybe at a, at a eight figure, seven figure. Like you only need one, two things working. But like to reach the most amount of people, they should have multiple. They should have UGC with micro creators. They should have partnerships, they should have more produced.

[Dara Denny]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Cody]

Need it all.

[Dara Denny]

Yeah, you need it all and you need it all and you need multiples of each thing is generally what we're looking for. Sorry guys, just more.

[Unknown (possibly another team member or guest)]

Yeah, more on all.

[Dara Denny]

Yeah.

[Cody]

Well that's why the volume that's why the volume versus quality thing is like guys, you need both, you need a ton of volume and ads have to be really good. And there's like, that's like going to be an endless debate.

[Unknown (possibly another team member or guest)]

Yeah.

[Connor]

And I mean but I think the, the crux of that debate was or what is it if you, if you were to straw man volume, it's that you're not doing it with diversity in mind. There were a lot of brands and Ridge is guilty of this and Connor's talked about it hexclad too. It's you, you're producing volume but you're not doing it in a, in a diversified way from a production standpoint or a concept standpoint. That's what people like love to, to criticize.

[Cody]

You need a lot of ads. They have to be different and they have to also be good.

[Connor]

Totally. And then you need, need to media buy perfectly and then you need to be, you know, profitable on a 30 day payback window.

[Cody]

Make no mistakes.

[Connor]

Make no mistakes, Claude. Yeah.

[Dara Denny]

Which again is why scanning for the setting for me, I know I've said it a lot, is like something that I think helps a lot with that creative diversity. Connor. I mean unfortunately you're always going to be in a kitchen unless you're on at a campfire using hexclad. But like being able to have as many different like kitchens as possible, many different aesthetics, different homes. Like that's like something that's like internally going on when I'm doing these like creative audits.

[Unknown (possibly another team member or guest)]

Yeah. Different meals I think as well can like reach a different audience. I think you said something Dar that I think is very empowering for brands and I think like our, because we also set up a studio in the last last two years that's a five minute walk from our core office and we are in there every single day shooting all types of content. I think that's been a moat for us. But you don't need to like you can achieve this like hi fi content pillar simply by working with creators that produce hi fi content versus a creator that shoots super native like content. And I think that's very empowering for brands. Like you don't need to. Maybe eventually you get to a point where you do need to set up your own studio because you're shooting that much. But like you can achieve, achieve that, that, that content pillar just by working with the right creators that are making that high fidelity stuff, which I think is great. And, and brands should think about that when they are like spreading their, their, their net on all the creators that they want to work with, like have your lo fi kind of native, socially native bucket and then have your more like higher produced hi Fi bucket if, if that makes sense for your brand. And like for Hexcloud and Jones Road and Ridge, I would say too, like, like we do have this premium quality and I think there's an inherent like subconscious association with the premiumness of your product and the, and like the high fidelity of a video. Like I think there is like, that's a really important connection to make and that's really what's driven all of our like YouTube and TV commercials as well, is like, I want this to be really well done, very produced because there's no way you could get to the end of any of our TV commercials or YouTube ads and then now a big, a big subset of our meta ads and be like, wow, that's a very premium product. And I feel that just through the premium hi Fi nature of, of the video that I just watched. And it's like, it's kind of subconscious in a way, I think.

[Dara Denny]

Yeah. And I think too, it's like it's, it surprised me too to learn that some of these hi Fi creators, like, they're not charging you like a production studio.

[Unknown (possibly another team member or guest)]

Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah.

[Dara Denny]

So like, you know, I think sometimes too like people automatically like associate a much higher price with it. But we've been able to like hi Fi creators that could do a very Caraway esque shoot for you know, around 1,000, 1,500 like for a single video, which is absolutely worth it. Like, you know.

[Cody]

Yeah, yeah, they, they do a very good job. Like their, their Caroise UGC is very, it's polished. It's definitely kind of has the premium feel. They, they, they get people with nice kids kitchens and that are, you know, good, good lighting and a little bit goes a long way if like you either invest in your creators or like pick the right ones who know what they're doing.

[Connor]

Cody is a little too complimentary of a competing cookware brand. For marketing operators, you gotta tread, tread, tread lightly.

[Cody]

They do less good than hexcloud.

[Unknown (possibly another team member or guest)]

They do a great job. Honestly. We're not like, if you look at our, we run a survey and ask people like, what else do they own? And Caraway is like, there's very little overlap actually. And like people that own Caraway and then buy Hexclads. But no, we actually, I pay attention to Caraway's marketing. They do a fantastic, fantastic job.

[Connor]

All right, so we're kind of at time here. I've got one more question for you, Dara. We've covered a lot. People will have been listening for 70 minutes at this point. If you were to leave people to want. If you were to leave people with one piece of advice based on all the brands you talk to, what would you say people should be focusing on moving forward?

[Dara Denny]

Hmm. What would I say people should be focusing on? I think Cody will like this one. But I think really truly understanding your different audience segments is the big thing that I'm focusing on right now. And if you can really look at your creative strategy and look at the people that you're serving and especially every single like creative that you're putting out into market to test if you can draw that back to a specific audience segment, that is like one of the things that I'm really scanning for and making sure that we're serving the right people and like delivering the right message to them at the right time. So be sure that you have a really good understanding of your different audience segments. And if you don't, like, be sure that you're doing that research and you know, developing content to pressure test all them to see which ones are actually gonna perform best for you.

[Connor]

Love it. All right. I like it. You guys wanna call that an episode? We got the okay from Connor. Dara, thank you so much for coming on. This is super fun.

[Dara Denny]

Yeah, thanks. Thanks.

[Cody]

Yeah, Dara, you're the best. I hope everyone goes check checks out her content. Cause it's lit. It's so good. Like I think it should be a must watch for any like buyer or stuff like that. Even like the old stuff. I know it changes, but just want to give you props for that. Especially the AD spend like series. Series like the. The production and editing that goes into those is also awesome. So big fan of your content.

[Dara Denny]

Oh, thank you. Yeah. Last episode of AD Spent well. The next two episodes of AD Spend one's gonna be coming out next week with Apothecary. Actually, the founder of Apothecary. That's a very good one. And then the last one will be Apparel. The packed brand. Packed the apparel brand.

[Connor]

And is that the one in March that you were teasing?

[Dara Denny]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Connor]

Okay. All right, what's to look forward to?

[Dara Denny]

Pact P A C T C. Just.

[Cody]

Gonna go dive into their content now.

[Dara Denny]

Yeah.

[Connor]

Awesome. Well, Dara, thank you so much again. We'll have to have you on a.

[Dara Denny]

Few future rep. Yeah, it was great jamming with you guys. Thanks. Bye.

[Unknown (possibly another team member or guest)]

Thanks.

[Connor]

Bye. All right, thank you for listening to another episode of Marketing Operators. Thank you to Dara Denny. The best super fun episode. Hope you found it helpful. We'll have many guests on in the future, so if you've got suggestions or anything else, make sure to tweet at us, comment on YouTube, etc. Thank you to our sponsors Motion Rich panel, Prescient After Sale and House. Please like subscribe share with your friends, family, colleagues. We will see you next week. Bye.