Creative Volume vs Creative Quality with Guest Natasha Chilcott

Today we are talking about creative volume vs creative quality... which is more important to be successful with paid social? Although creative volume has become more important, the key is in thoughtfully developed creative. This episode is filled with insights into how to balance the two and develop a repeatable process for both.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:26

You are listening to the Dynasty and Jelly Market Podcast with your host, Chris Julia. Today I am with guest Natasha Chilcott. She is the director of sales and marketing at Mar Media Group based in Canada. Today's topic creative volume versus creative quality. Before we get into our prompts, I wanted to quickly define what creative volume and creative quality actually mean because I find that even though for a lot of people in the marketing world those terms are clear, they actually are confusing to business owners. So Natasha, why don't you kick it off and give us your take?

SPEAKER_02 0:59

Yeah, I think there's I think we've moved into this period of time where all of a sudden, you know, the cool popular thing to do was just to like start pumping out these and like an insane amount of creatives across your um across your channels, whether that be organic, you know, on your meta ads, TikTok, what have you. But in my opinion, there's been more of a shift lately back to quality. So things, I it, you know, kind of felt like things got a little bit out of hand, you know what I mean? And uh yeah, we've kind of centered back around to, oh, okay, we there has to be some substance here. Like we can't just publish 50 creatives and cross our fingers. Um, we still need a methodology around, you know, is this a top of funnel piece of content? Are we trying to get someone to buy something? Do we just want them to engage with us? Um, so I think that, you know, um the difference between like creative volume and the quality of creative, I think is coming, I guess, more back into the limelight, if you will. Where, you know, I I just had a conversation yesterday, yesterday morning, um, with a client, and they're they had been working with a performance agency who was just blindly running creatives, like tons and tons of creatives. And there was no rhyme or reason for, you know, anything that was happening, right? Like there was no creative testing methodology or um structure um process, anything like that. And so yeah, I think that there's a there's a big difference between running great creative at volume and just what I would refer to as like dumping creative into organic or paid channels.

SPEAKER_00 2:38

Yeah, and I think that's really the key right now, just being very thoughtful with your creative strategy because just depending on your advertising budget, you do need a certain volume at times. And I think a lot of people I talk to, or like at least a lot of business owners, whenever I say creative quality, like their mind always goes to, oh, I need to be shooting 4K footage, I need like a studio shoot. Whereas quality is much more like like you said, Natasha, about just how thoughtful you are with the process itself. Some of the best ads can be just shot on an iPhone and look really organic. And at least from my experience, that's those are the creatives I usually see perform the best.

SPEAKER_02 3:15

Yeah, I mean, I don't there we don't have a single client in our portfolio that has high production value ads running. So, I mean, that just you know goes to show you right there. I mean, we we have 31 clients on our roster. Um, I think all of which are doing uh like running both organic and paid. Um, and yeah, there's no photography uh budget outside of like product photography for their websites and things like we're not utilizing in studio shots for ad campaigns. We are not, there's no like, you know, high quality videography happening. And I mean, you know, that's why like that's the way that like we um structure things too within our within our agency, within our team. Like we have a full creative team, none of which are photographers or videographers. So again, that just goes to show you that yeah, the quality really doesn't have anything to do with like the production quality. It's more about the quality of how well do you know your customer, how well do you understand their life, their pain points, their needs, wants, motivations? How can you connect that into an angle, a hook, a CTA that is meaningful, you know, and impactful and um, you know, captures their attention, right? So yeah, quality really, you know, the whole, if we were talking 10 years ago versus now, five years ago, maybe even like three to four years ago, the conversation is a little bit different. But now it's about, yeah, quality. How well do you know your customer? And honestly, the realization is that a lot of brands out there don't really understand their customers and they're more interested in selling a product than they are with, you know, I guess being like I would say becoming like obsessed with who buys their product.

SPEAKER_00 4:53

Um, like you said, it has nothing to do with the 4K production or like studio shoots. No one on your team even does that. I mean, I've I have no one on my team who does that either. I've worked with some shops like that for, you know, TV or CTV ads, or you know, if we do kind of like a brand refresh for like a large franchise or something. But even then, often the the iPhone, more authentic stuff tends to outperform even those really expensive studio shoots, right?

SPEAKER_02 5:18

Yeah, we were um, I was doing, I'm collaborating with a um like an outdoor um retail property. So, you know, a bunch of retailers and like an outdoor uh out uh open air experience, sorry. Um, anyways, one on like a relaunch campaign, and um we're talking about like the budget for um, you know, the the content creation, like social content creation, um, and um, you know, like running influencer campaigns, having them visit the property, etc. And then there's like this whole other budget over here for um, you know, photography and videography to like showcase the the property and whatnot. And it's funny, I always think I'm like, what is really like getting people to step foot on the property? Because this budget over here is like $50,000 for like 20 photos and a 60-second like video. And then this budget over here is like, you know, $20,000. And there's endless creatives coming out of it, you know, you know, a full campaign. So it just makes you like style every time I think about this, and it's not my background, like I I don't have like a production background or anything like that. And so I have also a lack of under, I know a lot of work goes into it. I'm just from a marketing perspective, I'm always like, is this worth it? Like, is this, you know, is this where we're spending $50,000? Okay, interesting. Like, I I mean, obviously, there's still such a like need and time and place for that type of content. It's just, it's not, it's not necessarily relative to like my world and social. So um, you know, whenever I hear those budgets, I'm always like, oh my gosh, that's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 6:56

Yeah, no, that stuff can get really expensive. And sometimes I do think that scares even like mid-level companies of, oh, I have to invest all of this money to get quality creative that all these people are talking about. But as we just outlined, quality creative is much more about the thought process that it goes into developing those ads than it is about having a really expensive shoot. And I think all of this transitions really well into our official first prompt. Creative volume is more important than the quality of your creative. How do you feel about that?

SPEAKER_02 7:24

I don't know. Like I'm kind of 50-50 on this one because I do think that obviously a certain amount of creative volume is required and like it's necessary, you know? So if you're like, well, we can only we only have the time or budget to invest in like two quality creatives for our campaigns, I would say, well, that's not gonna get you anywhere. Like there's not enough there to learn from in order to make more strategic long-term decisions, you know what I'm saying? Um, I do think like it's a little bit of uh uh, you know, I'm yeah, 50-50 on this because the creative volume is important. You know, we want to uh I just pitched um an expansion campaign for an existing client and we were talking about this like, okay, how many pieces of creative are we, you know, investing in for top, mid, bottom nurture in the campaigns that we're running? And you know, we kind of determined, well, well, our our minimum that we want to run with is, you know, two to three and in top to mid, you know, four to five in our bottom of funnel and like one to two. Um, and that these uh new iterations get created bi-weekly. So I mean, I think that like I look at that and I'm still like, well, there's still a volume there, you know, like we're we're creating like for me, volume almost comes down to again, what's the creative testing process and how and when are we moving into iterations based on, oh, this is the winning angle, or we want to now use our winning angle with two different hooks. And so there is a creative volume. I think that is, I guess that's it, that that's the way I'm looking at it, as opposed to again, just dumping, oh, you know what, let's just throw 20 pieces of creative into this top of funnel campaign when when our budget's only $5,000 a month. I mean, I, you know, that that's you know, you're gonna be limited. Um, uh, it's just it's a waste, you know? So um I think the quality, they're equally important and they can't live without one another, I guess is what I'm trying to say. So you need to be mindful of your creative volume depending on what your ad spend is. If you're if you're a brand, you're like, I'm just gonna throw $500 a month at awareness, you know, or like boosting my organic content. Well, then I mean, obviously you're not as concerned about creative volume. If you're spending $50,000 a month on meta-ads, a little bit of a different story, right? So yeah, I think there's a happy medium, but they're both important. You have to meet them in the middle as opposed to just going one way or the other. If you're so concerned about quality that you don't have enough that's even viable, then obviously you're not any better off.

SPEAKER_00 9:52

Yeah, and Natasha, that got me thinking about something. Have you ever run into with your clients where they are content with how performance currently is and they don't feel like they need to be testing high volume of creative anymore? And they're just kind of saying, let's roll with what's working. We found eight, maybe ten ads that are performing well for us. We don't need to be spending so much time, money, resources on testing new ideas anymore. And sometimes those ads have been working for a couple of weeks, a couple of months, and that consistency can make clients feel like they don't need to be testing anymore. But as I'm sure you know, if you have that mindset, you can then get to into a situation where it's almost too late to be doing that testing anymore. Or I guess a better way of saying it is you're going to have performance drop for a month, maybe two months, before you're able to actually ramp up your testing campaigns. Again, it's always important with your creative testing to be ahead and proactive instead of just being content with how things are going, right?

SPEAKER_02 10:49

Yeah, so I think this is a really interesting one because I this is to me, this is like the outdated mentality around ads and some brands, like I was obviously like more smaller brands, or like we'll we'll have them come to us and we'll be talking about, you know, collaborating or potential partnership, and we'll see, yeah, they've been running the same creatives for like six months. Their frequency rate is super high, and they're like there's obviously so much creative fatigue. They haven't refreshed it at all. I don't think that that, I mean, I again, I think that's outdated. I think that if you have winning creatives, the way that you scale your campaigns is that you figure out why it's winning and you create new iterations based off of the winning, the winning, like I said before, the winning angle hook, CTA, whatever combination is working. So for instance, you know, we have a brand that we work with that is in non-toxic um cookware. And um, you know, we're talking about new angles right now, right? So, and this is across all things. Their website, their organic page, even like all the angles of like how we want to talk to people, what we want to be talking about. And it's like, okay, well, let's just say, you know, we have our winning angle and it's like, hey, you are like, you know, you're super concerned about reading the label about what's in your food, but have you thought about what's in your cookware? So let's say like that's our winning angle, and we have a reel that's running in ads, for instance, that's got a great ROAS, and um, you just continue to run it. I mean, there's a lost opportunity there, right? Because if we have, let's say it's a someone on screen in their kitchen talking about why they are now paying attention to what they're cooking with and how that impacts like overall health and and wellness. Well, what if we tried that same angle, but we did it in a carousel? Or what if we tried that same angle with um uh, you know, more diverse representation, someone who's, you know, in their 60s versus in their 20s. You know what I'm saying? So like find the find the winning piece of what you're doing and then iterate on it because what's gonna happen is you're gonna avoid that creative fatigue. At the same time, you're getting that repetition in that winning message, which is what you want, that um, you know, is obviously resonating. So I would say, you know, if you have that, you know, if you're looking at your own account or, you know, you're you're a freelancer or agency looking at a potential uh prospects account or an existing client's account, if you have, you know, some winning creative, then that's like your ticket into scaling, right? So like now what can we look at? How can we pick this apart? I'm kind of gonna go off on a tangent here, but we're creating this thing right now, and it's called like just, I mean, it's not fancy, like creative log, right? Where basically what it is is it's like an ongoing log that we are summarizing our results for all of these different pieces of creative that we're doing and why we're making the decisions that we're doing. So this angle worked really well with this hook, but not with this hook. And it's just a it's a log that just keeps going and going and going forever and ever. So that when we come up, when we're um developing creative for a new campaign, we can go back to our log and we can say, we want to run this angle with this hook. Have we ever done this before? Or last time we did this, how did this perform? Or what new iterations or variations can you help us come up with based on the data that we had around a similar campaign that we ran in the past? So it's basically just like this monster log of anything and everything that we've ever done with creative so that we can go back to it and talk to it and and get it to help us make better decisions moving forward. So yeah, that's um that's something cool. Like I I I guess that's how we're thinking now. It's like, how can we just keep compounding on everything that we're doing over time in order to make better creative decisions?

SPEAKER_00 14:34

Yeah, no, I think that's super important. And do you reserve or how much budget do you typically reserve for like that testing versus like how much is going into just the you know core campaigns? And does that look different whether it's like a new brand or maybe even another way of saying it, like a brand that you just onboarded, do you usually invest more into that testing process?

SPEAKER_02 14:54

For sure. Yeah, I think like once we're settled in with a brand, you know, I want to go, I'm you know, don't quote me 100% on this, but I want to say we're we're reserving about, you know, depending on the brand and depending on the spend between like on average, like I don't know, 15 to 20% uh at all times where we're just testing something new. Like this is uh yeah, this is a new angle we came up with, like let's put some spend into it. Um, whereas, yeah, when we first start off with a brand, I mean, 100% of like, you know, nearly 100% of what we're doing is testing, you know, in the first, especially like one to two months. We look at everything out at a quarter when we think about, you know, how we want to plan strategically. And so everything is, you know, everything that we do, there's a plan for a quarter, and then we are breaking it down into like bi-weekly decisions when it comes to organic or paid. So yeah, so it really comes down to like in the beginning of a brand, like we're working with a brand right now. Actually, the call that I was on prior to this is a brand, and it's not a very like it's a young brand, like a new brand. And we're going back and forth with the founder, and you you I'm sure you can relate to these conversations, and he wants to just run conversion campaigns, and we're like, Yeah, okay. Nobody knows what this product is. Um, we don't have, we don't have an audience. Um, everything we're doing right now is testing, and we have to give ourselves a little bit of time because the the the mistake that I see the smaller brands making is they think they know what their customer wants, needs, etc. Um and there's this thing called founder's bias where you know you're like, okay, well, that's what you know to be true. That's why you created the product, but not everybody thinks the same way you do and has that same thought process around, oh, I have this need, I I created this product, right? So we are spending like we have to take a step back and understand that everything that we're doing right now is a test. Meta-ads have never been run for this brand. Like this, there's no historical data whatsoever. So um, you know, in those cases, 100% of what we're doing is obviously testing, you know, um, largely for the first two to three months of where we're building, we're starting to build this foundation and like I said, starting to, you know, um build the essence of that creative testing log that I uh that I told you about. Um, so we can start to learn what is obviously resonating with people in terms of those pieces that are capturing their attention, you know, getting them to engage, flowing through to a product uh PDP page, you know. So yeah, I'd say in the beginning it's largely 100% testing unless they unless they've run something prior that we can learn off of that we know they have some winners there.

SPEAKER_00 17:43

And I I find a lot of owners don't necessarily like respect that first two or three months that you are putting into that testing, kind of like you just said, that one client's like, I just want to start conversion campaigns right away and you see how many sales we generate. And if they don't have a lot of data on that, especially I think like a good nuance is paid media versus anything they might have done organically or anything they've got like direct traffic-wise. Like that's always good to know that there is some type of product market fit or some type of demand, or that you know, just like in some sense the website is working to drive sales. But running paid media and what works there is so much different than what works for people who are just like coming into the brands from like organic search or direct traffic affiliates, whatever it may be. And really understanding the exact just like way to phrase those value propositions and how to really like layer them in a paid media sense is so much different than anything that may have happened prior to launching those paid media campaigns. I remember I worked with one brand who had that same type of thing that you were talking about, that kind of like founder's bias where they thought they knew exactly what their customers wanted, and I asked them to give me their top two or three value propositions, and they gave me a list of ten value propositions. And I'm like, can you trim this down in any any shape or form? They're like, no, all ten of these are important. And you could just, you know, clearly tell that they hadn't really run a lot of paid media campaigns who understand that you can't talk about all those ten things, especially if you're gonna run if you want to run conversion campaigns. Yeah, when you have that type of mindset or just like that long list of value props and you don't really know what to focus on, that's like the perfect use case to do all that testing for those two or three months. And as I'm sure you know, Natasha, spending time doing the testing for two or three months so that you know exactly what to do in month four, maybe month three, where you actually will have um ROI efficient marketing campaigns, paid media campaigns, save so much more money than starting with a conversion campaign, losing a ton of money, maybe even losing a lot of resources, building that initial conversion creative, and then having to start all all from month two kind of like fresh. And that's the I know owners are always like really eager to get started, but they don't realize how much money they're actually losing by not being methodical with that process.

SPEAKER_02 20:00

Yeah, I mean, yeah, these are tough conversations, these are tough conversations and and to be um, you know, no shade to any founders who are listening, but there's a reason why we yellow flag founder-led marketing within brands and don't always take on those brands. It's because they're coming at the they're coming at this from a different angle than a senior marketing leader. Um, and they just don't have this understanding that it's not, I mean, gone are the days when you just turn on meta ads and just start making sales. I mean it just doesn't happen anymore, you know? So yeah, there is this period of time where we're just trying to get an audience. Like we don't have one, you know, we don't, we don't have any data. You have maybe sentiment that you've pulled from markets that you've done when you were developing this product, you know, boots on the ground. But we don't have any real data. There's no, there's not enough, even enough traffic going to your website to know how people are even interacting with your, you know, with your product pages or anything like that. Like we don't have anything to go off of. So all we have is from the founder's perspective, all they have is what they feel to be true. But again, that's where that bias comes in. And there's a difference between knowing how to establish those angles and that winning creative on meta as opposed to just being able to talk about your product and why you create it and why it's so great. It doesn't, it doesn't translate over like that. Yeah, I mean, it's a tough, it's a tough position to be in as a marketer. And you're like, why did you hire us? You know, um, we've been doing this for many, many brands. And over, I don't know, we've like our company, we're 12 years old. Like, we're not, it's not like we just started doing this yesterday, you know. Um, how many meta ads, uh how many brands have you grown through meta ads as a founder? You know, some have, but some marketing people have gone to great products and and got into that side of things. But most founders are people who creative a product out of their own needs. So it's hard for them to like take a step back. But if you're working with the right people and you can put the trust in them. And also, I think, too, like obviously understanding why your freelancer or your agency is making the decisions they're making, good communication explanation goes a long way.

SPEAKER_00 22:20

Yeah, no, I think that's really true. Definitely setting expectations properly and just communicating the reasons why we're being methodical with this process. I had the opportunity last year to be like, I guess, perfect in the way that I view it in terms of like really spending all that time testing, growing some organic presence first, and then launching the paid media ads afterwards. And that was by far the most successful paid media launch I've had with a client because they actually gave us the time to test everything appropriately. And when we launched those paid media campaigns, we knew exactly what was going to work and what wasn't, as opposed to having to spend so much money on conversion campaigns that aren't working and wasting more budget than some of those value prop testing that you can do initially. And then once you know that, it makes all the all the months, the years after that so much easier to like grow and scale with paid media.

SPEAKER_02 23:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:11

I've had some brands who run conversion campaigns for eight or nine months and then still don't know exactly what is and isn't working just because they haven't like put in the time to do that methodical, methodical research and testing.

SPEAKER_02 23:24

Yeah, there's there's no shortcuts. I always tell people, I'm like, we are not like we're not doing something unique as an agency. The way we do it is unique though. Like when you look at how you go about this and that the systems and processes that you have in place in order to get to that point where you can scale and you're, you know, you're building that direct-to-consumer revenue on the website, and you're having the halo effect across Amazon and and or whatever other channels that you're using. It all comes down to process. Like there's a reason why we've invested like two and a half years rebuilding our processes as an agency and why we revise at least one of our processes every quarter. The processes are everything, you know, like for an agency, taking your learnings from, you know, all of the work that you've done, and then being able to say, okay, how can we apply this to, you know, this, this brand, X brand, you know? How can we, um, how can we methodically go about this um based on everything that we've learned? And yeah, there's no shortcut. It's not, we don't agencies don't like turn around and like press some magic button behind their desk and be like, oh yeah, we just scaled this brand to 10 million. Like there's no, there are no secrets. That's the thing. There, there are no secrets. So it's just about the way that the way that you go about that. And yeah, obviously, uh, as it pertains to what we're talking about, a lot of that now has to do with creative and and a creative testing process and the feedback loops. And um I'm really big on like I'm really, really big on like the same team working on creative as is media buying. Now I don't that wasn't always the case, of course, but now I do think that there's an unlock there with regards to like the feedback loops and the speed to test and iterate. So it's not impossible to do with with two agencies collaborating. It's just inevitably there's more back and forth, more communication, and delayed timelines. That's all. So it's not impossible. If they have great processes, then great. But there is something to be said about the same team running the creative testing process as is doing the media buying.

SPEAKER_00 25:43

That's a really good point, Natasha. And like you just said, I think it's even more important in 2026 to have your media buying and creative teams really interconnected. They don't necessarily have to be through the same agency or through the same partner, but they definitely need to be talking to each other. And one thing that I say about marketing in general, because everyone out there is looking for hacks or the next the next gimmick that's gonna get them to 10 million, 50 million dollars in revenue, whatever that number may be. But the most important thing in marketing is to just be thoughtful with your strategy. There might be quicker ways of doing it, but at the end of the day, it's all just a methodical, consistent process of doing the fundamentals right every single day and making sure everyone on the team is on the same page so the strategy can feel cohesive both internally and it into the end user or audience that you're targeting and serving the ads to.

SPEAKER_02 26:38

No, I mean all of marketing is just coming up with the hypothesis, putting it out into the market, testing it, seeing how it goes, and then making more decisions based off of those results. It doesn't matter if we're talking about paid ads, if we're talking about organic, if we're talking about email marketing, your website, literally any of these things. It's like marketing 101 from university. If you went to university, most people in this industry haven't. Um, but yeah, um, it's yeah, there's just the you want to know, and I'll I really like something that you said there. I was a brand, and geez, I would just love to be brand side one of these days again. Like I started my career brand side, and then I've it's been so long because I've been in the agency space for so long. But one of these days I'd love to go back brand side and be the person who works with the agencies and just start out and ask the questions that I know that are so um that are so important. Like, what do you do with when things don't go to plan? So if we do this and it fails, walk me through your next steps. Like, what is going to happen from there? And I and I hey, actually, we have this happening with a client right now. To be honest, we did a launch a month ago and it just hasn't gone well. Like it just really has not gone well. And um, yeah, I think it's a great question. Like collaborating with a client now. It's on like, okay, like what are our next steps? Okay, here's what we're gonna do. You know, here's here's you know what we're gonna change, here's what we need to keep the same because we haven't had long enough to understand whether or not this is, you know, uh this is really a problem, or you know, if there's just, you know, one piece of this that we that we can change. So um I think really understanding, you know, and and sorry we keep saying process, but it it does come back to, okay, well, APA campaign like shifts a bit, and what's the what is your process around that? Like, how are we gonna, how are we gonna handle that um as a team? How are we gonna collaborate and work through that together? And I think there's also, and this kind of ties back to your to what something you said about like misconception that we just have the answers. We don't have the answers. We do have the understanding about what should come next, though. So um, because there is no like canned solution for any brand, I don't care if you, even if you just like specialize in an eight vertical, you know, hey, we work with we work with D2C snack brands. That's all we do. Okay, great. Well, how much variation is there in D2C snack brands? Like there is a lot of variation in like audience and even just around like, okay, are you like a vegetarian snack brand? Are you a meat? I know we work with like a 100% meat snack brand, you know, it's like, well, obviously those are wildly different and like the the same, you know, the same plan is not gonna work for this one and this one. So um, yeah, I think just of that the understanding that marketers, like the best, the best question we can ask is, well, what do we do with this information? What comes next? How do we, how do we use this information in order to make better decisions moving forward? And being able to collaborate on like this is so important when it comes to that creative because we're what you don't want to get into is just bring uh a partner on for creative that's just like 10 creatives a month, we're just gonna deliver them to your inbox. Like all these solutions out there about hey, just pay X dollars per month and you're just gonna get 10 pieces of UGC. Well, like what you know, just just getting 10 pieces of UGC every month is not necessarily like that's not strategy. Like, well, why are you what is the UGC? You know, if it's just if it's just random and it's not based on anything, then that's not helpful to anyone either. So yeah, there's so many, there's so many factors to think about the brand side, just like understanding, you know, where to invest, where to put your money, um, and and what are the most important things. But I think we've kind of hit the nail on the head um when it comes to what you need to be considering, what's important about creative and how that relates to um, I mean, these days everything, everything you're doing from a marketing perspective is really like based on creative, you know.

SPEAKER_00 30:28

Absolutely. Um, one thing I wanted to get to before we kind of wrap up here is just kind of getting your take on AI in the creative process. Do you believe AI is the only way to develop the creative volume you need in 2026?

SPEAKER_02 30:41

The way that we use AI in our creative process is um in our ideation phase. So, so for instance, um we like let's say I'm talking to Claude and I'm telling Claude, okay, this is this is the client, this is the product, these are we talked about those value props and and point of differentiation earlier. Um, feeding it all the information about the brand, you know, brand guide, tone, tone of voice, um, the personas, all everything that we have, everything that we develop in our strategy at the onset of relationship with the client. Um so that we've basically like built out this. Um we've built out a like a um, you know, a full profile of like who this client is with Claude, for instance. Um the next step for us is we need to now build this into, okay, here's how we're gonna structure campaigns at top of funnel, mid-funnel, bottom of funnel, nurture. Um, here's what our our angles and our formats, et cetera, are all going to be. We then want to create, you know, we want to start with three angles at each stage of the funnel or something like that. And then basically we're utilizing AI. Like we've gave, we've given it all this input. Like we've told it about the brand, we've told it about the customers, we've we've really built that out. And now it can help us basically just take that and plug that into what our creative test is going to be. So that's how we use AI. What we don't currently use AI for is actual asset creation. And there certainly are people that do. Obviously, there are um people, agencies, uh, you know, SaaS programs, etc., that you can just hey, input your product and we'll generate X number of credits. We're not currently using it like that. Um, we are, I mean, we're still finding that we're getting those ads are not getting um or organic posts, um, are not getting the um, you know, the engagement and the performance that we would want when we when we have tested it. So right now, that's just not something that we're using it for. I do not think that you need that in order to be successful um with creative volume. Because again, going back to the very first point that we touched on, creative volume doesn't have to mean that you're launching 50 creatives at a time. I mean, there's certainly some companies out there who are doing it. Um, but I mean, we're using real people to um to build those creatives. So to give you an example of how we would do this, if we have a creator that's going to um film a piece of content for us or film content for us, um, we are going to give them, you know, in one shot, we're gonna ask them to do multiple angles, multiple hooks, multiple CTAs. We are gathering a huge bank of raw footage, right? Anytime that we engage a creator. And I mean, I don't when I say creator, I don't mean influencer, although those could be a part of the equation. I'm also I'm just talking about you like just creators, right? We have our own team of creators and work with external creators, but anytime we get them to film something, we are getting multiple iterations of it so that when we go to run the test, we're gonna edit one piece of content at the beginning that's gonna be included in our test. But when we need the iteration, it's already filmed. They filmed it at the same time as they filmed the first one. Do you know what I mean? So it's like, well, all we have to do is go and change out that first five seconds, the hook. But change the first five seconds, done. It's uh, you know, the edit takes no time at all. Um, so there's different ways that you can uh, you know, obviously incorporate AI into what you're doing when it comes to a creative test. If you're if you're a small brand and you're managing this yourself and you don't know where to start, um, yeah, do what we do. Like feed, feed um AI everything you know to be true, all the data that you have, and then work on, hey, I have these ideas for these angles. Can you help me concept these out into briefs or creators and get your starting point? And then, yeah, when you engage people to film content for you, make it worth your while and don't just get them to film, oh, I'm it's $500 for one reel. Like, no. Number one, you want all the raw footage, build up build a bank of content um uh categorized by your angles, hooks, and CTAs within Google Drive, wherever you're storing your files, and that you can go back to and you can pull from and you can make quick edits. Um, I mean, you can use AI to make those edits as well if you want to, but when it comes to I'm I'm just we're we're not using AI for to to like AI avatars and videos and I mean like AI imagery, I don't know, like that that's just not the type of content that we see performing. So um we're not using it like that. And I don't I don't think you need AI to develop the creative for you um at skill, but you probably do need it to do the planning um and to help you with the testing process um at the onset, I would say. That's my opinion.

SPEAKER_00 35:49

Yeah, no, I know we I think that kind of like comes full circle almost. Like, I guess something we've been hitting on consistently throughout this is just like the process of things. And the real time, the most amount of time has always been in the research and the planning of the creative strategy. And so using AI to speed that up or just make it so much more efficient, that's really where AI, at least in my opinion, um, has the most value. Because at the end of the day, it doesn't take like that much time to like design an image in Photoshop, or to make a UPC um video if you have the script and the talking points that you order need. It's just like all that before work that really is the time sucks. So making that more efficient makes everything so much faster and better without having to just have a bunch of AI output for for the sake of it.

SPEAKER_02 36:38

For sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, um there's AI has a place. I and honestly, if you're working with anyone who's not using AI to some degree, that's a question mark for me. I mean, I don't like right, like today, I mean, for them, for an agency or a freelancer, what not not to be integrating it into um what they're doing at all is strange to me. I I um because I mean for us, it's like, oh, we have more time, obviously, to work on the um the pieces that AI can't do because we are utilizing it over here for what it can do. Um, so you you end up, I mean, I think you end up getting a better output um from your partner if they're using it in the right way. So um I know like as an agency, we're in the middle of a $30,000 investment into AI right now, um, in terms of like how to integrate it strategically into the agency for reporting and um, you know, dashboards and all of these things that are meaningful to our clients that they want um that we want to be able to customize out there that you know doesn't exist in the SaaS. They all have seem to have all the reporting programs seem to have issues and they're just not quite exactly what we want. So we're just building our own with AI now. Um, you know, just things like that where it's like if if you um there's all these strategic ways to integrate AI into what you're doing that doesn't have to take away from doesn't have to take away from the creative, it can just add and and allow you more resources to be able to commit to yeah, real people filming videos and like I don't know about you, but I'm like these ads out there. I saw one this morning, I'm like, oh God, um, who's in charge of this? It was like there's this ad that I got delivered, I guess, because I'm like a 33-year-old woman, and apparently everyone's losing their hair in their 30s now. I don't know. Anyway, there's this ad, and it's like this this woman, and I'm getting to learn all sorts of them now where, you know, they'll be like a before and after, right? Like we've all seen them, right? And it's like, okay, so for this one, it's like a woman, like the top of her head in her kitchen, and she's like, you know, her hair's obviously really thin and she's got like a frown on her face, and the one right next to her is in the exact same position in the kitchen, but she's smiling and her hair looks full, and like the same cups are on the countertop in the background, like the background's the exact same. And you're like, come on, like just give me a real person like sharing their real authentic experience. Like it's so frustrating as a consumer, and just don't go there as a brand. Just be authentic, like just have real people talking about your product. It's not, there's you know, efficient and cost-effective ways of doing it.

SPEAKER_00 39:19

That's really great context on how to use AI to enhance the process instead of replacing it. I absolutely agree with all of that. Well, that's all the time that we have for today. But Natasha, did you want to tell people how to get in touch if they have any more questions or want to work with you?

SPEAKER_02 39:32

Yeah, cool. Yeah. Um, Mar Media Group, we are a social and email agency. So um pretty much anything and everything that falls under the banner of those two things is something that um we work with direct-to-consumer product brands who are focused on, yeah, building that direct-to-consumer revenue through their websites. Um, we are, you know, full creative team, full uh, you know, ad buying team, email team. And yeah, we're, I guess the the primary thing that that we're looking for with clients is an opportunity to create these efficiencies that we've talked about today, that to be able to come in and you know, find a better way to get a better result for them based on the way that um all of these things are working together. So when we look at organic, we look at paid, and we look at email and just content overall. Um, yeah, how can we create more efficiencies there? How can we get um more in tune with your customer? Um, and yeah, ultimately create content that um converts them into paying customers. That's the idea. So yeah, that's what we do. If and and if we can be of help um with a creative audit coming in, having a look at your ad library, your organic um content library, you can always book a consultation with me and I will run a creative audit for you and give you some ideas about how you can narrow in uh for better performance.

SPEAKER_00 40:53

Thanks for coming on to the show, Natasha. It was an awesome conversation. Really glad I was able to bring you on as a guest. Feel free to check out Mar Media Group. Definitely a great shop to partner with, or feel free to reach out to Natasha on LinkedIn. She posts a lot of fantastic LinkedIn content as well. So even if you just want to follow her for that, definitely highly recommend. Thanks for tuning in. Hope everyone has a great day.