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How AI Is Rebuilding Every DTC Creative Team · Scalability School

0:16
But the act of concepting is basically to try to find the like higher level themes
0:21
that are worth pursuing, that are worth creating five or six or 10 briefs around.
0:25
And so it really is around like what themes are working, what themes are not
0:28
working, and how do I explore ideas at a concept level so that I can basically go
0:34
and create like a few versions of that concept.
0:36
And so that was like by far, by far the most common use case.
0:39
But there's one paradigm shift that they make is that if you can get an agent to go
0:44
and do five minutes of work for you, great, then try to do 10, then try to do 15.
0:47
Keep trying to push that until you have an agent
0:49
doing work for you for a longer period of time.
0:52
Hooks are so much deeper than this like tacky pattern
0:55
interrupt that you might do in the first three seconds.
0:57
It's almost like the hook is like the DNA for the whole thing.
1:00
And if the team gets good at hooks, they've got it all figured out.
1:04
Like everything basically becomes downstream of being really good at hooks.
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Maybe it's not like this month, next
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month, maybe not this year, maybe not next year.
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But I think we're getting to the point where that's
1:14
the only job left is being an allocator of AI tokens.
1:17
And if you're not doing that job, I don't think there is a job.
1:27
And now let's take a listen to the Scalability School podcast.
1:31
Welcome to another episode of the Scalability
1:32
School podcast, everyone's favorite podcast.
1:35
Thanks to all the tens of listeners we have.
1:37
Super stoked to have you.
1:38
We're very popular.
1:39
I've heard we're the number one podcast in
1:40
marketing in Poland, Google told me recently.
1:43
So thank you to all the polls out there that are listening
1:46
to this bad boy and implementing it as quickly as possible.
1:50
Today, legend of the industry.
1:53
Legend to me, who's also a great friend.
1:56
And I tried to email you recently and it came up with your shoelace email.
2:01
And I think if you have Reza's shoelace email,
2:03
that's like a sign that you're like a true friend.
2:05
You've known him for that long.
2:07
And I was thinking and I look back and the first time I emailed you, do you want to
2:11
take a date on the year, a guess on the year, Reza?
2:14
Must have been like 2017 or something like that.
2:18
2016, 2017.
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2017.
2:20
First time you and I traded emails.
2:22
2011.
2:23
No way.
2:24
Wow.
2:25
That's crazy.
2:26
Yeah.
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2011.
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And which is insane and also shows that we're old.
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So there you go.
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So we're glad to have Reza on today.
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We're talking about AI and creative.
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There's tons to get into here.
2:40
Super stoked to talk about it.
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Everybody's always excited on the podcast, of course.
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And Brad has a story.
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Brad actually has something he'd like to admit to you, Reza.
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This is the confessions part of the podcast.
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But by the way, this is not a sponsored episode by emotion or anything.
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We just really like love Reza and you guys are doing a ton of crazy stuff.
3:05
And I think I've been listening and hearing you talk about this a lot in terms of
3:07
AI and creative teams, what it means, you know, what AI, where we're headed and how
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people can really like make sure they're
3:14
thinking about this the right way in their organization.
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And so that's really what we're going to cover today.
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I know it sounds very general, but I promise tactic stuff is following from this.
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But first, Brad's, this is Brad's confession.
3:26
That was beautiful.
3:27
You should sing.
3:28
You need to sing more often.
3:29
Well, it's funny that you started with your story because
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when I do, when I type in Reza's email, I also get the shoelace.
3:35
And I originally started paying for motion in 2021.
3:39
And I was the idiot that after three months was
3:41
like, I just don't know how we're going to use this.
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Like I can't, I just like ads manager.
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We stopped using it.
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And yeah, like long story short, it's we use creative
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analytics every single day, all day and everything that we do.
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It's just like embarrassing that it took me like, well, that was that was 2021.
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We first started using motion.
4:02
After a couple months, we went off.
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And in the last two years, I literally like can't.
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It's like we just were perpetually involved in these dashboards.
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And so I'm embarrassed, which leads me to an
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like, I guess, like a starting point of the question.
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Am I alone?
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Or is there something that changed?
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Because like, I think we're going to we're going to go through this journey of
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we'll eventually get to AI in this conversation.
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But before AI, there was just like getting people to open up creative analytics.
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And so was there a was there a change that like started to
4:31
get people to care about creative analytics that you you saw?
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I feel like we've seen multiple like like something around Andromeda last year.
4:39
I know this wasn't necessarily a thing that tipped you over the edge, but like for
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whatever reason, towards the end of last year,
4:44
everyone just started talking about Andromeda.
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I think a lot of it was a little bit exaggerated, like
4:49
doom and gloom stuff to like YouTube videos and whatnot.
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But like, I think that that had a really big impact on people taking the concepts
4:59
that I think we've been talking about for a very long time seriously, which are
5:02
basically like the the classic motion POV is kind of crazy that like all this stuff
5:10
has changed and so much has happened in the last few years.
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Like the POV is still exactly as it was when we were first chatting about like why
5:16
we're building motion, which was that there was a gap between the people that are
5:21
like thinking about revenue and data and numbers
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and the people that are like producing the creative.
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So we noticed that those two disciplines were so far apart.
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And I think towards when we started working on motion 2020 2021, we saw a really
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big shift from basically like audience targeting being a really big part of media
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buying to like all of a sudden kind of felt like a bit overnight.
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The revenue lever started to just basically be creative and the algorithm was going
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to be creative and the algorithm was going to handle
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targeting and figure out who to put it in front of.
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And so our view at the time, and I think it just becomes more and more true every
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year is that those two disciplines really do need to merge into one, like the
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people thinking about driving revenue and analyzing
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data, they really got to get their creative caps on.
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And then the people that are producing creative, if they want to level up, if they
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don't just want to be like order takers that are just kind of producing stuff, then
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eventually, even like pre AI, we always had the view that if you're a creative
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person that just produces what other people tell
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you to produce, you're not creating a ton of value.
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Like as soon as you can articulate to someone, hey, go and make me this, executing
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that work is actually not that useful or valuable really.
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And so as a creative person, it's like, how do you rise
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up to a higher level of abstraction, create more value?
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And the best way to do that is to like, get your data caps on and like think about
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revenue and the impact of your work, which was
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like, a really empowering story to creative people.
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And I think we saw people come from both sides of it.
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But in particular, creative people are like, you know, I actually think they, they
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will win in in whatever is about to happen, because to have like, taste and
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judgment and like kind of an eye for good quality,
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creative is a lot more difficult to teach than it is to be like, hey, by the way,
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look at what happens with revenue and data and so
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on, like that is easier to wrap your head around.
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And so our view is like, could we build products to
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really help bridge the gap between those two worlds?
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And it just feels like every year since we started.
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The message of that idea reaches like a wider and wider and wider appeal, the the
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stat that recently just like starting to blow
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my mind, you guys know, we've been creating like,
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content and do a ton around like virtual events since the early days of motion.
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I think, Andrew, you're on the first virtual event we did.
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I think it was you.
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Nick Sharma and one other person, I don't remember who it was, but like the first
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like marketing idea we had for motion was like, hey, there's a lot going on.
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Like we got to do like long form stuff.
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Like, let's get a bunch of smart people together
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for an hour and do like a live event for an hour.
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People are still talking about it, you know.
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So I wasn't invited.
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He said smart people.
8:02
Yeah, that's right.
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That's why you weren't there.
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Smart people.
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Yeah.
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We did a creative trends event at the end
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of last year and it got 26,000 registrants.
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Just insane.
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Like I think that's kind of been our marker for like how wide appeal these ideas
8:20
are is like how many people show up to our events.
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So something's going on.
8:26
I think I think the idea that this collapsing of roles I think is not just true in
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our industry, but like it seems like in many, many industries where we're entering
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an era where if people, the individuals who can juggle what seem to be like
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opposing skill sets and bring them into one are just so valuable.
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So extremely valuable.
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So extremely valuable.
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And now like with the help of AI, like you can really extend the things that you're
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maybe not naturally as good at to basically be
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these more like polymath multi skill set individuals.
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And I think we're going to see a lot more of that.
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And just the fun, just the fun time to be doing anything.
9:10
Honestly, I think it's just such an exciting time to be living through.
9:12
I mean, so, okay, so you have so right now let's think about like, let's say I have
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a brand, let's say it's an eight figure
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brand and we sell water bottles or whatever.
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We go through and have hired maybe a couple creative strategists.
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We have people that are creative strategists.
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We have a designer and we have a couple of designers and we have a video editor.
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This seems to be like a typical setup now.
9:35
Okay.
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I'm like maybe creative director if you're lucky.
9:37
Right.
9:37
Or you're thinking about this, you know, in a bigger picture.
9:40
What do you think is advice that you would
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give to organizations that have this model?
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And like, how is this going to evolve even in the next six months?
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Because so much, I mean, already it's gone from like briefing to, you know, like
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people were putting together briefs, which
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obviously is still happening to a degree.
10:00
And then it's like you go out and create it.
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And I think there's still some of that that you're going out and, you know, you're
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creating the UGC or you're getting UGC back and all this.
10:07
But it seems like a lot of what these people they're doing now is they're like
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project managing to a degree with a
10:13
creative idea and looking at performance as well.
10:16
So they have to have paid social performance.
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Like I'm doing a search, I'm doing three searches now for creative strategists.
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And I sent candidates to each of these people and every one of them wrote me back
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and was like, what's their paid social experience?
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And I was like, yes, let me tell you about that.
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Like, I'm sorry, I didn't mention that.
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And they all want that.
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They want to have that because that's where they're headed.
10:33
So how does this team evolve?
10:35
Like, how do people build the right way in your opinion?
10:38
Yeah, it's an interesting question.
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It's also, I think, a question of timelines.
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I think there's so much that can be said about where we're headed with AI.
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And it's hard to say, like, how much of it is going to be
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applicable next week, next month, next quarter, this year.
10:53
Like, I think that's probably the piece to, like, whenever you hear any AI advice,
10:59
it's trying to figure out, like, you know, is this
11:01
something that, like, is going to be years in the making?
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Or, like, what do I actually do tomorrow or next week?
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I think the more useful, tactical, tomorrow, next week, next month type of ideas is
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probably less around reimagining the way org charts work.
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Right?
11:17
I think that will happen.
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I think we're going to have to reimagine org charts, but I don't think that is,
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like, the most important thing to do right now as,
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like, a business leader is to start reimagining org charts.
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The way that I think about it, and I've been trying to, like, start to instill this
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in our team, is that I think everyone's job at this point,
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I do think this is, like, this should be a next week thing.
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It's going to sound like a later this year thing, but
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I do believe this should be, like, a right now problem.
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Is that every individual, no matter what job role they have, I think the right way
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to think about our jobs right now is as allocators of AI tokens.
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And what I mean, the reason that's an interesting framing is that step one, there
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is a question of, like, what is my AI token consumption right now?
12:00
Like, I'm not being paid by the AI labs to say this.
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And by the way, you can use, like, a lot of
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tokens on some of these, like, subscription plans.
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It doesn't necessarily translate to burning lots of money.
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But the first question is, like, am I doing stuff
12:14
that translate into, like, AI token consumption?
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And that's the first place to start.
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If me or other people on the team are still not, like,
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deploying AI tokens for some body of work, that's wrong.
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Like, I think we should be doing something that involves, like, using up AI tokens.
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Then the next question is, like, is my return on AI token positive?
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Like, am I doing useful work?
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Am I doing valuable work?
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Am I, like, am I creating more value with these AI
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tokens that I'm spending versus whatever they're costing me?
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Which I think it's very hard to do poorly on that trade.
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Like, I think if you're deploying AI tokens to do any kind of work that you find is
12:57
interesting, chances are it's going to be really valuable.
12:59
But I think that is a good way to start thinking about things in this exact moment.
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The problem, the reason why people don't do it as much as they should be doing
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right now is that in order to get value out of AI, it takes some investment.
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It takes some time investment.
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You've got to learn a bit of vibe coding.
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You probably need to, like, do things you've not tried before.
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Like, the barrier to entry isn't, like, that's probably the hardest thing.
13:23
My sense is that we have extremely capable AI
13:28
models that have not been diffused into the economy.
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But it is, but they are real.
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And, like, you see it in the coding industry and the way that it's, like,
13:36
completely transformed that industry right now.
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Like, it's not a theory for that industry.
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Like, coding has forever changed.
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It is not the same job as it was even, like, 12 weeks ago.
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And I think that is going to be true for every other industry as well.
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So anyways, long answer to the question of, like, I don't think people should be,
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like, shuffling around their org charts right now.
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But every individual in whatever role they are in should ask the question of, like,
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if I was forced to spend $1,000 or $2,000 in some kind of AI credit consumption
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over the next few weeks, what might I do with that?
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Even if you don't want to give your employees free reign to go and burn a few
14:16
thousand dollars, which I think is money well spent.
14:18
But even if not, like, at least get them to, like, run that as a hypothetical.
14:22
Like, if you had to spend $2,000 in AI credits, like, what would you do?
14:26
And I think the answer to that question is basically
14:29
the answer to what people should be doing right now.
14:32
It's like, force yourself to think about enlarge blocks of AI tokens and then think
14:36
about what's the most meaningful work you can do with that.
14:39
We can talk about certain examples.
14:40
I can give you one that I did the other day that was quite expensive in terms of,
14:44
like, token processing, but I found it very useful.
14:46
Yeah, I would love to hear the example.
14:48
Okay.
14:49
One quick sidebar.
14:50
Sure.
14:51
I've been trying this entire, like, last couple of weeks to
14:53
just, like, force everybody to, like, go into Cloud Coork.
14:56
And just, like, whenever you're about to do something, go there first.
15:00
And, like, I know that sounds like you're not outsourcing all of your thinking and
15:03
decision making to this, but it's like you're using it as a sparring partner to,
15:06
like, help you get closer to the right decision.
15:08
And I just, like, I just keep getting random HTML visualizations from the team.
15:12
It's like, okay, like, this makes me, this helps me understand this better.
15:15
And it helps me, like, think of the process to even get to this in the first place.
15:19
So I've been seeing that show up a little bit more
15:21
frequently with our team, just trying to, like, push that.
15:23
And it's been fun to see.
15:25
But tell me how you burned a bunch of money.
15:28
Okay.
15:29
So our AI agent, which, by the way, I think this is the year of, last year was the
15:35
year of overhyped products because AI wasn't really there.
15:39
And this year is the year of, like, underhyped products that really work.
15:43
We have launched an AI agent called Runeth.
15:48
We've not really talked about it.
15:49
If you log into Motion, you will see it.
15:51
Our goal is to actually not make a splash about it, but
15:54
we just kind of release the agent into our little universe.
15:58
And we kind of want to take the opposite approach of really big, splashy launches.
16:02
But the thing is completely taken off.
16:04
When we see our usage metrics on Runeth, it's just like a vertical line in terms of
16:09
the amount of usage that people are doing on the agent.
16:12
And I can't remember the time period I looked at it.
16:14
It may have been in the last, like, few weeks.
16:17
People have exchanged a total of 40,000 messages with Runeth.
16:21
Just to give you a scale of, like, how far this thing has gotten.
16:24
And I was like, okay, there's no way I'm going to read 40,000 messages.
16:29
But, like, what if I could understand what the hell is going on here?
16:31
Like, what are people asking?
16:32
What do they want?
16:33
And, like, what are some themes and trends?
16:35
And I'm like, I could probably get AI to go and read
16:38
every single one of those conversations and come back to me.
16:43
But obviously, you don't go and just, like, dump
16:45
40,000 messages into, like, ChatGPT or whatever.
16:49
Like, blow up the context from this.
16:50
So, like, Vibe Coded some stuff with Cloud Code.
16:52
We came up with a plan together of how it
16:54
was going to go and, like, do it one by one.
16:57
By the way, I did this, like, several weeks ago.
16:59
And I just had one agent do it.
17:01
So, it took, like, a few hours.
17:02
And I felt like an idiot now for doing that last time.
17:05
Because now what you could do is, like, create a swarm of agents.
17:08
Right?
17:09
So, I just told Claude, can you spin up, like, 40 agents?
17:12
And then you just divide the work.
17:13
And then they just, like, attacked it.
17:15
And they were done in, like, 20 minutes.
17:18
That was, I can't remember what it cost.
17:20
But it wasn't cheap because I was using an expensive model.
17:22
Like, I really did want to understand what's going on there.
17:24
But, like, that is an example of the scale
17:27
of work that is possible to do right now.
17:30
But it's a different paradigm than, I think,
17:34
ChatGPT has, like, screwed things up for us a little bit.
17:37
Where we are used to sitting there and talking
17:40
with AI back and forth as, like, a chat partner.
17:43
Which I actually think, like, that is a great place to start.
17:46
It creates a ton of value.
17:48
But Sequoia, if we can link to the, I'll send you
17:51
guys the link and we could share it in the show notes.
17:54
But Sequoia released this article where they basically claimed that we have
17:58
achieved AGI for, like, practically speaking, we have achieved it.
18:03
And the framing that they were describing
18:05
was around this idea of long horizon agents.
18:08
So, like, how do you set up a work environment for an
18:11
agent to go and do work for, like, an hour or two or three?
18:14
And I think that is the paradigm shift that when we start thinking about the world
18:18
that way, it starts to be like, okay, this is really powerful.
18:21
Like, the kind of work outputs that I can get
18:25
done from AI starts to be really interesting.
18:27
As opposed to, like, going back and forth and talking
18:30
about, you know, what's the history of this or that, you know?
18:33
All right, friends.
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We have.
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20:09
I mean, give us the tea, Rezo.
20:11
What were some of the things that, you know, we're being, what were, like, thematic
20:13
things that people were talking about it with?
20:15
Yeah, what was cool is, like, it gave me some insights about things that,
20:18
what people were trying to do that, that it couldn't work.
20:21
And so people are trying to do a lot of image generation,
20:24
video generation that we don't support yet, but we will soon.
20:28
But probably the biggest one is around concepting.
20:31
So I think there, there is this, when we think about the creative strategist job,
20:35
we've had this view for a long time that downstream of concepting is basically
20:40
producing briefs that other people are going to execute.
20:42
But the act of concepting is basically to try to find
20:45
the, like, higher level themes that are worth pursuing,
20:49
that are worth creating five or six or 10 briefs around.
20:53
And so it really is around, like, what
20:55
themes are working, what themes are not working,
20:57
and how do I explore ideas at a concept level so that I can basically go and
21:03
create, like, a few versions of that concept.
21:06
And so that was, like, by far, by far the most, the most common use case.
21:09
But it's super interesting, because we're starting to see the agent, like, part of
21:13
our view on this was that on a long enough time horizon,
21:16
the agent is going to disrupt our core business,
21:18
because you might spend a lot of time inside motion,
21:21
poking around, looking at reports, trying to gather insights.
21:24
But now you can just, like, tell Runneth to
21:26
do it, and it'll go and, like, gather stuff.
21:28
So, like, it did a lot of, one of the things that we've done in preparation for
21:33
this moment is that when you connect your ad account to motion,
21:37
when I say, like, underhyped products, like, this is kind of what I mean,
21:40
we're not loud enough about this, but our
21:42
view is that, like, we have such a big community,
21:44
and once people start to experience the value, like, it'll just spread organically.
21:49
It's not worth us, like, shouting from the rooftop.
21:51
So we're spending a lot of time trying to get our customers to adopt this stuff.
21:54
But basically, when you connect your ad account to motion,
21:57
what we immediately start doing is, like, watching every single one of your videos,
22:01
and we're summarizing them.
22:02
So you know how people are, like, have figured
22:03
out that you can upload your video to Gemini,
22:05
and you say, hey, Gemini, like, watch this video.
22:08
And, like, as soon as you connect your ad account to motion,
22:10
like, we are off to the races doing that for you,
22:13
processing every video, summarizing every video,
22:15
most importantly, like, categorizing every
22:17
video based on AI tags that we know really matter,
22:21
not, like, was there a dog in this image, in this ad or not,
22:24
but, like, what were the hook tactics used here?
22:26
What messaging angles are found here?
22:28
What visual formats?
22:29
Like, the key elements that we know creative strategists use to test.
22:33
And so all of this rich data is, like, ready and
22:37
cleaned and just, like, perfectly LLM friendly.
22:40
And so when you type into motions agent some kind of question,
22:43
like, we've already prepared all of that so it can fly, right?
22:46
Like, I think when a lot of people are taking this use case
22:48
and trying to vibe code their own agent,
22:51
which I think is an excellent idea, by the way, everybody should do it.
22:54
Because then when they come to what we have, they'll appreciate it more.
22:58
I actually think there's, like, an appreciation gap that you really get.
23:01
Like, when we talk to users that have vibe coded their own systems,
23:05
like, oh, my God, this is crazy.
23:07
But when we talk to people that haven't done that yet, like, oh, this sounds fun.
23:10
When all of that is clean and ready to go, then the agent can really, really fly.
23:16
So that was another really big use case is people asking questions like,
23:19
hey, what's working?
23:20
What's not working?
23:21
And, like, giving it more and more challenging questions.
23:24
And, like, it delivers and does a good job.
23:27
And so, like, what I was trying to figure out was that
23:29
where are the places it gets stuck?
23:32
Or where are the places where, like, based on the conversation patterns,
23:35
it seems to be going well or it seems to not be going well?
23:38
And the parts where it didn't go well, what can we learn from that?
23:43
And, like, there's just so many interesting use cases, I think,
23:46
around processing large, a very large body of data
23:50
that we couldn't possibly do right now.
23:54
But it would give us so much more clean information
23:57
to make better quality decisions.
23:59
So a lot of interesting stuff that I think this year,
24:03
people are going to be pretty blown away how different it was to last year,
24:06
where last year is, like, everyone was kind of made to feel dumb,
24:11
all these really, like, splashy videos and, like, expensive courses and whatnot.
24:16
But I think this is the year where, like, people are going to experience the,
24:19
like, wow, stuff is real.
24:21
It works.
24:21
I can't believe it.
24:22
So let me ask you this.
24:23
So basically you have this pattern of, you know,
24:27
right now people are really looking for iterations and,
24:31
or rather, sorry, personas and new angles to go after and everything.
24:35
That's, like, a huge part of what, you know,
24:37
you're trying to do as a meta advertiser.
24:39
There's this shift and it sort of, like, started when you were, like, launch ads
24:43
and then you were using Motion to look at creative analytics.
24:45
You're like, oh, that makes sense.
24:46
And now it's, like, the next phase of it, which is, like, yes,
24:48
you're looking at creative analytics,
24:49
but it's also then unlocking the analytics now is not just numbers,
24:53
but it's also the concepts.
24:54
And so that's unlocking these new ideas and new concepts
24:57
and new groups of people you can get in front of.
24:58
We know with creative diversity that style is important as well.
25:03
So is the next phase of this, you think, like,
25:05
we'll be able to go and not only unlock new angles and, you know,
25:09
that type of idea, but look at what's trending on certain social platforms
25:13
and be able to weave that in.
25:14
And then it's pulling in that along with what people are responding to on your ads
25:19
and it's saying, hey, by the way, you should run this ad.
25:20
And I think that's what Meta's trying to do,
25:22
but they're, like, not going to do that very well themselves.
25:26
But is that where we're going, in your opinion, on this,
25:30
you know, in terms of, like, what the next phase of it is?
25:33
Well, yeah, and to add, like, one more thing before that,
25:35
it's like you said we have this sequoia,
25:37
like, they're saying you should think about how to do two to three hours worth.
25:41
It's like, okay, I pull up Replit and I'm saying, do this,
25:44
and I think I have this super long plan.
25:45
I'm going to hop in the sauna and I'll be back in 20 minutes.
25:48
And I look and it's like, it ran for five.
25:50
I'm like, shit, okay, I don't even know how to get there.
25:53
So I'm curious, like, as a part of that,
25:55
it's like, is the way that we do work right now,
25:58
in D2C land specifically,
26:00
it's like, is there even things that AI can do in two to three?
26:03
Like, is there even enough to be done for to think in that way right now?
26:07
Or are they talking about, you know, like bigger, bigger projects
26:10
and we're just, we're just small fish.
26:11
So I don't know if you could somehow wrap that in.
26:13
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
26:14
So on the style piece, I think they're kind of related.
26:17
Is that, so one of our AI tags is called visual format.
26:21
That's the tag that we've kind of thought about as this,
26:24
like this kind of spans across brands
26:27
because like a podcast ad is a podcast ad
26:30
or like, you know, before and after us versus them.
26:33
Like these are the basically the formats that people are using.
26:36
So we do categorize those for all of your ads.
26:39
And we also have a very,
26:40
like our inspo product is one that we've been working on
26:43
quite a bit for the last six months.
26:45
And it's now very, very good, partly because we're tagging all of inspo as well.
26:49
So like not just, we're not just tagging all of your own creatives.
26:52
We're tagging the entire ad library.
26:53
We've taken a bit more of a curated approach where like,
26:56
there are lots of ads that are not interesting on the inspo library.
26:59
So we've tried to like rank the brands that we think do a good job,
27:02
but we're also watching all of those videos
27:04
and categorizing them based on visual formats.
27:06
So we have a pretty good pulse on what brands are shipping,
27:09
what visual formats are new or trending.
27:11
And most importantly, like what are the visual formats
27:13
that you have not tried yet, right?
27:15
Because if we can categorize all the visual formats
27:17
that other people are doing,
27:19
then we can just immediately give you the delta
27:21
of what your competitors are doing that you're not.
27:24
It seems we'll see if things change over time,
27:26
but it seems like right now,
27:28
the formula is basically something like
27:30
figure out what messaging angles work,
27:33
the kinds of messaging angles that if they work,
27:35
you could probably spend millions of dollars
27:37
against that messaging angle.
27:39
And then try to find as many visually diverse ways
27:43
of expressing that messaging angle
27:44
until either the messaging angle runs dry
27:48
or you've run out of like visual ways to express that.
27:51
And then just repeat and repeat and repeat
27:53
where you basically go from like big messaging anchor
27:56
one to the next and really floor it
27:59
in terms of the amount of like visual diversity
28:01
of ways that you can express that.
28:03
And so like in some sense,
28:06
there's like a simplicity in that formula
28:09
that like even that, you know,
28:11
it's so interesting that as an industry,
28:13
we are one foot into like the depths of AI
28:17
and then another foot into like,
28:19
wait, what's the right way to do marketing?
28:21
Like, you know, a lot of brands are trying
28:23
to get their bearings about this,
28:25
like these just like 101 marketing principles
28:28
that I actually think the more algorithm-based
28:30
the targeting becomes,
28:32
the more the principles of marketing
28:34
are just like kind of what has always worked.
28:36
As part of that, I think because of, you know,
28:38
the question you asked Brad about the like,
28:40
is there even like multiple hours of work?
28:42
I think it's helpful to think about that
28:44
as like a mental model,
28:46
but we have a lot of like five, 10,
28:49
15 minute chunks of work that we can get through
28:52
before we get to like deploying AI
28:54
that not just runs for two, three hours,
28:56
like it should just be running 24 seven.
28:58
You know, like there actually is no reason
29:00
why we don't get to a point soon
29:01
where AI is just kind of working around the clock.
29:04
But I think the idea of thinking about multi-hour work
29:08
is a good breaking of our chat GPT paradigm
29:11
where we, because like I had a big conversation
29:13
with a lot of our engineering team and product team
29:15
as we were designing the new version of the agent
29:18
that has completely taken off.
29:19
There was a trade-off between how fast it could be,
29:22
right?
29:22
People are like, you know,
29:23
people are going to get annoyed
29:24
if it has, if you have to wait like a minute,
29:26
they're so used to chat GPT,
29:28
like we're going to get killed
29:29
if they type in a question like,
29:31
please analyze my last 300 days worth of ads
29:35
and we don't give it an answer in like 10 seconds,
29:38
people are going to get pissed.
29:39
And I was like, no, people,
29:41
people probably wouldn't mind waiting
29:43
one, two, three, four minutes
29:44
if it was clear that like hours of work just got done,
29:49
that would have taken you hours,
29:50
like in that like two, three minute query.
29:52
And so I think that actually is like,
29:54
I really pushed our team to think about like,
29:56
it's actually the complete opposite.
29:58
It's not how fast can we get our agent to respond to you?
30:01
It's how long can we get it to work and be productive?
30:05
So like the question of latency
30:06
is like literally the opposite.
30:08
Like I don't want it to respond in 30 seconds.
30:10
I want it to go and do 10 hours worth of work for you
30:13
and for users to be happy with that 10 hours of work.
30:16
So it's more of like,
30:18
I think anybody in knowledge work,
30:21
if there's one paradigm shift that they make
30:24
is that if you can get an agent to go and do work,
30:27
five minutes of work for you, great.
30:28
Then try to do 10, then try to do 15.
30:30
Keep trying to push that
30:31
until you have an agent doing work for you
30:33
for a longer period of time.
30:35
I think it's useful to do all this vibe coding stuff,
30:38
but I will say not just us,
30:40
but like every buddy who's been building software
30:44
for the last year
30:45
now has like models that really work.
30:48
And so I think like software products
30:50
are just going to get so magical this year.
30:52
And so like for people who don't feel like
30:54
going through the learning curve
30:55
or figuring out cloud code in your terminal,
30:58
like basically it's all coming to you
31:00
in real time, really fast.
31:02
And I think people are going to be able
31:03
to skip the learning curve part of it,
31:06
but I think it's useful to experiment
31:08
and play and try things out.
31:10
But yeah, software products
31:11
are going to get magically good this year.
31:13
Can we dangle some use cases?
31:16
This doesn't need to become a motion pitch.
31:18
I have some, like I have a specific example
31:20
I can share to like kick this off of like,
31:22
if you logged in,
31:23
if you're connected to motion right now,
31:24
as an example,
31:25
and you could, you could,
31:26
before motion had the,
31:28
whatever version I have access to of the agent
31:30
in the chat window,
31:32
like before that was, that was in there,
31:34
you know, it's like you could,
31:34
you could use, to your point,
31:35
you could use Gemini
31:36
to analyze things one by one.
31:38
And then you could try to drop it
31:39
into cloud or chat
31:40
and you could try to like
31:41
stitch all these things together.
31:42
So it's like,
31:43
it's not like you need motion to do this.
31:44
I'm just saying it makes it
31:45
a little bit easier to do it.
31:46
Um, maybe, maybe more than a little bit,
31:48
but I think giving people
31:49
some maybe specific examples,
31:51
like where they can find extra value today.
31:52
So I'll share one.
31:53
I'm basically telling our entire team,
31:55
it's like, we should do this
31:55
for every single client today
31:57
because it's super easy to do.
31:59
And I already wrote the prompt for it.
32:00
My, my example.
32:01
So like we, we have clients that,
32:02
um, I think there's a lot of teams
32:04
that probably feel like,
32:05
hey, we're, we're kind of limited on assets.
32:07
And maybe we don't want to tiptoe
32:08
into video gen AI creators.
32:11
We think that's a leak,
32:12
whatever, whatever your opinion
32:13
is about creating it.
32:14
So like we have to do with what we have.
32:16
I think people get stuck thinking
32:17
if I'm going to iterate,
32:18
like I can't, I've got a video.
32:19
I've only have, I only have a two minute video.
32:21
I can't do that much with this.
32:22
And I think like that's terrible thinking
32:23
because you can do two minutes
32:24
is insane amount of footage
32:25
for like what you can do with that.
32:27
So I can share this prompt.
32:29
Maybe we could save it somewhere
32:29
for people to copy and paste
32:31
and drop it into motion.
32:32
But it's like,
32:33
take your top spending video
32:34
of the last 30 days
32:35
and just go ask it to iterate.
32:37
But you can be more specific
32:37
about how to iterate.
32:39
So it's like, take this video
32:40
using only the footage that's in here,
32:42
only the voiceover that's in here,
32:44
anything that's in the video,
32:45
and then come up with
32:46
a couple of different things.
32:47
One, how do I,
32:47
how do I change the visual hook
32:49
in a bunch of ways
32:50
to make it packaged up
32:51
like it's a new video?
32:52
Two, how do I rewrite
32:53
the narrative of this?
32:55
Like, is there something
32:55
later on in the video
32:57
that is more compelling as a hook
32:58
that you can pull up to the front,
33:00
but it changes kind of the narrative
33:01
and the framing of this?
33:02
Three, ditch the voiceover entirely.
33:04
Just make it an organic looking video.
33:06
It goes from two minutes
33:07
to being 15 second clips
33:08
and it just pops up
33:09
the different features on the screen.
33:11
And there's like a million,
33:11
like there's so many other ways
33:13
that you can do this.
33:14
And I've done this several times.
33:15
At some point last year,
33:16
I put together a case study
33:17
of us doing this very manually.
33:18
And we took an ad that's like,
33:20
the first time we launched it,
33:20
it spent 16 grand.
33:21
And by the end of the 60 iterations,
33:24
literal 60 iterations,
33:25
we made this ad,
33:26
it spent a million dollars
33:27
over the course of nine months.
33:28
And it's like,
33:29
I'm not saying tiny iterations to death,
33:31
like don't just change
33:32
the text overlay.
33:33
But if like you run this,
33:35
Motion will give you those examples.
33:37
This is the Andrew Fox
33:37
will guarantee on it on my behalf.
33:39
It's like if you don't find something
33:41
that like gives you additional ad spend
33:43
or becomes a new winner,
33:44
I would be shocked.
33:45
Because you can get,
33:46
if you have two minutes of footage,
33:48
you could probably make 50
33:49
unique looking ads with that.
33:52
Throw on an AI voiceover
33:53
that again tells a different story
33:54
on top of that
33:54
and you're extending it even further.
33:56
So what are,
33:57
I guess like,
33:58
I'm curious how you feel about that.
34:00
And then two is like,
34:00
what other specific examples
34:02
are you seeing people run?
34:03
Yeah, that's really cool
34:04
that I've seen a similar example
34:05
where basically like repurposing content
34:09
and footage is a really interesting idea.
34:12
I saw another use case
34:13
where someone was doing that,
34:14
but on a larger scale,
34:15
like it doesn't have to be,
34:17
it doesn't have to be one video, right?
34:18
Like you can tell it,
34:19
I saw one that was like,
34:21
go do that,
34:22
but for the last 100 top spenders
34:25
that we've had.
34:25
And then try to like mix and match
34:28
and take only the stuff
34:29
that you've seen
34:30
from these like 100 scalers
34:32
because we know we have the footage
34:33
and so on.
34:34
And how do you kind of Frankenstein
34:36
together a new set of ads
34:38
that are from like
34:39
all of these different past footages?
34:42
And so like the thing
34:43
that's really interesting
34:44
is you can take any example
34:45
and just multiply the scale on it
34:48
and say like,
34:49
okay, if you could do it for one,
34:50
you could do it for a hundred.
34:51
And the thing that is super interesting,
34:53
I mentioned like underhyped idea,
34:55
like the agent that you have
34:57
and everyone is using
34:58
and the one that is like
34:59
basically gone vertical,
35:00
we've been referring to it
35:01
as like the legacy agent
35:03
at this point.
35:04
Just like that's how fast
35:05
things are moving in AI.
35:07
And like there is a new paradigm
35:08
that I think you guys saw
35:09
this like open claw,
35:11
clawed bod,
35:11
molt bod,
35:12
whatever we're calling it
35:13
these days like that.
35:15
The reason that thing took off,
35:16
there's a really interesting principle
35:18
in that that I think
35:19
you will see applied
35:19
to basically the idea
35:22
of AI agents
35:23
from now till the rest of time.
35:25
Is that AI age
35:26
and it's the reason
35:27
why clawed code
35:28
is really powerful
35:28
on your desktop.
35:29
It's the reason
35:30
why clawed co-work
35:31
is really powerful
35:32
because it has access
35:33
to your desktop.
35:34
Basically, it turns out
35:35
that if you give
35:36
these powerful models
35:39
access to a computer,
35:41
they can do unbelievable things.
35:43
Like give them access
35:44
to a computer
35:44
and give them some time
35:45
and they will do
35:46
unbelievable things.
35:47
The open claw
35:48
is an example
35:49
in the most extreme sense
35:50
because like they could
35:51
do crazy things.
35:52
They could like,
35:53
they can get you hacked.
35:54
Like it's a very,
35:55
like be careful with that one.
35:56
It's fascinating,
35:57
but be careful.
35:57
But the new version
35:59
of the agent
35:59
that we're releasing
36:01
is basically
36:02
has its own computer
36:03
in the cloud,
36:03
its own virtual machine.
36:05
Like for every single company
36:06
that's a Motion customer,
36:08
we are giving their agent
36:09
its own dedicated
36:10
virtual machine
36:11
dedicated to that brand
36:13
and only that brand
36:14
just so that it's like
36:15
safe and sandboxed.
36:16
And so that means
36:17
that any command
36:18
that you type
36:19
into the agent,
36:20
it has like
36:20
an entire computer
36:21
at its disposal
36:22
to go and do that for you.
36:24
And the thing
36:24
that when you watch
36:25
these agents,
36:27
how they work
36:27
when you give them
36:28
like a file system
36:29
in the computer,
36:29
the thing that starts
36:30
getting crazy
36:31
is that they start
36:32
writing files for themselves.
36:33
So like write himself
36:34
a to-do list,
36:35
come up with a plan,
36:36
write like reference documents.
36:38
And it basically
36:38
is the solution
36:39
to the context window problem,
36:41
right?
36:42
You know that if you
36:42
just throw a ton at AI,
36:44
it's going to get confused.
36:46
So then you're like,
36:47
well, I want you
36:47
to process a lot of information,
36:49
but if I just throw
36:50
all that information at you,
36:51
like you're going
36:52
to get confused
36:53
and hallucinate,
36:54
but when it has
36:55
its own file system
36:56
and you watch it,
36:57
it'll like leave
36:58
itself notes
36:58
and give itself
37:00
like reference points
37:01
and jump back and forth
37:02
between files.
37:03
And it's kind of
37:04
the solution
37:04
to the context window problem.
37:05
And so like when,
37:07
hopefully we'll,
37:07
I don't know why the team
37:08
didn't give you early access.
37:09
So we'll make sure
37:10
you have early access
37:12
to try it out,
37:12
but it's just like
37:13
a different scale
37:14
of example.
37:15
So when you think about
37:15
what can this thing do,
37:17
like you can basically say,
37:19
if you think about,
37:20
for example,
37:21
like a weekly cycle,
37:22
right?
37:22
Like how would a team work?
37:24
How many assets
37:25
do you need to produce
37:26
this week?
37:27
And almost like working backwards
37:28
from a weekly body of work,
37:30
that starts to get
37:31
really interesting
37:32
because,
37:33
okay,
37:33
how am I getting
37:34
to decide like the concepts
37:36
that I want to pursue?
37:37
Well,
37:37
probably I need to do
37:38
a crap ton of research
37:39
in my own data,
37:41
probably in the inspo library,
37:43
which by the way,
37:43
the agent has access
37:44
to the entire inspo library
37:45
and it's social coming soon.
37:48
So it's getting to the point
37:50
where if you can
37:51
come up with an SOP
37:52
that somebody on your team
37:54
was going to go
37:55
and execute that this week
37:56
as part of the process
37:57
to produce like,
37:59
I don't know,
37:59
20, 30, 40 ads that week,
38:01
you would be surprised
38:02
how many of those steps
38:03
is possible
38:04
to just like get AI to do it.
38:06
So it might be,
38:07
you know,
38:07
go and look all
38:08
of our top performers
38:09
and all of our bottom
38:10
performers and try to find
38:12
the themes and trends
38:13
from each,
38:14
right?
38:14
Like that's,
38:14
that's a very common use case
38:16
we've seen people do for years.
38:17
Go look at all of our ads,
38:19
see the top performers,
38:20
see the bottom performers,
38:21
watch them
38:21
and try to come up
38:22
with themes and trends.
38:23
Like, okay,
38:24
that's gone.
38:25
You can,
38:25
you can be,
38:26
and you know,
38:27
when I say that's gone,
38:28
it's like there is
38:29
some back and forth
38:30
to get the agent
38:31
to do that work
38:33
to your level
38:34
of satisfaction.
38:35
So I think that basically
38:36
starts to become
38:37
what work feels like for us.
38:38
How do I give the agent
38:40
a long task
38:41
and go back and forth
38:43
on like the structure
38:44
of that task
38:45
until I'm happy
38:45
with the output?
38:46
I'm not saying that like
38:47
every time you do that,
38:49
like one shot,
38:49
it's going to be excellent,
38:50
but you can iterate on that
38:52
and then let it go work
38:52
for 10 minutes
38:53
and then see what that does
38:54
and iterate on again.
38:55
And some of those,
38:56
like what you're finding
38:57
is you have a prompt
38:59
that works
38:59
and now you can
39:00
kind of reuse it
39:01
or iterate.
39:03
It's,
39:03
I think,
39:03
I think we're going
39:04
to be experimenting
39:06
with different approaches
39:08
to like research,
39:09
let's say.
39:10
Like,
39:10
you know how right now
39:12
we probably do a lot of work
39:13
that acts as like
39:14
the inputs to our decisions,
39:16
but we have limited time
39:17
and we're probably
39:18
just kind of winging it
39:19
a little bit.
39:20
Like what happens
39:20
if you could do
39:22
10 times,
39:23
100 times
39:24
the amount of research work
39:26
before you make
39:27
any decision,
39:28
right?
39:28
Like that,
39:28
that's the kind of example
39:30
that I think AI
39:30
could create
39:31
the most amount
39:32
of leverage is,
39:33
and it's so funny,
39:33
we really believed
39:34
this last year,
39:35
that's why we never
39:35
got into asset generation
39:38
because we're like,
39:39
that's the least valuable
39:40
part of the process.
39:41
The most valuable part
39:42
in the process
39:42
is like back office creative.
39:44
It's like all of the things
39:45
that go into the inputs
39:47
of producing creative
39:48
and that's the stuff
39:49
that's very time consuming anyway.
39:50
So like,
39:51
how can you scale
39:52
the amount of,
39:53
it's kind of like
39:53
the example I gave
39:54
of with the help of AI,
39:55
you can go and like
39:56
understand 50,000 messages,
39:58
you know,
39:59
and like use that
39:59
as an input
40:00
to make better product decisions
40:01
like that is helpful
40:02
as opposed to like,
40:03
hey AI,
40:04
go build me three more features.
40:06
It's like,
40:06
okay,
40:06
it could probably do something,
40:08
but it's like,
40:08
no,
40:08
hey AI,
40:09
like go and help me
40:10
sift through all this craziness
40:11
to help me come up with
40:12
my next decisions
40:14
that I'm going to create,
40:15
which by the way,
40:16
I'll probably get your help on too,
40:17
but you know,
40:18
I think what it also starts
40:19
to expose to is,
40:21
and this is why I was saying
40:22
like as an industry,
40:23
we're like moving forward
40:24
on multiple fronts.
40:26
Probably the most important front
40:27
is still just like
40:28
creative strategy,
40:30
best practices.
40:30
Like often the reason
40:31
why people don't know
40:33
how best to deploy
40:34
an AI agent
40:35
is because
40:36
they still need to like
40:37
master what good
40:38
creative strategy means
40:39
and the more you get good
40:40
at that,
40:40
the more obvious it becomes,
40:42
which by the way,
40:44
plug for Motions
40:45
first ever virtual bootcamp
40:47
that we're launching
40:48
in,
40:48
I think we're already
40:50
starting to promote it
40:51
and doors open in March.
40:53
This is going to be
40:53
a really cool program,
40:54
mostly centered on
40:56
just like fundamentals,
40:57
best practices,
40:58
just trying to become
40:59
an excellent creative strategist.
41:02
The more people spend time
41:03
becoming an elite
41:04
creative strategist,
41:05
the more obvious it becomes
41:07
like how AI can help you
41:08
because a lot of it
41:10
is about like gathering inputs
41:12
to make really
41:13
high quality decisions
41:14
and AI is very good
41:16
at helping you gather inputs.
41:17
So I think,
41:19
I think it's going to be
41:19
a fun year
41:20
as people try to master
41:21
two fronts,
41:22
being an elite creative strategist
41:23
and getting really good at AI.
41:25
Yeah, I actually created
41:27
a little content
41:28
about the bootcamp
41:30
and some of my content
41:32
around it.
41:32
I'm singing for the ad,
41:33
just FYI,
41:34
in case you want to ask
41:35
your team about that.
41:35
I don't know if you saw that,
41:37
but it's going pretty viral
41:38
right now.
41:39
I would like to transition
41:40
us to a new segment
41:43
of the show
41:43
that I've never even told
41:44
Brad about
41:44
called After Hours,
41:47
which is what we would
41:48
talk about
41:49
if we had hit stop
41:50
because it's always
41:51
really interesting
41:51
what happens when you
41:52
aren't recording
41:53
and what we get into.
41:55
And I want to ask
41:55
a question.
41:56
So welcome to the
41:57
After Hours segment
41:58
of this podcast.
41:59
Right now,
41:59
it sounds like,
42:00
you know,
42:01
your opinion is
42:02
people need to be
42:02
focusing on
42:03
longer agentic shifts
42:06
in terms of like
42:07
they need to be,
42:08
you know,
42:09
giving more hours,
42:10
more tokens,
42:11
and that's like the metric
42:12
of getting into it deeper.
42:13
You see across
42:14
a lot of creative teams,
42:15
like what are,
42:16
what are the things
42:17
that people need
42:17
to be doing right now
42:18
that there's not,
42:19
like that are,
42:20
they're missing on
42:21
or they're stuck on
42:22
or that you see
42:22
all the time
42:23
that just drives you crazy
42:24
that you're like,
42:24
look,
42:25
like you got to get better.
42:26
Like this is something
42:27
that's happening.
42:28
So one of the things
42:29
that we've been talking
42:30
about internally
42:31
quite a bit
42:32
is just how important
42:34
hooks are.
42:35
And I think that's
42:36
not a new idea.
42:37
I think like everybody
42:38
who's doing anything
42:39
in direct response,
42:40
creative strategy,
42:41
there is this obsession
42:42
around hooks.
42:43
But one of our views
42:44
recently has been
42:44
that hooks are
42:45
so much deeper
42:46
than this like
42:47
tacky pattern interrupt
42:49
that you might do
42:50
in the first three seconds.
42:51
It's almost like
42:52
the hook is like
42:53
the DNA for the whole thing.
42:54
And if the team
42:55
gets good at hooks,
42:58
they've got it all figured out.
42:59
Like everything basically
43:00
becomes downstream
43:01
of being really good
43:03
at hooks.
43:04
And so I think
43:04
it's so interesting
43:06
seeing like a wide range
43:07
of teams
43:08
that are elite
43:09
at creative strategy.
43:10
And I actually think
43:11
like that's been
43:12
a minority of people.
43:13
We live in this like
43:14
bubble of
43:15
exceptional D2C marketers,
43:17
which has been like,
43:18
I just feel so fortunate
43:19
that we've been amongst
43:20
this like group
43:21
of elite advertisers.
43:23
But like you stick
43:23
your head out
43:24
and you talk to like
43:25
the everyday brand
43:26
like, wait, what's a hook?
43:27
Like, what do you mean?
43:27
Like, what's going on?
43:28
Like, and so I think
43:29
there's a lot of people
43:31
who are just kind of
43:32
learning direct response
43:33
principles for the first time.
43:35
And I think
43:36
if that piece
43:37
of the equation
43:38
is not in a good place,
43:39
then everything else
43:40
is going to suffer
43:41
and struggle.
43:42
So like as people
43:43
come up with like
43:43
concepts and ideas,
43:44
but they're not kind of
43:45
thinking about them
43:46
in direct response hooks,
43:47
then like,
43:48
then things are really
43:49
going to suffer.
43:49
And like,
43:50
this is probably
43:50
a bigger conversation,
43:51
but one of the things
43:52
that I've started to notice,
43:53
even with the elite
43:55
direct response teams
43:57
who have completely
43:58
mastered hooks,
43:59
I find it mind boggling
44:00
that there's still
44:01
this brand team
44:02
that hasn't understood
44:04
what's going on here yet
44:05
and is disconnected by it.
44:06
And I have a theory on this
44:08
that I feel like
44:09
the brand team
44:10
is in for a bit
44:11
of an awakening
44:11
because you go back
44:13
like seven,
44:14
eight, ten years,
44:15
the people that were
44:16
doing direct response,
44:17
they were like
44:18
destroying the brand,
44:19
right?
44:19
They were doing like
44:20
crazy things,
44:21
like tacky things,
44:22
like things that were
44:23
just like really
44:24
easy.
44:27
All right.
44:27
Well, you know,
44:28
like, but partly it was
44:29
because the lever
44:30
was audience targeting.
44:31
It's like, listen,
44:32
I just need to get
44:33
in front of the right person.
44:34
As soon as I do that,
44:35
like we're printing money.
44:36
And so it was just like
44:38
things that were not
44:39
necessarily rooted in,
44:41
let's say,
44:42
creative taste,
44:42
right?
44:43
Like it was,
44:43
it was not very creative.
44:44
But now you actually
44:45
look at direct response
44:47
is a very,
44:48
is a very creative sport
44:50
at this point.
44:50
And the people that are
44:52
really good at creative,
44:53
direct response
44:54
are actually producing
44:55
incredible content
44:56
that in many ways
44:57
is indistinguishable
44:58
from what's going on
44:59
in organic.
45:00
And the reason I make
45:01
that point is to say
45:02
that it used to be
45:03
that the brand team
45:04
was basically like
45:05
they understood
45:06
the customer.
45:07
They didn't,
45:07
they understood
45:08
the narrative
45:09
that connected
45:10
the brand
45:10
with the customer.
45:12
Whereas it seems
45:12
to me like now
45:13
the direct response
45:15
creative strategists,
45:16
they are the brand,
45:17
like they are the ones
45:18
that are actually
45:19
building these like
45:20
connections with customers
45:21
through ads,
45:22
through social.
45:23
And the brand team
45:24
is actually the one
45:25
that is more
45:26
disconnected at this point,
45:27
not to create a feud
45:28
amongst teams,
45:29
but like I've seen it
45:30
quite a bit at this point.
45:31
Like if you have a team
45:32
that's like starting
45:33
to think about TV
45:34
or starting to think about
45:35
100% by the way,
45:36
totally agree.
45:36
Billboards,
45:37
it's like you obviously
45:38
should take the best
45:39
performing hooks
45:40
from paid social
45:41
and obviously that should
45:42
be the basis
45:43
for whatever billboard
45:44
campaign you want
45:44
to do,
45:45
right?
45:45
But it's like,
45:46
not really.
45:47
That's like,
45:47
there still is disconnect
45:48
where people are,
45:50
and so I think
45:51
our community
45:52
of creative strategists
45:53
are going straight
45:55
to the top basically
45:56
that the more power
45:59
they get,
45:59
the more influence
46:00
they get,
46:00
the more revenue
46:01
that the companies make
46:02
and the lines
46:03
between what is
46:04
direct response
46:05
and what is just like
46:06
good marketing
46:08
at this point
46:09
is like those lines
46:10
are gone
46:10
and so my hot take
46:13
is our community
46:14
needs to go straight
46:15
to the top
46:15
and basically get
46:17
more power
46:17
and influence
46:18
at companies
46:18
because they know
46:20
what's working,
46:20
you know,
46:20
and like the,
46:21
that's the kind of messaging.
46:22
Yeah,
46:22
and it's being tested
46:23
like millions of times
46:24
a day,
46:24
you know what I mean?
46:25
I actually,
46:27
I agree with you
46:28
and I literally
46:28
had this conversation
46:29
like the other day
46:31
with somebody
46:32
about that exact topic
46:33
about I can't believe
46:34
that the number
46:35
of brands I see
46:36
that are big brand,
46:37
big D2C brands
46:38
that they know
46:40
all the data
46:41
on the creative
46:42
and what drives
46:42
like revenue for them
46:44
and then they still put out,
46:45
my example is
46:47
connected TV,
46:47
this like connected TV thing
46:49
that looks nothing like it
46:50
and takes none of the elements
46:52
and I'm like,
46:52
I don't understand,
46:53
like this thing's over here
46:54
is making you a jillion dollars
46:56
and none of that shit's over here
46:57
and this other thing
46:58
looks super polished
46:59
and they,
46:59
you know,
47:00
work with some connected TV company
47:01
and whatever
47:02
and it's like,
47:02
doesn't make sense.
47:03
You brought up a new segment
47:04
which was After Hours
47:05
and then you went into beefs
47:06
and I just love
47:07
how that flowed together
47:08
and it's great.
47:09
Let's get into beefs.
47:10
For sure,
47:10
that's a beef.
47:11
One last point on that,
47:13
I think Dara Denny
47:14
started talking about this
47:15
and I think she's,
47:16
we're like completely
47:17
on the same page with her
47:18
is that the creative strategist job
47:20
is not necessarily
47:21
to just like make more ads,
47:23
it's to grow the business
47:24
and I think in tech,
47:26
there is this idea
47:27
that the product manager
47:28
is basically like
47:29
the mini CEO, right?
47:31
And the CEO
47:32
of their product area
47:33
or whatever
47:34
and I think the creative strategist
47:35
is basically
47:36
the mini CMO
47:37
and the skill
47:38
that I think
47:38
they need to learn
47:39
and like organizations
47:41
need to learn
47:41
is like last few years
47:43
was around bridging the gap
47:44
between the creative
47:45
and the data
47:46
and now it's like
47:47
an altitude gap
47:48
where it's like
47:48
how do you bridge the gap
47:49
between what's going on
47:50
on paid social
47:51
and social in general
47:52
to basically the business
47:54
and the more rapid
47:55
the feedback loop
47:56
between higher altitude
47:57
business decisions
47:59
and what is going on
48:00
in direct response,
48:01
I think that's the flywheel
48:03
that will enable companies
48:04
to grow really fast
48:05
and so I think
48:05
to all the creative strategists
48:07
who've been like learning
48:08
and leveling up
48:09
the next year or two
48:10
I think is leveling up
48:12
to be like
48:13
you should butt your head
48:14
into what's going on
48:15
at like the leadership level
48:17
because the amount of value
48:19
that you can create
48:19
to get them on board
48:21
with the ideas
48:22
around direct response
48:23
like really could move
48:24
the entire company
48:25
so like get the leadership,
48:26
get the CEO,
48:27
get the board involved
48:29
in ads
48:30
and like thinking about that
48:31
because it is
48:33
the most powerful signal
48:35
for go-to-market
48:36
for any consumer company
48:37
is like taking the things
48:38
that are working here
48:39
and applying the entire
48:41
go-to-market strategy
48:42
around it
48:42
and not being like
48:43
oh there's this ads channel
48:45
like no, no, no
48:46
this is like the whole thing
48:47
basically like
48:47
this is the feedback loop
48:49
that you drive.
48:50
Yeah, not to like
48:51
divulge into a whole
48:52
separate topic
48:53
but like
48:53
a lot of brand
48:56
is viewed through
48:57
this like layer
48:57
of consistency
48:58
across messaging
49:00
and how things show up
49:01
but social feeds are
49:03
everybody has a personalized
49:05
progressively more personalized
49:06
feed to them
49:07
and so like
49:08
if you want
49:10
a level of consistency
49:11
consistency doesn't
49:12
necessarily mean that
49:14
all of a sudden
49:14
you're saying
49:15
dramatically different things
49:16
and your values are changing
49:17
it's just like
49:18
you're making them show up
49:19
to that specific person
49:20
in the way that they care about it
49:21
and I feel like
49:23
that's a pretty big
49:24
adaptation
49:24
like that's what performance
49:25
mark
49:25
because we don't care
49:26
like
49:27
okay, I'm gonna be a little
49:28
dramatic for a second
49:28
it's like we don't care
49:29
we just want to make money
49:30
so it's like
49:30
we were on that extreme
49:32
and now like
49:32
that's starting to be true
49:33
and on the brand team
49:35
you know, they're thinking
49:35
well, we need it to be consistent
49:37
and it's like
49:37
there's a way to be consistent
49:39
without being dilutive
49:40
but also speaking to the person
49:41
on the other end
49:42
because like
49:43
if there's
49:44
trillions of pieces of content
49:45
out on the internet
49:46
and people are
49:46
spam scrolling their feed
49:47
every single day
49:48
it's like
49:48
what's getting them to stop
49:49
and pay attention
49:49
is the thing that is more
49:50
unique to them
49:51
which is why Meta is spending
49:52
billions of dollars
49:53
on GPUs
49:55
or whatever the hell
49:55
that I don't understand
49:56
so anyways
49:56
it made me think of that
49:58
if the consistency
49:59
originates
50:01
from
50:02
what's going on
50:04
in direct response
50:05
and we use that
50:06
as like
50:06
consistency
50:07
across everywhere else
50:08
I think that
50:09
achieves brand goals
50:10
of consistency
50:11
while making revenue
50:13
for the business
50:14
and actually like
50:15
because direct response
50:16
is such a powerful beast
50:18
at this point
50:18
you can't
50:19
you can't fight it anymore
50:21
because then you're
50:21
going to be inconsistent
50:22
so like
50:23
if you
50:24
if you don't fight
50:25
direct response
50:25
and let it consume
50:27
the brand
50:27
and make sure
50:28
that you're doing it
50:29
in a way that's like
50:29
authentic to the brand
50:30
like I think those
50:31
are the brands
50:31
that will do well
50:33
both in terms
50:33
like near-term revenue
50:34
and long-term brand
50:35
is you got to work
50:37
the hooks
50:38
right into your
50:39
brand identity
50:39
you know
50:40
it can't just be like
50:41
our brand identity
50:42
is X
50:42
and then we're going
50:43
to go try all these
50:44
like unrelated hooks
50:45
on paid social
50:46
that's not going to work
50:47
like the hooks
50:48
are the brand
50:48
basically
50:49
the hooks need to be
50:49
consistent to the brand
50:50
and it's not going to be
50:51
the brand that's going
50:52
to set the hooks
50:53
I think it's like
50:53
kind of the other way around
50:55
so there is a merger
50:57
that needs to happen
50:58
that I think
50:59
I think is going to be
51:01
really interesting
51:02
and our community
51:03
is very well set up
51:04
so I think this is the year
51:05
for our community
51:06
to be like a lot more ambitious
51:07
with the amount of value
51:08
that they create
51:09
in companies
51:09
and not think about
51:11
ads as a channel
51:12
but like the work
51:13
that we're doing
51:14
in paid
51:15
as basically like
51:16
the microcosm
51:17
of the entire business
51:18
is go-to-market strategy
51:19
yeah
51:20
yeah
51:20
there's many other things
51:22
that I'd love to dig into
51:23
so we'll have to save that
51:25
for a follow-up
51:26
or a separate time
51:28
especially as it pertains to
51:29
what hopefully I get
51:30
some early access to
51:31
but
51:32
this is my
51:33
after hours questions
51:35
like
51:35
in the short term
51:36
it's like
51:36
this is awesome
51:37
dopamine is
51:38
perpetually popping off
51:39
because you're just
51:40
unlocking new things
51:40
day after day
51:41
but like
51:42
do you ever get like sad
51:44
just like
51:44
shit
51:45
what's going to be left for us
51:46
like
51:46
are you there yet
51:48
do you have that
51:48
do you fall into that at all
51:49
or are you kind of like
51:50
yeah we got time
51:51
I don't go there
51:52
for myself
51:52
partly because
51:53
I think that
51:55
if you are a person
51:56
who is like
51:57
really high agency
51:58
and really curious
51:59
and like
52:00
loves tinkering
52:02
and playing around
52:03
with stuff
52:03
like
52:04
we are in the moment
52:06
where like
52:07
that person
52:07
is going to have
52:08
a blast
52:09
and like
52:09
personally
52:10
we've grown motion
52:11
we're like 75 people now
52:13
and like
52:13
we have lots of different teams
52:14
and so on
52:14
like I'm still like
52:15
deep in the weeds
52:16
of like playing around
52:17
with AI
52:17
and doing cool stuff
52:18
like just
52:18
if uh
52:19
if we didn't have motion
52:20
and I wasn't running
52:21
this company
52:21
I would be having a blast
52:23
just individually
52:24
playing around
52:25
with all this stuff
52:25
um
52:26
and I
52:27
I think
52:28
there's a real superpower
52:29
to the
52:30
the people who
52:31
are doing that
52:32
it is concerning
52:33
I will say
52:35
it is concerning
52:35
if
52:36
you are not
52:38
leaning in that direction
52:39
because
52:41
um
52:43
increasingly
52:44
that is going to be
52:44
the way to create value
52:45
which like
52:46
I really do think about
52:47
um
52:48
we are allocators
52:51
of AI tokens
52:52
I kind of love that job
52:54
right
52:54
so like
52:56
from my standpoint
52:56
I'm like
52:57
that is exciting
52:58
and so I'm fired up
52:59
but
52:59
I think
53:00
uh
53:02
where I get concerned
53:03
and nervous
53:04
if
53:05
if
53:05
you know
53:05
there are some people
53:06
who are like
53:06
I don't know what that means
53:07
I don't want that job
53:08
like I have a different job
53:09
I've gotten used to a different job
53:11
and I
53:11
I think
53:12
maybe it's not like
53:13
this month
53:14
next month
53:14
maybe not this year
53:15
maybe not next year
53:16
but I think we're getting
53:17
to the point where
53:18
that's the only job left
53:20
is
53:20
being an allocator
53:21
of AI tokens
53:22
and if you're not doing
53:24
that job
53:24
I don't
53:25
I don't think there is a job
53:26
that is not that
53:27
interesting
53:29
so
53:29
let's get allocating
53:31
giving us
53:31
not just food for thought
53:32
but a meal
53:33
a meal for thought
53:34
an entire
53:35
buffet for thought
53:36
uh
53:37
with this episode
53:38
uh
53:39
Reza
53:40
very much appreciate
53:41
your time
53:41
and um
53:42
thank you for joining us
53:43
on the
53:43
scalability school podcast
53:44
thanks guys
53:45
always a pleasure
53:46
this episode is brought to you by
53:53
the Foxwell founders membership
53:54
that Andrew
53:55
and his wife
53:56
Gracie run
53:57
it has been
53:57
absolutely pivotal
53:59
for not just the
54:00
homestead team
54:00
but the easy street brands team
54:02
we've had
54:02
I don't even know
54:03
how many members
54:04
are currently in there
54:05
that are part of our ecosystem
54:06
but when it comes to anything
54:07
from learning ads
54:09
to understanding
54:09
what's going on
54:10
to building an agency
54:11
to knowing retention
54:12
it's been
54:13
absolutely useful
54:14
for our team
54:15
when they get stuck
54:16
or they need help
54:17
to just go there
54:17
and resource
54:18
all the other experts
54:19
so definitely would recommend it
54:20
for anybody
54:21
that's looking to
54:22
you know
54:22
take it a step deeper
54:23
try to get a little bit more knowledge
54:25
on growth marketing
54:26
and all the world DTC is
54:27
yeah I think one of the most
54:28
incredible things about it
54:30
is you can just like
54:30
open up the Slack group
54:31
every single day
54:32
you can pin your favorite channels
54:34
for the topics
54:34
you care most about
54:35
and like every day
54:36
there's going to be somebody
54:37
who just like
54:38
because they want to contribute
54:39
something valuable to the group
54:41
you can go learn something
54:42
every single day
54:43
and it's going to be
54:44
extremely useful
54:44
there's some ballers in there
54:46
that you just get like
54:47
the benefit of learning from
54:48
that like
54:49
for the cost
54:50
like you couldn't pay them
54:51
that for their time
54:52
but through the membership
54:53
like you get access
54:54
to some incredible people
54:55
and tons of resources
54:56
yeah I mean
54:57
I think the biggest resource
54:58
to me too
54:59
is like the events that
55:00
you know
55:00
Foxville Founders does
55:01
they've been able to do some
55:02
even in Wisconsin
55:03
even in the boring state
55:05
of Wisconsin
55:05
which is pretty awesome
55:06
getting people together
55:07
in person
55:08
and able to have really
55:09
just like honest conversations
55:10
of what's going on
55:11
what's working for them now
55:12
you know
55:13
where they're at
55:14
in their business
55:14
and knowing that
55:15
there's going to be
55:16
like Brad said
55:16
some real killers
55:17
in the space
55:18
in this membership
55:19
that can help
55:20
and are willing
55:21
to take the time
55:21
and help
55:22
so that's been
55:23
a huge part of why
55:24
a lot of our team
55:25
have really enjoyed it as well
55:26
and the applications
55:27
are now open
55:27
if you're looking to join
55:28
so
55:29
Foxville Founders
55:30
yeah
55:31
foxvillefounders.com
55:32
go check it out
55:33
go apply
55:33
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55:39
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55:40
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55:50
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55:50
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55:53
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55:54
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55:54
thank you for listening
55:55
honestly