Creative Research 101 | The Hidden System Behind Ads That Scale

Avoiding Over-Reliance on Tech in Creative Research Whenever we're conducting research, we're trying to solve a problem. How are we ensuring that we're going down the right rabbit hole, I guess? Speaker 2 People almost forget how to research and I guess how they get to a hypothesis or a conclusion because there is now this over alliance on the tech and on the automation. So I think the key at first, whether you're a brand listen to this or an agency is starting with the outcome, finding the binding constraint that then motivates where our research goes. Speaker 1 I really like this concept of like trying to like almost speak like you are in a WhatsApp chat of 10 of the people you're targeting who are all friends. Speaker 2 It's the obvious thing, right? Speak to that person individually. I did it with my mum, got on a call with her. It was the most valuable exercise to like, just better understand how she thinks. Speaker 1 Do things that don't scale, Just doing things that others aren't willing to do. Finding those new avenues that you can really tap into. Speaker 2 Uncovering the UNP, the unique problem mechanism, if we're able to tap into that deeper layer, yeah, that's how you're going to differentiate yourself from your competitors. Speaker 1 I don't like, I'm not sure about the no arms on this. I know. It's really. I don't know what to do with them. Yeah. New little studio set up here. Yeah. Not been in this room before. The Hideout, as it's called. Yeah, same. Speaker 2 Same building, just different floor. Speaker 1 Charlotte's podcast House. Speaker 2 Yeah, we're on the top floor now, so we must have made it. We're making it to the wall, aren't we? Apparently. Speaker 1 Yeah, I heard with the longest running subscribers to the podcast studio. I don't know if that's a good thing or thing, but we're back back for another episode of DC Diaries, back with another solo and excited to talk to talk things, talk all things creative research, creative research one O 1 as we've as we've titled this episode. Speaker 2 Yeah, we've done, we have done this before, but I think we something we've learned internally is just, you know, in a constantly evolving process with, you know, more distractions, more AI, more automation, bringing it back to its absolute core and like the brilliant basics. And you know, the, I guess the theory behind how we research, how we prioritise, I think is really important because it feels like, you know, we've spoken about this a lot in other parts of the process that the pendulum almost swings so far in the other direction that people almost forget how to research. And I guess how they get to a hypothesis or a conclusion and and what they prioritise because there is now this over reliance on on the tech and on the automations. Speaker 1 Yeah, I think you can find this in like micro examples, examples being like Reddit pulling automating Reddit research just doesn't doesn't go to the say you don't generate the same level of context and depth around the products problem a customer. If you use getting Reddit MCP to pull things together into a document. I think that's one example of where we've we've seen this actively within our teams and within brands of people trying to to take shortcuts or over optimise a process rather than just spending the time actually doing the work and gathering the context and building depth of understanding. So looking forward to going through this. I'm going to talk to a few of the different approaches to research, maybe given some of our, our thoughts on like best and worst, if that's even possible. But I think whenever we're conducting research, we're trying to solve a problem and you very much want it to start there. Didn't you with like the intention before we start going and looking at data insights like how are we ensuring that we're, we're going down the right rabbit hole, I guess. Speaker 2 Yeah, for sure. Prioritizing Research with Clear Outcomes and Constraints Yeah. And I think this is like really important because research is very much like how long is a piece of string? I think you could do it forever if you don't have a clear direction and clear outcome in mind. I think, you know, it's about how do we work smarter, not harder. And I think manual research is all about focusing in, in the right areas and doing really Advanced Research in, in, in those spots. And that's both through the lens of manual and automated, which we can get to. But, you know, especially as we talk, talk about the importance of that manual research and the fact that it's kind of like the, the, the way I like to compare it is that that's, that's really the way it's like reading the whole book versus, you know, just just reading the blurb at the back of the book. And I think that's the difference between manual and automated to some degree. So, you know, ensuring that the time that we do have to do manual research is really focused in in the right areas versus if we've got a whole day as an example, spreading yourself too thin across, you know, lots of different personas going very broad. We're not going to get the same impact and outcome that we might have otherwise. So that means we need to go in with a clear idea of like where we're focusing on and why with our research rather than spraying and praying. So I think the key at first, whether you're a brand listen to this or an agency is starting with the outcome. So you know, sometimes if we are refreshing our research that will be because of a certain trigger, it will be because of a certain problem identified likely linked to performance. But we really need to be going into that with a clear outcome of what we're looking to find. And you know, that can be more commercially if we zoom out, right, that can be based on, you know, we're looking to increase our spend by 30% in the next 3 months or, you know, hit certain revenue target, a certain, you know, blended NCPA. So starting with that outcome means we can really reverse engineer back from that. And then the key is like finding the binding constraint so that, that we're looking to, to fix or solve, which brings more focus to, to, you know, what we're doing. And we've spoken a bit about this in a couple of episodes to go back to our episode that you and Sam did on the Growth Compass, which is all about, you know, how we simply simplify how we simplify growth into four key pillars. But also we spoke about it, I think in the last episode, depending on when everything comes out where, you know, we spoke to that, that that, you know, the creative pillar of that growth compass and the different areas that make up, you know, gold standard creative strategy within an AD account. And really understanding that and you know, those factors is how we can identify the core by and constraint through the lens of creative. Understanding Persona Coverage in Creative Strategy Framework So just to go through those five factors which will make up our total creative score. And I'm not going to go into this in huge amounts of depth or like how we what our scoring matrix looks like, but we can keep it very top level to give you an idea of the things you need to be thinking about that then and you know, motivates where our research goes. Speaker 1 Yeah, We'll put this down below. We'll put a CHEAT SHEET and we'll link the video that Lucas mentioned. And this is again, I think this is universal like this is our approach to scoring creative quality in a business like the creative function of a of AD 2C brand and it's proving very valuable. We've done it across 50 plus bands so far and it always gives us a clear focus or multiple priorities to focus on over a period. And then is a leading into to some really good growth when we're focusing resource and to time and attention on those constraints. Yeah. Speaker 2 So yeah, just to remind you of what those five factors are. Now we score each of these out of five. And the key is that they're not all as high a priority as as as each other, which we can speak to. But the first is persona coverage, second is messaging diversity, then volume and velocity format and vehicle being the 4th and concentration in lifespan being the 5th. So just to give you a very quick overview of I guess what gold standard looks like in each of these through the lens of persona coverage. It's all about, you know, the, the, the amount of intention in terms of persona strategy within an ad account. So you know, how many based on the amount that we're spending and the size of the brand, how many personas live within the creative strategy right now and are able to drive spend? You know, is there a documented persona framework that is clearly identified within the the created that we see within the ad account? And you know, is there clear, you know, is there clear difference between macro personas and then how we maybe speak to those micro personas on a more specific level? Now, depending on the brand, you don't need to necessarily have micro personas. I think it's less likely if you have a lower AOV. But again, this is really important to look at, OK, how is our, what's our spend concentration across personas like if it's heavily weighted on just one and we're a bigger spending account, then we know that we're likely going to be scoring this lower and that needs to be a a focus in terms of where we diversify. Speaker 1 Very tied to time as well. So the, the number of personas you can reach is, is tied to products and, and the total addressable market of that product. I think it's probably the biggest, It's one of the bigger levers in terms of unlocking a new persona often has an outsized contribution to growth, but it's often more difficult, right, more difficult to crack versus some of the other things we'll go through. Speaker 2 Yeah, exactly. Enhancing Messaging Diversity for Specific Personas And second one, as I said, is messaging diversity. Now, one part of this we've spoken a lot about, but I think it's probably one of the lowest impact things that you should be focusing on. So it shouldn't be a focus unless you know, you're probably spending north of like 7 to 800 KA month on on your creative. And but and it depends on like the specifics of the ad account, you know, where we need to be focusing and prioritizing. But valent zones, which is the different way that we speak to our customer, whether that be through the lens of, you know, high confidence, you know, positive, negative, all of these different ways that we can speak directly to these individuals is is will cover us across those valiant zones. We'll put that on screen right now that we've done lots of episodes going speaking to this, but as I said, it's one of the lower, lower impact things that we would focus on for most accounts. I think the the the second piece in messaging is like, are there very clear and distinct messaging themes and angles that map up to a specific persona? So, you know, if we're seeing the we're there, there is persona diversity within an account, but certain, but but really like we can't clearly show what those angles are or the overarching message of those angles, then it's clear that there is a lack of diversity or intention through the lens of angles. So that's something we need to be thinking about. And then look at messaging frameworks in a slightly different way. So that is things like US versus them, you know, objection handling, 3 reasons why that's more the type of mess, not, not necessarily the, the messaging themes or the angles, but the framework in which those messaging, that messaging goes within. So like are we seeing that, that, that diversity in the messaging frameworks that are being used within an ad account? I think the other thing here that's so important that we see a lot of is, you know, people think they are clearly mapping their personas. So they could be scoring high in terms of persona, but there isn't intention in terms of how we are differing the language used per persona. So we think we're speaking to menopausal women, but we're speaking like Gen. Z 25 year olds. So are you know, is there a clear correlation between the messaging and the language being used that is targeting that specific persona? Speaker 1 Yeah, I think brands find this really hard to to shift from one to the other shift, especially if you've got broad personas, broad ages, broad demographics, seeing real clear differentiation in the the way that we're speaking to those, but still weaving in the same pain points objections. The way in which we we talk about those pain points needs to differ. So I think it's a really important one. Speaker 2 Yeah, for sure. And. Speaker 1 Obviously it's where research can be super valuable. Speaker 2 Yeah. And again, that's a great indicator of like if we're scoring really low, but there's there's a real opportunity through the lens of persona, you know, how do we better speak the language of them? Optimizing Creative Volume, Format, and Asset Lifespan And that comes through things like audience research, which we can speak to in a bit volume and velocity just quickly is, is, is the next one, which is very much about is the amount of spend that we're driving in the account. Are we matching that with the the right amount of creative volume? Is there a clear testing strategy? Are we consistently feeding the beast as it were? Volume should never be the bottleneck. And you know the the resource we have available to us is able to scale with spend. Speaker 1 Yeah, I think there's, I think we've, there's been a lot of narrative around volume of and whether volume is still a lever and or whether people should be focused on quality. And I still come back to the fact that about increasing volume without seeing quality decrease over time, which is hard to do, increasing the right volume of creative. Like you will never open another account of a brand spending over 7 figures a month and see them launching less than like 1000 plus odds. In most cases, the biggest brands are launching the highest volume of creative period really. But it's about making sure that that's it's right for your stages. I would also say there's the other side of that is there's some brands where we'll they'll be spending a low amount and actually launching too much creative. So it's very relative to spend levels, but it's making sure that that tracks and and is something that is intentional as as we scale the account. Speaker 2 Yeah, 100%. Another really important one, which is where usually a lot the low hanging fruit comes from his volume and his format and vehicle. So you know, is there, is there a clear mix in the AD account in terms of spend and there's not too much spend concentration in UGC static and high prod. Usually you'll see real gaps here where we're really heavily over indexed on something like static. I'd say it's probably the most common and you know, there's not enough intentional testing or diversity when it comes to say, UGC and high prod. So now we're not looking to go into an ad account and see like a perfect 33% split each. But really it's like we shouldn't see maybe one single format that's dominating more than like 5060% of spend. Speaker 1 Yeah. And I'd say obviously you've got UGC static, high prods, I think high prods a big opportunity for many. And then you've got the sub sort of sub genres to give it a name, I guess within that, the vehicles, which I think is there's almost an infinite amount of those. But you don't want to get like survivorship bias and just double down on the same thing just because it's worked previously, because you will hit that ceiling eventually. Speaker 2 Yeah, exactly. So how we will score this is based on those formats. But then also if you go deeper into those formats, is there strategic vehicle congruency with the persona we're speaking to? You know, are we testing continuously new vehicles and in including like bigger swing vehicles that haven't yet been tested? I'll go into an ad account a lot and see that they're doing like one or two formats really well. But actually if you look at what they have tested, there's, there's probably 20-30 vehicles that we know have worked for similar brands that haven't yet been tested there. And that is a real low, low hanging fruit opportunity where you know, if we look at like an ice rating, it's like it's we'd we'd score it really high on ease, we'd score at fairly high on impact. And then confidence as well because we know this has worked for similar brands. They've got a proven persona or messaging that has worked. But it's just about taking that messaging and applying it to a different vehicle. So usually there is a lot of juice to squeeze there just looking at the likes of format and vehicle. Speaker 1 Yeah, 100%. And the final one I guess is just concentration and lifespan, which it's all about how how concentrated is spent and how long are assets lasting on average. I guess lifespan is usually an indicator of are we feeding the account with enough new eyeballs first time impression ratio because that extends lifespan to if we're too low a funnel, often lifespan will start to decrease over time. Our assets are going aren't going as far. So our cost is increasing and our results are often decreasing. And then concentration is that centralization of spend if we're doing all of the other things well these this is usually positive. Speaker 2 Yes, it's a secondary factor usually. Speaker 1 Yeah, Yeah. So it's like if we are effectively delivering diversity and delivering volume without decreasing quality in the right way, the strategy is solid. Usually we won't find this to to be a problem. But yeah, just want to make sure that hit rate is in a solid spot and we're not spending over 20% of spend through one ad really. Speaker 2 Yeah, exactly. Using the Five-Factor Framework to Identify Binding Constraints Now I'm going to share some stuff on screen as I go through this example, and then we're going to go on to the actual research process. But I think why this is important because it gives like a really good example of, you know, how we get to the binding constraint and how if I didn't go through this process, it could have completely changed where I went with research. So this is an example from a brand where there are three key triggers from going through that growth compass process. Specifically looking at creative now, the first trigger is you'll be able to see on screen. Now is although persona diversity was really present, 87% of spend was concentrated on just two personas. In the context in the account is we're only spending 30 KA month, but we're testing 4 different personas, which suggests that, you know, yes, you could score quite highly on persona diversity, but we're probably testing too many personas there. We're based on the volume we have available, which this account was launching 30 ads a month net new. There wasn't enough, you know, there wasn't enough creative volume to to actually mean that we we should have been diversifying across that many personas. There was. There's clearly an identity. To fire here that two personas are driving the most spend so we need to go much deeper into those two core personas. The second trigger was the, you know if we look at concentration and lifespan, this was driven by three single ads that dominated almost 80% of spend. So the what that essentially tells us is again the format and vehicle diversity, we are way too over indexed on just three single ads. And therefore although we have shown that there are two clear personas that are resonating, we're not going deep enough into diversifying that creative output to avoid concentrating that spend too much. And the third trigger was like vehicle format diversity scored two out of five and that's because almost all the spend was just being pushed through UGC and very, very little through static and high prod. Now what this kind of shows, if we look at how we approach the research off the back of this is that there's, you know, breadth of vehicle is not breadth of persona is the constraint. So why some people might have been going in there and saying, OK, let's do more research on different personas or the personas that aren't driving the most spend really it's like based on the size of brand and where they're at. Let's get rid of two of the personas for now. Focus in on on the two that have really shown they're resonating and go much deeper there. And so by deliberately narrowing persona focus on to those kind of proven segments, we can systematically test more creative diversity through those two specific personas. So that meant when we approached research, we went really deep into researching the those two personas that haven't really scratched the surface yet in terms of opportunity based on the amount the brand was spending and the Tam available within that market. So I think that just shows how you know by going for a process like that, you can really focus in and work smarter, not harder when it comes to the actual research process. Speaker 1 I like that example because it's slightly nuanced as well. Like you mentioned. I think many strategists would open the account and and go down that that rabbit hole of of persona research rather than really sitting with the problem and going deeper on the problem 1st and finding that it that it was in fact vehicle. So I'm going to sneeze. Speaker 2 I think like just why you sneeze on the, I think the key to remember there is like this was an example. This was an example of like where actually the opportunity lived in the data we already had and we just needed to go much deeper into that. But then on the reverse, and there's a few triggers that will get you to this point of knowing, OK, actually I look at the account and there might be opportunities there, but there is a way bigger opportunity outside of that. And there's kind of three things that that fall into that. It's like Tam. So let's say that we have it and we've had this before where we will start working with a brand and we're like, you know how we're not tested menopause as a persona. And that's a huge Tam, right? It's every woman in the country aged 40 to 60. And the next thing is like depth of desire. And we know if you do audience research through read it as an example, you will see there's a huge desire there to solve some of the pain points associated with menopause. And the third trigger was like intuition. So from working with other brands or knowing other brands in the market that solve the same problem, they're like indirect competitors, same problem with a different solution that those are like the three massive signals that suggest actually our big opportunity is something that is, is is not shown in the data we can see in the ad account. It's actually something completely separate. Leveraging Owned Data for Deeper Audience Insights So how are we approaching that research once once you've sort of spotted that opportunity, maybe maybe we start with maybe we start with audience and we can go through a couple of others beyond that. An audience is really where we we go deep on who the person is, but also how we speak to them, right. To simplify it, yeah. How would you break up like the the approach and the different routes we can take from a from a research perspective through the lens of audience? Speaker 2 Yeah, for sure. So I think keep that in mind what I just said because that the the key with research is like strategic prioritisation. You're going to find a million opportunities through that process, but you know, a great strategist knows what to prioritise and you know when to prioritise it. So Tam, depth of desire and domain intuition, these are the three kind of things that will help inform our decisions in terms of that strategic prioritisation. So there's there's a few different lanes of research that we will look out for audience research. The 1st is owned, so the market share that they the your brand currently owns, right. So that will be in terms of what the cost your customers are saying about the product. So what are your customer reviews? What are people saying online ad comments, social comments, You know, that's your own data that that can kind of I guess, yeah. Give you an idea of like where the opportunities are. I mean, we have quite a funny opportunity example where we did a an AI research pool and did like review mining for a brand and they hadn't ever tested menopause. And like we found that I think about 25% of all of their reviews were essentially menopausal pain points and that that wasn't something they tested. So that was a really good trigger that lived in the data that they already have not, not external research that suggested we need to go deeper into that. So I'm not going to touch much on the owned research right now because I think actually that is a really good example of where AI is really valuable. It's like customer reviews because it can really spot the trends in your existing reviews and and can help inform some of the directions that we might take with the second type of research, which is prospective and unaware I'm. Speaker 1 Hoping that everyone's what we've spoke about review managed so much on this podcast. I'm hoping everybody's gone through that process for their brand and at least refreshing that every what quarter probably because I, I also think as you unlock new personas, your reviews will shift and that data become updates very frequently at scale. And that can be enlightening in itself. It can deepen your understanding of a certain persona over time as they, as you generate more data. And I like to add a couple more to that is just post purchase surveys, which is a big opportunity. And then we've spoken briefly previously about even direct calls to customers post purchase surveys for things like triggers, like why have you bought today? What triggered you to purchase versus some of the pain points that can be identified. I think the pain and the trigger can be different and I think they can be, it can be very interesting to like target specific triggers. I use the example of like you can have bad teeth for ages, but then you're going to get married in 12 months and then it becomes big enough a pain at that point to go and buy. And that's, that can be a whole. Like you can imagine the UGC offsets around that as a propane point, how emotive that could be like your wedding photos looking so much better because you've got your teeth done. Yeah, I think I don't think that would show up in, in, in like reviews as such. Maybe not. Maybe it would, but maybe it wouldn't. So I think it can be very like useful to to to lay some of that in as well. Speaker 2 Yeah, we've spoken a lot about that, that idea of, you know, that's just the raw scrappy manual research of just calling customers because I just think you can go much deeper into that understanding what those triggers were for them, like what their fears are, you know, what was that kind of purchase prompt? And I think, you know, that's where you can really squeeze some some exciting juice out that your reviews would have missed most likely. And it also just gives you a much stronger, you know, viewpoint of the customer as well and you know how they will speak. So that that is definitely something worth doing if you haven't. Speaker 1 Yeah, 100%. There's so many ways to slice that customer reviews piece. I still really love like asking it for edge cases, like problems that show up in like less than 5% of the reviews or yeah, there's just so many ways you can get a bit more creative with the prompts after you if you after you've ingested that context. Yeah. Episode Break But perspective, perspective and unaware. Tapping into Prospective and Unaware Audience Insights I've not actually heard you label it this before, so I'm interested to deeper into this. How are you approaching that side of of audience research? Speaker 2 Yeah. So this is like people that are aware of the problem, or they might, they might use a solution that is different to, to our solution or they're people that are completely unaware to the problem entirely. So what's the art of this is like really understanding, like especially using tools like Reddit, Google Trends, answer the pub, like blogs, you know, what, what, what, what are those kind of keywords and key phrases that are going to unlock the best responses that we can, we can get the best insights from. So the thing that I would usually do is start on Google Trends, announce to the public. So let's say that it's like a a product that supports the menopause as an example. Like I will put in keywords and key phrases that are associated with that pain point or with that solution. And from that you will be able to see through Google trends, like what are the highest ranking or subcategories that are being shown that associate with that keyword or key phrase. And that is like a trigger or signal that that's where you want to then take those insights and apply them to something like Reddit because you can be more directional with where that goes. A good example of that is I did research for a creatine brand and by typing in like creatine for women, like one of the biggest search terms on answer the public was like, does creatine make women bulky? And just by seeing that as a trigger, I was able to take that and apply that, bring that into Reddit and start looking at like, you know, these incredible subreddits and, and women kind of freaking out about, you know, if they start taking creatine, is it going to mean that they're going to put on loads away and get loads of waterway and get, you know, get bigger? And that really showed us an opportunity of like, that's a fear that that we can tap into and also, you know, ensure that that is something we're combating as an objection with the creative for that specific persona. So like knowing the knowing what those opportunities are and then going much more directional on Reddit is where you can really start to extract, you know, the the right opportunities and how we go into that. I'll talk through in a moment. Speaker 1 Yeah, I find answer the public useful for for that same thing around like objections, because you can often find like just by searching the category of products and then going around to the public on Google Trends. There's loads of that's an example of an objection. I was the one I was searching for just was like the the the question was, is XYZ product OK for sensitive skin? And then it was like, that's a whole like rabbit hole to go down of like why? What was the fear? What's the what's the need within the product? What do we need to be emphasizing to get over that objection, which many people in this persona really had or experienced alongside the problem that we were solving have to be like complementary. So I think that's a really valuable approach to them pulling it into Reddit and going a little bit deeper because I think the Google trend search or the answer, the public search alone doesn't have that much depth. It is the second step that you're moving it into Reddit and moving into some of those other searches, quarry even, where you get the threads of people's responses, where you find the messaging and the language that resonates on a deeper level. Speaker 2 Yeah, exactly. And you can use things like Reddit answers, which essentially is, is like an AI version where you are able to like really craft what people are saying. And there's also subcategories of like related posts as well. That's actually like an interesting hack on Reddit, by the way, like if you're not signed into an account, because if you are doesn't show up. If you go onto subreddits when you're not signed into an account on Reddit, it will actually come up with like recommended subreddits or posts that associate with that previous one. Which is a good way to like go down the rabbit hole and be more directional around the similar, similar topics that have been raised where you can really extract those insights from. So yeah, once we've once we've got that, we, we kind of break it into different buckets and they're almost like their own databases that we can start to look at what the trends are in the patterns at a later point. But through going it down that that rabbit hole, we will be breaking down and just essentially pulling quotes or copy and pasting quotes into different categories. So those are angles, benefits, pain points, desired outcomes, objections, purchase prompts and misconceptions. And then I always like to just have one, which is like general stories because I think that's where you can really like, you know, find the language that is being used and apply this to, you know, your creative. But by breaking down all of those, essentially all of those are like elements of like a messaging framework, right? Like, and if you pieced, if you pulled out a quote from each of those, you should be able to pull a script together. So I think it's really interesting to go like really, really focused in on those core different areas to then like understand how people are talking about different benefits that might associate with a product pain points. And then we can start thinking through that lens of time, depth of desire and and domain. So I really like to build that out as like a bit of a database in each of those core areas to start uncovering and understanding, you know, how these different people speak and how that can apply to our strategy. Speaker 1 I think what you've mentioned there in the notes around like that giving you the building blocks for scripts, is is is perfect as well. Because I feel like if you don't, if you're not intentional with how you document and store this research, you could end up with just a massive of quotes, data points, like so many different things that it becomes hard to almost utilize it in an effective way. So I think the the the tagging in the this process makes it just so much easier to follow. Speaker 2 Yeah, exactly. And I think like you're just going to see some gold by doing this. I I did it for like auditing a brand that we work with on the weekend and just. I was literally on there for 15 minutes and just, I think pulled about 15 different quotes that like literally in in, in themselves could have been concepts because they were they went into like real depth in terms of the story. You know what, what the problem mechanism it was, you know what, what the failed solutions were, how it impacted their life. And I think we see a lot that there's like a script can be very surface level. A lot of the time just talk about the surface level problem. But like really, if you if you go deep, that's never the motivator for someone solving a problem. Like we go back to the example of, you know, bad skin or acne. Yes, the surface level problem is the acne, but really the motivator or the, you know, the, the trigger is normally down to something like you can't even look at yourself in the mirror anymore or someone you know, made a comment at school or you went on a, you know, it means that you don't want to go out with friends anymore. You know, all of these things that go much deeper into the core human desire of confidence or relationships. That's really where the juice is. And, you know, if we're able to tap into that deeper layer, that's how you're going to differentiate yourself from your competitors. Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm huge on that. Articulating Deep Desires and Persona-Specific Language And I think often it's articulating those deep desires in a way that resonates with the different personas. That's what we come back to where we see personas being done well but messaging being done poorly within those personas is when you have the same pain point, but you're not going to. You're not translating that into because everybody can feel tired, but my desire to feel feel tired would be probably right now in my life, weighted towards work and performance and output. But then when if I was 36 to 40 and I had two kids, it's like it's way more weighted towards how I come home from work and still have energy to be my best self and my children as an example of how that can live, how that desire can appear so different or can be translated in such a different way across different personas. But if you've been surface level, you're speaking to everybody. We therefore speaking to nobody and you're, you just see it in retention rates, hold rates. I was looking at a concept we made for a from a parent, a brand selling, selling to mums the other day and the hook was very focused on just calling them out for being tired. I'm like, that's such, we have so much more ammo we can use. That's like the perfect persona for that problem. It's like, how do we make it resonate in a much deeper way to get that hook right, to get that hold right, and then obviously action off the back of it. Speaker 2 Yeah. Speaker 1 I think this is what the the thing that I see the the most in scripts right now, It's the most, it's probably the most important part, I think, especially as we go more and more upper funnel and we go longer and longer in terms of narrative and education to have that depth in a concept. See, I think and I think research is the is the backbone of of finding that depth and the way to translate that message over. Speaker 2 Yeah. Speaker 1 I don't even think it's on the desires that that messaging piece is important. We've spoken about it previously. I really like this concept of like trying to like almost speak like you are in a WhatsApp chat of 10 of the people you're targeting who are all friends because like the way that they will speak to their like inner circle of people. Like, say it's a mum's group chat. Like the way they will speak and and talk about problems have certain turns of phrases that maybe as a younger person you're not even aware of. Like these concepts of like speaking to girlfriend's brother who's got a number of kids under he was concept of like having two under 2 is like known as being carnage for parents. Wasn't aware of that. But that's like a big thing that it's almost like a turn of phrase in in that in that space. And that's something that you can leverage in sort of hooks and and copy to really resonate on a deeper level. I think those are the Nuggets that you really can find from this sort of level of research. Speaker 2 Yeah, 100% if you. Speaker 1 Spend the time there with enough intention. Speaker 2 Another one that I did when we started working with the Collagen brand, I was like involved in the early phase there and again, being a 30 year old male, I didn't didn't know much about, especially when it was menopause or was the kind of core market that we were looking to target and the biggest opportunity. How do I get in the head of, you know, menopausal woman And genuinely, I feel like most personas you will know someone in your network that is that. So like you think it's kind of just like it's the obvious thing, right? It's it's it's the, it's like speak to that person individually. And I did it with my mum. So I literally got on a call with her. I showed her ten ads from this brand and I and I asked her when it got came to the end of every ad. Firstly, like, would you have purchased from watching this ad? What messaging resonated or like really hit in this specific creative and you know, just basically uncovered from doing so the type of ads that she would consume and actually buy from what those purchase prompts were and triggers and the certain fears that tapped into into her most. And like it was the most valuable exercise to like just better understand how she thinks. And obviously we can't generalize every menopausal woman as my mum, but you can get a really good idea from going through a similar process. And it's, it's definitely worth doing that as like, again, another one of those like very raw scrappy style of research that, you know, really can hit. Speaker 1 Yeah, do things that don't scale. That's an example of doing something that definitely doesn't scale to you. But I think like, I think that's where you can find that the the just doing things that others aren't willing to do, finding those new avenues that you can really tap into. Speaker 2 Yeah. Strategic Competitor Analysis for Creative Opportunities Maybe want to come touch on competitor research and then we can end on social. Yeah, as a, as a, as a next step. We've talked a lot about competitor research and I do think it's, it's still valuable when done correctly. It's there's a lot of interesting narrative floating around on Twitter at the moment of like which competitors to choose. I think you've got to keep in mind when you're looking at brands like IMA who are playing just a different game to you, like what they're doing in the creative strategy, post click strategy relative to like where you are in your journey as a brand, picking the right sort of reference points. I think is, is key. It's the right direct reference points. But I know that more So what what's happened into recently is that those indirect competitors that allow us to find just just I guess like bigger swings pulling it into the ad account. You don't want to operate in that echo chamber. We don't want to be looking like there's, there's so many different supplement brands. We don't all want to be looking the same because we're here to win an auction. I think it comes back to that is like we're competing on the same platform for the same customer a lot of the time. So just ripping concept to concepts across competitors, it is just like a race to the bottom really. It's a race to whoever can afford to pay the most for cock from a new economics and margin perspective, which is difficult. So yeah, it would be good to speak to you about your process from like an indirect competitive perspective. Speaker 2 Yeah. We've got a prompt that I'll put on screen now and it's basically just to help uncover, you know, some indirect competitors that are solving the same problem but through a different vehicle essentially. And I think you shared a good one on the pod a couple of months ago, which was like magnesium, but then, you know, magnesium as a supplement is a completely different vertical to say you know, a a mattress or something that helps with sleep, helps give you better sleep, but is a completely different means of getting you there. Speaker 1 Like an 8 sleep exactly an example and you need to be cautious of like, yeah, an 8 sleeps 5 grand and a magnesium supplement is £20. So it's like you can't just RIP an 8 sleep concept, but it's like it's trying to be a little bit creative with what? Like what does that ad library tell you about the desires about the the turn to phrase? Like maybe they found some gold in the, in the way that a customer describes the problem, their research that you can lift into your, into your category, into your space. Obviously we've spoke about the red light therapy mask and collagen is another example. I think that's quite a nice example of something that's maybe closer in price points than the one I the one I use. But yeah, you can just find totally different ways of approaching creative. Speaker 2 Yeah. I think the gold as you said are the ones that you know, you, you're at a similar AOV if you can get there and but it's a completely different product. That's usually where you can find really big opportunities, and usually they come in like Persona, but then also things like vehicles. I think you'll get, you know, some really interesting new ad ideas directly through going into that process. And so we'll go through three directs and, you know, minimum 3 indirect competitors. And we will essentially build the themes out into messaging angles, personas, frameworks and emotions so that what we seeing across these and where do the gaps lie? And I like direct competitor analysis more to like understand what they're not doing because again, there might be real clarity around, OK, these are clearly their biggest opportunity, their biggest spend drivers from looking at like ads library, you can you can filter by impressions in terms of persona, but then you will likely see, you know, what they haven't tested yet in terms of things like vehicle and where the gaps are. So with direct competitors are more looking at what they're not doing versus what they are doing. And if you build those themes into those kind of categories, you can really see where the biggest opportunities lie. So it's like, you know, what is what is the why behind it? So that is driven by data and insight. And then the So what, so like what does this mean in terms of our strategy? And that is where we will build those opportunities into that strategic opportunities database very similarly to how we would with audience research. And we'll do that through like ice prioritisation. So we'll give everything a score out of five on impact, confidence and ease. And I think usually it will go into two buckets. It's either strategic or it's execution. So you'll find that usually what your your kind of findings or what you want to apply to your creative falls into one of those two categories. An example being strategic might be, you know, this indirect competitor is, you know, clearly heavily indexing on this persona, which hasn't yet been tested in the account and and proves through time and depth of desire that it's a big opportunity. So test this persona, something that's more executional will be related to like the language used, you know, specific pain point and how we articulate that a certain vehicle that we want to test. So there how you want to potentially split both of those out. Speaker 1 I, I, we've, I've recently went pretty deep on compare research because launching a bit of a brand project, which you can talk about in another episode. But obviously looking at what you've just described there is really looking through the ad account and their ad library. Also that you can look through comments, some of these other tied kind of links a bit to Social Research, which you're going to come on to. But from doing this process and entering this category, just found that there were everybody was doing the, the quick things like smashing ARUGC, smashing statics, native ads, which I, I'm, I'm pretty bullish on native. I don't want to do an episode about that in the next couple of months because I'm working on that a lot at the moment. So we were like, well, let's just do this properly and do UGC and high prod straight away. That worked. But then looking into all of the comments, there was loads of people saying they'd bought the product and it hadn't worked. So then kind of lifted all of the products information and compared it against ours and Claude. And then Claude highlighted a reason that their product wasn't working the ours would. And then we did loads of US versus them's calling out what basically I did like 3 reasons why XYZ product didn't work for you and just broke down our unique mechanism relative to theirs. And it's just crushing. And I think that's an example of we just found a few data points on comments that they weren't able to remove quick enough that you validated that as something we should focus on. Prior to that, all we were doing is problem aware. But then that gave us a point of like maybe we should actually go solution and products aware 1st and capture all of the existing demand. And it worked really well. Speaker 2 It's literally exactly what we did for Club Nero. Like the the solution aware product aware creative was what really worked best initially. Similar to yourself, because through that research, we're able to identify like, OK, what what people don't people like about their product is there is there a unique solution mechanism that we have that they don't that's going to solve that problem? And then you can speak directly to that. And in our case, it was, you know, the, the sensory friendly aspect of the product that they didn't have that we did and like the actual quality elements. So we just spoke highly to those things and did a lot of objection handling creative and US versus them style creative. 3 reasons why. And again, it's a good example of like, you know, you don't need to overcomplicate it all the time. Like sometimes it's like what is the lowest hanging fruit that is going to unlock spend? Then we can diversify after that point. Speaker 1 Yeah. And it's always cheaper to acquire those customers as well because they've already they've already educated. Ours was similar. It was, it was an ingredient and then and then an objection that people got that people had got having experienced a poor version of the products that we're selling. So we just have to overcome those. Then once you've got that base, it's about it's about when you start to unlock the problem where everything lifts behind it and it's just so much more efficient. Speaker 2 Yeah, the one that I did just forget to mention in audience research. Unlocking Creative with the Unique Problem Mechanism And again, I think is one of the most valuable things, especially if you're like because of one thing that we've been looking at a lot of accounts recently. And usually the one thing that people just aren't doing enough of at all. And we're going to do an episode on this because we did a training session internally fairly recently. But you know, uncovering the UNP, so the unique problem mechanism and speaking directly to that, because a lot of people who don't know why you get a certain specific problem and then then what the solution mechanism is that is that bridges that and it creates this open curiosity loop. So for example, like, you know, do you, do you, do you know why women suffer with X over the age of 40? You know, speaking directly and asking those questions directly to to you know, why a problem mechanism exists that usually then relates back to some form of research. And then our solution we have ausp that very much solves that specific problem. Is, is like a really good direction that like I think a lot of people don't tap into as part of their creative strategy. So really like looking at on like, you know, most, most, there's so many studies that are done online and I think like it's about extracting those studies and insights that can be spoken directly to. So, you know, usually you'll find specific statistics that are done from studies and how you can kind of tie that into your creative and that again, you know, you'll find really big opportunities directly from that. And I think good example coming back to that creating one from like looking at research was that 70% of women don't produce creatine, Sorry, women produce 70% less creatine than men, which again is like a really interesting insight that we can then it's also a hook. It's a hook, yeah. And it was the top performing hook that identifies, OK, this is this is the problem or the gap. And then it motivates towards why you need a certain solution. And you the thing you're filling in in between is. Is the why? Like the reason why? Speaker 1 You need it. The skill in that is the ability to simplify and present that information in a really simple format. We've just launched a split screen Yappa where we've exactly that like the which we're explaining the problem, how the problem exists, where it comes from, what's the mechanism that leads to it occurring. And it's like the top is the expert and the bottom is a mirror board walking through the journey because I think it just helps so much when you're explaining something complex. Yeah, that's. Speaker 2 Why whiteboard ads always do Well? Because it's like, yeah, it's taking something that could be quite overwhelming and like distilling it down to really simple visuals. Speaker 1 Yeah. And I think it's really important as you get more of a funnel to to be thinking about how you explain the problem, not just the the product and the solution and educate because those are the longer concepts that really work for new audiences who are problem aware. Well, it's truly unaware I guess if you fully explain the problem before you get into the the solution of the products. Speaker 2 Yeah, I think that's why when you're bringing in those mechanisms like you are, you're unlocking more time and usually unaware audiences, which I think not enough people go into with their creative strategy. Like usually there's no waiting towards, you know, problem where. Speaker 1 Yeah, and that's what can just just has a massive impact on spend levels. Yeah, very conscious of time. TikTok, Pinterest for Creative Ideas, and Key Takeaways Final ones, Social Research. Do you want to rifle through some Social Research? Speaker 2 What time we got to we've. Speaker 1 Got about 10 minutes. Speaker 2 Yeah, I think this is one of my most the one of the ones I really enjoy doing. And I think I prefer doing audience than competitor than social because the way usually the audience research directs where we go with our Social Research. So that is, you know how when we're going on to channels like TikTok and we're using other things that people don't do a lot of the time like Pinterest and also Calo data as well, which we can get into in a moment. But I think really this is a great opportunity to again uncover how people are talking about problems online. So really uncovering language and how, you know, people are, you know, how they're communicating that problem through through organic video, I think we can really uncover strong messaging as well. And then also themes. But I think the biggest opportunity for organic research is, is looking at like, you know, different frameworks or vehicles that that can be used. And I think TikTok is an incredible place, as we know, especially if we like look at what affiliates are doing, because affiliates are the most incentivized people in the world. Like if you think about it like everyday, how much money they earn is determined by, you know, the the output of what they're producing. It's like the perfect incentive for ensuring that they are unlocking attention in what they're doing, which is why you find so many innovative creative concepts that come through or start from TikTok. And the biggest examples like Yapper ads, you just see that that coming. So what I will do is from my audience research, I said, I find that OK, these are the two big opportunities from a persona perspective or these are the two big pain points that we want to speak to more. I will then type those in on TikTok and like filter by most viewed creative and by doing so, you can start looking out, you know, what kind of posts there are or videos that have been posted in and around those topics. A good example again, I'll come back to because we've used this one a few times, is the creatine 1. So just by typing in like creatine for women, very broad, you know, key phrase, but just by typing that into TikTok, it was very clear that there was low market sophistication because a lot of the creative that was doing really well organically was like expert education based content. So that in itself is a really big trigger to suggest, you know, we need to go higher a funnel. We need to do more expert based education because you know, there is there's big objections to overcome around women in creatine because it's seen as this Jim bro supplement. There needs to be that expert validation to be able to, you know, push them to buy that product. So that was like a really big insight from going through that. And the second one was, you know, the if there were people talking about it, it was like Yappa based creative. So that in itself not only showed us from a funnel standpoint like market sophistication, but then it also showed us some of the types of vehicles that that demo that we're talking about creatine would resonate most with. Speaker 1 That was literally the same as me doing the research for the product I've just launched went on and there was about 5, there's only like 5 videos. What we've just launched is, is a product that has like, it's, it's Google's trends to curve is just starting to go up in the US It's tiny. So it's just like there's no market awareness around the problem or the products. So it's, and there was about 5 videos of people talking about the problem, experts a lot of the time explaining the mechanism of how the problem exists. So very much the same, very much like gave us a proof point of how we need to approach the messaging. Then we found the competitor piece for those that are already in the market. That kind of pivoted us again to doing what we spoke about before. But the next wave is really like how do we crack that problem mechanism explainer and then how do we bridge that to the products? Yeah, from that research. Speaker 2 Yeah, 100%. And so, yeah, through this process, we were essentially build a database of, of vehicles that and opportunities and why this is an opportunity. And then again, we'll break into those similar that similar set up that we did before where we're looking at angles, we're looking at, you know, opportunities, personas and then, you know, concept ideas. We're building the exact same database that we did for the other types of research that would then funnel into strategic opportunities. Just a few other things that I would recommend. Firstly, Calo data which is like a great way to filter by like highest GMV TikTok shop creative. Speaker 1 Yeah, I did. I I thought everyone was on this wave, but I realised that someone, someone introduced it to me a few months ago, maybe a year, about a year ago now all TikTok shop data is public. It's a bit of a lag. It's like a few days lag, but you can see every video, every store, all the top GMGMV videos, and especially if you're in the UK, pulling from the US into the UK market and just putting more of a meta spit on it often just works really well. Speaker 2 Yeah, 100% that's the US and normally ahead of UK and TikTok shop create affiliates usually ahead of creative strategies. So it's like a really good place to look and like people just need to be studying affiliates more because like they're some of the, they're just so smart, you know, they're, they really understand like attention and curiosity and like how you open and close and keep withstand attention. So definitely worth just using that as a tool for inspiration and new vehicles that you can test. Speaker 1 Yeah, 100%. Speaker 2 Pinterest is another one that we're doing a lot of within the agency right now. And I think it's a it's a it's a really good thing to go deeper with certain personas to understand the type of creative that resonate was with them. So we did this with a product that was like TRT focused and, you know, found like, so it unlocked spending the account, but also like a new vehicle that had never been tested across any of our brands. And that was just by typing in the name of the persona on Pinterest. And then look, I think it was like, yeah, this this piece of paper with a no, which was like note to self and it was about a guy and his masculinity and something like that. We took that static and then applied that to through the lens of video and that unlocked a brand new vehicle that we hadn't yet really tested across any accounts. So I think we'll probably do a deeper dive into like Pinterest and how that is used because it's an incredible place not only to look at that like how you can take static and apply to video, but also how you can find like static ideas as well that have wouldn't have been tested on on meta. Because you can actually, you can actually again, filter by, you know, the amount of likes that certain Pinterest. And I don't know if that's the word pins. Yeah, certain pins have. Yeah. Which again, is a great indicator for, you know, whether something resonates. Speaker 1 Yeah, I want to do a full episode in statics. I want to go from native statics all the way down the funnel. Yeah, because I think it's a it's a good, I think they're underrated if if, if you do them well. And I think Pinterest is a really good place to find top of funnel static ideas. It's not very hard to find lower funnel static ideas. Yeah, so many we could RIP them off matter and put them in Higgs field. But that is somewhere where I think competitors really easy to leverage. Just RIP competitor adds, put them in Higgs field, do a few products. But the statics that have real outside contribution to other accounts, they're usually the ones that are a little bit more upper funnel. Yeah. And I think Pinterest is a really good source of of finding that, finding those, finding those ideas. Right now there's text heavy formats that can really translate into matter. Speaker 2 Yeah, 100%. Well, yeah, I think, you know, very quick run through that. It's very top level of like a few different things that that we do. Like a lot of it isn't anything new, but I think the the approach is important and how you prioritise is really important. So hopefully that has been valuable and I think we can go much deeper into some of these areas and do it more kind of like share screen vibe at a later stage. But for this episode, we just wanted to go very top level across that way of thinking, essentially. Speaker 1 Tyrus sneezing again. Yeah, I think we, because if if anyone's stuck with us to the end to, to comment below any, any like topics you want us to go deeper into. I've got statics. I think creators affiliates is another one that I'd like to do a big of a deeper dive episode into, but hopefully that was useful. Hopefully you can apply some of those research frameworks. We'll attach the resources we mentioned in the description below. Subscribe. Subscribe if you. Speaker 2 Haven't. Speaker 1 We'll catch you on the next episode. Speaker 2 This guy's here, I think he needs to go to bed. Speaker 1 Yeah, I feel, I feel a bit rofy today. Yeah. Thank you for watching.