Meta Insider Reveals How £100M+ Disruptor Brands Scale With Andromeda

You work with the top 1% of brands, the disruptor brands. You will have seen a lot of the nuances, the things that they're doing correctly that gives to them that status. Shall we go for it? Let's go. Just do it. It sounds a bit like a therapy. (all laughing) A double therapist. I think it's probably more going to be a therapy session for us. - I know, really. - Yeah. - Got the creative in the room. - Exactly. Exactly, but super excited today. We've got Maxim from Meta, who works as a creative strategist there with some of the most disruptive brands on the platform, including the lights of Space Goods, who we also work with, super excited to have you here today, because I think we can see a slightly different perspective from what's happening on the inside, how you're perceiving things, and also where we are going with Meta. We're also going to look back at things like Andromeda, partnership ads, as well as creative diversity. So Maxim, welcome. - Thank you for having me. - Yeah, it's great to have someone from the inside of the operation where we spend so much time, so much of our time talking about to get the inside scoop. - So much of us just almost, yeah, wondering, is this the right way? You just kind of have to test. - You're just trying things up. - Yeah. (all laughing) - We have to find the experts, but I'll put an on-brake on dreams to go. (all laughing) We saved multiple six figures in Q4 by changing the way that we make ad creative. And we did it with Lens by 4Play, a creative analytics tool that's built for speed and clarity. And you see, I've used a lot of these creative analytics tools before, but genuinely for me, Lens is the best. In seconds, you can get a bird's eye view of every creative test plotted. The UX for me is one of the best parts, like if you've used one of these creative data tools before, you will know that loading times for reports can be incredibly slow and tedious, whereas with Lens, it is literally instant. Just insights on demand that you can just hand directly to your creative team, to your designers, or your creators. Lens also connects to 4Play's research to I'm sure you've used their inspiration function before, and for me, it's so, so valuable having optimization and inspiration all centralized in one place. So if you want genuinely better creative, faster decisions and less wasted, you need to use Lens by 4Play. Link down below. Well, yeah, we'd love to, I guess, start with just a bit about your role. Be great to get an overview of what does a typical day look like as part of the disruptors' creative strategy team within Meta? Yeah. I mean, there's a very varied. But my role in general is about basically leading transformation when it comes to creativity within the disruptors' world, basically. So that means it can help disruptors finding new insights to explore new creative or running workshops, basically with creative team and the day teams, all the way to helping really into business transformation when it comes to creative creativity and creative teams. Makes sense. The disruptors for everybody watching is just like brands doing, pushing the boundaries, I guess, of Facebook and in terms of results, in terms of scale. How much of a-- is the role transformed, I guess, overlasts that whole disrupt the team, transformed overlasts a couple of years within Meta. How much do you mean it's got a much greater focus on creative now than it did previously? Yeah, I think it's really interesting, because I'm coming from a more traditional world, a more like CPG traditional world. So really exploring the disruptors is really bringing the knowledge that you get from the old world and really getting on this journey with those people who are not following any rules when trying to build the new rules. But the new playbook basically when it comes to creative. So it's really, really exciting. Nice to have-- nice that you guys are pushing the same narrative as others. I can't have so many conversations with brands. They're still trying to scramble to figure out how to set up an operation, how to even think about creative strategy for Meta. I feel like we've come a long way since even like six months ago, so I can't imagine when it was like then. Wanted to start with Andromeda. Again, for everybody watching, this will be the last time we talk about this on the podcast, because I feel like we've really milked this. We were saying it's become a bit of a meme that agencies just talk about Andromeda all the time, but I think it would be rude not to discuss it today. It'd be great for you, I guess, just to give your interpretation of Andromeda. What it is, we've talked about it. We've talked about our best interpretation, but I think hearing it from the inside would be great. So maybe your last time talking about Andromeda, but I know it won't be my last time talking about Andromeda. And we're ready wants to talk about Andromeda. And like you're saying, in the past few months, Andromeda has been on everybody's lips. So it's quite interesting. But in plain terms, and how I explain to clients is like, think of Andromeda as like a super intelligent librarian. So the old school librarian or the old school system was looking at ads as like book cover. So the Andromeda is capable of going inside the book and going through the content of the book. So it's like a super intelligent librarian that knows everything about every book that is in the library. That's a really good analogy. Yeah. Better than any analogy we've used. It's very good. Yeah. For sure. And I guess what that's helped the platform do is just deliver a better route in entry to the users and therefore derive better results for the advertisers if you're producing the right diversity and volume of creative. Is that correct? Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think we're going to get into it in more details. But it's basically blending art and science. Andromeda is really getting into the content, like the sentiment, the actual meaning of the ad. So you're moving away from basically this targeting game and really getting into what is the creative content. Why did they feel like they needed to make that change? I guess what was broken in the customer experience that led to a meta completely re-imagined in the way that they deliver ads? I think there is this two part to this answer. The first one is completely understanding that today we're not in the business of disturbing, but about earning attention rights. So the whole ecosystem has to be about earning the attention of the consumer on the platform, right? The other is that today we're receiving millions of millions of ads per minute, right? So you get that people are starving for attention or brands are starving for attention. The people are losing attention span also. So you have more ads, more people, but less attention span, sorry. And then more ads being served basically. So the idea is like how can we make the experience on the platform for the consumer completely tailored for them? Yeah. I feel like message is a really good job of being non-intrusive and it's that inventory compared to things like YouTube. Compared to a lot of other advertising platforms where it's very hard to skip. It's very obvious when you face now. Obviously they rolled out the whole subscribe for no ads on platform. And that was a big narrative in the last few weeks. But it definitely feels like the platform's got a strong balance. Yeah, 100%. I think especially because from a creative strategy perspective, you're seeing more and more brands leaning into that very raw native approach that fits the platform in which they're distributing ad content on. What you were thoughts, I mean, you're done if this is something that you think about much, but it very much aligns with which we're going to get into soon, creative diversity, but also Andromeda. This idea of like soulmate theory, like there's a perfect piece of creative out there for everyone. I mean, how are you thinking about that when you're talking to these disruptor brands? Yeah, I think it's funny that you're mentioning that. But it's like, it's about the brands. And I think that's the work we're doing with disruptors today. It's less about thinking what piece of content I'm putting out there. But who am I building this piece of content for? And which motivation or barrier I'm trying to tackle with this piece of content, sorry. Yeah, so very much persona driven in the way. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. We'll definitely be getting on to that shortly. And I guess just coming back to Andromeda because I think there's a lot of misconception isn't there about how we are creating ads for Andromeda, how we're delivering ads for Andromeda, what it means in terms of how we change from a volume and output perspective. What would you say is the biggest misconception that people have around Andromeda? I mean, I think it's around volume, right? And I think we're going to get into that later. This idea of like you have to have thousands of ads. And it's about iteration. It's not about iteration. I think it's about being smart in the volume. It's strategic volume. And understanding really, like we're going to get into it like motivators and barriers when you build the content. It's not about flooding the platform with content. It's really about finding the right motivation and the right barriers to create the right content. Yeah, 100%. I mean, we actually did a-- with-- created that campaign article with Meta, where we did the controlled study all around volume and doing a creative volume A/B test, where we essentially compared five ad variants with 25 variants. And essentially, from that test, it came out that definitely the volume was where more of the performance came from 171 more purchases, despite reaching 59,000 fewer people, 50% cheaper cost per conversion. But I think the key there, the learning there, the hypothesis around that is that volume for volume sake, as you say, isn't enough. Like, it's important that we are driving that through the lens of the persona and also going deeper into how we speak to those individual personas through that volume. 100%. And we've-- Sorry, cool. No, no, I was going to say to link to the article. It's exactly-- and when we talk about strategic volume, think of it as like how much flavors you're giving to the algorithm, basically, right? So if you're giving 10 times the same flavor, you are basically reaching for the same audience. If you varied your flavor, you're giving more signals for the algorithm to find new audiences, basically, for your content. It's as simple as that. That's where we talk about strategic volume. Yeah, love that. So it's like flavor is the more flavor, the more strategic depth, which essentially then translates into incremental reach, exactly. Yeah, I feel like-- and even we've been guilty of it towards the end the last year of just throwing more at a problem. And I think that is-- that is creative strategy, right? I think brands-- the brands that got on the volume high-perly went-- a lot of them went really far into like 4,000, 5,000 assets a month. And we do a lot of audits where we'll look at an account and they've been making more and more assets every 30 days. And their reach is going down, or their cuck is going up, rather than taking a step back and being like, are we being really intentional? Do we really understand the different customer types we're going after? Do we understand what their content preferences are and how we're building those blocks of diversity or-- which, yeah, I know we're going to come on. So we've spoken a lot about Andromeda, but then we've got Gem. And then Latis is the three building blocks of the new delivery system within Metasalgarithm. How is this fundamentally changed? I guess not just the creative portion of the approach, but the general approach to add accounts and growth on the channel holistically for brands before we go deeper into creative. Let's cover Andromeda and Gem, how they work together. Basically, so let me go back to the librarian image, right? So if Andromeda is the librarian, basically selecting the best ads, thousands of best ads, you would think that Gem is like the discerning reader, right? And what we mean by that is like, out of those thousands of ads, they will be able to scan the content and the context from a consumer perspective. So it's not just about finding or getting the right ad, but it's getting the right ad at the right moment for you, basically. So those two work together, Andromeda will basically filter the best content and Gem will exactly know and predict how to basically deliver it to the right person at the right time. So you've got Andromeda, which is retrieval, and you've got Gem, which is the ranking system. How is that changing, I guess, the approach to add accounts, like the way that people are approaching them, the media buying the, I guess, the people and the operation that need to sit around that to grow consistently on Facebook compared to maybe like 12 months ago. So we're talking about accounts structure, right? Yeah, accounts structure. And even just the resource that runs needs to be thinking about and bringing into that approach, some creative resource. Yeah. I think one thing that is quite hard for for internet team and agencies is when we talk about radical simplification. Yeah. I think the all the ways of thinking was like multiple ad campaign, multiple assets with those campaign, right? We see now that if you do that, if you overcomplicate and if you manually create all those layers, basically you're actually not helping the algorithm to reach new audiences. That's why we talk about radical simplification, right? And I know it's scary because of the all the ways of thinking of like accounts structure, but it's about trusting the algorithm to the finding. So the idea is recruiting those creative strategists that we've mentioned before. So the people who have like a mix of heart and science, I like to explain them like that. So people who understand creative, but also can read data, right? And those people are the golden employees of the future. Those departments used to be separated, right? She had the people, the left brain people, and the right brain people. Here are the golden child of the descriptors are those creative strategists that can do both. Basically, which is such white, such a hard role. Exactly. Exactly. Because you also sometimes play the missing link between those two still existing team within a company, right? So the always of thinking. So you're playing this role, basically. The idea of the team and the team will really understand is that your job today is not to create those layers, but to provide a creative fuel for the AI and let the AI find a destination, basically. Yes. So creative truly becomes the target thing. I mean, it shows how it's like flipped from pre-IOS 14 where there was-- there was much more complexity from an out-of-cult perspective and targeting versus probably more simplicity from a creative perspective as to what would actually work. Now it's all about the creative and how we really talk through that psychographic state of the persona and ensure that we're tapping into the right motivators, fears, desires to get in front of the right person. Yeah, I think-- so the all the way was like, basically define your audience as restrictive as possible and then maybe test your way to your winning assets, basically. And then once you have this winning asset, just iterate and iterate and iterate, basically, the golden era of the-- [LAUGHTER] I remember the whole thing all the ways, though, rather than the golden era. I remember when I first started doing some media behind on Metter at Walsers at University, and at one point we were running 1% lookalike audiences of every single event on 200, 300 pound campaign with one asset per asset. And there was like, you'd go in the account and be like 1,000 campaigns. Or as many as we could run. And it was literally the opposite, right? Literally, like the arbitrage was in the campaign set up and not the creative. So it has completely flipped. And I think we've definitely seen that journey of consolidation play out, especially for brands who are spending larger amounts, where reached and ad delivery becomes even more important, getting in front of new audiences consistently to inform today's performance and future performance, and ensuring that we're getting the right creative volume and variety. And with SpaceGuz is a good example of that, where we've kind of pursued that consolidation approach over a period of a few months, and it's contributed to better and better results over time. So definitely think everybody who's watching needs to go on that journey and find a way to simplify their account structure, even if it's giving all of the power back to the machine, in a way. - Feel the algorithm and then trust the algorithm. - Yeah. So what are diving to creative similarity? - Which is something that, yeah, we've again spoken a lot about, we've done multiple masterminds on. But again, it's still, we'll say early, it's not that early anymore, but there's still a lot of unknowns around creative similarity. I guess just to start, what could you just give some context for those that maybe don't know what is creative similarity in matter and how important is this for brands that are listening? - Yeah, of course. So think of that the algorithm analyzes what we call visual signature, right? So that means that it goes through your creative, like we were talking earlier, and analyze the content, the emotion, the message behind it, not just the file name, basically, which was maybe before. Which means that you may have 200 ad files on your account, but the system recognizes only 20 different signature, right? That means that it's not about having, like we were saying, hundreds of different assets, but the right assets, because again, the algorithm will only recognize 20 different signature and that means that your 200 assets are fighting for the same audience, right? So it's like moving beyond those superficial tweaks when we used to call it iteration, and I think we need to be careful today when we use the word iteration, because I think everybody's mind iteration is changing the background or changing your word in the title, and really understanding, like, it means the meaningful changes in the DNA of the creative and the assets. - So what are some of the things that matter are looking at most in terms of whether they're deciding if something is the same or not? I mean, that's not meta as us. - Yeah, I'm not behind the algorithm, but there is basically, like we were talking earlier about visual and creative signals, right? So I think the algorithm is looking as many as possible different signals. That means like different talent or creators, different background or environment, different type of filming or camera angle, different type of messaging. The more you're feeling the algorithm, different, like I say, creative signals, the better your asset is about to stand out. Basically, if on this crowd of 200, and assets. - Yeah, it's definitely changed the approach that we've taken, and we've definitely gone on this journey where, you know, Andromeda, we had changed our whole process when we started kind of leaning more so into that of Andromeda, and I think that became okay. We need to iterate more on a weekly basis, drive more volume, but then with creative, diver as similarity, it completely changed the approach again, because actually we have to be, we can still iterate, but we've got to be like truly intentional about the iterations that we're doing. So if we had say three hours to do 50 iterations, in that same time now, maybe we could only do 10 to 15, but as a result, they are going to drive more diversity and therefore more impact, more incremental reach within the account. - Yeah, I think it's quite interesting. When we talk about iteration, and like, like you were saying, in the back, when you found your winner, you would change the background or the music when it comes to video, now it's about completely shifting the way you're thinking about winning assets, right? So it's less about the execution and more about what has convinced people about this asset. So really about what is the inside behind this asset that has really struck a chord in people's mind, and that's why it's a winning asset. It's not because of the color or the visual, it's really the inside and really the motivators, right? Behind the assets. - One of the things I think is an interesting challenge, which we haven't quite figured out, I guess internally, is like, I think some assets can really work 'cause there are a combination of things working together. So it could be like a format under persona, under message that all works together to resonate with an audience, and it's trying to strip out, which of those has been the real contributor, the biggest driver, is it the message, or is it that we've done it as a podcast? But yeah, we're definitely looking at that as more of like, what's the fundamental building blocks rather than those small things in a creative that we can then take into next-gen. - I'll put it in. - Yeah. One of the latest things that we'll get onto in a moment is the idea of how do we go into more depth with the personas that we're targeting. And I think previously we would have just macro personas, which really were quite broad in many ways. Like technically, Ollie and I could fall under the same class of persona, but we've got different fears, we've got different motivators. We've got different things that drive us as individuals that are going to resonate with us. And therefore, really, we shouldn't be sat under the same class of persona. So this is wild now, we're viewing personas as macro, which maybe we fit under the same, and then micro, which through that you're looking at, what is the primary desire, what's the core fear, what's the belief, and that's then really governs how we speak to each of those individuals? Yeah, I think it's quite interesting, because before we were all part of the same demographic, right, like male living in England, liking football, for example. That would be a proper demographic, like 25 to 35, if I'm older than 35, and 25 to 35, looking at like football and living in England, basically. Right now, we're looking at personas, and it's more like the emotional and psychological level, which is much more interesting when we talk about creative diversification. We can talk an example like space good, for example, which is a wellness brand, right? If your target only male would like football, you're gonna get the same message over and over. But then if you start thinking over like why people would like to try space goods, the different products, right? They may be the person who is like a high achiever, and in that case, the messaging is around productivity and scaling and getting more active and getting better at your life. Then you are on the other side of the spectrum, you may have someone who is like the stressful, a newbie or the stressful worker, and the benefit is all gonna be being like peaceful mind and wellness really the core of the brand. So it's really interesting to think of it like that, because immediately you get diversification by thinking about your audience from a completely different perspective. And you could also, yeah, when you go, when you approach it in that way, you can often, we've done this for a few clients, you'll find through research audiences that you didn't even know existed for your brand, and that can open up like another huge leap in spend and new, exactly. - Exactly. - And new leap in growth massively. And I think they, yeah, and the deeper you go on those sub-personers, the more of those you'll find and the more scary you'll be able to drive. - Just on that, what advice do you have for brands that maybe are in that position where they are seeing frequency increase, they're needing to unlock new personas, new angles, like how would you approach a situation like that? Or I guess through the lens of reporting or research? - I think it's both reporting and research. I think there's a work to be done by brands of understanding the consumer better. And again, not on the demographic level, but more on the psychological and emotional level, right? So it's like, it's almost shifting role, I'd always say to marketers or clients or brands that are coming to us, it's like, put down your marketer cap for a moment and think of yourself as the simple consumer, right? Like when you target it by ads, when you feel that you may be targeted because you are a mere living, and like, and for the world, you're not relating to this ad, not into this world. But when they start talking about emotional trigger or it feels like they know you as a consumer, it's much more interesting, much more relatable. So there's a lot of tools now, there's a lot of AI capabilities, AI for example, is a great way to start asking question about different audiences, what drive people, a certain group of people to purchase a certain category, what example, it's a great place to start. - Yeah, I think that's what we speak about a lot. I think like research is the 80-20 of creative. - Yeah. - I think it's like people should spend such so much more time on like review mining, surveys, looking at organic videos that are trending against a certain problem or product, and trying to find those like, it's trying to find the way that your customers and the different personas talk about the problem because that is often so different to how the brand will talk about the problem, and that align and just finding those small turns of phrases can have such a massive impact on performance. - Yeah, because we're going through this inflection point in the business right now where the role of the creative strategist is changing as execution becomes more commoditized by AI, it means that the role of the creative strategist becomes vulnerable unless they are truly strategic in their approach. So they become more of the strategic spine versus, I guess what notoriously they've been, is kind of a jack of all trades, they have to do scripting, concepting, ideation, reporting, optimization, everything in between. And yeah, because of that, like we are, we're really putting an emphasis on how we spend more time on the research because I think sometimes brands think you do research once, and they then don't touch it for a year, two years, but if not a monthly thing, it has to be a quarterly thing, and it needs to be a big part of that ongoing approach. - Yeah. - We have saying within the creative department, I admit, creative will be automated, creativity will never be. And I think that's a good thing to understand and to take for brand and understand, and investing in the creative strategy department, right? It's like, AI will help you automate the execution, but creativity, which is really to understand your consumer, your brand and the market, that you function within, this will never be replaced by AI. 'Cause you like you're saying, it's about emotion, it's about understanding the geopolitical environment, the socio-economical environment of your consumer also, and really act quickly upon that. - 100%, and that's definitely the kind of ethos we're approaching like our growth of that department through. We touched on how meta looks at creative, similarity and why it's so important. You mentioned signals which I want to come back to because we think a lot about signal engineering within accounts, which I think many brands don't think about that enough, like how can we engineer the signals in the platform to find new audiences? But I know meta's got a lot of creative similarity updates coming from like a reporting perspective and a, and I just wanted to chat about that. The view of like creative fatigue, creative similarity, score, talk, creative themes, and how you're looking to arm-bruns with more data and insights to improve creative similarity over the next few months. - Yeah, I think for me the most exciting one is themes, and because you're gonna be able to not only understand what is working for your brand and double down on that, but also understanding when you're saturating your audience with a type of content, right? So let's say you have 8% of your content that is around humor, but you see that this content is really performing. And I mean that like double down on humor, that doesn't mean that it has become 80% of your content, right? We see brands that have 80% of their content that is, that look like a podcast. - Yeah. - Good luck today, right? And it's true also specifically in the disruptor world, right? I don't think there's a ride of fastest for disruptors to have this ad that looks like a podcast. - Yeah. - That's not the benefits of the USPs. - It always works. - Yeah. - No, I know. - It's still ripping. It's still ripping. - It's like people are coming to like, we've done podcasts as I'm like, you're not gonna well enough. - Yeah. - Yeah. - I thought process now is like, what's the next evolution of a podcast? - Yeah, I agree. - So we've like tried to innovate on the same approach. - It's like the street bike is the next version. But the idea is that if 80% of your content is the podcast, you may want to evolve in terms of content. - Well, diversify again, the content. - I think that's, I've been thinking about this recently 'cause it's like survivorship bias in a way. It's like when you analyze, when you're creating more assets and you're analyzing what's working, you're always looking to double down on what's working. And I was reading a Ben Horowitz book recently from Andres and Dreson Horowitz. And he said that he used to go into his strategy meetings and write up like, what are we not doing? And start from there. And I think that's, especially for brands that have quite broad appeal, have a lot of personas to go after, have broad-time big market. I think you do need to balance doubling down, doing more, refreshing what's working with trying to activate just completely different styles of content and completely different types of people. - It's like the cool earlier today about, with one of our brands, where you were saying exactly that, where are the gaps? We need to do some gap analysis. - Yeah, well, like so over leverage into 40 plus, but we're not really telling anything to people under the age of 40 and the product has appeal. So it's like, how do we do that? 'Cause we're like, so much more volume. And they're already spending a lot. So it's like, there's a big opportunity there. But yeah, the theme sounds really good. - Yeah, I think to your point, I think it's really interesting what you're saying, because this is also what we're working with brand in terms of like shifting mindset, right? And it's less about like short-term results and more like long-term, how you build a brand. We usually tell brands don't try to have this winner, loser, add mentality or like the concept on the ad and try to build more of like a creative portfolio, right? And within your creative portfolio, you'll have the themes that you know are working. But if you think of your content as a creative portfolio, then you may want to have more risk with 15 to 20% of your content, right? Try new theme, for example, or try new formats within this portfolio, because you still have those 80, 85% where you know you'll get performance from. So it's this idea of like really building from the future and not just being short-term vision. - Yeah, 100%. Yeah, we've started, we've always categorized by like framework or big swing and then that's a layer within the creative strategy and what percentage splits we're doing of each, but the one we've added into that is calculated risk as well. So I agree, it's like actually labeling what that looks like with each piece of creative as well. Like is it a big swing? Is it a framework, which is something we know has worked before? And I think that's, again, like I guess, almost before we get to that point of those like scoreings, are we approaching it? Are we being proactive in the way that we are approaching that diverse to the way that we can ensure that we aren't over-indexing in one vehicle? - Yeah, it's a calculated risk, right? I think if you go back to like, you're talking about framework, like if we go back to personas, it's decided that like think of like three to five personas on your brand or campaign level basically and within those three to five personas, three to three different angles per persona. Then you can take, like I said, calculated risk with each of those personas with a specific creative angle that you're testing to actually, like you were saying, reach a new audience that you may have not thought about before. - Or it's to ask one really practical question because I get, this is a question that gets asked by clients really frequently. So we've obviously talked, the creative similarity is a big message like people are looking at diversity, but then like an example of one that, a question that I'll get asked by clients is like, if I have a UGC video with the same creator in the same setting, but completely different scripts, is that enough differentiation for method to not see that as the same asset? In most cases, I would say no. - Right. - Again, earlier we talked about creative signals, right? If you think of literally those assets that you're talking about now, there's not enough domination and differentiation between those two assets, right? - Yeah. - And let's remove Meta and the algorithm and again, let's go back to think of yourself as a consumer, right? If you're serving a piece of content about let's even like a burger brand basically and it's a chef in the kitchen and you watch the first 10 seconds and it talks to you about the fact that it's a beef burger, right? Then let's say six hours later, you being serving another piece of content, it's the exact same chef in the exact same kitchen and you start by saying the burger, you're skipping the ads, right? Because you've seen this ad already. - Yeah. - This is what the algorithm is doing basically on behalf of the consumer. And when we talk about iteration or tweaking, this is what we mean by that, right? But if I give you, and that's also the consultation that we do, if we go on set with clients, for example, we tell them, if you rent a house, why is the chef only at the kitchen? Can he not be in the bedroom or in the garden, right? You rented a house, use the entire house or basically hire different type of creators within this kitchen. But you need to have a real visual differentiation in order for it to be sure. And again, I'm not behind the algorithm, but to be sure, to be 100% sure that it's differentiated, you need to give multiple visual signals that it's a different ad. - That's why we've started thinking about that through that, 'cause we will do full podcast days in the same podcast studio. And even, you know, you could have one actor and another actor in this podcast. And maybe you swap out one of them, but you've still got the same of the other. Same setting, probably not enough signals there that we've to actually kind of deem as creative difference, right? So that's something we're thinking about in terms of logistically on those days, you might be filming multiple ads, but in a same studio, same location, like actually you need to view that in a slightly different way, even if potentially the angle's different in which, you know, and the messaging as well. - Yeah, I think like I was saying, there's no right formula as right, and I don't want to give the wrong signal, but like you were saying, like, it's quite interesting when you like start swapping actors, but you keep the same background. You have a different speech or a different angle, like we were talking earlier, the algorithm would probably recognize it as different ads, right? 'Cause it's not the same human, it's not the same actor. We're not talking the same thing. What's left is just the set, right? So I think you have given it enough creative signal. And like you were saying, I think it's interesting when you talk about angles. Now we're being shot today, but like, technically, you could only shoot me and you could be basically in the background, right? So this ad could be just me talking, versus having two people or three people, or sorry, I have two or three people talking with each other. So I think there are like creative ways to diversify the content. The idea is like, don't expect the algorithm to recognize where you're doing minimum tweaks, basically. There's loads of ways to do that as well. Yeah. Split screen, you can put a green screen, someone over the top of the original ad talking about the ad in the background, switch to third person. It's just, yeah. You can't just requires that next. And there's the work we've done with space goods, right? It's like going on shoot, not only talking when we talk about mood board, but it's really going on shoots and really like practice, basically, with the team on the ground, right? So you go to one or two shoots with those teams and then it's a muscle, basically. They understand that you need to change the angle, you need to change the actor, you need to change the setting and then it becomes like a natural creative muscles that you develop. Yeah. I think that's why, like, actually, operationalizing the building of framework databases for your brand is so, so important. This is something we've done huge amounts of. Even if it's like just through something you've seen organically, as a real or maybe it's something you've seen in an ad library and you're just saving a bank of all of these different types of messaging frameworks or vehicles that you can deploy a message within. Because I think, obviously, persona diversification is super, super important. But when you find winning messaging within a specific persona, like that's like gold dust and you should be testing that against five, six, seven different vehicles. Yeah. Because, you know, that, as it comes back to that idea of soulmate theory, every, every one likes to consume information in different ways and what works one person might not for another. True. I mean, you call it messaging, I call it insight. I think it's exactly the same thing, right? It's like, when you touch upon something that has striker cord with the consumer, right? With those different personas, like, that's what I call it insight. It's like, keep that. Because like I was saying, it's gold, right? You found a way to cut through the noise and really find relevance within those personas life, right? So yeah. We saved multiple six figures in Q4 by changing the way that we make ad creative. And you see, I've used a lot of these creative analytics tools before, but genuinely, for me, Lens is the best. The UX, for me, is one of the best parts. Like if you've used one of these creative data tools before, you will know that loading times for reports can be incredibly slow and tedious, whereas with Lens, it is literally instant. Lens also connects to 4Play's research to, I'm sure you've used their inspiration function before. And for me, it's so, so valuable having optimization and inspiration all centralised in one place. Link down below. The golden question off the back of this is, right? What's the right number of distinct creative concepts to run at any given time? I mean, don't put us out of a job by saying, not far. No, I think, I mean, like it's like talking about Andromeda every day, I think I get this question also at least twice a day. Every time I meet clients, it's the same question. There's not right or wrong answer. But if you go with the personal framework, for example, I would say think of like three to five personas and like we were saying, for each person, I think of like three to five creative angles or messaging angles, right? The different insight. And then based on those creative insights, I have those like vacuals, like being like what different formats, being static video or carousel. You end up with a really diverse creative portfolio, right? And you don't realize that you've created dozens of ads, but always with the consumer in mind. And that's the true goal, right? To have a diverse creative portfolio versus what we were talking earlier, creating those hundreds of ads were saying the exact same thing with the exact same visual. So it's about diversity, but also my role as a creative strategist is also to say diversity cannot come at a compromise of quality. And I think that's one thing that we talk a lot at meta is like the quality. We've seen brand try to overproduce and to really hinder the quality of the output. And that will automatically link to also the quality of the performance, right? Yeah. Yeah, I think brands obviously, the easy thing when you've got bottleneck is just a throw more, resource asset. And it's like, we look at, like, hit rate, like, how many of our ads are winning based on what-- how we define a winner differently by account. And it's like, we need that to be in a healthy range. And we need that to be flat or improving as we add more value. And that for us is like a good creative system because the output is driving results. And not just throwing it all away. Yeah. I think the other-- off the back of what you just said as well, the other thing that's super important, I think, what makes a great-- one element that makes a really great creative strategist is knowing how to prioritize. Because I think, you may, like you said, you might have-- someone listen to this right now. I might have five personas, three per persona, suddenly. And then you've got vehicles underneath that. And you've just got so many ads. But let's say you've got a much smaller budget that you're playing with. You have to aggressively prioritize. How do you think about prioritization? I mean, I think it depends on your goal, right? And usually, I'm not the guy in the room that talks about media budget because I'm the creative 30% [LAUGHTER] That's not a much persona. But I think it is really important to understand budget, right? We have clients and brands who have hundreds of ads. But don't have the budget to support that. So you end up with really badly performing campaign because there's not a proper ratio between the creative and the actual-- it's like almost being too hungry, basically. But not having the appetite, right? Or not the right appetite for it. So again, it's not about producing hundreds of ads, understand who you are, understand what are your goals. And like you were saying, maybe it's about prioritizing the persona that you know are going to resonate with your brand before exploring with more adventurous persona. I would call them like that. So it's like being ruthless in prioritization. So it's not only prioritization in the production of the assets, but also in what are my goals, right? I think that's important. The goal piece is important as well, because you strategy on need to evolve multiple times through a year to as you goal evolves, like as you spend increases. And that's where you might have to add another two, three personas or more wholesome personas, which makes sense. I think the last point when we're talking about quality-- also I think it's really important to understand when you have a winning formula. When we talk about winning formula, we talk about strong hooks branding within the ad, like a strong message, a strong CTA, for example, to not completely dilute that when you're trying to create those iterations. When you have this winning formula, continue producing within this winning formula. You mentioned, Brad, I'm not going to go down this note, because there'll be-- we'll go down a black hole. But a lot of-- it's interesting when you talk about creative diversity and the similarity being the enemy of growth. And the role of brand, which, by definition, is producing similarity across a set of output for a business. And I'm having more conversations with clients on how do those two things live together? How do we ensure on brand creative, whilst pursuing diverse? I think a lot of that is like constraints and similar elements, but not completely similar creative. I think that certainly feels like a conversation that's becoming more and more frequent as this rolls out. Yeah, I think even branding the content. I think we've had different era, or we've been told you need to have the brand within the first three seconds. And then there's been an era. I was like, you don't need to show the brand anymore, because it should be subtle. And I think the winning brands today are becoming smarter and smarter at integrating the brand within the content. And that means not having the logo on the right end corner of your content, but-- All this. Yeah, exactly. But when we talk about-- it's funny. When we talk about beauty brand, for example, sometimes it's about having a boundle basically with the logo of the brand, or like cooking brands type of having an apron with the logo. So brands are smarter and smarter in the way the brand logo really show up in the content through the packaging. Without you being noticing it, you're being exposed to the content for the 25 seconds of the ad. Also, that's where developing the brand tonal voice is really important. Sometimes you know you're watching an ad from this brand and the logo hasn't been showed, right? It's because the brand has such a strong tonal voice and such a strong personality that it comes out through every content that they're putting out. So it's really interesting. Yeah, that's where I think that runs. That's what I think brands need to be thinking about. Because I think if you have that kind of older school brand approach, it really does constrain. You're able to get out of meta, which is for many of our-- it's certainly our clients, the biggest channel. We talked about signals briefly. Good segue into partnership ads. Yes. We talk about partnership ads internally, and I'm on a massive push for partnership ads now. Yes, because Chloe off-camera is made as-- she is, she's aggressively Qon. But yeah, we're on a big push. Because we've seen the impact that it can drive, it feels like a bit of a hesitate to use Hike, but like cheat code right now to get-- when done well. Because so many brands aren't leveraging it, I think that creates an opportunity to get great results before everybody is doing it everywhere. We've seen it as a multiplier of diversity. It's like when you add in the identity, it's another variable to add to that similarity piece. And it helps with signals by leveraging other people's audiences and how different people react to different accounts. What do you think is a realistic sort of spend target for partnership ads? How are you seeing the best brands use the tool internally to drive results? I mean, the top performer, the top brands are spending between 30 and 50% on partnership ads today. And it's just because it's partnership at consistently deliver a lower CP and higher CTR. So like you're saying, basically, I don't know if we got a cheat code. But I think the top brand of understood few things. The first is that injecting partnership ads within your ad set, within your campaign really bring one authenticity. And we were talking about differentiating content. And saying, going back to signals, you're bringing a completely different set of signals, especially when you're running the patch about from the creator's handle. You're bringing the signals from the creative handle. It's community, it's type of content, it's type of emotion that the deliver. So like we were saying earlier, you're really feeding the algorithm a completely different set of creative signals in order to reach new audiences. So I mean, all the way into partnership ads, and not just because I'm a fan of creators, but really because it does deliver a result. So it's not just nice to have, it's now a must have to have. Yeah, and I think Brands overthink it. I think there's a lot of ways to get started quite quickly there. We've seen success with founder stories, we've delivered through a founder using internal team members. But I also think where we're going to go through this year is like, we were talking about this today on a call, like the concepts of maybe getting an expert for a brand and then building a separate creative strategy around that person that runs just through that identity and almost isolating that work street. But yeah, seeing a lot of brands overthink it, I think, in terms of just getting started and leveraging that tool. Yeah, I think there's a lot of brands who are scared to hand their brand away, right? Because that's how they see it, basically. But there's so many great creators out there who really understand how to work with brands also now. They're not just crazy artists, you know what I mean? And then you take their brand and they take it completely somewhere else. They understand brandy and they understand how to work with a brand. So it's really about building this collaboration with those creators. Very tactical question just on this. You may not be able to answer it. But are you going to be penalized for creative similarity if you're taking, say, a top spender within the ad account and then starting to whitelist that against the creator? Wait, repeat the question. I'm not sure I understand. Would you, you mentioned like it's a completely different set of signals? So I guess the question is, you know, if you've got a top performing creative in the ad, in your ad account, or a creative that's showing promise, are you going to get penalized for creative similarity? If you take that creative and then run it as a partnership ad with that creator? That's an interesting question. I'm not sure I have, or we have the answer to it. I've seen it work. I've seen it work. [LAUGHTER] Oh yeah. I mentioned quickly the brand's overthinking it. But if you are a brand watching this, what's the quickest way in best way to get started on that partnership ad journey? How do you function to go about doing it? Yeah. I think there's a few steps when you start with partnership ads. The first one is you really understand what kind of creators do you want to work with? And where to find them? I think the creator marketplace is a great place to start your journey because you have from nano to bigger creators. I know sometimes the investment also can scare brands away. So it's good also to start with maybe smaller creators to test the water and understand how to work with creators. The second is really to find a way to work with them. And we help also some brand with that. It's like how to write a brief, how to let go of some of your brand guardrails when you work with creators and give the creators real creative freedom when you work with them. And it's about like building, like I say, building a collaboration. I think the biggest mistake that we see brand do is to think that partnership ad is a one-off and not an always on strategy. And when we mean always on strategy, it's not just having partnership ads all the time and always on, but it's also working with some of creators as always on right, especially when you see that the content is working right. And when you community, for example, associate this creator to your brand, it's good to really build a relationship with this creators because one, it becomes easier to work with them. They understand your brand, you know. And two, you can really start building a story arc with those creators and with your brand. Could you talk about some of the, I know there are quite a few updates in 2025 in terms of features that help brands with partnership ads. Could you talk through some of those newer features? I was about, say, I think the creative marketplace is like the Unsung hero of our brand. Exactly. Like people who don't talk about it. It's really valuable. But especially, so, I'd say to what you said about getting started, the recently, I think it was only a couple of weeks ago, rolled out the ability to use creative marketplace to search through your brand's followers for active creators. I think he's a really quick leg up. It's like these people are already engaging with you. Like, it makes sense to go try and get them on first because they're not going to have a grand mention, doesn't it? Yeah, so, yeah, I think that's just been a, there's been a lot of features coming out there, which has been valuable. Yeah, I think that like I said, the creative marketplace is really to democratize working with creators, right? I think you have this world of like, creator agencies, which are really also great because they provide also strategic value to the relationship that you have with creators. But I think creator marketplace is great because it gives power to the brand also because it's not about like you arrive on a, on a marketplace and you just look around, right? There's, there's proper filters. And once you find your pool of potential creators, then there is this level of like, like I said, it's not just nice to have creators, but what kind of like metrics do they provide, right? And then you have this layer also not just in terms of like they reach and they're demographic, but also like what type of performance they can provide. Then it's the third level of like reaching out and really building this relationship. And I always say like don't believe that every creator want to work with you. Also, I think that's the beauty of creators. It's like they also vary. The authenticity is that sometimes they say like, I don't think my value align with your value as a brand, but that's also what they make them powerful. That's all where we see amazing results, right? With them. So think you have different layers that really put the brand in the driver's seat and less at the mercy of the creator world. So I think that's what creator place for me is an exciting and I know that we're gonna get more and more features also on it. - Yeah, I think it's been everyone should go and have a look at that as well. - Yes, yes, of course. - So great. When you're actually launching functionally, again, tactically in the other car, when you launch in these partnership ads, it's very different type of content. We're seeing brands approach it very differently when we're looking at accounts when we're doing audits. We've taken the approach of like continuing to consolidate, treating it just as another creative test. What would you say is best practice for brands there? - Yeah, that's a good point. I think the biggest mistake that brands do is to create a different campaign or a different ad set for the partnership ad. Like we're saying, you completely missed the opportunity of those signals, those creative signals, right? So the idea is really to incorporate those partnership ads within basically your ad set or UBA, you campaign. It's don't create silos, like we're saying like radical simplification. It's because again, you're feeding the algorithm more creative signals to reach new audiences. So like you're saying, I think the biggest mistake is to isolate those partnership ads into the own ad set or into the own ad campaign. - Yeah, and I think the signals aren't just ad level either. It's like the sequence of ad delivery by incorporating it in, it can provide a signal to reach new audiences, which then lifts the full campaign up. That would be behind the hypothesis. But yeah, we definitely tried to incorporate them into those core campaigns rather than strip them out. We'll deliver best performance. Switching gears a bit to AI, it would be wrong not to touch AI. I feel like it's gotta be in every podcast. I feel like this. Which of Meta's AI tools? 'Cause I know you've got a lot of consumer facing tools, you've got a lot of ad account level tools, creative tools, which I actually think has come on leaps and bounds over the last few months, the creative tool in the platform. But what do you think are like the absolute must use for advertisers? I didn't work that very well, but you kinda know. - Yeah. - And you can't say all of them. (laughing) - No, I mean, no, no, no. I already mentioned that. I already mentioned Meta AI earlier, so I already ticked that box for inspiration. But I think today brands would be missing a huge opportunity if you were not using the full suite of advantage plus tools, which are available to everyone in ad manager, right? And we talk about text generation, video editing, or like image to video conversion. I think today, and maybe a few months back, it felt like it was for earlier adopters. I think today everybody should be at least playing with them, trying with them. I think to me, at least as a strategist and a brand's register, text generation is really interesting. To back to personas, right? Because I think now today you can actually create those personas within the text generation. That means that the AI is smart enough to understand your brand DNA when you develop a message and also understand which person you want to develop this message for. So it's like the AI understanding your brand DNA and also the personas that you're trying to target. So I think yeah, I think advantage plus is a great way to start, like I say, it's not for earlier adopters. It should be for everyone today. Yeah, and there's some features in there, like comments, pin comments, delivery, the rest of them escape me right now. But I do think in no brainers, you just have to be cautious of not going to lose with them because you can end up with happy birthday on some sort of random asset. Yes. Of course, this music in middle of July. But I'm sure that'll get improved over time. I guess that comes on to my next question of like, where have you seen AI tools create problems for advertising and where do people need to be cautious when just, when giving all power to the robot? Especially because I know one thing you've spoken a lot about today is authenticity. So it's almost balancing the two right. But I think you just mentioned about a half of your birthday or like a Christmas song in July, right? I think the biggest pitfall that we've seen brands do is like over reliance on AI. I think when we think about AI, we think that AI is about augmenting human creativity, not replacing it. And I think you should always have a human within the loop, right? Sometimes today's AI doesn't get your brand to no voice right or exactly right, or maybe missing a bit in the message that you're trying to deliver. So over relying on AI without a human within the loop, I think it's too big a pitfall. I think there is this idea of like, people are against AI and people are just throwing everything at AI and wishing for the best. I think there's a balance between the two and I think like you're saying authenticity come also from the human touch. Yeah, for sure. Especially with AI creative. Like I think it's one you've got to be super careful with. I think there's a lot of value, but I think I see that as like its own vehicle in a way. Like it's another messaging vehicle that we use. It isn't as you say a replacement to real content. Yeah. Yeah, I think a lot of the fastest growing, if I look at the last 12 to 18 months for our client base, the type of create, and we were looking at like our top asset, sorry, I would say that the majority of our larger spenders are the ones where you would say they are more authentic, more organic and heart and therefore harder to produce with full AI and to end tools right now. I'm sure that'll become easier. Yeah, but I know the brand you're talking about, but every single one of them also has top spenders that have AI creative to some degree, even if it was like AI voice over or how we've used winning messaging in a framework and put that into third person AI generated framework. So yeah, it's still outweighs the balance of AI creative. But I think the best brands are doing authenticity really well, but also doing AI really well and are open to doing AI. We have some brands that will not touch it, which is problematic in a different way. I think it's part of our job, right? As I'm going to talk about the creative strategy world, it's about making people understand how you meet AI where your creative or your marketing ambitions are. So today you may have bigger creative marketing ambitions and today if you're not using AI to reach those ambitions, it won't be possible for you. So it's like mixing, really mixing both of those creative marketing ambitions and the capabilities that AI provide today. Yeah. We've had, we've definitely obsessed over creative the last two or months, but measurement is such a fundamental part of meta strategy. We, I guess we're fortunate in a way that the majority of our clients and the majority of our spend right now is converged, an optimized, row-ast, and CPA easy to fund a lot easier to track the impact of them when you start getting into sort of brand up a funnel. With all the automation that's coming in like the changes in the platform, the changes in creative diversity, how do you think brand should be thinking about measurement and like proving the value of investment, whether that's creative or whether that's in new objectives or just generally a new campaign, new structures in the other count or just-- I think the top brands are understanding that today it's not about a one in platform metric. And I think the partner with the agency today to really create a more holistic measurement framework, I think we all understand that meta is just one piece of a larger ecosystem, right? And I think it's the top, like I said, the top brand really understands that I have really advanced analytics when it comes to understanding the interplay, not between only-- between the different platform but between the different channels, right? So it's not just about your page channel, but it's also about your organic, about your emailing, about offline also really combining all of those into bigger and more complex, like I say, holistic measurement framework. So it's less about the one-off or like we were saying earlier, the short-term win, but understanding how do you do longer and more meaningful winning through those holistic measurement framework. Yeah, and I think the search varying degrees of measurements, sophistication in brands of all different sizes, there's often like different motivations in different teams, trying to prove different outcomes. There's a CFO who wants absolute clarity on every pound spend, and I think that's the biggest thing I think would advise all brands is like start building like a measurement process early, because it's really hard. We work with a couple of brands that I'm thinking about right now that haven't done that, have got to a point of really complex media mixes, they've got Amazon retail, four media channels, and then trying to do it at that point, trying to set up test, validate things, and build cases for further investment in key areas is really difficult. And one point I would make also is invite your creative to those measurement conversation. Again, this idea of not creating silos within the company, even invite the creative strategy, invite the creative, and I know that maybe for some creative team at the beginning, it's like speaking another language when we talk about measurement and performance, but the more you integrate those departments together, the more you work towards the same goal and like you're saying basically, it doesn't feel like just trying to speak a different language, or you're not trying to reach different goals or measuring different, you're all measuring the same thing. Yeah, and I think incremental is the north star, right? And getting to the point where you've got a really good process of proving increments to outcomes on both meta and other sales channels from the activity you're doing. Yeah. So we're almost there now. (laughing) Sorry for the grilling, but I'm worried. I didn't feel like a real, I didn't come. One question that this just book ends this quite nicely, you work with the top 1% of brands, the disruptor brands, you will have seen a lot of the nuances, the things that they're doing correctly that gives to them that status. If you had to give one piece of a device to a brand that is wanting to move from where they are today to a disruptor by the end of 2026, what would you tell them? I mean, I'm gonna sound like I'm repeating myself, but embrace a creative diversity with a strategic framework. And that means like, stop thinking in terms of like, winning and losing ads, and like I was saying, start building this creative portfolio. Going back, develop a deep understanding of personas, the motivators, their barriers, and really based on that build a matrix of creative concept back to this creative portfolio, right? And not to sound again, but like fit the algorithm like reach mixed creative, and let the algorithm really reward you when you're feeling or fueling it the right way. - Amazing. - Well, I think that's a bit of a mic drop moment. (laughing) - And we're maxing. - Thank you so much for joining us today. I appreciate you coming on. And yeah, if you've enjoyed this episode, please give it a like, subscribe. - Just yeah, final point, I know we've talked about loads of meta updates. Where, for those watching who maybe find it difficult to stay up to date with those, where should they be heading to stay on top of all of the algorithm changes, the upcoming creative similarity, roll outs, et cetera, for their brand and business? - Yeah, I think the meta for business website is a great source when it comes to updates and knowledge, bit of a knowledge center. And there's also like great communities, like and great source of information, like your podcast, for example. And I swear I haven't been asked to say that, but I think it's also it's good to bring different vision to the table, like the official version with meta for business. And then what the community is really experiencing with our updates. - Perfect, so yeah, thank you again for coming on. It's been a pleasure. - We'll put the link down below. Thanks for joining us. - Thank you. [MUSIC]