Creative Research 101 | The Hidden System Behind Ads That Scale

14 Sep 2026 · 1 h 5 min · 19 chapters

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In short

Creative Research 101—how to research for ads that scale by starting from outcomes, identifying the binding constraint, and using both manual and targeted automated research (not “spray and pray” or over-automation).

Guests

Solo host (Luke) and a co-host (Sam mentioned in prior episodes). No guest bios are provided in the transcript; they discuss running creative research/scoring across 50+ D2C brands and building an ad-account creative scoring framework.

Key claims

  • Begin with the commercial outcome and reverse-engineer the research direction.
  • Find the binding constraint using a creative score, not just “more persona research.”
  • Manual research provides deeper context than automation (example: Reddit automation lacks depth).
  • Research lanes: owned, prospective/unaware audience research, plus post-purchase surveys and direct calls.
  • Messaging must match personas’ language and deeper desires; surface-level pain points reduce retention.

Notable examples

  • Brand example: 87% spend on 2 personas and 80% on 3 single ads; constraint was vehicle/format diversity, so they narrowed persona focus and went deeper.
  • Menopause: AI review mining found ~25% of reviews contained menopausal pain points; also a “mum call” exercise uncovered purchase prompts and fears.
  • Creatine: “creatine for women bulky?” (Answer the Public) led to Reddit fears about water weight.
  • Competitor research: comments revealed product failures; shifted from problem-aware to solution-aware/product-aware creative (e.g., sensory-friendly/quality and objection handling).

Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.

Chapters

Tap a time to open that second in VO

The Essence of Research in Advertising

1:40 to 6:07

Exploring the core principles of effective research and the challenges posed by technology.

“dc diaries um back with another solo and excited to talk things talk all things creative research Creative Research 101, as we've titled this episode.”

Research Outcomes and Creative Strategy

6:07 to 14:00

Discussion on the importance of starting research with clear outcomes and creative strategies.

“So I think the key at first, whether you're a brand listening to this or an agency, is starting with the outcome.”

The Importance of Creative Volume in Ads

14:00 to 18:48

Learn about the balance between creative volume and quality in ad campaigns.

“which is very much about is the amount of spend that we're driving in the account.”

Analyzing Creative Performance Through Case Studies

18:49 to 22:17

Understand how to identify key triggers in ad performance using real examples.

“we're going to go on to the actual research process.”

Research Strategies for Target Audience

22:18 to 25:07

Discover various research strategies to understand target audiences better.

“I like that example because it's slightly nuanced as well.”

Leveraging Customer Insights for Effective Marketing

25:08 to 28:05

Explore the value of customer insights and how to gather them effectively.

“So the market share that your brand currently owns, right?”

Exploring Customer Insights Through Manual Research

28:05 to 29:14

Learn how to uncover deeper customer insights using manual research techniques.

Deep Dive into Audience Research Techniques

30:05 to 39:55

Understand effective methods for audience research including tools and strategies.

“So the art of this is like really understanding, especially using tools like Reddit, Google Trends, Answer the Public, blogs.”

Leveraging Personal Experiences for Marketing

39:55 to 42:00

Learn the value of personal connections in understanding target demographics.

“I really like this concept of trying to almost speak like you are in a WhatsApp chat of 10 of the people you're targeting who are all friends.”

Understanding Ad Triggers and Competitor Research

42:00 to 43:19

Learn how to identify the triggers and fears influencing ad consumption through personal and competitor research.

“um 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 her most.”
Show all 19 chapters

Indirect Competitors and Creative Opportunities

43:20 to 46:09

Explore the value of analyzing indirect competitors to uncover unique creative opportunities for ads.

“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.”

Data-Driven Insights for Strategic Opportunities

46:10 to 48:09

Discover how to leverage data from competitor analysis to identify strategic ad opportunities.

“So we'll go through three directs and minimum three indirect competitors.”

Crafting Effective Ad Messaging Based on Competitor Insights

48:10 to 51:06

Learn to create compelling ad messaging by addressing consumer objections identified through competitor research.

“I want to do an episode about that in the next couple of months because I'm working on that a lot at the moment.”

The Importance of Unique Problem Mechanisms in Ads

51:07 to 54:59

Understand how to communicate unique problem mechanisms to improve consumer connection and ad effectiveness.

“Then once you've got that base, it's about when you start to unlock the problem where everything lifts behind it and it's just so much more efficient.”

Social Research Techniques for Uncovering Consumer Language

55:00 to 56:00

Learn social research methods to analyze consumer language and uncover effective messaging strategies.

“It just has a massive impact on spend levels.”

Unlocking Messaging through TikTok Research

56:00 to 58:16

Learn how to leverage TikTok for effective audience research and messaging.

“I think we can really uncover strong messaging as well.”

Analyzing Market Sophistication and Messaging

58:16 to 1:00:01

Discover how to analyze market sophistication and tailor messaging strategies.

“And the second one was, you know, if there were people talking about it, it was like Yappa-based creative.”

Utilizing Pinterest for Creative Insights

1:00:01 to 1:02:14

Explore how Pinterest can unlock new creative ideas and personas.

“And that was just by typing in the name of the persona on Pinterest.”

The Importance of Approach in Ad Research

1:02:14 to 1:03:33

Understand the significance of approach and prioritization in ad research.

“Yeah, certain pins have, which again is a great indicator for, you know, whether something resonates.”
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Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

0:00Whenever 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? People almost forget how to research and I guess how they get to a hypothesis or a conclusion because there is now this over-reliance on the tech and on the automation. So I think the key at first, whether you're a brand listening to this or an agency, is starting with the outcome, finding the binding constraint that then motivates where our research goes. 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.

0:36It'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. 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. uncovering the UMP the unique problem mechanism if we're able to tap into that deeper layer that's how you're going to differentiate yourself from your competitors

1:06I don't like I'm not sure about the no arms on the suit I know it's really I don't know what to do with them yeah um new little studio set up here yeah not been in this room before the hideout as it's called yeah same uh same building just different floor shout out to podcast house 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 yeah i heard we're the longest running subscribers to the podcast studio um i don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing but we're back back for another episode of dc diaries um back with another solo and excited to talk things talk all things creative research Creative Research 101, as we've titled this episode.

1:53Yeah, 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 prioritize, 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 what they prioritize because there is now this over-reliance on the tech and on the automations.

2:43Yeah, I think you can find this in micro examples, examples being like Reddit. Automating Reddit research just doesn't go to the same. You don't generate the same level of context and depth around a product problem, a customer. If you're just getting Reddit MCP to pull things together into a document, I think that's one example of where we've seen this actively within our teams and within brands of people trying to take shortcuts or over-optimize 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.

3:24I'm going to talk to a few of the different approaches to research, maybe giving some of our thoughts on best and worst, if that's even possible. But I think whenever we're conducting research, were trying to solve a problem. And you very much wanted 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 going down the right rabbit hole, I guess? Yeah, for sure. 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.

4:05and 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 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 reading the blurb at the back of the book. And I think that's the difference between manual and automated to some degree.

4:45So, you know, ensuring that the time that we do have to do manual research is really focused 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. Quick one before we get back into the episode. Every business spends money to make money. Ads, software, flights, travel, the hundred unavoidable little things to keep the lights on.

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6:00Sign up for free, use the code SWU2K26. Link's in the description. Now back to the episode. So I think the key at first, whether you're a brand listening 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 three months or, you know, hit certain revenue target, a certain, you know, blended NCPA.

6:46So 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 we're looking to to fix or solve which brings more focus to to you know what we are doing and we've spoken a bit about this in a couple of episodes to go back to our episode that you and uh sam did on the growth compass which um is all about you know how we simplify um how we simplify growth that into four key uh pillars um but also we spoke about it i think in the last episode depending on when everything comes out where um you know we spoke to that that that you know the creative pillar of that growth compass and the different areas that make up um 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 binding constraint through the lens of creative 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 um you know motivates where our research goes yeah we'll put this down below we'll put a cheat sheet and we'll link the video that luke has 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 d2c brand and it's proving very valuable we've done it across 50 plus brands so far it always gives us a clear focus or multiple priorities to focus on over a period and then is leading into some really good growth when we're focusing resource and time and attention on those constraints yeah 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 each other, which we can speak to.

8:44But the first is persona coverage. Second is messaging diversity, then volume and velocity, format and vehicle being the fourth, and concentration and lifespan being the fifth. 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 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?

9:26You know, is there a documented persona framework that is clearly identified within the creator that we see within the ad account? And is there a 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, okay, 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 focus in terms of where we diversify.

10:13Very tied to TAM as well. So the number of personas you can reach is tied to products 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. Yeah, exactly. 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 seven to 800K a month on your creative.

11:00And it depends on 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 high confidence, positive, negative, all of these different ways that we can speak directly to these individuals will cover us across those valence zones. We'll put that on screen right now that we've done lots of episodes speaking to this. But as I said, it's one of the lower impact things that we would focus on for most accounts. I think the second piece in messaging is like, are there very clear and distinct messaging themes and angles that map up to a specific persona?

11:49so you know if we're seeing that we there there is persona diversity within an account but certain uh 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 i then look at messaging frameworks in a slightly different way so that is things like us versus them you know objection handling three 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 messagings uh that messaging goes within so like are we seeing that that diversity in the messaging frameworks that are being used within an ad account um 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 is an intention in terms of how we are differing the language used per persona.

12:55So we think we're speaking to menopausal women, but we're speaking like Gen Z 25-year-olds. So is there a clear correlation between the messaging and the language being used that is targeting that specific persona? Yeah, I think brands find this really hard to shift from one to the other, especially if you've got broad personas, broad ages, broad demographics. Seeing real clear differentiation in the way that we're speaking to those, but still weaving in the same pain points, objections. The way in which we talk about those pain points needs to differ. So I think it's a really important one. Yeah, for sure.

13:38And obviously is where research can be super valuable. Yeah. And again, that's a great indicator of like if we're scoring really low, but there's a real opportunity through the lens of persona, you know, how do we better speak the language of them? And that comes through things like audience research, which we can speak to in a bit. Volume and velocity just quickly 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 right amount of creative volume? Is there a clear testing strategy? Are we consistently feeding the beast, as it were?

14:16Volume should never be the bottleneck and the resource we have available to us is able to scale with spend. Yeah, I think there's been a lot of narrative around volume and whether volume is still a lever. or whether people should be focused on quality. And I still come back to the fact that it's 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 an ad account of a brand spending over seven figures a month and see them launching less than like a thousand plus ads in most cases. The biggest brands are launching the highest volume of creative period really.

15:04but 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 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 is something that is intentional as we scale the account yeah 100 another really important one which is where usually a lot of the low-hanging fruit comes from is format and vehicle. So 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.

15:43Usually you'll see real gaps here where we're really heavily over-indexed on something like static, I'd say is probably the most common. And 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 formula that's dominating more than like 50, 60 % of spend. Yeah. And I'd say obviously you've got UGC static high prods. I think high prods are a big opportunity for many. And then you've got the 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.

16:35Yeah 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 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 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 hanging fruit opportunity where, you know, if we look at like an ICE rating, it's like we'd score it really high on E, we'd score it fairly high on impact and then confidence as well because we know this has worked for similar brands and 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 and just looking at the likes of format and vehicle yeah 100 % And the final one, I guess, is just concentration and lifespan, which is all about how concentrated it's spent and how long are assets lasting on average.

17:56I guess lifespan is usually an indicator of are we feeding the account with enough new eyeballs, first-time impression ratio, because that extends lifespan. If we're too low a funnel, often lifespan will start to decrease over time. Our assets 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, this is usually positive. Yeah, it's a secondary factor usually. 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.

18:36Usually we won't find this 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. Yeah, exactly. 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.

19:18Now, the first trigger, as 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. And the context in the account is we're only spending 30k a month, but we're testing four 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 where based on the volume we have available which this account was launching 30 ads a month, net new, there wasn't enough creative volume to actually mean that we should have been diversifying across that many personas.

20:01There's clearly an identifier 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 that, you know, if we look at concentration and lifespan, this was driven by three single ads that dominated almost 80 % of spend. So what that essentially tells us is, again, 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 uh avoid concentrating that spend too much um and the third trigger was like vehicle format diversity scored two out of five.

20:55And 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 breadth of vehicle and not breadth of persona is the constraint. So why some people might've been going in there and say, okay, 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 were at, let's get rid of two of the personas for now, focus in on the two that have really shown they're resonating and go much deeper there.

21:39So by deliberately narrowing persona focus onto 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 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 through a process like that, you can really focus in and work smarter, not harder when it comes to the actual research process. I like that example because it's slightly nuanced as well.

22:22Like you mentioned, I think many strategists would open the account and go down that rabbit hole of persona research rather than really sitting with the problem and going deeper on the problem first and finding that it was in fact vehicle. Sorry, I'm going to sneeze. I think not just why you sneeze. 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 okay 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 haven't and we've had this before where we will start working with a brand and we're like you know how have we not tested menopause as a persona um and that's a huge tam right it's every woman in the country age 40 to 60 and the next thing is like depth of desire and we know if you do audience research through uh reddit as an example you will see there's a huge desire there to solve uh some of the pain points associated with menopause and the third trigger was like intuition so from working with other um brands or knowing other brands in the market that solve the same problem they're like indirect competitors same problem with a different solution um 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 so how are we approaching that research once once you've sort of spotted that opportunity maybe maybe we start with maybe start with audience yeah um and we can go through a couple of others beyond that um 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 um 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 yeah for sure so i think keep that in mind what i just said because that the key with research is like strategic prioritization you're going to find a million opportunities through that process but you know a great strategist knows what to prioritize and, you know, when to prioritize it.

24:56So 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 prioritization. So there's a few different lanes of research that we will look at for audience research. The first is owned. So the market share that your brand currently owns, right? So that will be in terms of what your customers are saying about the product. So what are your customer reviews? What are people saying online? Ad comments, social comments. That's your owned data that can kind of, I guess, yeah, give you an idea of where the opportunities are.

25:39I 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 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.

26:24It's like customer reviews because it can really spot the trends in your existing reviews 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 hoping that everyone's we've spoken about Review Man so much on this podcast I'm hoping everybody's gone through that process for their brand and at least refreshing that every quarter probably because I also think as you unlock new personas your reviews will shift and that data updates very frequently at scale and that can be enlightening in itself it can deepen your understanding of a certain persona over time as you generate more data and i like to add a couple more to that is just um post-purchase surveys which is a big opportunity and then we've spoken briefly previously about even direct calls to customers um post-purchase surveys for things like triggers um 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 there 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 assets around that as a probably pain point how emotive that could be like the wedding photos looking so much better because you got your teeth done yeah um 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 um so i think it can be very like useful to to layer some of that in as well 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 understanding what those triggers were for them like what their fears are you know what was that kind of purchase prompt um 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 yeah and and it also just gives you a much stronger you know um 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 yeah 100 there's so many ways to slice that customer reviews piece i still really love like asking it for edge cases like um problems that show up in like less than five percent of the reviews or uh yeah there's just so many ways you can get a bit more creative with the prompts after you if you if you've ingested that context yeah quick one before we get back into the episode every business spends money to make money ads software flights travel the hundred unavoidable little things to keep the lights on all that spending every month and none of it comes back to you it just goes out the door.

29:25Incard is a financial platform built for digital businesses and it flips that on its head. They're giving two percent cash back for your first year on ads, SaaS, travel and everyday business spend and it's all uncapped. The same money you were spending anyway except now a slice of it lands back in your account. You also get multi-currency accounts, corporate cards and Shopify, Meta, Stripe and Xero connected in one place a true source of truth but honestly you're spending regardless so you may as well earn on it sign up for free use the code swu2k26 links in the description now back to the episode but perspective perspective and unaware i've not actually heard you label it this before so i'm interested to get deeper into this like how are you approaching that side of of audience research Yeah, so this is like people that are aware of the problem or they might use a solution that is different to our solution or they're people that are completely unaware to the problem entirely.

30:34So the art of this is like really understanding, especially using tools like Reddit, Google Trends, Answer the Public, blogs. You know, what are those kind of keywords and key phrases that are going to unlock the best responses that we can get the best insights from? So the thing that I would usually do is start on Google Trends and answer the public. So let's say that it's like 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.

31:29And 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 creatine for women, 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 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 of weight and get loads of water weight and get, you know, get bigger?

32:21And that really showed us an opportunity of, okay, that's a fear 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 what those opportunities are and then going much more directional on Reddit is where you can really start to extract, you know, the right opportunities and how we go into that I'll talk through in a moment. Yeah, I find Answer the Public useful for that same thing around like objections. Because you can often find like just by searching the category of products and then going on to the public or Google Trends, there's loads of, that's an example of an objection.

33:07The one I was searching for just was like, the question was, is XYZ product okay for sensitive skin? And then it was like, that's a whole rabbit hole to go down of like, what was the fear? 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. So it has to be like complimentary. So I think that's a really valuable approach to then pulling it into Reddit and going a little bit deeper. Because I think the Google Trends search or the answer to the public search alone doesn't have that much depth.

33:48It is the second step that you're moving it into Reddit and moving it into some of those other searches, Quora even, where you get the threads of people's responses, where you find the messaging and the language that resonates on a deeper level. Yeah, exactly. And you can use things like Reddit Answers, which essentially is like an AI version where you are able to really craft what people are saying. And there's also subcategories of related posts as well. That's actually an interesting hack on Reddit, by the way. If you're not signed into an account, because if you are, it 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 topics that have been raised where you can really extract those insights from.

34:46So yeah, once we've got that, 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 and the patterns at a later point. But through going down 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. options uh 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 um 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 um and then we can start thinking through that lens of um tam 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 i think what you've mentioned there in the notes around like that giving you the building blocks for a script 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 um data points like so many different things that it becomes hard to almost utilize it in an effective way so i think the the tagging in the this process makes it just so much easier to follow yeah exactly and i think like you're just gonna 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 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 trigger is normally down to something like you can't even look at yourself in the mirror anymore or someone um 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 yeah i'm huge on that 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 have how that can live how that desire can appear so different or can be translated in such a different way across different personas.

38:55But if you're being surface level, you're speaking to everybody, but you're therefore speaking to nobody and you just see it in retention rates, hold rates. I was looking at a concept we made from a parent, a brand selling to mums the other day and the hook was very focused on just calling them out for being tired. and I'm like, as 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 rate, to get that hold rate, and then obviously action off the back of it. Yeah. I think this is the thing that I see the most in scripts right now.

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39:36It's probably the most important part, I think, especially as we go more and more up a funnel and we go longer and longer in terms of narrative and education to have that depth in a concept. And I think research is the backbone of finding that depth and the way to translate that message over. Yeah. 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 trying to almost speak like you are in a WhatsApp chat of 10 of the people you're targeting who are all friends. Because the way that they will speak to their 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 yeah like there's concepts um of like speaking to um girlfriend's brother who's got a number of kids under he was concept of like having two under two is like known as being carnage for parents wasn't aware of that but that's like a big thing that is almost like a turn of phrase in in that in that space that's a something that you could 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 yeah 100 if you spend the time there with enough intention another one that i did when we started working with the collagen brand um 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 menopausal was the kind of core um market that we were looking to target and the biggest opportunity how do i get in the head of you know a 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 um 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 10 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 um 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 her most.

42:16And it was the most valuable exercise to just better understand how she thinks. And obviously, we can't generalise every menopausal woman as my mum, but you can get a really good idea from going through a similar process. And it's definitely worth doing that as, again, another one of those like very raw scrappy style of research um that you know really can hit yeah do things that don't scale that's an example of doing something that definitely doesn't scale 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 um that you can really tap into yeah maybe want to Come touch on competitor research and then we can end on social as a next step.

43:04We've talked a lot about competitor research. And I do think it's still valuable when done correctly. There's a lot of interesting narrative floating around on Twitter at the moment of 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 key. It's the right direct reference points, but I know that more so what we're tapping into recently is those indirect competitors that allow us to find just, I guess like bigger swings, pulling it into the ad account.

43:50You don't want to operate in that echo chamber. We don't want to be looking like, 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. It's like we're competing on the same platform for the same customer a lot of the time. So just ripping concept to concept across competitors is just like a race to the bottom, really. It's a race to whoever can afford to pay the most for CAC. Yeah, exactly. From an economics and margin perspective, which is difficult. So yeah, it would be good to speak through a bit of your process from like an indirect competitor perspective.

44:24Yeah, 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 like an eight sleep exactly for example and you need to be cautious of like yeah an eight sleep's five grand and a magnesium supplement's 20 quid so It's like you can't just rip an eight 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.

45:22Like maybe they've found some gold in the, in the way that a customer describes the problem through 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. maybe closer in price points than the one I use. But yeah, you can just find totally different ways of approaching creative. Yeah, I think the gold, as you said, are the ones that, you know, you're at a similar AOV. If you can get there, but it's a completely different product, that's usually where you can find really big opportunities.

46:01And 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. So we'll go through three directs and minimum three indirect competitors. And we will essentially build the themes out into messaging angles, personas, frameworks, and emotions. So that what we're seeing across these and where do the gaps lie? And I like direct competitor analysis more to understand what they're not doing. Because again, there might be real clarity around, okay these are clearly their biggest opportunity and their biggest spend drivers from looking at like ads library you can you can filter by impressions um 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 i'm 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 um 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 uh that strategic opportunities database very similarly to how we would with audience research and we'll do that through like ice prioritization So we'll give everything a score out of five on impact, confidence and ease.

47:35And 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 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 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.

48:17so they're how you want to potentially split both of those out I've recently went pretty deep on competitor research because launching a bit of a brand project which I can talk about in another episode but obviously looking at what you've just described there is really looking through their ad account and their ad library also you can look through comments some of these other kind of links a bit to social research which we're going to come on to but from doing this process and entering this category just found that everybody was doing the quick things like smashing AR UGC, smashing statics, native ads, which I'm pretty bullish on native ads.

48:57I 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 product information and compared it against ours and claude and then claude highlighted a reason that their product wasn't working that ours would and then we did loads of us versus thems calling out what basically i did like three reasons why xyz product didn't work for you and just broke down our unique mechanism relative to theirs um 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 a 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 product aware first and capture all of the existing demand and it works really well that's literally exactly what we did for club neuro like the the solution aware product aware creative was what really worked best initially is similar to yourself because through that research you're able to identify like okay 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 uh the sensory friendly aspect of the product that they didn't have that we did um and like the actual quality element so we just spoke highly to those things and did a lot of objection handling creative and us versus them style creative um three reasons why and again it's a good example of like you know you don't need to over complicate it uh all the time like sometimes it's like what is the lowest hanging fruit that is going to unlock spend that then we can diversify after that point yeah and it's always cheaper to acquire those customers as well because they've already they're already educated ours was similar it was a it was an ingredient and then a and then an objection that people got that people had got having experienced a poor version of the products that were selling.

51:10So we just had to overcome those. Then once you've got that base, it's about when you start to unlock the problem where everything lifts behind it and it's just so much more efficient. Yeah. The one that I did just forget to mention in audience research, and again, I think it's one of the most valuable things, especially if you're like, because one thing that I'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 I'm going to do an episode on this because we did a training session internally fairly recently, but uncovering the UMP, so the unique problem mechanism, and speaking directly to that because a lot of people don't know why you get a certain specific problem and then what the solution mechanism is that bridges that, and it creates this open curiosity loop.

52:02So, for example, like, you know, do you know why women suffer with X over the age of 40? You know, speaking directly and asking those questions directly to, you know, why a problem mechanism exists that usually then relates back to some form of research. and then our solution we have a usp that very much solves that specific problem um 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 creatine one from like looking at research was that 70 percent of women don't produce creatine.

53:12Sorry, 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 a top performing hook that identifies, okay, this is the problem or the gap. And then it motivates towards why you need a certain solution. And the thing you're filling in between is the why, like the reason why 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 yapper where we're explaining the problem, how the problem exists, where it comes from, what's the mechanism that leads to it occurring.

54:01and 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. That's 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. Yeah, and I think it's really important as you go more up a funnel to be thinking about how you explain the problem, not just the product and the solution and educate because those are the longer concepts that really work for new audiences who are problem aware.

54:34Well, it's truly unaware, I guess, if you fully explain the problem before you get into the solution and the product. Yeah, I think that's why when you're bringing in those mechanisms, like you're unlocking more TAM 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 unaware. Yeah, and that's what can... It just has a massive impact on spend levels. Yeah. Very conscious of time. Final ones, social research. Do you want to rifle through some social research? Yeah, what time have we got to?

55:12We've got about 10 minutes. Okay, cool. Yeah, I think this is one of my most... 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, we're using other things that people don't do a lot of the time, like Pinterest, and also Callow 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.

55:53So really uncovering language and how, you know, people are, you know, how they're communicating that problem 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 looking at like, you know, different frameworks or vehicles 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 every day, how much money they earn is determined by, you know, the the output of what they're producing.

56:36It'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 example is like Yapper ads. You just see that coming. So what I will do is from my audience research, I say 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 at, you know, what kind of posts there are or videos that have been posted in and around those topics.

57:21um a good example again i'll come back to because we've used this one a few times is the creatine one so just by typing in like creatine for women um very broad um 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 gym bro supplement.

58:04There 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, 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. That was literally the same as me doing the research for the product I've just launched. I went on and there was only like five videos.

58:44What we've just launched is a product that has like, it's Google's trends 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 product. And there was about five 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 um 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 and explainer and then how do we bridge that to the product yeah from that research yeah 100 um so yeah through this process we'll 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 um that similar setup that we did before where we're looking at angles um 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 um just a few other things that i would recommend firstly callow data which is like a great way to filter by like highest gmv tiktok shop creative yeah i did i thought everyone was on this wave but i realized that someone and someone introduced it to me a few months ago uh maybe a year about a year ago now um all tiktok shop day 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 gmv videos especially if you're in the uk pulling from the us into the uk market and just putting more of a meta spin on it often just works really well yeah 100 that's the thing us are normally ahead of uk and tiktok shop create uh affiliates are usually ahead of creative strategies so it's like a really good place to look um 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 really 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 yeah 100 percent um pinterest is another one that we're doing a lot of um within the agency right now and i think it's a it's a really good thing to go deeper with certain personas um to understand the type of creative that resonates 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.

1:01:39And that was just by typing in the name of the persona on Pinterest. And then look, I think it was like, yeah, this piece of paper with a note, 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 wouldn't have been tested on on meta because you can actually you can actually again filter by you you know, the amount of likes that certain pin trick, I don't know if that's the word, pins.

1:02:33Yeah, pins, it's pins, it's pins. Yeah, certain pins have, which again is a great indicator for, you know, whether something resonates. Yeah, I want to do a full episode on statics. I want to go from native statics all the way down the funnel. Yeah. Because I think it's a good, I think they're underrated 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 you can just rip them off meta and put them in Higgs field that is somewhere where I think competitors are really easy to leverage just rip competitor ads put them in Higgs field do a few products but the statics that have real outside contribution to ad accounts are 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 ideas right now there's text heavy formats that can really translate into meta yeah 100 % um well yeah i think you know very quick run through that it's very top level of like a few different things uh that that we do like a lot of it isn't anything new but i think the the approach is important and how you prioritize is really important so hopefully that um 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.

1:03:54But for this episode, we just wanted to go very top level across that way of thinking, essentially. Sorry, sneezing again. Yeah, I think we, because if anyone stuck with us to the end to comment below any 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 yeah subscribe subscribe if you haven't we'll catch you on the next episode this guy's ill I think he needs to go to bed yeah I feel a bit ropey today yeah thank you for watching cool in a bit bye

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Loukas and Olly go back to basics on creative research: the five-factor scoring system that finds your real binding constraint before you open a single tab, and the audience, competitor and social research techniques that get you there. If you run creative strategy for a DTC brand or agency and want a sharper process for finding what to test next, this is your refresher on the fundamentals.

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