Ep 530: Copy Pilothouse's Creative System for Q4 Scale

0:00It's a really important time to start thinking about the systems that you have in place for both sourcing content to be the catalyst to scale over Q4. Now's the great time to stalk that pond. Traffic is going to get more and more expensive, so if you can develop better and better creative, maybe you can combat that traffic cost as you get to Q4. Employee-generated content is so important, especially this year. There's a lot of benefits to it, number one. 80 % of our brands are being dominated by video on the cold traffic side. you need to stand out it's not only that you need video but you need that hook that first second something needs to catch attention and once people are aware of you that's where that static imagery that polished you know that branded stuff's really gonna pop

0:52it's all killer no filler i'm eric this is the ddc podcast and we are here recording with jacob and Ames from Pilot House. Today, we are talking, we're going to flesh out an idea we talk about on the podcast all the time. For years, we've been talking about creative being the real leverage in your accounts, your real ability to target users. But today, we're going to put some meat on that skeleton and talk a little bit about exactly what you should be thinking about when you're thinking about creative as leverage, creative as growth leverage, give you some systems, give you some frameworks for how we think about the kinds of creatives you need.

1:27and yeah we'll go from there welcome Aves and Jacob yeah I can kind of kick us off I think like this is a particularly important part of the year to start thinking about this because of Q4 I feel like I'm in like a race every year against myself to see how early I can bring up Q4 and stalking the pond and like sharing of your creative I do think this year I started talking about it in May so it's pretty that's pretty good but yeah it's a really important time to start thinking about specifically the systems that you have in place for both sourcing content to be the catalyst to scale over q4 and also think about your systems for testing that content i think sometimes we like get really excited and it's like content is king as we said it's like the number one growth lever at your disposal but also if you don't have like a sound idea on how you're going to test it it's a little bit moot as well i don't know if you have anything there jacob no i agree And like, yeah, now more than ever, like you said, content is the driver, you know, with all these delivery tools coming out, AI delivery, you know, all these things happening where a little less time is going into that mundane and more time is going to thinking about how am I actually going to stand out for my competitors, especially in Q4.

2:42it's not you know the little mundane like big caps targeting things it's it's the content that's going to make you stand out and um i think now yeah now the effects of strong content not necessarily polished maybe some stuff's polished some stuff's unpolished but it needs to be like strong and it needs to be consistent and it needs to be you know once you find those winners you need to be iterating and pumping out more winners and this all requires a system um which, you know, kind of leads into some of the other notes we have. And we're going to go through like video specifically, as well as, you know, imagery specifically.

3:19But I think that's kind of, yeah, the key we're trying to drive through. And now, you know, if you don't have that lever in place and system in place, it's almost getting to a point where it's too late. So, yeah, it's just, you know, now's the great time to stock that pawn to what Aves was saying. Traffic is going to get more and more expensive. So if you can develop better and better creative, maybe you can combat that traffic cost as well as you get to Q4. So we're talking about the kinds of content. And Aves, you kind of broke it down between video and still. Give us an idea of just how important a huge stream of video creative is to MetaCampaign's growth.

3:57Totally, yeah. Video content is so important right now. And it's not just on Meta. It's across basically all major platforms. I put some notes in here about myself last Q4. I really got dunked on because I was working with a brand and we went from spending nothing on app loving to like well over six figures. And most of these new platforms that pop up and can really help you scale in Q4 are going to be video driven. So making sure that you have a really healthy sort of treasure. What is it? A treasure box? Trove. A treasure trove. That's right. Yeah, yeah. You want to load up video content because it's like incredibly laborsome to create, but it works really well.

4:41So if you think about yourself in the middle of Q4, you don't want to be like sourcing this content then. You already want to have a system in place to have it just flowing. I think another really like interesting way to differentiate video content and we just had an adventurous episode about this if you want to listen to it but we really think about video content as like human video content and then you can break that down by CGC, UGC and then EGC. CGC is like what we all know is creator content so that's really classic video style content you have someone that you are actively paying to make a video about your product so it's going to look and feel a little bit different than those other types of video content but it's really key in like nailing an angle so I like to think about it like once I've incubated an idea maybe made a couple rough versions of a short form video on my own handing that off to someone who like is a professional like their job as content creator really helps kind of take it to that next level so it's almost like you do the foundational work figure out what the angle is how to capture really engaging clips of your product.

5:53And then again, you're handing it off to someone like their job is content creator most of the time. So they know how to create good content. Like I can't express that enough. How do we find content creators? Yeah, great question. So we work with a team on the Pilot House side internally. And there's like a really beautiful meeting point. So we've got a team of content sort of coordinators who work directly with those creators. But behind them, we've got our team of content managers and creative strategists who are always thinking about what type of person we need to find and contract to do this work.

6:28Something that I find a lot of times with brands is they'll think like you need to find an exact replica of your target persona to be successful, like hiring a content creator. but I've been using this example a lot lately. If you think about, is it Carl's Jr.? They've always got the burger ads with like some supermodel at the time. It's exactly that. It's like, that's not necessarily, it's not the supermodels eating at Carl's Jr., but the people who eat at Carl's Jr. want to see the supermodels. So thinking that strategically about the content creators you're hiring instead of just saying, okay, you know, we make this product, young women in their 20s, they buy it.

7:06Let's get a bunch of those. Sometimes it's a bit more nuanced. So the sort of system we have, like I said, having those content managers, creative strategists do that heavy lifting and thinking about who's going to be best to deliver the message and then handing that off to someone who has the patience that I don't have to talk to creators all day long and negotiate rates is like where the magic kind of happens. It's like a really good point about like, as you're, you know, putting this system in place for video is yeah like not what is my target audience to what you said but it's like what do they want to see and it's not always more of themselves right like I don't want to see an ad with someone like me and then I want to see an ad with someone like you know I aspire to be in it or whatever and a lot of the time we see you know men's apparel is sold best by females or vice versa And yeah, like, don't assume there.

8:01So it's like, you have to have that testing system, ways to, you know, allocate budget into these tests, but not ensure you're wasting budget, and then taking those signals, what's worked, what hasn't, working with this creator to iterate and really dial it in. So that's creator generated content. What are the other two types of generated video content that we want to see? The other one is user generated content. And this is something that when I'm talking to brands that often don't use this language. So I'll just break it down creator generated content is like creator specific it's someone's job but user generated content should truly be from a user in my opinion so we're talking about like if you're a brand and you're lucky enough to really have a community around your product and really have put the effort into building that community you're gonna have people like tagging you in things and sending you pictures adding pictures to reviews that you can ask or just automatically use in ads So that's like true user-generated content.

8:56And if you think about it, it means something different these days than creator-generated content because anyone can go out, find a creator, pay them to make something. But user-generated content is such a divine source of social proof because it's a lot. I don't do that. I've never bought anything and been so happy about it that I'm giving the brand a picture. It is a lot. It means a lot for people to do that. So leveraging it in a like intelligent way, whether that's through like review content that you get or actual videos and full bodied ads basically ready to launch. Just making sure that you're like actually fostering that community so that people do that is really important.

9:37Because it's just pure genuine. You can get a creator, you can get an employee to do it. But when you can get a customer to do it, it's got that authenticity built in quite often. Totally. It like adds social proof to it in ways that like creator or employee generated content just can't add social proof. So it's particularly useful to if you're looking at like your content plans for this upcoming Q4, if you're sort of missing that core UGC element, then you're probably going to be a little bit weaker in the middle and bottom of funnel when things get really busy and people need that like immediate social proof.

10:08They're just scrolling like mad Black Friday weekend and looking for something that feels really valid to purchase, having really good UGC is really helpful. And then the third, my favorite, perhaps just working at an agency is the employee generated content. And Aves, how many impressions do you estimate have seen you in an employee generated content ad? I don't know. Millions, tens of millions. Yeah, the ways that I have just like held things and taken a picture with them for different types of products, like the amount of different verticals I've like popped up in really incredible. But I do feel like, yeah, employee generated content is so like important, especially this year.

10:49I feel like there's a lot of benefits to it. Number one, like what I was just describing, if I have an idea, I can just do that idea in a rough way. It's not going to be as good as an actual content creator, but I can actually like put pen to paper and make the video, which I think is really cool. The other great benefit of employee generated content is I think these days people are starting to pay attention to brand a little bit more than we have been in the past five to 10 years. And so again, it's sort of like UGC where it's like if somebody likes their workplace so much that they're willing to like act a fool about it on the internet, that's pretty impressive.

11:25And it kind of signals to me that that brand is probably worth shopping with if their team is willing to put their face out there. And there's different ways you can do that. There's like you say, there is like warehouse stuff where you're actually talking to people at your company, creating content that way. There's also, if your team uses the product, you know, actually talking about it like as a customer as well, right? Totally. There's like so many different ways to think about it too. Like founders content is technically employee generated content. It's just anything that's like coming from inside the house.

11:58And I think being transparent about it is good too. Like if you're just genuinely someone who uses the product that you're selling saying Like not only do I sell this thing, but I use it every day. It's my favorite face cream. It like has a little extra oomph to it compared to maybe the creator generated stuff. And then are we also running any, because I know we do a lot of like beautiful still product photography. Is there, do you have product video ever? Are you ever doing like swooping shots of product video very much? Or is that, is that often something that the client will provide if we're using it?

12:27Typically, like in my experience, the investment on those like big sweeping shoots. and if we want to put together like a 30 second spot it only really makes sense when we're in the realm of like reach on YouTube or we start talking about connected TV it doesn't perform well enough on meta specifically or other social platforms to really be worth the investment because what people want to see on those platforms is something that's like attention grabbing and interesting and immediately gets them excited where there's like big sweeping video spots. I remember once I was working with a client who filmed like a 60 second spot, which was really crazy to me, but it costs a lot.

13:09And then, like I said, it's only really valuable if you're playing a reach game instead of like strictly being performance focused. Jacob, I was wondering if you could comment a little bit on how these video assets are best used in platform. Now I know we're using advantage plus a lot. I know we're testing against it all the time. How do we have to think about video in the meta environment technically right now? I mean, I'd say like 80 % of our brands are being dominated by video on like the cold traffic side, you need to stand out and, you know, product ads, branded ads just, you know, transparently are like boring.

13:46If you don't know the brand, especially, it's just like, you're going to scroll right by. So it's not only that you need video, but you need like that hook that first second something needs to catch attention and that is what yeah I'd say like 80 percent of our brands lean into and then once you know on the retargeting side of things once people are aware of you that's where that static imagery that polished you know that branded stuff's really gonna pop because they're already aware they're in the funnel maybe they're just not over the edge and that's where you're gonna you know be following them around a bit so I think they both obviously have their place.

14:21I'd say last year it was like 60-40 video. This year it's like, yeah, 75-80. But the static imagery, like, yeah, still need it. Catalogs and like, you know, using those images in your product catalogs, like as your product images versus even just like the boring white background shot is having advantages now too, where you can like have these, you know, really nice looking, beautiful catalogs with frames on them and all these things. And again, that's going to really pop on that, that retargeting side when people are aware of you. I don't know if that answers the question, but it's how we kind of think about them.

14:59Well, I'll actually just ask maybe or maybe we do a second podcast on actually testing in the platform how you think about testing all of these video assets that might be a second good follow up podcast. But what what are you what are your thoughts on statics and their role is? Yeah, I think static content still does work like Jacob was saying particularly in the middle and bottom of funnel when people are aware of your brand and I think that they also like static content tends to really start to pull its weight around Q4 because you have a lot of people who are shopping in a much different way than they are the rest of the year so the rest of the year it's all about like Jacob said having that hook and something that's really exciting and attention grabbing to look at but we've all been there where it's like, I don't know, I'm looking for a gift for my cousin's wife and I don't really care about this person.

15:49And so if I see a nice branded static with sale messaging on top of it, I'm probably going to make a purchase just because, like I said, Q4 is a really different beast on platform and people think and shop very differently. So they tend to start pulling their weight a little bit more. Something that I talk to brands a lot about is how we start sourcing and building a system around getting good photography for that. It's something that we do here at Pilot House. We've got a fully functioning studio, but I often see this like weird severance. Another show I've never watched, but we sever this tie between what performs and what we want the brand to look like when we start thinking about photography, which I think is really strange.

16:31It's like you should know that like to add text overlays, like I was saying, you're going to need negative space, Or you should also be thinking far enough ahead to understand like, what are my promos going to be? Can I include like kind of our five top sellers in this single shot? Because, you know, if you sell my make-believe cup brand that I always reference, if you sell mugs and also to-go cups, like including all of that in a single image, because like I said, it's just so different during Q4. you don't know what someone's really looking at, but people are pretty trigger happy with clicking on ads.

17:05So making sure that you have kind of all your ducks in a row and also covered to be able to quickly produce stuff. Because one thing you really want to do is set yourself up to be like agile during Q4. So if you have these pieces of photography that you've designed around being able to slap some copy on top of them, if you have to change your promo, it's really easy to change that instead of like reshooting an entire piece of creator content that's been running at scale. You know what I mean? It just like gives you options. And I feel like to succeed in Q4 and to actually grow, you need to have those options to pivot and change things.

17:41How many options? I guess that's the, you know, I know that's going to be relative to how much you're spending, but I think, you know, we've outlined a really good sort of formula for the kinds of creative people want to have in their quiver essentially. But then how often do they need to be thinking about remaking this and and creating new stuff perpetually forever all the time yeah that's kind of where the system comes into place and your system is going to get more and more efficient because like as you're doing all this stuff you're not just revisiting grounds euro every time it's like it's layer on layer of learnings too you maybe at phase one you're realizing that red colors are popping with your brand and performing better than blue colors and And then, you know, phase two is starting to test that across other mediums.

18:24And it just becomes this like self-winning thing. And yeah, it never ends or else like a lot of the time your cold traffic campaign will have an ad dominating the ad spend in most cases. But that other content is needed because it's still getting tested. We set up our campaigns in ways where we hit like niche audiences with that to test it. and then what happens is that top spender you know it's being seen by people if they interact with it they're being pushed into your retargeting funnel where you have this variety of content or if they're not interacting with it that's when the subsequent you know videos is going to get shown to them even though it's smaller budget so you need variety and then eventually you're going to have to pause that top one up because creative life is shortening people's attention spans are getting shorter.

19:13And, you know, you might say, okay, our CPA week over week is getting worse and worse, even though it's still the top performer. Let's pause it. Boom, all that spend just like sprinkles down to your other creatives that you've been developing. And I remember back in the day, I was in performance marketing, we were working with Groupon Germany. And we were trying to get people to subscribe. This is how old I am. We were trying to get people to subscribe to Groupon. And there was just this one burger that would run in the ads. And it was like, we were trying to beat that burger all the time. And we could never, no matter what all the different kinds of burgers, we were, you know, burgers were best, we tried all different kinds of food, burgers were best.

19:50And then this one burger we couldn't beat for the longest time. What do you do when you have, you know, maybe a piece of creative that's done super well? Are you going back to this? So say it's a creator generated content. Are you going back to that creator and getting them to try subtly different things, more expression? Are you trying to get them to beat their own burger? Yeah, this is a great tip that I think I got directly from Meta, which is what really counts is that first three seconds. So I've been in that exact situation a ton where it's like this burger is cooked to perfection. But what really matters is like the creative diversity in your account will help that ad continue to be served.

20:28So what I do is I just chop up the first three to five seconds. And I do it in a way that's like, number one, I start with the like visuals that we're seeing. So I'll look oftentimes for where people are sort of clicking through on that video. Like what is the visual that makes people go, okay, yeah, I'm sold. Let me go to the landing page and I'll bump that up to the front. Or I'll take stuff that's like really deep, but interesting to look at. And I'll bump that up to the front and test different visual hooks. And then I'll start playing around with the voiceover. And I find that a lot of the times, like those small changes do make a big difference.

21:00But I definitely also will go back to the creator, say, hey, this is working really well. Can we start branching out sort of across a product line or different launches? I'll also tend to like give that piece of content to different creators. So like we were saying before, with the Carl's Jr. example, you just don't know like what type of person is going to hit. So I might start off from a place where the creator who made the original video really represents our sort of target ICP. and then I'll bring it to someone who feels a little more aspirational to the brand, someone a little bit higher level, if that makes any sense.

21:35But yeah, I think it's about like really digging in and figuring out why that ad worked. Also trying to really do that across each persona in your sort of demographic toolkit. So easy. So easy. That's what Pilot House does every day. So if you want to work with us, reach out. I think let's leave it there. We're at time. And then maybe in a future one, we could maybe dive a little deeper on the technical side of what when we have all this creative, how do we how do we test it? How do we how do we scale with it? How do we retarget with it? You kind of alluded to it a little bit here, but I think it might be good to get more specific on a future episode.

22:11Yeah, that sounds great to me. Cool. Well, happy pond stalking. And otherwise, we'll catch up with you guys again soon. And go subscribe to Adventurous. If you have not subscribed to Adventurous yet, Abe's awesome podcast, go to your local podcast provider and subscribe to it because she's putting out fire every week on the DTC Podcast Network. So thanks, guys. This was great. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Jared.

22:40Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you're not getting the DTC newsletter, you can subscribe for free at directtoconsumer.co. And if you want to learn more about Pilothouse's all-killer, no-filler services, take off to pilothouse.co. I'm Eric Dick, and this has been the D2C Podcast. We'll see you next time.