How I Build an Elite Creative Strategy for a Brand in One Sitting
A creative strategist walks through the exact research pipeline — reputation analysis, review mining, AI-built personas — behind winning Meta ad strategy for brands like Grüns, Oats Overnight, and Rhode.
Posted
3 days ago
Duration
Format
Tutorial
educational
Views
7.2K
456 likes
Big Idea
The argument in one line.
Winning creative strategy comes from a structured research pipeline — reputation analysis, review mining, and AI-assisted persona segmentation — that surfaces real objections and personas, not from copying competitor ads or testing more formats.
Who This Is For
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
A creative strategist or media buyer for DTC/ecommerce brands who wants a repeatable research process instead of guessing at ad concepts.
A founder running their own Meta ads who wants to move past copying competitor creative.
Someone using AI tools to analyze customer reviews and build personas for marketing.
SKIP IF…
You're looking for a specific ad template or swipe file, not a research methodology.
You don't run paid social ads — most of the framework is built specifically around Meta.
TL;DR
The full version, fast.
Copying competitor ads is the weakest form of creative strategy — real strategy starts with research: a reputation analysis (press, Reddit, Amazon, social, YouTube) to surface objections and trust signals, a customer review mining process fed into an LLM to extract recurring complaints and 'golden nugget' phrases, and an AI-assisted persona segmentation step that turns reviews into named personas with emotional triggers. From there, strategy means auditing three gaps — which personas the ad account is missing, which funnel-awareness levels are over- or under-represented, and how much creative diversity exists per persona — then building quarterly and monthly roadmaps instead of chasing weekly format tests. Real examples come from work on Grüns, Oats Overnight, and Rhode.
Free for members
Chat with this breakdown — free.
Sign in and you get 23 free chat messages on us — ask for the hook, quote a framework, find the exact transcript moment, generate a markdown action plan. Bring your own key when you want unlimited.
01 · Why Copying Competitors Is Killing Your Creative Strategy
Copying competitor ads (even by impression-sorted ads libraries) and blindly testing formats are not real strategy — strategy means identifying gaps and planning around what the business needs next.
00:41 – 01:21
02 · The Research Framework My Agency Uses
Overview of the agency's living research SOP, which produces a reputation analysis document, a customer review mining sheet, an AI analysis of reviews, and a competitors document.
01:21 – 05:49
03 · Reputation Analysis: The Foundation of Great Strategy
Walks through the brand/product analysis (founder, founding story, best sellers, offers, bundles/AOV) and researching the first page of Google, press coverage, and social channels.
05:49 – 07:31
04 · Finding Customer Objections Through Research
Reddit, Amazon (including the 'Ask Amazon' AI persona feature), and YouTube reviews/comments are mined to identify the core objections and friction points stopping a purchase.
07:31 – 09:39
05 · Customer Review Mining & AI Analysis
Exporting and ranking reviews, mining comments from top-performing ads (not just the website), and running the compiled reviews through an LLM for SWOT, complaints, golden nuggets, and buying triggers.
09:39 – 10:25
06 · Using AI to Build Customer Personas
Feeding the review CSV, reputation analysis, and a prompt into an LLM to generate a persona deck, then replicating a top creative across each persona.
10:25 – 11:15
07 · Sponsored: Storyblocks
Sponsor read for Storyblocks, a human-made stock media library usable inside Premiere Pro/After Effects for building persona-specific creative variations.
11:15 – 13:00
08 · Turning Research Into Creative Strategy
Real strategy sits one layer above format selection — personas, content pillars/angles, and platform trends — and a single test can't validate a strategy on its own.
Weekly sprint cycles prevent strategists from taking bigger swings; quarterly and monthly roadmaps create room for real strategic planning.
16:30 – 17:32
11 · Real Example: Grüns Creative Strategy
Research on Grüns (not a client) surfaced 'is this a scam' skepticism language, which directly informed two ad concepts built to confront that objection.
17:32 – 19:09
12 · Real Example: Oats Overnight
Reviews revealed a GLP-1 cultural tie-in and a 'just make it yourself' objection best answered with a deliberate non-DIY, convenience-and-taste positioning.
19:09 – 21:16
13 · Real Example: Rhode
Auditing Rhode's account found zero partnership ads (an easy unlock) and reviews pointing to an untapped Gen X/elder-millennial persona tied to the brand's retail expansion.
21:16 – 21:57
14 · The Question Every Creative Strategist Should Ask
Closes on the core question behind every creative decision: why this persona, why this angle, and what gap or net-new audience it's meant to reach.
Atomic Insights
Lines worth screenshotting.
The worst creative strategy is copying what competitors are running, even when it's disguised as prioritizing an ads library by impressions.
Testing as many ad formats as possible is only marginally better than copying competitors — neither one is actual strategy.
A reputation analysis walks the same research path a prospective customer takes: Google, press, Reddit, Amazon, and social media.
Press coverage can be bought or earned, and creative strategists should treat purchased-looking press placements with more skepticism than clearly earned coverage.
Reddit tends to surface the most honest, unfiltered opinions about a brand because people aren't showing their face.
Amazon's 'Ask Amazon' AI feature can generate a persona breakdown of who's actually buying a product — an underused research shortcut.
Customer review mining should pull from more than the brand's own site — the top 20 ads from the last year and their comments are a second, richer source.
AI tools can automate ad-comment mining across an account, but human judgment still catches high-impact reviews that machines miss.
A completed reputation analysis becomes the context document fed to an LLM to extract personas, objections, and trigger points.
Real creative strategy lives in the layer before format selection: persona targeting, content pillars/angles, and platform trends.
A single creative test — or even a handful — can't prove whether a strategy is right; only a sustained pattern of results can.
There are three recurring creative-strategy gaps to diagnose: which personas aren't being targeted, which funnel-awareness levels are missing, and how many unique angles exist per persona.
Brands often over-index on bottom-of-funnel, offer-driven creative because it's the easiest thing to measure — leaving top-of-funnel content underbuilt.
Quarterly and monthly roadmaps prevent creative strategists from getting stuck in an endless weekly sprint cycle that never zooms out.
For Oats Overnight, ads that leaned into 'I don't have time to DIY this myself' outperformed ads trying to appeal to everyone.
Negative marketing — explicitly calling out who a product is NOT for — can work better than trying to appeal to everyone.
For Rhode, the absence of any partnership ads in the account was an easy, overlooked opportunity.
Reviewing press and cultural context, like a brand's retail expansion, can reveal an entirely new persona to target, not just a new ad angle.
Takeaway
Creative strategy is a research process, not a format-testing habit.
RESEARCH SOP
The strategist's edge comes from a four-document research pipeline — reputation analysis, review mining, AI persona segmentation — that surfaces real personas and objections, then gets audited for gaps instead of getting replaced by more ad tests.
01Why Copying Competitors Is Killing Your Creative Strategy
Copying competitor ads — even 'smart' copying based on ads-library impression counts — is the weakest form of creative strategy.
Testing as many formats as possible is only marginally better than copying; neither replaces an actual research-backed strategy.
02The Research Framework My Agency Uses
The agency's research process produces four standing documents: a reputation analysis, a customer review mining sheet, an AI analysis of those reviews, and a competitor document.
Treat the research SOP as a living document that keeps evolving rather than a one-time template.
03Reputation Analysis: The Foundation of Great Strategy
A brand/product analysis starts with the founder's story and the 'why' behind the brand, then moves to best-selling products, offers, and merchandising strategy.
Bundling and product assortment matter because a low-priced product may be too expensive to advertise profitably on Meta without raising AOV through a bundle.
Scan the first page of Google for red flags a first-time customer would see before buying.
Press credibility varies by audience — older demographics trust legacy print/web publications more than younger ones — and press coverage can be bought as well as earned.
04Finding Customer Objections Through Research
Reddit tends to produce the most honest, unfiltered opinions because people aren't showing their face and can be ruthless about a brand's pain points.
On Amazon, compare the platform's best-seller with the brand's own DTC best-seller, and use the 'Ask Amazon' AI feature for a free persona breakdown of actual buyers.
The reputation analysis should surface the core objections stopping a purchase: lack of trust, skepticism about efficacy, or price versus perceived value.
YouTube reviews and, even more so, their comments reveal what viewers are skeptical of and what FAQs they still have.
05Customer Review Mining & AI Analysis
Export customer reviews automatically, then rank products by number of reviews and star rating to prioritize which get creative attention first.
Reviews from a brand's own site aren't enough — mine the comments on the brand's top 20 ads from the last year too.
Tools can automate pulling ad comments at scale, but manual review still catches high-impact quotes that automated tools miss because they lack judgment.
Upload the compiled reviews to an LLM and ask it for a SWOT analysis, common complaints, golden nugget phrases, and the trigger points that cause someone to buy.
06Using AI to Build Customer Personas
Feed the customer-review CSV, the reputation analysis, and a persona prompt into an LLM to get a deck of named personas back.
A fast way to operationalize new personas is to take one top-performing creative and replicate its structure across each persona.
08Turning Research Into Creative Strategy
Defaulting to 'what did competitors do' or 'test more formats' is the trap that makes creative strategy go in circles until the business stops improving.
Real strategy sits one layer above format selection: which personas you're targeting, which content pillars/angles you're using, and which platform-level trends you're riding.
Platform trends are broader than individual formats — think 'more employee-generated, behind-the-scenes content' or 'the rise of partnership ads,' not just a single video style.
A single test, or even a handful, can't confirm a strategy is right — look for the pattern showing up consistently in organic creative too.
09Identifying Persona, Awareness & Creative Gaps
Cross-reference the personas surfaced by research against who the ad account currently targets to find persona gaps, including personas that are over-indexed relative to their real opportunity.
Audit the levels of awareness represented in the account; a common failure pattern is over-indexing on mid- and bottom-funnel, offer-driven content while starving top-of-funnel.
The creative diversity gap shows up when personas don't have two-to-three unique angles each, or when the creator program lacks range in lifestyle, gender, age, and vibe.
Getting stuck in a weekly creative sprint schedule prevents strategists from ever stepping back to make bigger swings in format, content, or creator partnerships.
Layer quarterly planning (mapping product launches and seasonal persona pushes) on top of a monthly roadmap for a genuinely strategic cadence.
11Real Example: Grüns Creative Strategy
Research surfaced recurring 'is this a scam / is it worth it' language for Grüns, which became the direct basis for two ad concepts built to confront that skepticism head-on.
A tongue-in-cheek 'the real scam is that it's actually good for you' angle was informed by years of pattern-matching similar skepticism-heavy supplement categories.
12Real Example: Oats Overnight
Reviews revealed a societal-trend tie-in for Oats Overnight — people asking if the product works for GLP-1 users — which became a timely, specific creative angle.
The most common objection ('I could just make this myself') was best answered not by arguing back but by leaning into convenience and taste as a deliberate non-DIY positioning.
Ranking personas by emotional language intensity surfaced an underused angle: customers who valued the product for keeping them full, which wasn't well represented in the existing creative mix.
13Real Example: Rhode
Beauty-category creative strategy leans more on vibes than direct-response 'cold hard sale' framing, even though the ads still have to convert.
Digging into specific SKUs (like discovering the lip peptide was a plumping formula) unlocked a before/after creative angle suited to paid social.
An audit of the ad account showed zero partnership ads despite the format's proven ability to scale — a straightforward, low-risk unlock.
Reviews signaling 'this brand isn't quite for me, but it worked on my skin' from older customers pointed to an entirely new Gen X/elder-millennial persona and influencer-partnership opportunity tied to the brand's retail expansion.
14The Question Every Creative Strategist Should Ask
The closing test for any creative decision is asking why that specific creative, persona, and angle — not just which format to run next.
Every new concept should trace back to a gap being filled or a net-new audience being reached, not just a hunch about what might perform.
Glossary
Terms worth knowing.
Reputation analysis
A structured audit of what press, Reddit, Amazon, and social media say about a brand — used to surface objections, trust signals, and gaps before writing any ad creative.
Golden nugget phrase
An exact phrase a real customer used in a review that captures a benefit or objection so well it can be lifted directly into ad copy.
Persona gap
A mismatch between the personas a brand's research shows it could target and the personas its current ad account is actually running creative against.
Levels of awareness
A funnel framework describing how much a prospect already knows about a problem, a solution, and a specific product — used to check whether ad creative skews too heavily toward one stage.
Creative diversity gap
A shortfall in the number of distinct angles or concepts a brand runs per persona, versus repeating one big pillar idea across different formats.
AOV
Average order value — the average amount a customer spends per transaction; often raised through bundling so a low-priced product becomes profitable to advertise.
EGC
Employee-generated content — marketing footage made by a brand's own staff rather than outside creators, used to show authenticity and behind-the-scenes trust.
“The worst creative strategy that you can do is just copying what your competitors are doing.”
cold-open thesis statement, no setup needed→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
11:59
“Real strategy lies in the layer before format selection.”
tight, quotable reframe of the video's core argument→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
03:08
“The reputation analysis at its core is essentially going through the same research journey that a customer would when they are researching the different types of options in the market.”
defines the method in one sentence→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
18:32
“There are other times where it's actually good to do the opposite — to actually call out who you're not for and lean into a little bit more of that negative marketing.”
“A single creative test or even a handful of tests is not going to be able to tell you, hey, do we have the right strategy or not.”
pushes back on a common industry assumption→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
The Script
Word for word.
Read-along
Don't just watch it. Burn it in.
See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.
17px
metaphorstory
The worst creative strategy that you can do is just copying what your competitors are doing. And yes, this includes if you are being very clever and you're prioritizing ads library based on what's getting the most impressions. The only thing slightly better than this is just trying to get as many formats as you can.
I found that the best creative strategist can actually do strategy. They can identify the current gaps in their creative ecosystem and make a plan for what the business really wants to do and achieve next. So in this video, I'm gonna show you the real building blocks of true creative strategy.
We're gonna look at the type of research that actually moves the needle and what you can do with that data and how you can turn it into an actual strategy for the brand, not just making ads or swapping formats. So what I wanna do first is take you through my agency's real research SOP and take you step by step on how we are compiling data that actually makes winning creative for our brands.
So you can see this is a living and breathing document. We're always changing our process. But the things that I wanna point out right here are the resources that are going to be developed as a result of going through this research process.
We're going to be making a reputation analysis document, which is filled out manually, which is very, very strategic on our end. And then we also have the customer review mining sheet, and then the AI analysis on those reviews, and then also the competitor's document.
So first, I wanna take you through the reputation SOP. This is actually an SOP that I have been doing for years at this point.
And every time I feel like, oh, I'm feeling a little nervous about working with a brand and I don't really know where to start, I always have a few really great ideas as a result of just going through this process. Process. And I'm actually gonna show you the document that I did for Grooms.
They're not a client of mine. Never attempted to be a client of mine, but I went through this process with them, and I had so many great amazing ideas. Uh, they actually gave me some good feedback online, so it means something.
Now the first thing that I like to do is I like to do a brand and product analysis. Now when you're digging into the brand, the first thing that you're gonna wanna understand is who founded it, who is the founding team, and also what was that founding story. What was the big why behind the creation of this product and or brand?
And then I'm gonna zoom in on their best selling products. What's their merchandising strategy? And ultimately, what type of offers are they using across the business, but really zoom in on the ones that they're focusing on for paid social.
And then for each of their best selling products, and I always like to begin with the one we're gonna be focused on initially when it comes to the creative strategy on Meta is really understanding, okay, what is the initial promise of this product? What is the transformation that this product says that it's going to give its users?
And then what type of evidence or proof does it have that it actually works? And then, of course, the features, benefits, bundling opportunities. Now the reason why I really like to look at bundles and the product assortment as a creative strategist is sometimes it is actually in my power to suggest or merchandise a bundle in a different way that I think is gonna be more scalable on paid social.
Sometimes no matter how good you are, you're not gonna be able to sell a $20 product on Meta because the costs are just gonna be too high. So the thing that you have to look at is, okay.
How can I increase that AOV through a bundling strategy? And what type of product assortment can I have in those bundles that are actually gonna be more problem solution oriented and would elicit more of that direct response via Meta?
These are the type of things that the elite creative strategists are thinking about, not just which format to use. The next thing I'm gonna be looking at is the first page of Google. Are there any red flags?
Is there anything that maybe a first time customer would see that would ultimately hinder them from buying? The reputation analysis at its core is essentially going through the same research journey that a customer would when they are researching the different types of options in the market for a problem that they have. So they're gonna go through press.
And I know that press might not be as important or as much of a big factor for younger audiences, but for older demographics, there's still a lot of trust in the legacy print and web publications.
And something to flag here too is that press can be earned or bought. So every time I'm looking through the lens of what different types of publications that a brand has been featured in, if I see a bunch of reviews like this, I'm like, okay. They probably bought that, whereas something like this is likely going to be more earned in legit media.
The other thing I also really like scanning for in publications is just news about the brand overall. I was actually going through this process with a new brand that we're onboarding, and I was like, oh, they're getting ready to IPO. That is huge news.
Also, they just launched in a massive retail store that is nationwide. This is really good news for you to have as a creative strategist because you might be able to play with different types of formats or offers or even objectives in the ad account.
Through this research process, you're also going to be going through Reddit. This is where I find that people are the most honest, not only about your brand. Like, if they have problems with it, they're gonna tell you there, but also with their pain points.
Reddit is really cool because people aren't showing their face like they are in other types of social media. It is kind of anonymized, so people can really show up and be the most ruthless version of themselves.
Another thing that I like to do in the reputation analysis as well is go to Amazon if they have an Amazon presence, and I'm able to see, okay, what is the best seller on Amazon specifically? Is it different than what's the bestseller on d to c?
And, also, what are those rankings? What has the highest amount of reviews or gold stars? I also think that the ask Amazon AI feature is really underutilized in creative strategy.
One of my favorite things to do here actually is to ask it, hey. What type of people are buying this product? And it will actually give you a persona breakdown specific to Amazon, which I find to be super, super value.
Now when we are looking at this reputation analysis as a whole, we're gonna be trying to identify a few things. Number one, what are the common objections that people have from buying? What is the big friction point that is stopping people from making that purchase?
Is there a lack of trust in the efficacy of the product? Is there a skepticism if the product is worth it? Are the costs in theory too high, or is the value not shown to be great enough to actually warrant that type of price bracket?
Another thing that I like to do in the reputation analysis portion as well is really going through the social media and understanding, okay, what are the core content strategies that are working the most here? How are they cultivating community inside of their social media channels?
What type of storytelling do they have? Do they have employee generated content? How are they showing the behind the scenes of their business?
What type of transparency are they offering to their consumers overall? And, of course, what type of creators are they working with? Another platform that I find a lot of creative strategists skip over is YouTube.
I mean, you're on YouTube right now watching this video. Right? I also find that it is a wealth of information for discovering what people really think about your brand.
And, yes, oftentimes, these type of reviews can be bought and they can't be fully trusted. However, I do think that those are still really worth watching to figure out what people are attracted to through the buying experience.
Sometimes I'm able to find golden nugget style reviews by watching these type of YouTube videos, but even more, I find that the comments are often a wealth of information about what people are skeptical about, what type of objections they have, and what other FAQs they have overall about the product or pain. Now once you have this document completed, this is an excellent context document for your LLM of choice.
The next thing that you're going to do is your customer review mining. So you're going to compile a list of all of your customer reviews. So here, what we have our creative strategist do is we have them make a copy of this review mining sheet, and then they export the reviews automatically of everything that their customer has said through their review platform.
Sometimes I do like to pull some reviews manually. I was actually going through the research process with another brand yesterday. And as I was going through the reputation analysis process, I was actually building out my own sheet of things that really stood out to me that people said on Reddit, on Amazon, across the board.
Another thing you're gonna be able to do here is rank your products by number reviews, but also the ratings of those reviews. Another thing too that I like to flag during this process is it's not quite enough to gather all the reviews from your website. It's a really good start.
But I would also make sure that you are prioritizing maybe the top 20 ads over the last year and looking at all of those comments and mining those. Now what's really cool is you are able to do this part of the process more automatically with a platform like Runneth that can actually compile all of your ad comments from the top ads.
You know, tons of new AI solutions that are coming out every day that can do this. But I still think that there is a lot of validity in doing a number of this manually because while the machines can completely automate it, they don't quite have the judgment of what could be a really impactful review that could lead to a top performing ad.
Now the AI analysis that you're gonna do on all of is you're essentially going to upload it to your LLM of choice and run through these questions so that you can have a sense of, okay, what are our strengths and weaknesses as a brand? What are the most common complaints or objections? Are they similar or dissimilar to what I found in the reputation analysis?
What about golden nugget phrases? Are there any trends that I'm seeing with the golden nugget phrases that I compiled? And what are the trigger points that causes someone to buy?
Again, once you have this analysis, this is another really rich context document for you to have and upload to your LLMs. And then the third thing that we like to do is discovering what our personas actually are. So again, we're gonna be using AI here to really figure out what our core personas are.
So you're gonna take the CSV with customer reviews, attach the reputation analysis, attach this PDF that we have, and then use this prompt. And what's cool is this prompt is actually going to spit out a deck for you that you can then review with your team. This is one of the most important parts of the process, and I'd say that one of the big things that we ultimately do for brands is identifying new personas that we can then develop a creative strategy around so that they can reach net new audiences.
So one of my favorite ways to do this is to take a top performing creative, something like this, and then replicate it across all of our core personas like this. Let me show you how Storyblocks makes this even easier. So say we did a David and Goliath ad first targeting 45 plus women going through peri menopause.
Using the Storyblocks plugin right in Adobe Creative Cloud, you can search and download assets directly inside of Premiere Pro and After Effects for other personas, like men on a GLP one or women who just had a baby. Storyblocks is a 100% human made stock media library made for creators by creators. So each download that you make actually goes directly to supporting artists.
And, of course, everything is 100% royalty free even for ads. To get access to the human made stock media library built for creators and essential to my workflow, head to storyblocks.com/daradeni.
They're also offering a 15% off discount off of any annual plan for a limited time, and that offer is only available in my link below. So now that you've seen how we conduct creative strategy research, you're probably wondering, okay. How do you identify which insights are actually important, and how do you actually take all of that data and transmit it into real creative strategy.
There are three big things that I think a lot of creative strategists miss out in their process that has them defaulting back to, okay.
What did our competitors do? They must know something that we don't. Or, okay.
I see that this specific angle is working. We just need to test the hell out of a whole bunch of different formats, and then their creative strategy just goes in circles and circles and then eventually putters out, and then that business doesn't survive. Real strategy lies in the layer before format selection.
So this is gonna include, okay, what about the personas? Are we actually targeting the right type of people? And then there are going to be your content pillars or your angles.
Do we actually have the big pillar pain points that our customer is going to make a direct response on? And then, of course, there are the platform trends. Now I know some people might see platform trends and think, oh, that's just formats.
Right? No. Platform trends are a bit more macro than individual types of formats or videos.
I think a good example of this is, okay, there's an overall platform trend of employee generated content or getting more behind the scenes from the people who work at the brand as well as, hey, the use of partnership ads. A single creative test or even a handful of tests is not going to be able to tell you, hey, do we have the right strategy or not?
It's actually a much bigger, broader idea. And I tend to know, hey, we have the right strategy if this is being reflected in organic creative.
Real creative strategy also lies in the current gaps that your current strategy has. And there are three big gaps that I like to analyze when I'm developing any type of creative strategy for a brand. Number one, the persona gaps.
After going through our persona process, I always really like to cross analyze that too with an analysis on what's currently running in the ad account. So, okay, we go through our persona SOP, and we also look at the personas that are being targeted currently with our creative strategy.
Are there gaps there? Are there certain personas that we haven't targeted at all?
Are there certain personas that we are over indexing on where there is actually a much bigger opportunity in terms of volume or in terms of emotional intensity on who our customers actually are versus who we have been targeting to date, I often find that there is a pretty big gap there. Another thing that I really like to do as well is looking at the levels of awareness across the entire creative account.
Sometimes I'll find that, oh, brands are over indexing on mid funnel or bottom of funnel content. And something that I see a lot is a lot of times their top performers will be super bottom of funnel and offer orientated. So that's where we will have a diagnosis of, okay, what we need to do as the creative strategist is come in and actually create much more top of funnel content so that we can actually continue to get the great performance from creatives, but actually just get more people into that ecosystem.
And then the final one is the creative diversity gap. It becomes a true problem when you look at the ad account and you see, okay, we're not actually attacking different personas, and these personas don't have two to three unique angles each. That's not concepts.
These are just big pillar ideas for those specific personas, and they don't have a range of the levels of awareness for those different personas. And then as a whole, taking a step back from the ad account, do they have good diversity in their creator program?
Are they working with creators through a wide range of different lifestyle types, different genders, different age ranges, different jobs, or just different vibes overall? Now I know what we've talked about so far is a lot of theory, but I've actually been through this research process for hundreds of brands at this point, if not thousands.
And I've done it on some popular brands recently, um, in DC. So I wanna show you how I was thinking about this research process for these brands and what type of creative road map then I would develop for them.
Because I think the other big gap that is really important for creative strategists is just the overall act of planning. Sometimes I'll see when creative strategists are into their role, they'll get on a weekly sprint schedule, and they'll never be able to get out of it. But that means that they're never able to see the bigger picture or take much bigger swings in their creative strategy in terms of format or content type or creators that they wanna work with, which is why every time I'm working with a brand, I make sure that we have not only quarterly planning where we're able to plan out certain times of the year where, hey.
We're gonna have these specific product launches. Maybe we should attack certain personas in this time of year. And then we boil down to a monthly road map where we're able to take a much more strategic approach.
You can actually just add strategy to your overall creative approach if you implement this thinking instead of just trying to churn and burn every single week. So here's some of the research that I did for grooms. And one of the things that kept on popping up for me is there was so much language around, hey.
Is this a scam or is this worth it? And when I was doing my video for them, this was number one, one of the things that I wanted to immediately call out and test.
And this of language I have seen work really, really well on other brands, especially other supplements where there's a lot of skepticism. So this is one where I'm able to develop the strategy for this specific ad creative based on, okay. I'm seeing it out in my research and in the ecosystem, but I also have this perspective from my ten years of experience where I'm very high confidence that something like this is gonna work.
So I have two creatives right here. Are Grooms a scam legit? And then this idea about the real scam behind grooms.
And this one was gonna be a little tongue in cheek kind of think, like, negative marketing. Like, this real scam behind grooms is they're actually good for you and they taste good. So I think it would work.
And when I did this research process for oats overnight, I actually saw in a lot of the reviews that a lot of people were asking if Oats Overnight were good for people on a GLP one. And if you've noticed anything about the broader creative strategy ecosystem and brands really attaching themselves to consumers who are going through this process.
Um, this is really much more of a societal trend. This is one too where I was like, oh, okay.
I think that would make a really good creative for Oats Overnight specifically. One of the most common objections about oats overnight was, hey.
I can just make this myself with everything that's in my kitchen. And there were so many people that would come to the defense of oats overnight and be like, hey. But I actually love the convenience.
I work a really hard job, work really odd hours, and I love the flavors. I love how it tastes specifically. And, like, when I do it myself, it doesn't taste like that.
So that was another one where I was like, hey. Let's actually just call out that we are not for people who love DIY. Sometimes, yes, in our creative, we want to signal to the people, hey, I'm here.
I'm here for you. But there are other times where it's actually good that to do the opposite, to actually call out who you're not for and lean into little bit more of that negative marketing. Another thing that I found too when I was doing this creative strategy research for oats overnight, and this was particularly when I did the ranking of the personas, which one had the most emotional language, which one showed up the most.
And I found that it it was actually the people that talked about oats overnight keeping them full. That was really underrepresented in the current creative mix.
So that was a gap that I wanted to fill with each of these creatives. Now Rhodes was a really interesting one, and I've worked for a beauty brand before. And I gotta say, like, working in beauty is completely different than working in supplements and working in things that are really problem solution oriented.
A lot of times for beauty brands, they're not going to want to go for the cold hard direct sale punch. It's a little bit more about vibes, but their ads still need to perform. So when I was doing my creative strategy research for Rode, I focused a lot on the specific products that they were focusing on.
Like, oh, okay. I didn't actually realize that the lip peptide boost was a plumping formula. That's kinda cool.
And offers more of that before and after experience that might be good on paid social. Now, Rogue is the one that I really drew on a lot of my past experience in beauty and other brands. And what surprised me is looking at their ad account at the time, they did not have any partnership ads.
So that was something that would have been a really easy unlock for them based on how well brands have taken to scaling with that format overall. Sometimes it's not as easy as, hey. Just do this format.
Sometimes it is, and I don't ever wanna negate that when I am looking for low hanging fruit for a brand. Now another thing I really wanted to do too is potentially inject a new persona into their ad account. Because what I had noticed when looking through press, when looking through a lot of their reviews, a lot of times people would signal, hey.
I know this brand might not quite be for me because it's Hailey Bieber. It's going after a younger audience, but this is how it worked on my skin. And I thought, okay.
There is a really great opportunity to work with a influencer or celebrity of a certain caliber who is at a 40 age range to do those partnerships with them that I think could translate really, really well to not only puncturing this new audience and opening up that avenue for them on paid social or via paid social, this would ultimately get them a customer that they're maybe not seeing walk through their Sephora source as well.
So knowing that they had this big expansion, which I saw through my creative strategy research, I was able to take a look at what they were currently running and see, what is a current gap that I could potentially fill here, which is where this Gen X or elder millennial creator would slide in very nicely. At the end of the day, the strategy and creative strategy means that you need to take a step back from which formats or which ads you're gonna be making and really asking the question, why this specific creative?
Why this specific persona? Why this specific angle?
Is there a gap that you're trying to fill? Is there a new persona that you're trying to target so that you can reach net new audiences? Is there a new big idea angle that is ultimately going to be more profitable for you on paid social versus another platform?
So I hope this video helped. Love you guys.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Copying competitors and chasing every ad format isn't strategy — it's noise. This breakdown follows a creative strategist's actual document trail — reputation analysis, review mining, AI-built personas — that turns customer research into a defensible creative roadmap.
Frameworks
Named ideas worth stealing.
00:51list
Creative Strategy Research SOP
Reputation Analysis Document
Customer Review Mining Sheet
AI Analysis on Reviews
Competitors Document
The agency's four-document research pipeline that precedes any ad creative work — conducted in order: reputation analysis first, then review mining, then persona/desire segmentation, then a mission doc.
Steal forany brand's Meta ad creative process, before writing a single ad
01:21model
Reputation Analysis
Brand & product analysis (founder, story, best sellers, offers, bundles)
First page of Google
Press
Reddit
Amazon (incl. Ask Amazon AI)
Social media (Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter/Threads)
A channel-by-channel audit of what's publicly said about a brand, walking the same path a prospective customer would take when researching it.
Steal foronboarding any new brand or client before proposing creative
13:00list
The 3 Creative Strategy Gaps
Persona gap
Levels-of-awareness (funnel) gap
Creative diversity gap
The three lenses used to diagnose why an ad account's creative strategy is stuck: missing personas, funnel-stage imbalance, and too few unique angles per persona.
Steal forauditing an existing ad account's creative strategy
CTA Breakdown
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
11:06product
“To get access to the human made stock media library built for creators and essential to my workflow, head to storyblocks.com/daradeni. They're also offering a 15% off discount off of any annual plan for a limited time.”
Mid-video sponsor read for Storyblocks, tied naturally into the persona-replication workflow just demonstrated (swapping stock footage per persona in Premiere/After Effects) rather than a jarring cutaway.
Twenty-eight time-tested ad angle types, grouped into seven psychological categories, mapped to what each one demands of a market's awareness and sophistication.
A media buyer pulls up real Ads Manager screenshots to prove one account really went from $30,000 to $1.1 million a month in Meta spend, then breaks down the three things behind it.
A five-dollar-a-day ad campaign turns already-viral reels into a follower machine — no bots, no landing page, just traffic pointed at the profile itself.
A Claude Code skill that turns real sales-call transcripts into a standing panel of customer-clone AI agents who argue back instead of agreeing with everything.
00:22
00:37
01:06
01:31
01:43
02:20
02:42
02:47
03:04
03:20
03:34
04:03
04:12
04:24
04:42
05:01
05:13
05:33
06:10
06:22
06:35
06:55
07:16
07:26
07:49
08:21
08:31
08:55
09:03
09:31
09:54
10:17
10:26
10:59
11:33
11:55
12:05
12:34
12:39
13:11
13:37
13:47
13:59
14:23
14:34
14:51
15:12
15:41
15:59
16:21
16:49
17:11
17:22
17:53
18:07
18:24
18:44
19:09
19:20
19:47
20:02
20:19
20:40
21:00
21:26
21:47
Video of the Day30:44
18:52
20:48
08:02
08:05
07:03