BECOMING

A CREATIVE
STRATEGIST
Bridge the gap between data and creative to
eliminate guesswork and improve ad results
 BECOMING A CREATIVE STRATEGIST
THE ART AND SCIENCE
OF CREATIVE STRATEGY
Most teams recognize that bridging the gap between data and creative has
become critical for success in paid social. But why is it so hard to do?

The challenge runs as deep as how humans are wired. Some are more analytical,
while others are more creative. Some are into math, others into art. Some defer
to logic, others to imagination. These differences fundamentally define our
approach to work, so no wonder it’s a hard problem to solve.

We need a uniting force who can combine the best of both worlds to build a data-
driven creative process. That’s where the Creative Strategist comes in.

In this guide, we gather insights from some of the best minds in the industry to
unpack the role of a Creative Strategist and why it’s quickly becoming one of the
most important functions in marketing today.

We hope you enjoy it!

Reza Khadjavi, CEO, Motion

2
 BECOMING A CREATIVE STRATEGIST
WHAT’S INSIDE
THIS GUIDE?
4 THE CREATIVE STRATEGY PROBLEM 22 Finding Ideas from a Customer-First
TODAY’S ORGANIZATIONS FACE Perspective

23 Bringing Data and Competitive Analysis

Together: The “Hypothesis” Approach
7 INTRODUCING THE CREATIVE
STRATEGIST 24 Finding New Pain Points With Competitive
Defining the Creative Strategist Research
7

9 What a Creative Strategist Does—And

Doesn’t Do 25 BRIEFING

10 The Golden Metric for Creative Strategists 26 Dual Approaches to the Creative Brief

10 The Creative Strategist Feedback Loop 27 The “Brick-By-Brick” Approach

11 Two Types of Creative Strategists 28 The “Sweet Spot” Approach

12 Takeaways: the Role of the Creative 29 The “Sweet Spot” Brief

Strategist
30 How to Pull Together a Creative Brief that
Suits Your Style

13 THE “CREATIVE SPRINT”: WHAT

DOES THE PROCESS OF A GOOD
31 RETROSPECTIVE
CREATIVE STRATEGIST LOOK LIKE?
32 Turning the Retrospective Into a Repeatable
Process
14 IDEATION
15 Analyzing Data on Existing Ads: Finding
33 PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Insights in the Ad Account

16 Monitoring Ad Trends to Make Creative

Decisions
34 TAKEAWAYS: THE CREATIVE SPRINT

17 Using Data to Drive Ideation

36 CONCLUSION: MASTERING THE
19 Competitive Analysis for Ideation ROLE OF CREATIVE STRATEGIST

20 Finding Ideas from the “Bird’s-Eye View”

20 Level Up Your Competitive Analysis With

Winners Circle Boards

21 Building on Your Analysis: Learning to

“Speak the Language” of Potential Buyers

3
 BECOMING A CREATIVE STRATEGIST
THE CREATIVE STRATEGY
PROBLEM TODAY’S
ORGANIZATIONS FACE

Let’s say your organization has a lot of good media often, both sides don’t know how to come together
buyers. Let’s say they also have loads of creative and create a tangible, long-term creative playbook.
talent on hand to produce media ads.
One problem: organizations are loading too much
Sound like a problem? Of course not. Good media on their media buyers’ plates. No, forget “too
buyers, good creative talent—sounds like a much.” Some media buyers have everything on their
winning combination. But the problem is today’s plate. Nick Shackelford, CEO/managing partner
organizations might have good teams on both at Structured, points to media buyers who handle
sides…but they don’t have someone in that critical every task. Some, he says, handle everything from
role that ties the two together. channel buying and data analysis to copywriting
and storyboarding.
Too often, companies trust that the two roles have
interdependent functions. Ideally, the media buyer’s “The media buyer should be contributing or
goals align with the creative strategists. What more owning,” says Shackelford, but is “often the only
needs to be said? one doing these things. And it’s excessive.”

As it turns out, a lot. It’s not enough to unify two

disparate roles with singular goals. Each side may
not know how to mesh with the other. And all too

4
 BECOMING A CREATIVE STRATEGIST
When media buyers do too much, creative Bringing Different Roles Together
professionals suffer. They don’t have the media
buyer’s access to data analysis or a portfolio of Challenge one, according to Nick Shackelford, is
ads that have worked for a client in the past. That simple. You have to establish coordination between
leaves with creatives with no direction. They end creative departments and media buyers.
up feeling like cogs in a machine rather than fully-
empowered team members. Adding plenty of creative talent is a very positive
thing. But while companies can build a hefty roster
Put it all together and you have an organization with full of capable creative professionals, it still takes
talented people who aren’t empowered to do their know-how to mold this roster into a cohesive team.
best work. Even talented creatives can’t help media
buyers if they don’t know what the goal of an ad is. “When you’re building an agency,” says Shackelford,
And media buyers who do too much work for the “you’re just building a bunch of marketing
creative team don’t let them relax and produce their departments.”
best work.
The question, then, is how you can bring the
Everyone has the goal of doing great work, different marketing roles together so that these
sure. But there’s something missing. There’s no departments never feel siloed—or separated—
connecting tissue that pulls it all together. from each other.

“The media buyer is a channel

buyer. The creative strategist
should be involved in the
designing, the scripting, and the
storyboarding and the content
team, setting some of the
benchmarks around how the
content should perform.”

Nick Shackelford, CEO & Managing Partner, Structured

5
 BECOMING A CREATIVE STRATEGIST
Counterintuitively, Shackelford says it’s better to start with separately-defined roles. This way, everyone
knows their role within the overall structure.

CHANNEL BUYER The role of the Channel Buyer replaces the traditional aspects
of the media buyer role. This channel buyer is still responsible
for media buying, data analytics, tracking KPI and handling KPI
reporting, and conducting creative/ad analysis. But here’s where
the change comes in: that’s all they do, deferring the creative
aspects of the job to other roles.

GROWTH STRATEGIST The role of the Growth Strategist, or sometimes the Chief
Marketing Officer, is to look at all of the channels and
communicate the overall direction of the project to everyone
involved.

CREATIVE STRATEGIST Finally, the third role, and the one we’re concerned with today:
the Creative Strategist.

How do creative strategists overcome these challenges in their roles? How do they overlap with other roles
in a marketing department? How do they ensure their vision is part of the overall goal of each campaign? And
how do they become the “connective tissue” between media buyers and the creative department?

That’s where this handbook comes in.

6
 BECOMING A CREATIVE STRATEGIST
INTRODUCING THE
CREATIVE STRATEGIST

A well-defined, empowered creative strategist is a

solution to the “creative” problem.

It sounds good on paper. But what does it mean

to be “well-defined”? And how can a creative
strategist take control over a project in an
empowering way—or learn to empower others?

We’ll start at the beginning: defining the creative

strategist’s role. “Over the last 5 years, there’s been a
new position created at most digitally-
savvy brands — a creative strategist.
Defining the Creative Strategist This is someone who understands
According to Indeed.com, “A creative strategist is a how to ideate and communicate to
marketing professional who focuses on improving a designers and editors, while keeping
company’s overall marketing and advertising plans.” the importance of performance
marketing KPIs top of mind. Every
But that doesn’t tell the whole story, does it? brand doing over 8-figures in revenue
needs to have this position internally,
It’s the unity of those two words—marketing and on the creative team.”
advertising—that can make the creative strategist’s
Nik Sharma, CEO, Sharma Brands
role so difficult to pin down.

7
 BECOMING A CREATIVE STRATEGIST
Here’s how we like to think of it. The creative and know what made previous ads work so well.
strategist is the connection an organization’s left But a creative strategist should also be forward-
and right brains. The left brain—analytical and thinking. They need to find creative ways to turn
methodical—is focused on data, KPIs, and ad data into new ads.
performance. The right brain—creative and
artistic—is focused on the innovations in writing Ultimately, a creative strategist is a translator. They
and editing to produce an ad. translate advertising data into actionable new
projects. They translate insights into hypotheses to
Within your organization, a creative strategist is test with new ads. They translate a brand’s goals
the bridge between the creative team and the into new ideas for the creative team to try.
media buyers. The media buyers root themselves
in data and research to know what an ad needs to The role of the creative strategist comes down to
accomplish. But they can’t necessarily pin down the how well they can answer two questions:
precise messaging that will get there.
What do we do next, and how do we do it?
Typically, a creative strategist leads a team of
writers, editors, or illustrators. These are the
“creatives” who form the messaging of the ad.

But creative strategists serve as a conduit to the

media buyers. That means strategists deal with
both the left and right sides of an organization’s
“brain.” Ideally, a creative strategist can handle data

8
 BECOMING A CREATIVE STRATEGIST
What a Creative Strategist Does—
And Doesn’t Do
As noted in the previous section, a media buyer
can’t flourish if they’re doing everything from
KPI reporting to ad copywriting. It’s the same for
creative strategists. They can’t flourish if they try to
do a little of everything.

Just ask John Murdock, who manages a team of “The role of a creative strategist
creative strategists at Tinuiti. Murdock echoed cannot be overstated. Creative is
Shackelford’s point: defining the roles of creative one of the biggest levers to improve
and media buyers helps both sides do what they do ad performance in 2022. Constant
best. communication between the media
buyer and the creative teams is
“It’s really difficult to be really good at [media paramount for success. That’s where
buying] and also be an expert at what creative
the creative strategist comes in.”
moves the needle,” said Murdock. “We found that
Cody Plofker, CMO, Jones Road Beauty
it’s best to split them off.”

To Murdock, it’s the partnership—not the total

joining—of the two roles that works best in Tinuiti’s
paid social campaigns.

“[Creative strategists] work in conjunctions

with media buyers at Tinuiti,” said Murdock. For
example, he asks, what if there was a large uptick in
an advertisement’s clicks, but overall engagement
was down? At Tinuiti, creative strategists consult
with media buyers to diagnose the problem. Was
it creative fatigue? Time for new creative ideation?
Both?

In this role, the creative strategist does have some

exposure to the data behind the success of their
campaigns. But they’re not solely responsible for
collecting, organizing, and interpreting that data.
At Tinuiti, once a creative strategist and media
buyer get on the same page, it’s time to decide
next steps. And that’s where the creative strategist
should thrive.

9
 BECOMING A CREATIVE STRATEGIST
The Golden Metric for Creative Strategists

A creative strategists north star is to improve the Marketing Efficiency Ratio (MER) of their organization.

REVENUE

MARKETING EFFICIENCY RATIO (MER) = MARKETING SPEND

(Media spend, Creative production costs)

The Creative Strategist Feedback Loop

By creating a feedback loop between media buying and creative production, the creative strategist is able to
help improve MER by finding efficiencies in the marketing spend. How?

More high performing creatives produced vs low performing

Less media spend towards low performing creative

Works with media buyers and

creative teams to produce higher-
converting creatives Higher marketing returns open
additional budget to improve
1 creatives and scale spend

This results in an overall

Better creatives result in better return 3 improvement to MER, making
from media spend and reduced spend the creative strategist role
on lower-performing assets
the perfect function to
creative efficiencies in the
performance marketing
function without sacrificing
ambitious growth targets.

10
 BECOMING A CREATIVE STRATEGIST
Two Types of Creative Strategists

Not every creative strategist’s role will be the same. In talking to experts in creative strategy, we found that
there were typically two styles of conducting the role:

EXTENSION OF THE The creative strategist as an extension of the media buyer role.
MEDIA BUYER ROLE
This is particularly true for companies without the capacity to hire a
dedicated strategist. But there are problems with this approach, as
Murdock and Shackelford outlined. Media buyers can sometimes
struggle with finding time to execute creative strategies.

A DEDICATED ROLE If a team is large enough, the creative strategist is often a

dedicated role. This dedicated role is often similar to a project
manager who has an understanding of both “sides of the brain” in
every project. The creative strategist needs to understand the data
as interpreted by media buyers. They then need to translate and
visualize this data for creative stakeholders and team members.
Finally, they should employ project management principles to tie it
all together and produce a successful ad.

Generally, creative strategist experts recommend the latter approach. This clearly-defined role requires
additional resources at the company to support a fully fleshed-out creative strategist salary—but those
resources often end up being worth the investment.

11
 BECOMING A CREATIVE STRATEGIST
Takeaways: the Role of the Creative Strategist

From what we’ve learned above, the first step in being an effective creative strategist is to work through a
clearly-defined role. That includes:

“PROJECT A creative strategist is ultimately the head of creative projects.

MANAGEMENT”
They’re the ones through whom the creative work filters, whether
that be in copywriting, editing, illustration, or animation. It’s the
creative strategist’s role to direct the creative team with an eye
on what the brand wants to see in its ad.

CONSULTING WITH In some cases, the media buyer is also the creative strategist.
MEDIA BUYERS
But when the roles are separate, the two should work together,
especially in the ideation phase. What can the media buyer show in
the data from previous campaigns that reflects where the creative
team should head in the future? And how can the creative strategist
use KPIs and other data points to help fuel creative ideation? (Note:
More on ideation below.)

Executing these roles is far different than merely understanding them. To help paint a picture of what creative
strategy looks like in practice, we consulted our group of creative strategy experts.

12
 BECOMING A CREATIVE STRATEGIST
THE “CREATIVE SPRINT”:
WHAT DOES THE PROCESS
OF A GOOD CREATIVE
STRATEGIST LOOK LIKE?

Add it all together and you have “The Creative Sprint.” This Creative Sprint defines the performance of the
creative strategist, while project management skills oversee each step. We’ll look at how to optimize all three
steps to create consistent improvements to creative efforts over time.

In the four sections that follow, we’ll tackle the process of an effective creative strategist in four key areas:

IDEATION BRIEFING RETROSPECTIVES

This is the role that is most A creative briefing is a blueprint Retrospectives. This is the
closely tied to right-brain for the team’s approach to the “debriefing” of the creative
thinking. Ideation means ad. It speaks specifically to world. What went wrong with
looking at the data and brand goals, key performance the campaign? What went right?
previous ad performance. Your indicators every ad should What seemed to resonate with
goal? To spark new ideas, target, and the messaging style the audience? At this point, the
new messaging, and new each team member needs to creative strategist will sit down
hypotheses to test in future ads. bring to the creative work. with other team members and
media buyers to pinpoint future
ideation and strategy.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT (PM)

Creative strategists aren’t always trained executives and leaders, which is why we’ll talk specifically about sticking
points they often have in project management.

But now let’s zoom in and see what some top-performing strategists have to say about each step.

13
 BECOMING A CREATIVE STRATEGIST
IDEATION

The ideation step of the Creative Sprint is often the

most challenging one. If you’ve ever sat in front of a
blank screen and watched the cursor blink back at
you, you know what we’re talking about.

Strictly speaking, ideation refers to the formation

of the concepts and ideas that will inform your next
campaign. But this is a fancy way to say it. It might
be easier to say ideation is the stage of the process
where you need to come up with new stuff. “Your ad performance can
no longer survive on brightly
The creative strategists we talked to had all sorts
colored static images and
of ideas about ideation with one thing in common:
they all had it down to a system.
raw UGC videos, to win in 2022
you must be amplifying your
creatives.”
Zach Stuck, Founder, Homestead

14
 BECOMING A CREATIVE STRATEGIST
A good ideation process, we learned, typically involves two things:

Analyzing data on existing ads. This should give you an idea of what’s resonating
with people and what isn’t working. This is typically your “north star” for new
ideation.

Performing competitive analysis to see what other companies are doing. However,
just as important is sifting out what might not be working for the competition.

ANALYZING DATA
ON EXISTING ADS
Finding Insights in the Ad Account
What type of imagery and messaging have the
best hook rates?
To Dara Denney, a marketing creator with

What types of ads have facilitated the longest
professional experience in creative strategy at
“hold” rates—that is, held attention the longest?
Thesis, the first step is sifting for gold.

What are the best conversion rates for certain

Not literal gold, of course. We’re talking about the types of creative tests?

little nuggets of inspiration and insights that show

Denney says her typical strategy is not only to sift
up when you first dive into a brand’s ad account.
out what’s not working, but then to double down on
Your goal here: to see what ads are living up to
what is.
their performance indicators. Among the questions
Denney says she asks herself:

15
 BECOMING A CREATIVE STRATEGIST
Monitoring Ad Trends to Make Creative Decisions

When trying to nail down your ideation, it can help to have an understanding of what elements of your
advertising resonates best with any given audience.

Take the example below, a report built on Motion that break downs ad performance from a set of ads
according to what influencer that ad featured. At at glance, this report shows that Scott Sampson and Mandy
Morgan outperform the other two influencers by a significant degree.

By monitoring reports like this, Creative Strategists greatly accelerate their workflow in two ways:

Knowing the answer to higher-level questions such as “what ad format should we create for” significantly
reduces the number of variables to consider in the ideation process

Discovering what variables work provides breadcrumbs that Creative Strategists can use to dive even
deeper into the ideation process

Creative Strategists should build
Creative formats
Ad placements

a reporting system that tracks:
Influencers
Landing page paths

Ad Types
Product categories

Offers

16
 BECOMING A CREATIVE STRATEGIST
Using Data to Drive Ideation

Creative strategists often use tools like Motion to evaluate their most recent ads. This gives them insights not
only into what ads are working, but the specific points in each ad that resonate most with the audience.

For example, consider a creative strategist reviewing video ad performance over the previous month. Imagine
they come across two ads:

AD A HAS A HIGHER THUMBSTOP RATIO AD B HAS A BETTER CTR

Thumbstop ratio measures the Click-through-rate shows how well an

performance of the first three seconds ad converts audiences to a landing
of an ad. It tells a creative strategist page. This tells a creative strategist how
how high well the initial hook of the ad strong the call-to-action is on this ad.
captures audiences.

“Using data to make decisions on creative is the smartest thing

you can do because it takes the guesswork out of whether it
works and lets the numbers speak for themselves.”
Courtney Alexander, Lead Media Buyer, Foxwell Digital

17
 BECOMING A CREATIVE STRATEGIST
WHAT DOES THIS TELL US?

Ad A is getting more attention from users who are

scrolling, so the first few seconds of that ad seem to be
high-impact. Something is going right with the hook.

Diving deeper, we can see that the hook shows a UGC-

style video of the influencer applying makeup. Its clear
this style of video does a good job capturing users
attention.

However, Ad B has more conversions. Ultimately, it’s

better-producing ad overall. It’s meeting its goals. This ad
leverages an image of the many makeup tones offered
by this brand, with a CTA of “Find your style”. A creative
strategist would glean the hypothesis that users respond
well to seeing the many foundation tones from this brand.

USING THIS DATA TO MAKE BETTER ADS

What is a creative strategist to do with this complex data? They might borrow the best elements from Ad A
(the first few seconds of thumb-stopping goodness) with Ad B (the meat of the remainder of the video).

Now combine the two elements and voila: you’ve got an idea for a new ad. You’ve also arrived at a new ad
hypothesis. Now you can test a version of the ad highlighting the best of both worlds, then measure its thumb
stop ratio and a conversion rate.

18
 BECOMING A CREATIVE STRATEGIST
COMPETITIVE By dissecting high-performing ads in this way, you start
to get a taste of what your audience might like to see.
ANALYSIS FOR
IDEATION Ideally, a creative strategist can save this
knowledge and find inspiration for future ads.
In some cases, discovering the trends in your
“Good artists create,” Picasso once said. “Great marketplace will be enough to spark an idea.
artists steal.”

Granted, actually stealing intellectual property is

a major no-no. But whenever any company does
something in the public sphere, it’s exposing an
idea to the marketplace that may be (legally) up for
the taking.

Competitive analysis doesn’t mean stealing ideas.

It means finding what themes are resonating with
your prospective audience.
“A good creative strategist
This side of the ideation process typically requires
has a deep understanding of
that you keep up brands in your niche or industry.
But there’s one caveat: you don’t have access to
psychology, economics, and
competitor data. Competitors may may repeat ads consumer behavior.”
that aren’t working, simply because they haven’t
Sarah Levinger, Creative Strategist
reviewed the data yet.

It’s the creative strategist’s job to suss out what is

working for a given audience.

One way to conduct legitimate competitive research

is to scroll through Facebook’s ads library. There,
you can find brands that serve similar audiences.
You can then ask questions like:

What CTAs are my competitors using?

What messages are the ads delivering?

What do the ads look like?

Do the ads showcase the product, or are they

more lifestyle images?

19
 BECOMING A CREATIVE STRATEGIST
Finding Ideas from the “Bird’s-Eye View”

For Savannah Sanchez, a social media consultant who works with multiple brands, the bird’s-eye view is
central to ideation. “As a creative strategist, a lot of time has to go into the research process,” she says.

But she points out her role as a consultant to big companies has a key advantage: lots of data. She has
worked with brands that give her access to that data, then dug in to see which styles of ads are landing for
the most popular eCommerce brands. Where Sanchez works, sample sizes are not an issue.

The result: Sanchez has a “bird’s-eye” view of the industry, seeing what works and what doesn’t.

“As a creative strategist, a lot of time has to go into the research process,” says Sanchez. She notes that she
has it lucky because she works with big companies that give her access to data, so she can see what styles of
ads are landing for eCommerce brands.

This might sound like wearing both the creative strategist and the media buyer’s hat. But there’s no reason
that the two roles can’t team up to share the data that sparks ideation.

Level Up Your Competitive Analysis With Winners Circle Boards

Proactive creative strategists will keep up to date with ad trends in the ecosystem. The best way to do this
is by keeping an eye on competitors ads. Tools such as Adison allow creative strategists to collect ads in a
“Winners Circle” for later reference during the creative ideation process.

20
 BECOMING A CREATIVE STRATEGIST
BUILDING ON Learning to “Speak the Language”

YOUR ANALYSIS of Potential Buyers

Mirella Crespi, founder and CEO of Creative
Milkshake, always looks for ideation in learning to
speak the “language” of potential buyers.

To that end, Crespi finds herself performing a

lot of research. She even dives back to what she
calls the “basic stuff.” That includes the target
audience, the problem a product solves, the nature
of the campaign (product launch or promotional
campaign?) or even any creative references from
previous winning creatives.

“The best direct response creatives

are written in simple, effective
copy. That’s always the language
of the user, the consumer—and
not how the brand wants to sound.
A lot of the ideation comes from
understanding how people talk
about those products.”

Mirella Crespi, Founder & CEO, Creative Milkshake

21
 BECOMING A CREATIVE STRATEGIST
Finding Ideas from a Customer-First
Perspective
Nick Shackelford agrees with this approach, noting
his own process can go down a checklist of what
every creative needs to know:

Who the advertisement is selling to

The pain points of those key buyers

“I’ve been advertising on social

What platform the ads will appear on
since ‘08. Over the years,

What platforms the users typically appear on
creative strategy has become

What placement the advertising will use
increasingly important as

Aligning the messaging with a landing page
marketers have been able

How much does the potential audience know
to collect more data about
about the product?
advertising performance.”
Like Crespi, Shackelford’s approach is to inform the
Barry Hott, Growth Marketing Consultant
creative team who’s on the other end of the screen.
Who’s the target customer? Who’s the person
scrolling TikTok whose thumb is about to stop
because of an exciting hook? Once the creatives
have a solid grasp on these principles, the ideas
start to spark.

“The build of what we do and why we’re doing it is

extremely important,” said Shackelford. “Before we
even get to the ad or the landing page.”

22
 BECOMING A CREATIVE STRATEGIST
Bringing Data and Competitive When you do, you’ve come up with a hypothesis—a
new idea to test. That’s when it’s time to give your
Analysis Together: The “Hypothesis”
new idea a structure via a briefing.
Approach
In science, the basic method is simple. You come up
with a hypothesis, test the hypothesis, and review
your data before deciding what to research next.

A creative strategist’s role is often similar. Using

data and competitive analysis to reach conclusions,
the creative strategist then comes up with a
hypothesis for future creatives. This fuels a new
round of creative experimentation.

To Anze Markovic, a freelance creative strategist,

the process is a balance between ideation and new
“The Creative Strategist is a
concepts. And he fuels it with background research bridge between the Media
to generate these new concepts. Buyers, Content Creators and
Editors.”
“First, when I work with a client,” says Markovic,
“I—like every copywriter should do—[start with] Anze Markovic, Freelance Creative Strategist

research.”

In addition to sending his clients questionnaires and

soliciting feedback, Markovic’s process includes
research that seeks users out directly. For example,
if he’s researching a product for insomnia, he’ll go
on a Reddit community where users are talking
about the problem. There, he’ll identify particular
pain points he might not have come up with in
traditional data analysis.

Markovic says he also visits Amazon, but not for

the good reviews. He wants the low-star reviews.
He’s looking for anything that stands out. The more
honest, the better.

“Then I try to put out the top five value propositions

and top five angles, and then I float between the
ideation phase and new concepts,” says Markovic.
“You need to find a balance between those.”

23
 BECOMING A CREATIVE STRATEGIST
Finding New Pain Points With Competitive Research

On top of direct customer research, some creative strategists have found another novel way of sourcing
creative inspiration. By looking at reviews on Amazon and discussions on forums such as Reddit, creative
strategists can uncover additional pain points that might not have emerged from traditional data anlaysis.

In the example below, a creative strategist looking to make ads for a sleep aid scanned Reddit threads about
insomnia and read reviews for competitors products on Amazon. Their findings exposed a pain point that they
had not yet tested - not only do insomniacs struggle to fall asleep, they are often even more frustrated with
their inability to stay asleep. This finding would go on to inspire a future round of creatives.

24
 BECOMING A CREATIVE STRATEGIST
BRIEFING

Once the creative strategist knows where they want contain. Every creative strategist might tell you
to head, the next step in the Creative Sprint is the something different.
blueprint. In other words, the brief.
But in the interviews we conducted, we found a
What is a brief? It’s easy to define: it’s a set of good brief generally includes the following:
details and instructions for your next project. But
there are contrasting opinions on what it should

A HYPOTHESIS YOU’RE What is the goal of the creative? What’s the idea you’re testing out?
TESTING
This is the overall direction of the creative, the goal you want to hit—
or, at the very least, what you want to learn by the time you’re done.

HOOKS, DEMOS, AND Nick Shackelford believes creative strategists should

FEATURES
communicate with plain, nuts-and-bolts language about what’s
going into the creative. What’s the hook? What product or feature
are you demonstrating? What feature are you highlighting? Keep
these points simple.

A BRIEF OUTLINE OF WHAT This can be anything from rough sketches, written outlines of copy,
THIS ROUND OF CREATIVES
WILL LOOK LIKE or even examples of existing ads that you’re aspiring towards.

25
 BECOMING A CREATIVE STRATEGIST
Dual Approaches to the Creative composition (such as data, charts, or Motion
visuals) that show the data that led to this creative
Brief
experiment in the first place, even better.
The experts we interviewed had two perspectives
on what to include in a brief. There’s the “Brick-by- Most importantly, a brief should contain a full
brick” approach of Nick Shackelford, which means outline of what needs to happen next.
to include every detail, such as:

What creatives need to be made?

Hook
When will they launch?

Benefits
Who on your team is responsible for what?

Branded elements
Savannah Sanchez agrees with the comprehensive

Demonstrations
approach. She gives her content creators explicit

Objections (and answers to objections) instructions for shot lists, scripts, and the like. For

Problems/Pain Points editors, she tells them how to piece the content
together, down to text overlays and transitions.

Validation

Features We asked her how she balances that with providing

CTAs her team with creative control. Her response? “I
lean way more on the side of no flexibility.”
John Murdock agreed with the detailed approach.
“You need to make sure you’re communicating However, this isn’t to say that every brief needs to spell
who the audience is,” he says. “You can’t assume a everything out in fine detail. There’s another approach.
designer is going to know.”

Under this model, you might include the points

above. This removes any possible ambiguities
for the creative team. If you include supporting

“For my team…it’s really important to get the

exact shots I’m looking for. It’s almost like when
you watch a TV show—like when I watch The
Office, for instance. [I assume] they’re probably
coming up with this on the spot. But then I
watch the behind-the-scenes. And they’re
saying every single move and every single line
is scripted, [though] it seems so natural. And
that’s what I’m looking for in the ads.”

Savannah Sanchez, Founder, The Social Savannah

26
 BECOMING A CREATIVE STRATEGIST
The “Brick-By-Brick” Approach

When developing creative briefs, Nick Shackelford uses the “brick-by-brick” approach. This entails breaking
down videos into different segments, each with detailed instruction of what that segment should include.

As seen below, these segments can then be rearranged and restructured to make a virtually limitless number
of assets for a single product and concept - making iteration stupid simple.

PRODUCT 1/CONCEPT 1

Asset 1 Hook Demo Feature 1 Benefit Demo Feature 2 Demo Solution 1 CTA

Asset 2 Hook Benefit 1 Valid Feature 1 Demo Testimonial CTA

Asset 3 Hook Problem 1 Feature 1 Solution 1 CTA

Let’s take a look at what this looks like with an example of what some
of these segments might look like in brief form:

SEGMENT NAME DESCRIPTION IN BRIEF OUTPUT

Hook
Mosquito biting user to “shock” audiences and
capture their attention

Problem
“Mosquitos ruining the campout”

Feature
Demonstrate that the zapper is waterproof for
those rainy campfire days

Testimonial User reviews to highlight product quality

CTA
“Click to learn more”

27
 BECOMING A CREATIVE STRATEGIST
The “Sweet Spot” Approach

According to Dara Denney, a “loose script” approach works best for her.

Yes—we just got done telling you all the details you need to include for the brick-by-brick approach. But
creative strategists like Dara Denney keep the brief loose. She allows creative professionals to fill in the gasp.
To her, that’s where the empowerment lies.

“Our sweet spot is supplying a really

loose script, even just listing out
core benefits that worked well in the
[previous] ads. We really try to keep our
briefs less than a page long, because no
one else is going to read anything bigger
than that. [We] try to make it open to
interpretation.”

Dara Denney, Director of Performance Creative, Thesis

28
 BECOMING A CREATIVE STRATEGIST
WHEN TO USE:
The “Sweet Spot” Brief
The Sweet Spot approach is particularly effective
Used by agencies such as Milked Media, the Sweet when used in an organization that has an
Spot brief takes a less specific, more ambiguous experienced in-house creative team or by a media
approach than the Brick-by-Brick approach to buyer who doubles as a creative strategist. It is
creative briefs. This can include elements such as: especially useful when leveraged for generating
new creative pieces versus for more focused

Hypothesis of what will be tested iterations.

Higher-level creative guidance

Style or aesthetic approach

Inspiration

29
 BECOMING A CREATIVE STRATEGIST
How to Pull Together a Creative Brief
that Suits Your Style
We’ve just pointed two alternative ways to construct
a creative brief. Given that each way has its own
advocates—many of whom are successful creative
strategists—which is the best approach?

Choose whichever suits your team and your

leadership style. “Be as clear as possible.
Designers are not mind readers
For a while, that may sound vague as you discover the
or magicians.”
right mix for your creative strategy. But we can help
you identify key mistakes you can avoid along the way. Lauren Schwartz, Owner & Creative Director, The Loft 325

For starters, don’t micromanage off the bat. It

can be counterproductive and lead to feelings of
stagnation in your creative team.

“If we had a 30-minute control for every asset [we

do] like social media,” said John Murdock, “we
would never get anything done.”

Murdock says his team builds from a template.

But that template leaves them plenty of room to
talk about each brand’s specific voice and what
the project is looking for. They’ll also list example
ads to show creatives the tone they want to strike.
The brief provides thorough scaffolding—but the
creative professionals fill in the rest.

As for specific tools for creating briefs? Answers

ran the gamut. Favorites included Google Docs,
Notion, and Basecamp, but the overall answer was
simple: do whatever makes it easy to communicate
the essentials to your team.

30
 BECOMING A CREATIVE STRATEGIST
RETROSPECTIVES

After the brief, the team gets to work. You finish the ad, Shackelford recommends having the creative
get approval from the client, and launch. Now what? strategist determine which benchmarks a project
needs to hit. That might include thumbstop ratio,
Now you begin assessing. The final stage of the conversion rates, or how long users are watching
Creative Sprint might not sound as fun as ideation, each ad. With that information gathered, the
but it’s equally fundamental. It’s what the creative creative strategist can then start to determine how
strategist often calls the “retrospective.” well the ad performed against expectations.

Think of it as a “de-brief.” Now’s the time to To Mirella Crespi, the retrospective process isn’t a
examine what went wrong and what went right. Did one-off meeting. It can include a couple of phases,
the hypothesis you tested bear out in reality? Or do from gauging the overall ad concept to the iteration
you need more ads to test your ideas? of each campaign’s essential hook. Once an ad has
passed muster on multiple fronts, then it’s ready
Your first step in creating a retrospective is to for primetime. If an ad passes muster, it’s ready for
decide where you’ll spend your reflection time. This scaling up.
can get confusing at times. For example, let’s say
you’re holding a meeting with a media buyer who Much like the creative brief, creative strategists
only wants to handle the retrospective from an often have different approaches to how they
analytical point of view. evaluate the success of a project. But most seem to
agree that this is the time to remove yourself from
“The creative strategist needs to understand what you thought you would work, zoom out, and
what metrics are making sense,” said Nick gain perspective.
Shackelford. “And the media buyer has to be
very mindful of what information is being shared
back with the creative strategist.”

31
 BECOMING A CREATIVE STRATEGIST
Turning the Retrospective Into a the hypothesis during the retrospective—may seem
straightforward. But completing all three steps
Repeatable Process
helps creative strategists spark ongoing ideation.
“You have to basically batch a time to reflect” on With a clear track record of results on previous
the project, according to Nick Shackelford. He tests, they can point to specific data points for
notes that with his team, there are generally three future projects.
steps they use to evaluate a project that’s just
concluded: This isn’t “guesstimation,” but new ideation based
on real-world conclusions.

Examining what they tested—and what the
hypothesis expected To accomplish this, creative strategists should
catalog their retrospectives for each brand. This

Examining what happened in reality
builds a “knowledge repository” for ongoing

Examining what to do next
creative learning. In the industry, many strategists
dub this the “Creative Playbook.”
“Nine out of ten times,” says Shackelford, that
process “is going to be led by the creative
The strategists we talked say they like to document
strategist. If it isn’t, it’s going to be the media buyer
this playbook in some way, often with Google
communicating that to the growth strategist.”
Sheets, Notion, or Google docs. But the result is
always the same: a “Creative Playbook” that details
This process—hypothesizing during ideation,
previous creatives and their performances with
defining the hypothesis in the brief, and reviewing
real-world data.

“I would describe [the retrospective

process] as: take a breath. Make sure that
you’ve dotted all your is and crossed all
your Ts and thought about the fullness of
the project. Have you communicated? Have
you followed the template? Have you looked
at the briefing template? Have you checked
every box?”

John Murdock, Senior Manager, Creative Strategy, Tinuiti

32
 BECOMING A CREATIVE STRATEGIST
PROJECT
MANAGEMENT

Throughout the creative sprint, the creative They use a Kanban board that follows the same
strategist is essentially a project manager. Their three essential stages you see above: Ideation,
role: to keep everyone on-task, on-time, and fully Briefing, and Retrospective.
in possession of the information they need to do
great work. In talking to creative strategists, we noticed two
common pain points relating to their project
Typically, the creative strategists we talked to management work:
handle their tasks on tools like Monday or Asana.

KEEPING THINGS It’s hard enough to get your own creative juices flowing. How can you get
“LOOSE”
a team’s flowing? Anze Markovic does this with a highly-detailed brief,
but then tells his creative team: “make it in your own words.” He looks
for team members who project a looseness and relaxation from the very
first project—because he knows he’s going to continue to get that kind of
creative work from them in the future.

AVOIDING TEAM Mirella Crespi recommends inviting everyone on the team to think of the
SILOS
big picture—the ultimate goal of the creative. Without that, she says,
you’re running a production machine, but not a true team. A production
machine might get things done, but the silo-ing of different teams can stifle
creativity. They’re thinking “insert this clip here,” “cut that voiceover into
this section,” or “add the voiceover there.” And while that gets work done, it
sometimes fails to speak to the voice of the brand. Crespi invites everyone
to see a brand’s goals so they can be clear on how an ad needs to end up.

33
 BECOMING A CREATIVE STRATEGIST
TAKEAWAYS: THE
CREATIVE SPRINT
Zac Fromson, COO of Lilo Social, believes that This helps identify the problem areas that need
a successful creative sprint is a means to test improvement and creative sprint cycles are aimed
assumptions towards a desired goal. at solving those. To Fromson, once the right issues
have been diagnosed, it points the team in the right
Fromson recommends studying the data to find direction to ideate on solutions.
elements of the creative that are performing
below grade and iterating to fix them. To that end
he recommends asking a few core questions to
uncover opportunities:

Is there a Thumbstop rate issue?

Is there a Click-through rate issue?

Is there a Conversion rate issue?

“We identify elements that are

performing below grade and we
iterate to improve them.”
Zac Fromson, Chief Creative, Lilo Social

34
 BECOMING A CREATIVE STRATEGIST
From a purely creative standpoint, the strategist’s role should be clear. But what does it really mean to be
“creative”? Our experts had some ideas that broke it down into specifics:

DON’T STEAL FROM According to Savannah Sanchez, looking at a competitor’s ad isn’t

COMPETITORS. LEARN
WHAT WORKS enough to come up with a good ad. But it can teach you to dissect
what works. Being vague with these conclusions—or plopping down
an ad on a video editor’s door and saying, “hey, can we make it look
like this?”—isn’t going to be enough

KEEP IT CASUAL Once again, Anze Markovic says he looks for relaxed content
creators who are that way from the beginning. That way, he knows
those creators will be the same for future clients. The “looseness” of
the team helps them feel comfortable enough to try new ideas.

KEEP PEOPLE IN Zac Fromson has had success in giving designers feedback from an
THE LOOP
overview perspective. He provides previous ad data, the status of
a campaign’s current results, and what the client wants to achieve.
For instance, if a client has had trouble converting buyers from its
ads, that information is going to be vital at every step in the creative
process—not just the brief.

Then, Fromson says, strategists should interact with other team members if they have a say in where the ad is
going to be placed. He recommends asking whether you have any say in the landing page, or whether there’s
someone with whom you can coordinate on messaging. These questions are all pertinent to the role of the
creative strategist—and ultimately, result in better creative work.

35
 BECOMING A CREATIVE STRATEGIST
CONCLUSION: MASTERING
THE ROLE OF CREATIVE
STRATEGIST

The creative strategists we spoke with had some different ideas about how to approach each step of
the process. But they did share something in common. They each had an answer for what to do for the
following steps:

IDEATION Without having a direction for your next ad, there’s nothing to be done.
Most of the strategists we talked to had specific systems in place for
consulting with ad buyers and clients for turning goals into creative ads.

BRIEFING Though some strategists prefer a looser, briefer-briefing, others have

more success in spelling everything out for their creative. But every one
of them had a hypothesis to test, and a clear vision of what every ad
needed to accomplish: to resonate with their audience and come back
with measurable results.

RETROSPECTIVES Finally, the “de-briefing” stage of a project helps fuel the next cycle. With
a retrospective done the right way, you’ll measure what went well, what
didn’t, and begin the next ideation phase with a clearer picture of what
your ads need to look like.

The creative strategist sometimes feels the connective tissue between wholly different aspects of a business.
But if you master wearing the hat of creative strategist from these perspectives, you’ll be able to put out work
that isn’t only creatively satisfying, but produces continual improvement for your clients.

36
BECOME A BETTER CREATIVE
STRATEGIST WITH MOTION
Motion is a Creative Analytics platform that helps teams adopt a data-driven approach
to creative strategy. It combines performance metrics with creative assets to make it
easier to discover insights and share findings with visual reports.

Eliminate guesswork and improve creative performance with Motion.

Start your 14-day free trial

Trusted by 500+ brands and agencies