The Evolution of Creative Strategy With Sarah Levinger
In this episode of Scalability School, Andrew Foxwell is joined by Sarah Levenger and special guest host Will Sartoris for a deep conversation on what separates average creative strategy from high-performing creative strategy in 2026.
The core theme is that winning creative is not just about producing more ads or testing more formats. It is about understanding people better. Sarah breaks down how the best creative strategists build repeatable systems for ideation, stay close to the customer experience, and work backward from business goals instead of defaulting to ad format first. From there, the episode gets tactical with a breakdown of behavioral-science principles like loss aversion, anchoring, framing effects, social proof, bandwagon effect, and System 1 vs. System 2 thinking.
The big takeaway is that most brands are still overusing urgency, surface-level psychology, and creative trend chasing. The better path is sharper positioning, better message framing, more respect for the customer, and creative diversity rooted in psychology, not just format.
Key takeaways
Are the best creative strategists winning because they make better ads, or because they build better systems for ideas?
Are you still choosing ad format first over business objective and customer type?
Have you already burned through your early adopters without realizing your message needs to evolve?
Are your ads accidentally disrespecting your potential customers?
Should your brand be using supportive or guilt-based messaging to convert?
Is plain old social proof losing power?
Does your internal team believe the same thing about the brand that your customers do?
Is AI helping your team think more clearly, or just helping you make more of the same content faster?
This episode of the Scalability School podcast is sponsored by NorthBeam and they just launched Northbeam Incrementality. Northbeam Incrementality gives you easy, automated, self-service incrementality tests, while protecting you from the major mistakes so many people make while running incrementality tests. Your MTA handles the daily tactics, your MMM guides the long-term planning, and Incrementality provides the causal truth. It’s a closed loop that allows you to scale what works and cut what doesn't. Right now when you head over to www.northbeam.io/incrementality, they’re offering Scalability School listeners 50% off unlimited tests for a year when you join. Just tell them we sent you!
To learn more about Sarah Levinger, you can follow her here: https://x.com/SarahLevinger
To learn more about Sarah's insights tool that she spoke of, head here: https://tetherinsights.io/
To connect with Andrew Foxwell send an email Andrew@foxwelldigital.com
To connect with Brad Ploch send him a DM at https://x.com/brad_ploch
To connect with Zach Stuck send him a DM at https://x.com/zachmstuck
Learn More about the Foxwell Founders Community at https://foxwellfounders.com/
Learn More about the The Hive Haus Creators Community at http://HiveHausUGC.com
Full Transcript
(00:01) After we decide that, then I try and figure out who is it that we need to go after that would be able to provide that for me. Is it long-term customers? Can we afford to lose a little bit of cash on the front end right now so that I can go after people who will stay with us for eight months, 12 months, 18 months? Or is it like, "No, we really need cash.
(00:18) The business really needs just a little bit. How should I know if I should use guilt or supportive language?" I have created basically a couple different frameworks that you can use very, very quickly to identify this with AOP. Because not all of us have that weird background. We're like, "Now I just look for it everywhere.
(00:32) " If I come in with a message of just like, "Your skin is just wrinkly all over the place. You need to fix this." She's going to be like, "Yeah, I do." But no, thank you. Sometimes if I come in with a message of like, "Get glowing skin. She might be too high-p." It's this weird sweet spot in the middle where it's just very calm, very...
(00:53) Your skin is fine. Aging is normal and you know this. But there's pieces that you do want to fix. We have something for you. Those type of anchors are really interesting because we can actually kind of functionally work with that as brands just by how we present ourselves. So I've seen some brands be able to raise their prices.
(01:08) AOV skyrockets, the whole thing just explodes just by changing how their website looks. They were like, "We just look mid-tier, so let's go up in value just by changing what we're presenting." There is a big difference between social proof and bandwagon effect. They're like two totally different psychological mechanisms.
(01:24) Social proof just tells me a lot of other people trusted this, so I could probably trust this too in a while. Bandwagon effect, though, that one has to do with the fact that we tend to support opinions as they become more popular. Not necessarily that a lot of people have said they like this, so I should like it too.
(01:39) It's more the fact that I'm noticing this is becoming more popular. This happens on Twitter all the time. Creative diversity is a great example of this. That was bandwagon effect. People were like, "We're talking about it. We're doing it. I'm going to get on board with this because that seems important." Right? We stopped to think whether or not we were communicating the same thing because to me, creative diversity is psychological.
(01:59) To everybody else, creative diversity is format. Now let's take a listen to the Scalability School Podcast. All right. Welcome to another episode of the Scalability School Podcast featuring a special guest host, Will Sartoris. Will, so glad to have you. Will from Self Made. You probably know him on Twitter. He's gone viral recently.
(02:23) He has an AI newsletter that's absolutely exploding. I can find it in the show notes. Will, glad to have you with me. Thank you. Yeah. It's an honor. I'm very stoked to be here. Previous guests as well from our illustrious list of past guests. Today we have creative genius slash awesome person in the world slash just a person I've known for a long time who's incredible, Sarah Levenger.
(02:48) Welcome to the show. Oh, clap. That was such a nice intro. You're so kind. You and I go. Well, hey, I mean, I should look at like the first email we sent each other. It's got to be like a long time ago. Yeah. This time is weird. I was just talking about how time's not real with somebody this morning. So. Oh my gosh.
(03:07) You knew me before I knew anybody. I was like just like wandering around being like, what do you do? And what do you do? And do you want to hang out? Like I'm trying to learn stuff. And you were one of the first that was like, I appreciate that. Thank you. Come over and hang out. I mean, here's the thing. You know, I've been doing a lot of self reflection and self-work last several years.
(03:26) So you knew me before I knew me. Really. I mean, not so every human on the planet works. Sometimes I would look back at content that I posted and I'm like, what was I talking? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I also just look at stuff and I'm like, I was a tool. Really? Like actually relatively sometimes. I never got that much.
(03:45) You were very kind. I appreciate that. Well, hey, welcome to the show. Today we're talking about creative strategy, the role of a creative strategist, which we're going to start with. And then we're going to shift into basically, you know, all of us, we have to make better creative. And so we're going to talk about behavioral, 15 specific behavioral science heuristics and applying them to ad creative for performance marketing.
(04:07) That's what we're going to get into. So my favorite first question, creative strategy has shifted seven and eight figure brand owners have creative strategist or a creative or a series of creative strategists. This role today, people that are doing this role, what are they doing that's making them more successful than other people? Oh, okay.
(04:27) We'll load a question there. Success, define successful, meaning like success in the ad account or success. I'm talking about, let's just talk about success. I appreciate that. I'm talking about success in the ad account that it's moving performance forward. Yeah. I would say success that they're not like completely hating their lives and they have, you know, that they're like, because it's so hard to do like this job is difficult.
(04:50) Yes. It's a difficult job. Mm. Mostly because I think the primary output from this job is ideation. It's ideas, right? Like it's just ideas that map to a specific goal. And this I find really interesting because it's the only one of the only, I should say. The only roles that, uh, over indexes for one type of optimization, when you're a CEO, a CMO, a CFO, you have a primary directive, but you get the entire year to kind of figure out your way to get there.
(05:20) Right? If you're a creative strategist, you have today. I need wins today. I need you to get me money today in the ad account, no matter what happens, your only goal today is to find us revenue and cash. So it's a really difficult, high stress, very high fluctuating kind of a role that optimizes primarily for just revenue generation.
(05:40) So that's first part. Second part of it though, the ones that are doing it incredibly well have a system that they've created for themselves that makes ideation just a natural part of whatever they're doing in their day. And specifically, I would say high levels of creative ideation. So they're not regurgitating the same things they always do.
(05:58) They're just really creative and they can do it over and over and over and over. So it takes a very specific type of person to do it well. But if you can find one, they are incredibly valuable for the brand. And how are they integrating it in the daily that they're doing? I mean, they're scrolling and they have their feed that's built properly and they have a way to curate this content and that kind of thing.
(06:25) And then they're messing around with AI to a degree. Like what are they doing? They're doing it all, which is crazy. I have noticed that the people that have the best systems, since the direction really is go find revenue, go make cash. Secondary, you got to have a system to be able to do this and you have to be able to create ideas at scale.
(06:42) The best thing that I've seen these people do is they have a system for regenerating what they believe about people. And that I find really, really fascinating because the ones that do it the best, like the Dara Dennys of the world, like Barry Houghts of the world, like even down to the people that we don't even know what their names are, but they're just really good.
(06:58) And they're currently just crushing it for their brands. These are the people that I've found understand not just like what their customers need. They don't do like deep, deep levels of research all the time, but they've been able to synthesize it so that they can just continuously repeat this over and over and over.
(07:13) So for instance, Grady Doubles, I met a creative strategist the other day that has all of her notion docs and she has a calendar set up. And on her actual calendar, Mondays are literally only for understanding what the customer experience is. So she will go and she will actually try the products on every single Monday and continue to experience the product, which I thought was like brilliant.
(07:35) Because I don't see a whole lot of creative strategists using the products that they're trying to sell. So that was lovely. But then Tuesday was her actual ideation day based upon her experience and digging back into the customer data, understanding what they have said in the past. Now she can combine the two and she comes up with much better ideas because she's got her own personal experience to add to theirs.
(07:55) And then Wednesday she'll go into production. She has this system every single week. I love this. Will, feel free to jump in anywhere that you'd like. Brad and I just usually and Zach, we all interrupt each other. So I was going to ask another question, which is, so that's super helpful. It's integrated. They're making it a part of who they are.
(08:10) Every week. Yep. Where so much of what I feel like is in that demand of it has to be profitable now is unlocking new personas. Right? It's trying to, it's like, okay, we've spoken about or indoor benefits to the product, which we can get in. This is a good transition into this other stuff we're talking about. But like, how are those that are doing this well? Is it that they're just reading a lot more Reddit research? Is it that they're like, what are they doing to unlock this or those that you've seen that have unlocked, let's say new benefits or
(08:48) new, you know, new angles, new personas? What are they doing? Yeah. Others are not. I think they're doing what this girl is doing that I met last week. They're immersing themselves, not just in the data. And I think this is kind of key. They're not just immersing themselves in like, what did our customers say on a post purchase survey last Tuesday? That's kind of important, but it's just one snapshot, right? It's one day where we saw somebody do something interesting.
(09:14) Most creative strategies that I know are like heavily consuming content around the entire industry itself. So I see a lot of creative strategists that are just prolific on TikTok, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, because they're looking for interesting ideas, not just like interesting ways to sell stuff. They're looking for trends, really like definitive things that they can see that's coming out of the organic creators.
(09:39) So that's one piece of it is they're just really good about identifying good stories that are coming out of content. And then second, I think that they have a very, very, very deep knowledge about business growth, which is something that didn't pop up initially. Like when we first saw creative strategists come in, what was like 2021, 2022, their job was like, you just need to go make good ads.
(10:00) So we need you to be creative. We need you to know how to make content and we need you to know how to somewhat video edit and script, right? And some other things. Then it kind of expanded into like, well, now we kind of need you to understand the media buying tactics behind this, the growth tactics behind this so that you know what type of ad to make.
(10:17) And now it's expanded even further into like, well, now we really need you to understand where our business sits, right? What kind of metrics we're facing, what our cogs look like, what the metrics look like on like the ad account and for the overall business. It's getting intense and very complex, but the best creative strategists I've ever seen have this kind of like a global view where they can look at all of it and they're able to kind of synthesize it easily.
(10:46) It does feel like there's like sort of like two core verticals here, right? Like with the strategists that you were discussing, having her try the product every day. So she's experiencing things and she's probably like sort of coming up with angles. This could be a potentially great demographic for this product.
(11:03) So you're sort of wetting your own experience with the personas and angles, right? And then sort of secondarily, you have the copy that goes along with the ad. And then I guess like from a tertiary standpoint, then you have to pick the ad creative. So like how does one, you know, wed the persona and angle to copy and then to the ad creative? Because there is a myriad of different ad creatives.
(11:29) Like how would one even know which persona and angle would work with, you know, this type of static or this type of video? I mean, I have my own system for it. Do you guys want to hear my system? I can share that with you. I think every creative strategist has their own way of doing this. Some people like to go basically format backwards.
(11:47) So we choose what kind of format are we using, static, GIF, carousel, like what are we doing, UGC. And then we'll go from this formulaic kind of format over to persona. Who are we trying to go after, right? What do they want most? How do we need to tell the story? Then from there, we'll go backwards from there and just decide what landing page are we going to? Where are we going to send them so that we know what kind of messages to put in there? That's the typical way that I see it is just very marketing focused, very foundational
(12:13) to the structure of like the tactics we're using. I like to go backwards because I get very confused and lost in the sauce if I don't understand all of the picture of like what we're trying to do. So I first kind of sit down and talk about what does the brand want to do right now? I always tell everybody, you got to start with like, what are we optimizing for this month? Cause it's not always growth.
(12:35) Sometimes it is. And I know that the brands want to talk about it like it's continual growth forever, but you can ask anybody Coca-Cola all the way down to startups. You're not going to grow every month. It's not, you're not even going to grow every year. Like it fluctuates constantly. So we start with what are we trying to optimize for? Is it growth or typically efficiency is what I see second.
(12:52) So cost are we trying to get costs down or we're trying to get more people in the business? What are we trying to do after we decide that? Then I try and figure out who is it that we need to go after that would be able to provide that for me? Is it long-term customers? Like can we afford to lose a little bit of cash on the front end right now so that I can go after people who will stay with us for eight months, 12 months, 18 months? Or is it like, no, we really need cash.
(13:17) The business really needs just a little bit of cashflow right now. So we need to go after people that are going to buy today. Who are we going after? Right? From a mental standpoint is very, very important. So figure out the optimization of the business, figure out who we're going after. And then I put a lot of time into understanding the personas, like the ICP, like we're trying to figure out exactly who we're trying to get in the business.
(13:37) Because half the time from what I've noticed is brands will get to this seven, eight figure mark and all of a sudden they will forget that you've eaten through early adopters already within the last two years. Now you probably haven't eaten through all of them because unless you're really reaching like millions of people every single day, you haven't touched everybody yet.
(13:57) But you've eaten through enough of them that now the people that are in your ecosystem are actually people who are pretty well versed in this industry. They know a lot about your products. They know a lot about the brands and what's available. They need a different message than early adopters did. So you got to change your strategy.
(14:12) So I like to look at it a little backwards, go from business to person, not like person to business. That's fascinating. So are you effectively subscribing for each persona? Like maybe a number, let's just say one through 10, 10 being like this would be a long term purchaser, one being like a one time purchaser.
(14:32) Exactly. Yep. Fascinating. I need ranking systems. It's actually weird. And I'm like, you got to give me a number, put a number on it. Like Sarah's not super good at math, but I understand statistics well enough to know some of these people in here are going to get us this quick injection of cash. And some of these people in here are not going to buy for another eight months, but they'll stay with us for 30 years if we treat them correctly.
(14:53) I mean, that's like such an overlooked, such an overlooked piece. Yeah. I mean, honestly, so, so let's talk about, you know, the behavioral science side of this and getting into this specifically. A lot of people talk about psychology in marketing in a surface level way. And the first question, what do most people get wrong when they apply to ads? Oh, I need to have to like pair this down.
(15:24) What I see typically from the industry now, especially since we've had AI kind of pop up, which is the whole conversation itself. I see a lot of people talking about apply psychology to your ads. You need to be emotional with your ads. But I don't see a lot of people talk about how, how. So psychology is fascinating because some of us have a background in this.
(15:42) Someone was at college. Some of us are just like Sarah, who's just a fanatic and consume a lot of content around it. But the interesting part is the application step gets missed. So I understand that I need to be more emotional. And I understand that the emotion I'm trying to pull out is maybe guilt or fear or anxiety, but I only have one way of pulling that out.
(16:03) Especially with marketers, it's I need to force somebody to feel guilty right now in order for them to make a move or to purchase something or to push them towards the sale. That's not how humans work. Typically speaking, when you're trying to elicit a response from somebody, you want to find out what's motivating to them, not just assume that because they feel guilty, guilt is what's going to make them move.
(16:25) That's not how that works. So I tend to see an application issue. So great example of this too. If you're going to be going after this kind of guilt focused customer, depending on the product, the psychology will change as well. Category psychology matters a lot here. So for a mom who maybe feels guilty because she's really letting her face go and it's just like, I really should get some cream or something.
(16:46) I don't even know. Like I just need something for this, but I don't have enough time because I'm a mom. Guilt is a part of her experience. But the second part of it is she doesn't want to be forced into something because she's being forced to do 80 million other things every single day. So a better tactic would be to choose a different emotion that will cause her to feel like you don't have to do everything.
(17:06) You just need one thing. Let's start with night serums. Just one thing, right? We'll present it to you and help you buy this without having to make a full commitment to a 30 day process and 50 different things and all kinds of stuff. So you got to be careful with application because not every emotion is motivating.
(17:25) I do feel like all the best strategists are talking about emotions to subscribe to specific personas and angles. But how would one even go about knowing? If I have, persona one is a busy mom of four and we're maybe talking about a skincare product, how would I even know to start in taking in an emotional approach? How would you know to use guilt or not to use guilt? Yeah, exactly.
(17:54) I've been trying to figure this out for years. I don't know. It's just innate. I don't know. For some reason, my brain just works this way. And I think a lot of it just is childhood trauma. All of us have traumas that came from childhood and teen years where it's like you got trained to look at something very closely.
(18:11) My brain got trained to look at what people were saying, dissect what their face was actually doing and then understand the subtext between the two. I understand you're communicating this even though you're saying this. And I trained myself to do this for a very, very long time. That's just a part of my history, but I can see it in other ways too.
(18:32) So if you're wondering, how should I know if I should use guilt or supportive language? All right, friends. This episode is brought to you by Northbeam, the marketing attribution solution we love over here at the pod. And you know, Zach, good news. Northbeam is launching Northbeam Incrementality. Have you guys used this? We have.
(18:50) We've gotten a little bit of access to it. And so far, so good. Max is stoked. He's my CMO. He's digging it. Out of the gate, we're super happy. Yeah. I mean, Northbeam Incrementality gives you easy, automated, self-service incrementality tests right there in the platform. And it gives you sort of like actionable data and allows you to operationalize a lot of these.
(19:12) I think that's a big difference between Northbeam's Incrementality tool and what we have other places in the market. It can run basically, it runs end to end with lift testing with your MTA and your MMM. So you can scale what works and cut what doesn't, which I know for you guys, your companies is huge, right? Yeah.
(19:32) I mean, the fact that we use Northbeam as our North star for all of the dollars that we spend to have this functionality built in right into the MTA is just like not only a time saver, but it just makes the workflow much easier. So big fans. Yeah. And it's something that you trust, which I think is huge. So they're giving right now really good deals, pretty cool 50% off offer to listeners of the Scalability School Podcast.
(19:56) You just go to northbeam.com.com forward slash Incrementality and you get to be the first on the list. So tell them what we sent you 50% off all tests for a year for those who join now. So check it out. Lots of awesome features that you have and look forward to hearing how it goes for you. How should I know if I should use guilt or supportive language? I have created basically a couple different frameworks that you can use very, very quickly to identify this with AI.
(20:22) Because not all of us have that weird background. We're like, now I just look for it everywhere. So I look for basically three different things, sometimes four, but the fourth one is emotion is what I'm looking for. Three different things, especially in the ad creative that I currently produce. So before I do anything for any brand, I usually come in and do an audit for them.
(20:39) I'm not looking for hooks, angles, avatars. Like I don't care what you guys have been doing earlier. I'm looking for how you communicated the message. So for instance, we look for one thing called valence. So valence has to do with, I can't take credit for this, it's a psychology model. The valence that arouse a model, I typically change it to valence and intensity because it makes more sense in my brain.
(20:59) Valence has to do with positive or negative. How do we communicate this message? Did you say everything's going to be fine? You don't really need to worry about it because we're going to take care of you. Everything is going to be totally okay, positive communication. Or did you say it negatively, which is like, you really got to, you have to do something about this.
(21:15) I mean, we're at a critical point. If you don't fix this, something bad is going to happen. Negative, right? So I track valence, then I'll track intensity on it. So positive or negative communication goes in all sorts of different directions, but how intense that language is changes how the messages are seen. So I bring this example up a lot, but I can say to my husband, did you, did you take out the trash? Like, I'm so sorry.
(21:38) I completely forgot to do it. It would be super helpful if you can do that today. Or I could say, why did you not take out the trash? Like I have told you five fricking times to do this. Like I am so tired of you just not doing what I've asked you to do, right? The level of intensity is very different. And how I worded it also changed depending on what I wanted him to experience.
(21:58) The first one says, I'm so sorry. I completely forgot. Can you please help me? The second one says you're an idiot, right? So and we don't notice that we do this in marketing. So I sat with somebody when I think it was like last Tuesday, sometime, once through their entire ad account. And I was like, did you realize that you're communicating the message that these women are incompetent because they're not dyeing their hair the way that you think they should.
(22:20) And he was in shampoos and he was like, how I'd not seen that. Like how am I saying that? And I was like, well, you're asking him if they're exhausted. And if they've thought about dyeing their hair in a different way, of course they have. These women are not dumb. You're communicating that you think they are and that they can't figure it out themselves instead of saying, you already know this.
(22:40) You're smart, capable woman. You're just tired. Let me help you figure out a different way to solve your grays without having to do it the way that you know works. Cause it's just not healthy for you anymore. Yeah. That's a great point. And like fundamentally comes down to like respecting the consumer. It's like, you know, thank you.
(22:58) Oh my God. That's my goal in life. Empathy is important, but ethics guys, ethics. And I say guys is in like the entire industry. Everybody I talk to really wants to make money. I get it. Especially now cause we got tariffs and all this other stuff that we're doing. But you got to do this ethically cause these customers are already so drained from all of the marketing stuff we put in place to try and force an emotion on them.
(23:24) It's critical to slow down. We audit a lot of accounts as part of the functional founders community, right? Every member gets an audit every month. And a lot of times if they say we have another account, like whatever, we'll audit like three counselors in a month. It's fine. But what's interesting to me is there's a lot of chasing of trends in terms of ad creative of like, Oh, this was like work, you know, this is what that is.
(23:48) And we got to get on that. There's just not enough time spent in the intention of the message. I agree with you about like, you know, speaking to people with respect. There's a lot of, I think, Sorette side of it, like, and you know, within what you were talking about, like, there's a lot of that that's in the negative because I think that too many founders of companies feels like it's more urgent.
(24:17) Yeah. Yep. And so, so as you dive into this even more, let's talk about some of these, you know, heuristics. So like one is loss aversion losses. Can we just go down the list? Is that cool with you guys? So like number one loss aversion losses feel roughly twice as painful as equivalent gains feel good. How do you think about framing ad copy around what people stand to lose versus what they'll gain? I think it's a good question.
(24:49) I'm talking about this. Loss is interesting because I think marketers just assume that loss means pain, but loss can come in all sorts of different flavors and shapes and forms. So some of the best ads that I've ever produced talk about loss of self, not necessarily loss of time or loss of like progress, loss of success.
(25:08) I think it's also interesting because a little bit of this comes down to conversation of what loss means to me is what I typically communicate in my own marketing. So I do a lot of work these days on team psychology to understand what is the team believe about this loss because typically the customers aren't as sensitive to loss as we think they are unless it's a specific type of loss.
(25:31) When it comes to like, how do you decide how to frame these inside your ad account? I'm typically looking at more, what does our customer respond to when I say loss? Because I'm trying to think of like a good example of this. Loss comes down to value, right? Like what you actually crave in life. So for instance, for Sarah, some of the things that I don't want to lose this time with my kids, that's like critically important.
(25:56) So it might mean that I move slower. So it might mean I might actually be more sensitive to gain message if it's for something that will get me back time. Does that make sense? So like I'm actually operating from loss, but I'll be more likely to buy things that will gain time because that's- Yeah. I mean, well, I mean, you look at it, like I would think it would resonate with like a certain segment of demographic.
(26:21) It would resonate like one side of like loss, you know, but then the other side of it, it's going to resonate that potentially, you know, someone like you that's, you know, has kids, not trying to stereotype here, but I mean, we have to get into this talking about creative strategy, like, like, you know, college educated, you know what I'm saying? Like you're like, I want to reframe this for myself.
(26:43) And so instead of like, this is going to be bad, you know, like stop damaging your skin barrier every morning versus like get going skin. Yes. Yes. The time thing is time is a huge thing that I don't think is pitch enough for the record. Yes. Like I think everybody wants more time. Everybody wants more time. I also think everybody wants more.
(27:05) Like you said, beginning respect. I see respect messages working incredibly well right now because people are just like, can you stop? Like, I don't want to be sold to. First of all, I can tell you're selling to me. Second of all, and third, it seems lazy. It comes across as disrespectful. Like you're not actually trying to get me as a customer.
(27:22) You just want my money is what customers are like feeling a lot of the time. So if I come in with a message of just like your skin is like just wrinkly all over the place and you need to fix this, she's going to be like, yeah, I do. But no, thank you. Sometimes if I come in with a message of like get glowing skin, she might be like too hypey.
(27:43) So it's this weird sweet spot in the middle where it's just very calm, very, you know, your skin is fine. Your skin is normal and you know this, but if there's pieces that you do want to fix, we have something for you. It's like an, it's a really odd message that seems to be working right now. And it all comes down to which type of loss is she trying to avoid? Because right now it's almost loss of autonomy that these customers do not want.
(28:13) Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think that's really well said. I mean, and you look at like any great work of art, right? In a movie, film, book, and they're all, they all respect the consumer, the reader, the viewer, right? And so I guess I would love to just drill down on that a little bit more. Like what maybe, maybe could you provide some like examples of like what that exactly looks like? You just provided one, you know, with like, it's okay to age, but like, how do you sort of, you know, we only have so many seconds in a movie medium.
(28:48) You have these days, three hours, right? So like, how do you think about respecting the consumer? In my point of view, honestly, I tend to go see what the organic creators are doing. Cause they typically have a different optimization that they're going towards. And so they can capture what the customers want from stories way faster than we can.
(29:12) Because we're optimizing for sales. A lot of times we want to go after urgency, scarcity, right? Like, go, go, go, go, go, go. We get really into the lower valence emotions a lot faster. With the organic creators though, they have to keep attention. And attention, especially on the organic platforms comes down to how well can I identify what people are struggling with the most internally? So a lot of the content creators that I follow, I follow in all sorts of different odd ranges of the internet, but it's predominantly
(29:42) because I'm trying to figure out what do like pottery people suffer from right now? What is it that they're currently craving? Let's go look at some organic pieces of content so I can try and see what are they talking about a lot that's coming up constantly when I start to revamp my feed just for pottery. Right? And you'll notice it very, very quickly because TikTok's algorithm is so well suited to getting you stuff that's like high, high, uh, what's the word conversation, right? Lots of different people are talking
(30:12) about this right now, regardless of how many people like the video or follow this person. This topic is a trending topic. So that's one of the easiest ways to go in there and get it because so good. I mean, that's, yeah, that's a huge one. So looking at organically, that's something that, that like other members have suggested you will has suggested that, you know, I've talked about this, like looking at that and then looking at obviously combining it with, um, you know, what people are talking about on Reddit.
(30:40) It's a similar thing. It's a little bit deeper, but it's not as fast. It's like, to me, if I was to get amazing, like if somebody's willing to create a piece of content about an actual topic, that's a huge signal. Even if it's like two people, because it's, it's not easy to create this stuff necessarily. You know, so it's like, if you're like, I'm going to create, I'm going to create this, you know, it's like a good one.
(31:01) Um, okay. So we had lots of versions. We're talking about that. So we talked about anchoring. Um, let's go to anchoring. So how do you use anchoring and pricing creative landing pages or even the first frame of the video at anchoring is interesting because I think people assume that it's only things that you show them right before you show them the most important piece of information.
(31:22) So typically anchoring has to do with the fact that whatever piece of information you show first, that's what people are going to make their judgment off of for the next whatever amount of time you're with them. So you'll see oftentimes, uh, car dealerships will do this a lot when you go shopping for vehicles.
(31:37) They'll ask you what your price range is, what kind of car you want, those types of things. They'll show you some that are either outside of your price range, depending on their judgment, like of your type of prior or inside your price range or lower than your price range, depending on whether they think they can actually get you to buy up.
(31:52) So they're using anchoring, right online. This typically comes in the form of, we show you the price on the ad and then we'll show you the price in on the landing page, PDP, wherever we're going. Uh, and that typically comes with a discount. Now we're hoping that just because we showed you the price on the ad that the price on the PDP will be satisfactory and you will go ahead and purchase.
(32:13) It does work that way. A hundred percent. The problem with this is when it comes to anchoring, we also have to realize that people have category anchors that are tied to entire industries. So the only industry that I haven't seen this very much in is wine because wine is like subjective. It's like, I can have a $20 bottle.
(32:29) Why not going to have a $200,000 bottle? Why? We don't know. It's like a, a gift and good, right? Like the higher, the higher price they are, the more appealing they are. It's just like, okay, well there's some deep psychology in wine. It's such an interesting industry, but for everybody else, typically speaking, I might buy a t-shirt.
(32:47) It's probably going to be somewhere between 20 bucks and $120. If it's outside of that like range, 20 to 120, now we're getting into brand work. Like why should I part with $121 just to get this shirt? It better be something that I'm pretty aligned with. Blue lemon, right? We're talking like something that's really, really good.
(33:06) Now, those type of anchors are really interesting because we can actually kind of functionally work with that as a brand just by how we present ourselves. So I've seen some brands be able to raise their prices, AOV skyrockets, the whole thing just explodes just by changing how their website looks. They just, they were like, we just look mid tier.
(33:25) So let's go up in value just by changing what we're presenting. There's never been a time. So because of the function of people having a short amount of time, there's, there hasn't ever been an opportunity for luxury or little luxury to present itself more positively. And these little like, these little things like that of like going up in price, but if it solves this sort of luxurious issue or if it feels like a little luxury, it's going to be more important.
(33:55) And I think it'll definitely help. This could lead us into number three, framing effects. I love framing. This is probably my all type favorite one because this is, this is kind of what I do predominantly on the daily basis. So when I do consulting projects with all these brands, we're looking at framing, right? So valence, intensity, trying to understand which self we're going after, which emotion we're going after.
(34:19) All of this is, I'm just trying to understand how do we need to frame this, this particular piece of communication. So it goes back to that take out the trash kind of example. Ming, how you say something matters almost more than what you're saying. Because you could say basically whatever you want, especially in this particular country, but how you say it is going to change how many people follow you, who decides to buy from you, how much they decide to buy from you, where they go to buy it.
(34:43) And then if they ever come back to buy again, this is why I don't love the kind of hacky urgency scarcity based stuff, because it's been so overused that I think people are just kind of done being receptive to that framing. It's also in my book, not very creative. There's so many more creative ways to get somebody to buy from you.
(35:02) Humor is a great example. Like Liquid Desk grew like a billion dollar brand over the course of just a couple of years just by being funny. Like they sell water. Like it's, I mean the most bonkers brand now, there was a lot of market things that happen there to make it awesome too. But humor worked incredibly well for them and they were consistent.
(35:23) They kept that framing the same so that people knew what to expect when they came in contact with them. So yeah, framing effect is everything. The one that Will brought up to me before the podcast, which you know, Will's my guru, so I thought it was really smart. It's like protein bar positioned as meal replacement, clean snack versus a fitness recovery tool.
(35:43) Yes. It's like, and that's, I think that that's so much of, also when you look at a certain ad account, there's like, you won't see that happening as much. Typically the variations, this is just in the last couple of months, this is a gross generalization, but the variations seem to be based on creative type versus a frame.
(36:06) So they're like, this is a founder talking at, which is good. I mean, I'm not saying that's wrong, but it also I think has to hold those things. It's like the same message and the founder saying it, the static is saying it and the video high produced video is saying it. And it's like, those can also, there can be variety in that as well.
(36:23) I think this also is affecting creative similarity because we're hearing about that a lot nowadays, which is kind of funny because man, we were really addicted to creative diversity there for half a second. Diversity in my book was never about the format. I don't care what format you put this message in, right? Format is important, but it's like step five for me.
(36:44) Like it's way down the line. Alexa has said, creative diversity is important under, you know, gem and, you know, they're and you know, they come out and talk about gem and andraman and talking about how much organic plays a role in this as well. I think that is big. I hear you, but also like that has to be part of a two degree.
(37:04) So I think putting these things through that kind of machine is important. Yes. Diversity though. Oh, sorry. You want to move on? I was going to say, no, no, please go. The diversity conversation for me is psychological diversity format is step five in that process. Like I said, psychological diversity though, comes down to again, what situation am I trying to bring up? Our concepts for creatives are so bland.
(37:30) Unfortunately, like we were going to say a lot of the same messages over and over and over. So just call out a hundred percent diversity is incredibly important. Psychological diversity though, not format diversity. That's. You know, cause so let me just jump into a random thought that's been rolling around in my head, which is like, I think these, it's really important to go through all of this because everyone is being forced to create better ads.
(37:53) But like we have, we have a member who I've talked about before. He'll come on the podcast at some point. Who's a friend of mine, Harry Demelch. Okay. Harry started his own creative strategy firm. Harry stayed at my house in the room that I'm in last year. And like, he's like, what makes him more successful? Because he, that keep their, his, they're creating absolutely like killer ads and they're working and what makes him more successful than other people.
(38:18) And I, and I really think a lot of it comes down to this type of stuff we're talking about is going through and understanding the psychology of like making a different, not just different pitches, but how are people thinking about this and why? So okay. So number four, social proof bandwagon effect. People follow what others are doing.
(38:41) It's easy to say 12,000 people did this or whatever. Like 12,000 people brought this today example versus a single detailed testimonial versus a wall of UGC. Which one, I mean, you want to test that variety obviously, but what's your take on this? There is a big difference between social proof and bandwagon effect.
(39:00) They're like two totally different psychological mechanisms. Social proof just tells me a lot of other people trusted this. So I could, I could probably trust this too and go buy bandwagon effect though. That one has to do with the fact that we tend to support opinions as they become more popular, not necessarily that a lot of people said they liked this.
(39:19) So I should like it too. It's more of the fact that like, I'm noticing this is becoming more popular. This has a Twitter all the time. Creative diversity is a great example of this. That was bandwagon effect. We're talking about it. We're doing it. I'm going to get on board with this because that seems important.
(39:35) Right now, did we stop to think whether or not we were communicating the same thing? Because to me, creative diversity is psychological to everybody else. Creative diversity is format. So we have this issue now that we're all arguing about something that technically we have different definitions for. So this is the reason why when it comes to pushing social proof inside your ads, you have to be careful which one you're choosing.
(39:56) And I would tend to lean towards bandwagon effect over social proof because again, social proof has been overused, especially by Amazon to the point where we don't really trust it or check it. Like people will read the reviews. It's still like a part of their purchasing process, but it's not as intense anymore.
(40:13) You used to be able to get somebody to buy from testimonial ad. Like if you showed a testimonial with five stars, that ad would just print. Now it's just a part of the stack. So overuse of these tools tends to degrade them. But I'd rather go after bandwagon because that means I can hop on cultural trends pretty easily and quickly.
(40:34) Yeah. Chris FOMO. Yes. So type one, type two thinking, system one, system two, right? System one, automatic car, right? You're just like sort of on autopilot. You think you're going through reels or TikTok. It's just like, is your brain even on? So I guess the question is like, how do you sort of think from the, from, we talked about respecting the consumer.
(41:00) So one might assume that the consumer is doing type two thinking, but like, how do you sort of think about consumers and ads in type one, which is like sort of fast, quick thought versus or not even thinking at all, just like sort of going on gut impulse versus type two, where you're actually turning the gears on doing fundamental thinking and like going through, yeah, thought architecture.
(41:25) I don't know, even know if I have an answer for this because I don't think that there's, there's nowhere on the planet where the variables are going to be consistent enough for somebody to go through the same type of thinking every single time. So when they're looking at products, I might be in my car one day and I might see your ad, but I also might be like at daycare the next day, or I might be at the grocery store.
(41:46) I might be in my office. I might be scrolling while I'm watching TV. That's the toughest part about this industry is like, we don't control the majority of what happens to these ads after they go out. We spend hours, thousands of hours every single month trying to make sure that messages are just right. Or for some people just drafting as many different variations of this as possible.
(42:06) The problem is once it goes out, we don't have control over how the human experiences it. So because of this, like system one versus system two, I default to system one style ads more than system two. So I would rather get an ad that you can process without having to think about it than an ad where it's like, I have to think of what is she trying to say? What does this ad try to say? Unless, unless, coming out to that, the only time I want system two thinking ads to go in places, if they're brand ads, like, and I'm talking like,
(42:36) man, your man could smell like, right? Most interesting man in the world ads that are like, I have to pay attention to this because this is so weird. The guy's on a horse and like he's has diamonds around him. Like now he's in a bathroom. What is going on? That type of ad, a hundred percent. I'll spend hours drafting brand level, very iconic ads, but only at the, only at the top of the level of the brand for paid advertising.
(43:01) I'd rather go for a system one, just let it get processed through as fast as possible. And there's probably like different layers of system one. You know, it's like very clickbaity, you know, just like crap dropshipping. Yeah. But yeah, that's fascinating. Going back to respecting the consumer, you would think that like respecting the consumer would try to trigger type two thinking, but like probably not if someone's attention span is already so narrow.
(43:27) Yeah. Especially because they're going to watch, you know, Taylor Swift's documentary this weekend. Like they're on the other, like they don't care that your brand is having a 25th anniversary sale. Like that's not like critical for them. Save for maybe the, you know, at this, at this level, probably like 10,000 customers who just love you.
(43:47) Like they can't get enough of what you've got. Those people maybe might be receptive to system two thinking, but for the most part, the rest of the market doesn't care about us nearly as much as we think they do. Yeah. And so it's yeah, way better to go faster. You raise a good point. It's almost like with paid, just like default to system one, maybe like in your like Facebook group that you have with all of your consumers.
(44:11) Like that's where you want to provoke deep thought. Yes. A hundred percent. And that's where you ask questions. You want to get deeper into their mind. You also want to understand what's your life like? Cause I can't tell you how many times I've asked that question in focus groups and post purchase surveys and quizzes all over the place.
(44:25) What is your life? Like is one of the most respectful questions you can ask as a marketer because nobody knows that Sarah's got two kids and I work only 40 hours a week because the rest of my hours are dedicated towards like managing children. Right? Nobody understands that like Sarah doesn't really have any hobbies outside of like my plants.
(44:43) Maybe like I have a very specific life outside of my D to C ecosystems that I don't really show people, but it's still a part of what I bring to work. And that's also happening with customers. Their life outside of the screen is what they're bringing to the screen. That's why the algorithm will change what your for you page looks like on the daily, depending on how you feel.
(45:03) So our job as marketers is to get really, really knowledgeable on what their life looks like so that I can plug into what they do focus on, not become something they focus on. Yeah. I mean, also the framing of that question is pretty genius because it seems like you give a shit, right? Like I actually care about you, you know, like that's so sad, but yes, like I care.
(45:24) What's your life? What do you do? What do you not do? What do you hate? It's super important outside of just the products. Like that's important information too. It gets the eye framing. Like what did you think about my product? Like, yeah, that's pretty genius. Oh, it's so intense out there. Yep. So we're not going to, I'm looking at how big our list is and we're not going to be able to get through all the, all of these.
(45:49) And I'm thinking about, um, you know, we have endowment effect status quo, the decoy effect. And I will pop, we'll put these in the show notes as well so that everybody can see these, and see that kind of the way that we were going through this. But I would say if you're sitting here as a seven and eight figure brand owner and you are trying to get your creative strategist or you yourself are trying to create better ads and let's just say better marketing.
(46:26) Let's talk about landing pages. Let's talk about looking at the funnel. Let's talk about the emails that you're sending out. How do you begin the system of assessment that somebody would hypothetically pay, be paying you for? I mean, like how did, how do I even begin this to, to, to, I mean, some of this might be cool, but it's like, I'd be curious, but what you'd say some, where can somebody go? Typically I always tell people, if you're just starting this out, you have a creative strategist, like you have a team, you guys are stable.
(46:58) We're just trying to figure out like, how can we do this better? Because we know we can always optimize. The very first place I start is with us, right? It always starts with you as like a person. We can study our customers left and right, but if we have an internal hidden bias that we just have dug in there somewhere that we don't even know we have, it's going to affect literally everything we do with the people that we interact with.
(47:19) So these days, I'm actually doing it backwards. This is something that I just started doing this year, actually, offering internal team audits of the team psychology first to see what do you believe about us? What do you think we sell? Right? What do you know we sell and what do you think we do poorly? Like as a brand, what do we default to when it comes to creative? How do you think about like our creative processes? What our workflows look like, what our briefs look like? And then secondary to that, I always go
(47:45) into what do you know about our customer that you just don't think is true, that we think is true. It'll be very obvious when you start asking these questions, because depending on the role, you'll get a totally different answer. And that right there is so telling of what we've done to the internal teams of the business.
(48:05) When we've tried to force optimization towards scaling, we don't allow for people to have these very nuanced views because we're just constantly hammering down on like whatever gets somebody to buy. So very first thing, audit that internal team. And then secondary, audit what your customers think of the brand.
(48:22) So often you can do this with your email list really quickly. Just shoot out an email that's like, "Hey, we just want to see what you guys think about us. Like we're trying to do better in the world, do better for you guys. Tell us what you think. Please be honest as honest as you possibly can." And ask the same questions.
(48:37) What do you think we sell? Who do you think we are as a brand? What do you wish we wouldn't do? Did you see anything that you love that we did that we could do more of? You get lots of really interesting answers, but it always comes down to again, what do we believe? What do they believe? And what's the delta between the two? Once we identify that, then it's a whole lot easier to win.
(48:58) So that's super helpful. And right now we're in this age where everyone is building tools to assess their creative and performance. And I think that removes the human side of it a lot. Will, what are some applications that you've seen in terms of building better creative and helping scale a brand with AI tools? This could be any of them.
(49:28) Like what are people doing? Will, on a previous episode, talked through his process at that time of creating better creatives. But I'd be curious of kind of what you're using and Will, it'd be interesting to hear your thoughts too. I need to go back and listen to that because now I want to see what Will's doing because you're always at the forefront of stuff, Will.
(49:48) So I mean, for myself, I'm typically using AI to help us ideate a little bit better based upon all these things that we know about the team. So once I get all this information about the team itself and then about the customers and finding out the gap between the two, then all I want to do is grab a tool that's going to help us come up with the most creative ideas I possibly can get and layer in that missing piece is what we're trying to do.
(50:13) So I have like a teeny tiny tool that I developed at Tether OS. This one in particular is basically a content scraper. So it'll go out, take a look at every, all conversations around a particular topic or a keyword, and then it will go ahead and ideate new concepts based upon how the phrase is being communicated.
(50:32) So we're taking a look at like intensity, feelings, self, like all kinds of different emotional motivators, identifying those like super, super carefully, and then creating good ideas from that. But I'd be interested to hear Will doing. Now I need to go listen to that episode. Yeah. Yeah. And things have obviously evolved at a light speed pace since that last episode.
(50:53) But I think you raised something really interesting in that like sort of format comes last. And I would say 90% of folks I speak to, they pick their format first. And so just something I just like vibe coded this past week was just like, because I agree, I think like the meat in the potatoes and where the human element really comes in is just like, who are we targeting? What are we saying to them? How are we speaking to them? And then like, okay, like what's, what format should we use? Like what like sort of fits best into our
(51:25) sort of creative stack? And so, you know, to that end, you know, just like, and I said, I showed this with Andrew, and we can share this, you know, show notes or whatever. It's just like this vibe coded tool that, you know, pulls in the meta ad library, it's just for statics. And it tells you like all the different formats, everyone is utilizing.
(51:44) And you're allowed to compare your brand to that. So you can say like, Oh, I should be doing more like us versus them or more headline or more, you know, whatever. And so like, if you already have your meat in potatoes, and you just like need that last 5%, like, okay, I guess we need to do like, you know, us versus them ad, like, that's just like a great way to leverage AI and just like juxtapose yourself versus the market.
(52:07) But like, to your point, Sarah, like so, so many people discount, like that, a really important work that goes in. And like all these AI workflows that just like, here's 1000 UGCs that you can post in your TikTok, like, that's useless. And I think it's just like, that's where the bandwagon effect goes really haywire.
(52:27) And it's quite bad. I would agree. I like this tool though, too, because half of this comes down to how did you communicate this consistently. And you'll notice I go into some ad accounts, and I'm like, I can tell the team just loves video. Not that video is working for our audience, but our team is very good at communicating these messages with video.
(52:50) So I find that like super fascinating because that's a good internal kind of a thing too. So you can audit what the team is just really good at. Some brands are really good at statics. Some brands are really good at video. Some brands are really good at like carousels, you know, whatever it is, you'll see it pretty quickly.
(53:05) If you audit that, I love it. So interesting. Well, I feel like we jam packed it in. I feel like we talked about a lot of interesting stuff. I mean, I was taking quite a few notes actually, myself, because I like to have the information before other people, which makes me feel elite. And it makes me feel like I have a leg up.
(53:26) So even on the podcast that I host, Sarah Levenger, super grateful for your time. Thank you for joining us. Will, thank you for stepping in at last minute. Very appreciative of you. And we'll put all this information in the show notes if you have questions. We'll also put all the connections to Sarah and Will in the show notes.
(53:45) Make sure to talk to them, hire them, work with them. Absolutely genius, brilliant people. So thanks for being here. This episode is brought to you by Brad's company, Work Marketing. If you need a D2C marketing agency, let me tell you Homestead is great, but Work Marketing is also fantastic. And let me tell you, you aren't going to find friendlier people out there in the e-commerce space.
(54:15) So we decided to do these little ads for each other's companies. So hopefully you find it interesting, but seriously, great team at Work Marketing, very smart. Brad and Jordan are incredibly dialed in. I just gave them a lead, already made this brand that I gave them. Like, I don't even know, double, double revenue that they had in the previous month or something.
(54:33) So you know, it's very exciting to be connected with Brad. And if you need a great agency, there's really no one better. Zach, anything to comment on Work Marketing? Yeah, I mean, if you want an agency that cares about your business much more than they care about their own website, I just tried to load WorkMarketing.com and it was broken.
(54:51) So they're definitely going to give more of a shit about your business than their own. So I highly recommend Brad and the team over at Work. They've been incredible. We've referred a lot of business over to them as well. Really, really good as far as like cracking funnels and figuring out like rapid growth for brands.
(55:05) So I recommend these guys. The only way that we grow this podcast is by you sharing it with your friends. Honestly, like reviews kind of don't really mean anything too much anymore. They're really meaningful, but they don't do a lot for the growth of the podcast. And so sharing YouTube links, sharing Spotify links, sharing Apple, whatever we call it under the podcast app now, anything you can share, the better we're going to be.
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(55:50) Thank you everyone. Thanks for listening.
