How to Use AI for Creative Strategy Without Killing Your Best Ideas | Matthew Gattozzi
How should a creative team use AI for creative strategy without losing the original ideas that make ads work?
Use AI to compress the non-creative work that surrounds ideation, not the ideation itself. A creative strategist typically spends 40 to 60 percent of the day on coordination, recaps, and admin; cutting that to 20 or 30 percent buys back the hours where original ideas actually come from. Feed the model a living brand context document so it can draft, expand, and fact-check briefs and scripts, but keep the originating idea human, because an LLM predicts from rules and past patterns and will always regress toward what has already worked.
In this episode, Will Sartorius and Matthew Gattozzi of Goodo Studios break down how to use AI for creative strategy without losing the original ideas that make ads work. Matthew explains why a strategist should hand AI the coordination and admin instead of the ideation, how to build a brand context document that actually improves your outputs, and why he cancelled his ad analytics software and built his own reporting tool instead.
We discuss:
Where AI delivers real ROI in a business built on physical production
The "Matthew tokens" model for deciding what you personally should spend time on
How to cut non-creative work from 60% of a strategist's day down to 20%
What belongs in a brand context document, and how to get AI to build it with you
How to sync context documents across a team so they stay living, not stale
Why the best ideas come from being out in the world, not behind a laptop
When a creative strategist should break the rules their own context doc sets
Why he replaced his analytics SaaS with a custom tool, and what it actually tracks
How to find net-new angles that will never show up in your account data
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This episode is brought to you by Runneth from Motion: https://runneth.com
Learn more about Matthew Gattozzi Goodo Studios:
https://www.goodostudios.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewgattozzi/
Site: https://matthewgattozzi.com/
To connect with Andrew Foxwell reach him here Andrew@FoxwellDigital.com
To connect with Will Sartorious DM him here https://x.com/will_sartorius
To Connect with Thomas Moen DM him here https://x.com/thomasmoen
To learn more about Foxwell Founders and conversations like this one, go here: www.foxwellfounders.com
Learn more about Foxwell Digital: https://www.foxwelldigital.com
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AI DTC WTF is the podcast for people who work in DTC, use AI, and want to know what is actually working right now. Every week: tactical tips, strategies, and ideas you can implement in your AI workflows to make your brand or agency more money.
Chapters
00:00 Why AI can't break creative rules
01:12 How Goodo Studios combines creative strategy and production
03:20 Where AI fits into creative strategy, and where it doesn't
05:02 The "Matthew tokens" model for protecting your best thinking
07:04 Cutting non-creative work from 60% of a strategist's day to 20%
09:04 Why the best ad ideas come from living, not prompting
11:07 How to build a brand context document that improves AI output
13:09 Using AI to draft, expand, and fact-check ad scripts
17:50 How to share and sync AI context docs across a team
20:16 Let AI interview you to build your creative filters
22:30 What taste actually is and how you develop it
27:23 Separate context docs for statics, UGC, and studio video
28:25 When a creative strategist should break the rules
31:40 Why he built his own creative analytics tool instead of paying for SaaS
35:29 Tour of the custom Meta creative reporting dashboard
38:34 How to find net-new angles the data will never show you
43:41 Why AI is retroactive and can't generate new ideas
45:43 Building a hooks library from saved ads
47:43 Getting your team to actually use the AI tools you build
49:46 Parting advice: finding harmony between AI and creativity
Full Transcript:
(00:04) If you work in DDC and you use AI and you're wondering what the F is going on every week, this is your podcast. The AI to see F podcast your home for tactical tips, strategies, and ideas that you can implement right now in your AI workflows to make your brand or agency more money. Welcome to another episode of AI fuck! Here we have Matthew.
(00:27) Matt, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. Will appreciate it. Long time friend. Matt has obviously built a really incredible studio that works with e-commerce brands. Maybe you can just give us a bit of background on what you've built and sort of how you got there. Yeah, so I started getting the studios four years ago, and really what it's all about is combining strategy and production together.
(00:51) Traditionally, those two things are fairly separate, which I think creates bad incentives for both sides of what's being created and why it's being created. And so my goal was to make sure that I was building a studio that really took into account performance and business goals, because if you could understand why you're creating something, it would change how you go and create it.
(01:13) We work with many different brands across different industries and other companies as well, and really what we're providing them is kind of like a full stack of creative, right? So we're doing the in-person shoots. We're also doing creator content, static ads, edit iterations, all of it, as well as landing pages and looking at the data.
(01:37) So we kind of we kind of do a lot within the creative sphere. And, you know, I think when it comes to AI, really excited to kind of talk a little bit about what we're doing here, because I think the way I look at it is like I am very much a creative person. I don't consider myself technical. My brother is the software engineer.
(02:00) I was always the artist. So very two different minds, right? But it's been really cool to kind of see how I myself can actually build some things and use it so that we can make better creative. Right? Because that's what I care most about is making the best creative for our clients. And how do we use AI and be thoughtful about it.
(02:22) So yeah, that's that's a little bit about what we're building. Nice. And when I think about you and your agency, I think about, you know, you're thinking about lens type, you're thinking about where are we going to be doing this shoot for this product, or how can we source the best actors or talent? So it feels almost like the most human, or rather, is one of the most human agencies I'm aware of.
(02:45) So I'm curious, like, what has been your sort of journey with AI and where have you actually found like ROI there? I think it's a great question. I think that, you know, obviously, you know, it's not like we're replacing our video shoots all of a sudden with AI video. And I actually don't think that that's really what's going to happen.
(03:08) But as you said, there's a lot of human components to how you get a production done. And there are a lot of things that people don't really know. But the reason why it's really hard to replicate what we're doing is because there is a lot of crappy hard work that has to get done, and those things can be you got to coordinate a bunch of people's schedules in a physical location, okay? When you're dealing with the physical world, which is what we do.
(03:32) We have to deal with things like a lot of communication across many different people. You have to deal with shipping. You've got to deal with a lot of things that you don't really think about, but it really stacks up. And when you start to scale an organization where you're doing multiple shoots a week, we're doing 2 to 3 shoots a week.
(03:51) That's a lot to be planning out, not only week to week, but month to month. And so not only do you have a lot of like, human like elements that you have to coordinate, you have a lot of ideas, a lot of writing, a lot of things that have to get done. The way I look at AI is not necessarily that it's a replacement, but I think about what are the most if you are like as a human, as me, I have Matthew tokens, right? Like, I've got what my what I'm best at and the efforts that I'm going to do if I can not spend my tokens on
(04:30) writing a recap slack message, and I can use my tokens to be more strategic, now I'm getting more value out of my tokens while offloading, you know, the smaller things to that. And I look at that across my organization. I look at my creative strategist and I say, I don't want them to necessarily be like, not sink or not do writing.
(04:57) But there's a lot of parts of the job that are coordinating. There are things that just take time that you've got to do, and if we can compress that time for them on some things, it opens up more time for other things, right? So if we can compress their communication time writing slack messages, recaps, follow ups, etc.
(05:17) , and now spend more time being like, what's the best idea? Or my producer, if she can answer all of her emails a lot faster now, she can think more about what's the best talent, what's the best location for this place to make the best video as possible. So it's very much about not usually replacing, but more about where can you compress certain things so that you can spend more time creatively.
(05:42) I think the thing that when many people they when you're not doing creative work full time, you think, oh, I just want to do if only I could be a videographer full time. If only I could be whatever, full time. That's usually kind of how people feel. And then they actually maybe work hard enough and they get good enough to be in that full time role.
(06:04) And then they realize that, well, actually, 40, maybe even close to 60% of that time is actually not even the creative work itself. And if we can actually, like take down that 4,060% of non creative work to 3,020% and then expand it to hey, now you're spending 80% of your time, 70% of your time on actual creative work.
(06:27) The value to the client is way higher, as well as the value to them as a person and what they get to do as well in their career. And so these are the things that I'm really thinking about. And then I'm thinking about how do these tools and how do we use AI within the organization to do that thoughtfully? And I don't think that like, we do anything like super crazy or super fancy, but I think it's enough to get that alpha that I think most people probably want.
(06:54) And I think there's some really practical things you could do. There's some cool, complex things you can do, but there's a lot of like simple things you can do that if you can just get most of your team members to do that, like you're you're kind of ahead of the game. We all hear a ton about AI. We all hear about what it can do and how amazing it all is.
(07:18) And I don't think that there's anything incorrect about that. But this episode is brought to you by an AI brain that is absolutely incredible for your marketing team called runneth. It's from motion. And therefore, you know, it's awesome because it's from motion. But really, what runneth does is connects every single function of your marketing department into one place.
(07:38) It can do so many different things. It can build you ads. It can verify that your brand looks proper. It can verify that what your top creators were and you can ask it, you can have it live in slack, or you can have it live as a CLI so you can interact with it any way you want to. The thing that's really insane to me about motion is how absolutely intelligent it truly is and how it works cross functionally across the team.
(08:02) There was recently a marketer that Reza talks about in the landing page on run, which you should definitely check out, where basically she went on vacation. The CMO did and said if run says the ad is okay to run, then it is okay to run. So she uploaded all the context for the team they ran it into, Run It and run said, yeah, that ad is totally on brand.
(08:23) It's absolutely crazy the number of things that this can do. And I think the fact that we all live in silos and the fact that we all live separately is really, really challenging. And one of the hard parts about AI. So that's not what this does. This brings it all together with shared context, shared resources, and it also looks at thousands of ads every day.
(08:41) So it's always up to date on what actually is the best performing ads that it's seeing across motion. And so that's another whole thing that it does. It's really crazy because instead of one more dashboard, you get a teammate in your slack that knows your performance data cold. As I said, you can ask it really anything and answers instantly.
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(09:17) So if you need a cheat code in e-commerce and to see with your ads and your ad creative and your marketing team, check out runneth com 30 day money back guarantee. It's absolutely incredible what this thing can do and I encourage you to give it a shot. Got it. That makes a ton of sense. So just it is still done.
(09:36) What you've said, the idea is like you're trying to just free up your team to do creative work and effectively offload a lot of the admin to AI. Is that right? Yeah, I would say that. I think like there's I don't think that AI can right now just I, I think there's a lot of value as a human to be able to, especially in creative work.
(10:01) So I'm speaking kind of more for, for, for our role and how we, what we do for brands. But I think that when you think about what makes a great strategist in general is when somebody can take something that they see inspiration, they take that, and then they're able to relate that back to the brand and how they're going to use it.
(10:19) So maybe they are on YouTube and they see this really cool format of another video about whatever. We ask somebody 72 questions. Oh, we could do a 72 questions video, right? And it's like, you know, AI's doesn't just like say like you guys should do a 72 question video, right? Like that doesn't happen. Like the ideation part doesn't happen that way.
(10:42) And so like we need to actually create more space so that like our just can just exist in the world because it's like by existing, by doing things, by being out and about, they actually are, that's where they're going to get their best inspiration because the best strategies are can like take things and then put it for the brand.
(11:04) Okay, I saw this and now I'm going to take that, I'm going to bring it to this brand, I'm going to do all these things. I'm going to take this format onto this style. Wow. I love how they like, explain this thing on this TV show. Now I'm going to take this and do that or like whatever. Right. And so I think that like if I have my strategist having to like be behind the computer 24 over seven and then I'm like, why aren't you making great ads? It's like, that's probably that's probably why they're not existing.
(11:32) They're not living. Right. And so I'm thinking a lot more about how do we free up their time so they can live and exist so that they can come up with the best ideas possible? That makes sense. So let's pull in that thread a little bit. So let's just assume your strategist found a 72 questions video. Walk me through end to end what that process would look like.
(11:50) And where does AI sort of fit in throughout. Is it you know, is it helping to brief and if so, what does that actually look like? Is a strategist going back and forth with AI tell brief. Is it, you know, for revisions? Is it you know for editing. Like where exactly is I fitting into your workflow that is streamlined it to this to, to a point where you have freed up your strategist to do like the messy human. Yeah.
(12:12) So I think that every shot just on my team has a bit different of a process, which I think is good because I think like they people think and work in different ways. So some people might really have like more of the visuals first, or some people might have more like the copy kind of first. But really the process is kind of the first thing, which is like one we have already have a document that's for the brand.
(12:40) And I think that like this is a very simple thing to do, but essentially to get the best outputs of AI, you need good inputs, right? So having some sort of context document is extremely valuable. And always updating that context document is valuable. So if if you are a brand yourself listening to this, make your own document about that and you might wonder, well, how do you know what you want in there? Well, there's some things that are I don't want to say proprietary to to to good.
(13:10) But the things that we think about in our creative strategy, we have included. But there's a lot of other things that are very like basic and simple, like reasons by hesitations to buy things that like, you know, I think everybody would want to have like a cheat sheet, if you will. If you're wondering how to do that, you would just go just ask AI, like, if you don't know how to do something, just ask AI.
(13:31) Like, if I need to give you everything about our my business, what do I need to do? How do we need to build it right? Like so. Always ask AI how you can get more out of AI and like it will help you do that, right? So just has this idea there. Like this is really great. I want to do this. All right. That already is a very messy process because there's probably a lot of self-selecting of what not to do. Right.
(13:56) So that's something that's like not being done in AI. And like, again, everybody's going to have a little bit of a different process and now goes into kind of like the writing of it. Let's say we're like, okay, we're going to do this idea. This is kind of what it's going to look like, whatever. Then it's like sometimes people are writing like, what am I trying to just she loves going on walks and kind of like writing down notes.
(14:19) So maybe she's like putting down notes, kind of like fragmented. So not like completely writing, but being like, I want to talk about this. I want to talk about this. I want to talk about this right then maybe goes into AI and then it's like has the context document. We also have another context document that's about like script writing.
(14:38) So if it's a more traditional kind of like UTC, that might work. If she wanted to do something that is like more of like the 72 questions, she might take that and say, like, we're going to do a video about 72 questions, adding that. And then maybe she's like speaking on like, I want these things, this is what I want to hit on Da.
(14:59) And then like maybe editing and working off of that, like that script that's coming up and then being able to say yes or no, change it. Sometimes they'll take it off and write it on their own and then put it back into AI as well. So it's kind of like like CI less so about like this needs to complete it from end to end, but it can get that jumpstart to get the juices flowing.
(15:26) And then saying, oh, we could do this and changing it. So there's a lot of like messiness within it. Right? So it's not like trust whatever comes out or whatever. But I think playing with it as best as possible. Another way of doing it would be you do create the initial shell of the ad itself. Like, I've even done this recently.
(15:48) I actually write out the script. I then put that script into AI to kind of like buff it up a bit, right? Okay, that claim based on the context document is like, not maybe I wrote the percentage wrong or whatever, and it's going to fix it for me. It's going to edit some of those claims. It might add in a few additional reasons to buy or whatever.
(16:07) So like sometimes you might have that core idea and kind of exactly what you want to hit on, what you want to see, you plug it in and then like it can expand it from there. So cool. There's a few ways you can use that. But I think that, like the most important thing for anybody to practically be able to kind of like, right, would be you need to spend time having like, what is good writing for you? Like what's your style and things like that.
(16:34) You need to have like core, like, what is my brand? What is like the reasons why? And whatever you find most important because that is how you're going to be able to get kind of better outputs that you can work with. So those are kind of the process. But the last thing I'll say is this is that if you are compressing your time, you can actually spend more time thinking like, what's the best way of writing this? What's the best visuals? So you can let your you can let your process be messy because you have more time
(17:04) to really flesh out these ideas and really think about. Yeah, okay. So I think there's a few important things you touched on there. So it sounds like this context document is sort of your foundation, your bedrock. And so you're making that individually for each brand. But presumably there are also elements that are congruent throughout each of these documents.
(17:26) And it also sounds like this context document is also a bit of a fact checker for you as well. Right? Like you are using it at the front end and the back end. So how is that context document evolving and how are you actually tactically using that. Like are you just like is it a markdown file. Like how are you cross-referencing the context doc as you are building these briefs? So I think I've mentioned this to you in our group chat, but we've been using this thing called HQ and it's from Jacob, Jacob and Team.
(17:59) I think it's like Indigo, Indigo HQ. I'm probably not doing my best to to I'm not sponsored, so whatever. But what is what's it really is good at? And I think this is actually what's most important is that one of the hardest things about using AI within an organization, outside of yourself, is sharing those context documents, as well as always updating them.
(18:25) Right. So the point of HQ is that it is your context layer. Okay. So good Studios, we have all of our documents in there. Okay. What's cool about this is that it is stored locally and you're working on cloud code or Codex. It doesn't really matter. You can you can decide whatever model you want. So that's another value is that as models change you can.
(18:50) Oh I'm going to jump to Codex. But I don't have to like ship off all of my Claude documents and projects over there. I can just plug one on top or change it out. Right. Because you own that context layer. Now that's like stored locally, but the app or the software or whatever allows you to sync it up into the cloud and then sync back.
(19:11) So if I change something about the document, it sinks up into the air. And then the other person on my team, it sinks to their their desktop as well. And so they are also getting that update. So it makes it really easy as opposed to being like hey guys, updated this. Make sure you know you've got the correct markdown file, all that stuff right.
(19:33) And so that is a really huge gain because I think team context documents is really hard to like do. So like as I see outputs I might be like like I feel like I need to work that copywriting document again and I might rework it, I might add to it or whatever. It also allows other people to add to it, change to it as well.
(19:56) So it's a living, breathing document versus always having to reset it. So that's practically how we're sharing things and doing it. I think that like the the best thing you can do is, is spend the time doing the setup. Right. So like spend the time really thinking about what is what are your filters, what do you think is good writing? What do you think is good statics? Like all of those things, I think most people just start.
(20:26) They just keep creating. They're just like, I gotta make more ads. I gotta and it's like, pause for a second. Like what's like, what do you really think is good? And think about that a bit more and, and be thoughtful about it. And it's worth spending. Like you could spend just one day like is really you don't need that much time to set a lot of these things up.
(20:47) It's been one day and like just talk to AI and be like, I like this. I don't like this, I want this. I, you know, and like just really shaping it. And again, like, I am a non-technical person, but like asking AI like, hey, this is the outcome that I want. How can I get that outcome? Like what documents do we need? And like, can you build me a plan to do that? And it's like, yes.
(21:11) And then it will interview you all. Like it'll be like, here's all the questions that we need so that we can build this document. And you're like, great, okay, cool. So you're still putting yourself in it, right? You're not just being like, well, AI gave me this. This is what it is. It's like you can shape it, but you've got to spend that time.
(21:29) But it's not like you got to spend like 100 hours to do this. Like spend a day, you know, and just yap into the into Claude and have it ask you questions about your expertise or whatever. And it can really shape that document and get you like a pretty good output, way better than what it was before. And then you're not repeating that.
(21:50) And then if you do have multiple team members and whatnot, because we were sending prompts back and forth, we had like a full doc, like, like with a table and being like, copy and paste this prompt into this. And then we were trying to like do Claude projects and all that stuff, but it just was like so difficult.
(22:09) Now it's like way easier to have this whole like, HQ setup. Got it. Okay, cool. So what I'm gathering from what you're what you're outlining here, is that you're having AI interview you into building this context document, and you're effectively uploading your taste, if you will, into the AI. And I think that word taste is obviously in the zeitgeist right now.
(22:36) It's you go to New York, San Francisco. That's all I can talk about is test, test, test. Alex taste. So like, how are you? How are you sort of thinking about like, that human taste as you are briefing content. My other question is, are these context documents? It sounds like you may have multiple, right? It sounds like maybe there's one that is very focused on you as the tastemaker.
(23:01) And then maybe there's another one that's focused on the brand specifically, like how are you sort of thinking about these different verticals as you're building your, your briefs, your assets, etc.? Yeah. So it's always funny when people talk about taste because I'm like, most likely the people that talk about taste don't have the taste because.
(23:23) That's all these Silicon Valley bros being like, yo, it doesn't have taste. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah. So anyway, let that let that sit for what it needs to be. But jokes aside, I think, you know, when I had just mentioned about, like, a person being able to see something in the world and then find how it can come back and be a creative idea, that's actually where the taste really exists.
(23:55) And you can only develop taste by like, experience, unfortunately. Like it's not something you can just like, I just have it. It's like, no, like you kind of need to like watch a lot of content and be like, what's good, what's bad and just know it. Right. And like, you can refine that palate, if you will, of what's going to work and being able to be creative.
(24:19) Like I actually think that's like, you know, creative director tends to be this like very ominous, vague term. And it can be from like a title perspective. But I think that's like, you know, you think about the people who are putting together like beautiful Pinterest boards. You're thinking about people who are grabbing inspiration all the time.
(24:40) Like, those are people that are really, really good at being able to generate ideas. So I think that, like, your ideation should really come from you as a human. And I think that's where it's like, I want to compress so much of other things so that they have more time to just sit and exist and try to find interesting things.
(25:02) Like if I'm thinking about a lot of my client conversations that I've had in the last two days, it's Wednesday. So Monday and Tuesday I had a conversation with a telehealth company that we work with because I had another friend tell me about something with their health, and it made me think, oh, that's interesting.
(25:21) Like, that's an interesting trigger. Let me talk to them about this. And then like, hey, that might be something, right? That's just me existing, being friends with another person. I'm not asking them so that I can get some like internal info so that I can make them ad, but it's just like I existed in the world.
(25:38) But because I'm somebody who's like, that's interesting. Like, I think humans are interesting and I love how what's motivating them. And like that motivated that guy to go get blood work and go get testing and stuff. That is actually something that we need to figure out, like, what is that motivation? Maybe there's multiple reasons, right? And I'm starting to ask that question.
(25:58) If I was behind a computer and not out to dinner with my friend, I would have missed that. So like and that that idea probably is going to unlock like a lot of money from my client. And so you think about like, oh, well, is that work? Is that it's like, I guess, you know, like, was I sitting behind making the best brief ever? No.
(26:19) But the best briefs come from like, great ideas and connecting it and understanding people. And you can't understand people if you're not with people like that. I think is just like the heart, like the funniest thing. It's like if you're grinding all day, it's like, no, you should probably watch some Love Island because most people are watching Love Island.
(26:35) And if you watch Love Island, it's like crazy, like you're watching people in real time be motivated by actions and completely complex ways. It's like it's insane, right? So I say all that because like, that is where you can really get great ideas and thinking about things is like existing. So that's how you can build your taste, your palate and like all that stuff.
(27:00) Now going back to like the context documents though, which is like we have different you have the brand context document. That is true. Right? So you want to say I, I know that like whatever, I want to talk about these things for this brand, maybe the theme, maybe whatever. And then I want to put it in this format, 72 questions, because I saw this from Vogue.
(27:23) And then then you've got the different types of kind of writing documents. We have one for statics, we have one for UGC briefs, and then we have one for studio videos. And they all have different elements because those we shoot those kind of differently. The hardest thing in the most important thing, I think to note whenever it comes to how you use AI with creativity and specifically with creative work, is that you are giving it rules, right? The context document says this is how we want to write static briefs, right?
(28:01) A great creative strategist is someone who knows when to break those rules. And so 72 questions probably would break those rules of what a studio vision video typically is for us. And so it's probably not ideal to use that context document because we're really doing something completely different. Right. It's not as much direct response.
(28:25) We're going to be, you know, asking questions or whatever. So like knowing when to break rules is important. And I think it's the hardest thing about AI is because llms are rule. It's rule based, right? It's predicting the rules and what you think the word should be. And so it's not very good at like breaking out of those rules.
(28:47) And I think that's where the human element is, is like if you have as much human parts of your ideation, you know, like, like how to get something really interesting that taste, if you will, and then you should have individual types of things, like I like to have my static adds a certain way. We have certain rules of how we want to write things, design things.
(29:10) Same with UGC, same with studio. But I think over time, like we might flesh that out even more. We might have like a, you know, maybe we build out like a specific style of video. It has its own context document. That way you're like, hey, write it this way or whatever, but for right now, that's what we have. But I think always know when to break those rules is, I think, important.
(29:34) So I think if you have that human element in the ideation phase that actually will prompt you to be like, no, we're breaking the rules. Like we need to do something wild or very different. And I think the best content is when people know when to break those rules. And they do do that. Right. So the best examples that we love in advertising tend to break the rules.
(29:53) And yet we try to create very rules based content. So I think just being careful of of that you need both. But if you're like, wow, I really wanted a very different idea. It's like it's probably not going to come from your context document output. So got it. That makes sense. And I don't want to belabor this point to much.
(30:13) I don't want to move on because I know you're building something that I would love to see, but it feels like maybe there's like a streamlined approach if you're doing something sort of, you know, let's just say you're coloring within the lines, you know, you've done this a million times. You have this context document.
(30:28) The beginning part of your process is ID come up with the idea on my own, cross-reference the context document to make sure the brief looks okay, write the brief and refine it, and then come back at the back end and have the kind of like document review it. And sure, like all my stats are correct, maybe beef it up a bit and then put it into production.
(30:46) If you're thinking sort of like, you know, coloring outside the lines, thinking outside the box, you know, insert your metaphor here. You are saying, okay, maybe I actually don't want to use any context. This is going to be entirely human process where AI actually doesn't even necessarily make sense to be involved.
(31:02) Yeah. And then you could after you build it in a more human, you could run it through that context document of the brand and say, like, are we missing anything or whatever? Like, like, is there other hesitations we need to hit on? So like, you don't always have to use it AI to help you create or like right. It can help you edit as well.
(31:23) So I think those are those are different ways to use it. But I think, you know, you definitely want to have, you know, space and time to create. Yeah, that makes complete sense. And honestly having that as a fact checker, that's pretty brilliant. I feel like we should probably be doing that more, just like checking stats and just like maybe this stat is better than that set.
(31:44) Okay, cool. So you've been sort of talking about maybe like built a AI tool sort of similar to motion and maybe like it's a little bit more personalized to your, to your studio. Maybe you can share that and maybe talk through it. So I think that we're in an interesting time within, I think, SaaS and I think that, you know, SaaS is they are a business, right? They have their own business.
(32:11) I find that within kind of software itself, they have to kind of build for the middle. So there's always times where you're like, if only I had this one feature. Right? And then they ask people for features and stuff, and they start building those features so that you feel like complete. But it's like, man, sometimes you get into a program and you're like, this is so great.
(32:37) I love this program. This is awesome. Maybe it doesn't have everything, but we make it work, right? It's like out of the box. Good. And then like two years later, you're like, yo, what is this? It gets. The expansion of product is just insane. You're like, I don't need all of this. I didn't ask for this. And now you're charging me for AI credits.
(32:57) And I personally think your stuff sucks and you're making me pay like, ten x that, like, no way. Right now, hopefully nobody sponsors this this podcast, but I've not been as public about this. But I will right here. So you'll get the hottest of takes. I think that if you look at the major players of, of analytics, their model of charging is egregious, if I'm being honest.
(33:25) Because if I am a and see who's working with a brand and spending millions of dollars a month not all on my ads, but just millions of dollars a month on meta, which we have multiple brands doing that. You are charging me thousands of dollars to get some analytic like an analytics tool when I could just do a Facebook ads report.
(33:49) It's like insane, right? So like, I at a certain point was like I was looking at like, if I'm looking at motion, I'm like, I get a data analytics team with how much you guys are going to try and charge me. That doesn't make sense to do, right? Like I might as well just hire like a brilliant, like, you know, whatever mathematician at this point, which I, you know.
(34:05) So that being said, I was like, there is so many things that like we could just like simplify if we could just have like these 2 or 3 things like, it's like, this is all we really need. So I spent the time trying to build something of equivalent to it. Now, is it the most perfect thing now? Does it get the job done? Yes.
(34:33) Does it save us thousands of dollars in software? Absolutely. And I think what's cool is that, like, there have been features that I thought would be helpful and then they've become not helpful. So we just delete it. Right. And I think that's what's really cool. And I think potentially one day SaaS will be able to have like you get the out of the box, you know, 80%.
(34:59) And then you can code by the code, the 20% that you need. But as of right now, that's not how it works. So you kind of have to do it yourself. So I'm going to share my screen so you can kind of see it. But basically some of this will have to be blurred just because of confidentiality. But I will share my screen so you can kind of see it.
(35:23) But this is called Verdana. Cool. So basically what you'll see is like you have this overview. You're able to see like kind of high level last 14 days. Like you can pick your time. Right. So like it's just the Facebook. You're just plugging in the Facebook API into this and you're just grabbing that data in and it's syncing. Right.
(35:49) So I can kind of see how things are improving versus the prior period. Very simple. There is a creative. So this is like your actual like table view. So you're able to kind of this is our custom report that we do like these are this is what we look at right. Like nothing too crazy here. We actually have we we this is a newer client so we haven't tagged them yet.
(36:14) But we do have tags of like by is this a founder ad. Is this an actor. Is it no talent? The type of hook, the style and things like that. So there's a lot of like tagging that we do, but you're able to like see the ad and then you can click in and then it will load because you'll actually play the video itself, which is pretty cool.
(36:38) And sometimes it doesn't fully load because of the API, but it always has like a a preview link. But you can see like we've got some really cool stuff here, right? Like you can see the retention curve, which is pretty cool. Basically everything you would need to know about this. So like there's some other finer details in here that's pretty cool.
(37:04) But like I think overall like what I love about this is the fact that like what matters most to to a strategist is like, can I just quickly see what's working in the account and what is the like, co-create the whole rates, like what's actually working. And it doesn't need to be that complex, right. Like I think that like, you know, people are like and then you're going to connect all the AI and the LMS and like all these things and these software companies are doing like all of this, like analytics and stuff.
(37:40) And it's like, honestly, if you have a good strategist and like they can just view these things like it actually is, it simplifies it. And I think oftentimes we're trying to almost overcomplicate it and like do this like hand wavy stuff when it's like does this add work yes or no. And if it's working like what are some elements as to why.
(38:05) So yeah, I think that people just over complicate some things that I think, you know, just make it way harder to use their application. So we are really just focused on like, what do we need so that we can get back to being creative as much as possible? Yeah okay. That makes sense. So tool like this it seems like commensurate with motion atria etc..
(38:28) And you know, I guess one question I have and this isn't necessarily related, and obviously you probably built this with cloud code or Codex. So this is more of a question for creative strategy in general. These tools are very helpful with iterative learning. Going in looking at oh, this is at a great thumbs up, right? Like maybe we should use this hook for a different persona or whatever.
(38:52) When you sort of think like, you know, not to insert myself at all, but like, you know, I generally like to think of iterative content and sort of net new content like net new testing. So when you're strategists and you said if a good strategist comes in, I will say caveat finding a good strategy is really fucking hard. Yeah.
(39:11) Yeah. It's it's way easier to code stuff. It's a fine great talent right now. So very very true. So this is great iterative learning. How do you take an analytics tool that you built with AI and turn that into testing entirely new tests, entirely new personas, angles, things that aren't necessarily going to be evident in the data? Yeah.
(39:35) I like made a post to you about this, like especially with reviews, because a lot of people will say like, oh, look at reviews. And it's like, well, if you're advertising a specific angle, you're most likely going to attract a certain people. Like it's just going to kind of like reinforce that for you. I like this is where I like I genuinely like hate to say this, but that that's actually where the taste comes in.
(39:58) Like that is actually where like the person comes in because you have to be always open to understanding. How can you open and expand the aperture of the funnel right then? That comes from new styles, new personas, like people you want to talk to. So like that's the strategy part. Like like yeah. Like that's it. Right.
(40:23) I think that when you have that new idea where AI can help you is maybe start to start to expand it. I'll give you an example, which is that we're working with this one brand. It's a home goods brand, but the it's a weighted blanket. And so it's like okay great. Like way to blanket there science behind that. There's a health component to it. Great.
(40:46) Now like we started to expand. Well how do we talk about this. Not just saying like hey everybody needs great sleep okay. That's true. But now we're saying, okay, well what about people who are neurodivergent and they feel overstimulated and the weight actually helps them with that? Now we're doing the research to like figure that out if that's true or not.
(41:12) And then we're doing that and then we're thinking about like, well, how can we break this down into other health components? Somebody on dialysis, somebody on blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. And like it just now, you're now you're generating like, oh, you could do this, you could do this. And now maybe you're using AI to like be like, are there other studies out there that, you know, say weight is helpful, right.
(41:32) Like, but that initial prompt of asking AI that came from a human being thoughtful, right. And being like, how can we do something different, right? And so I think that like that is where the human aspect is. So you can expand it. Now where the tool can come in is is like, let's say you have an idea, you now go and make a few statics, see how that works.
(42:00) Are you getting, you know, good click through. Is that expanding that like are you seeing good early signs so that you feel like I can de-risk going and making a big video about whatever, you know, an idea that you had, like it's riskier when you're expanding off stuff that you don't know. Right. So like that's where an analytics tool can come in to say like, hey, I had this early test.
(42:23) This is what I was hoping for. This is my hypothesis. And now we're getting some early signs. Let's double down on it and let's continue on. Right. And so I think that's where those two things can kind of play in is like data can help refine or, you know, say yes or no to an idea. But like that idea, you want to get something that new or different.
(42:43) That's where like you need to have somebody who they themselves are generative, right? Like, you can't hope that the AI is going to be generative, if that makes sense. Yeah. I mean, I think you touched on a point that people would just like, don't talk about enough is like, you know, AI is built on historical human knowledge.
(43:02) Like, if we're not sort of thinking forward, you know, these things are going to be perpetually retroactive and we're never going to have any new ideas, and we're just going to be in this like negative feedback loop where every outage is, you know, the same. Right? And so like, I think I think people and listen, I was in an AI psychosis state for a very long time somewhat come out of it.
(43:24) Welcome, welcome. Yeah. It's good. It's good to be back. It's good to be back. But listen there's obviously we've talked on many podcasts like there's plenty of ROI here. I don't think AI is going to be this like fundamental foundational tool that everyone it's going to replace all these workers. I genuinely don't think that anymore.
(43:42) I think if I had a better margin account, I would be shorting space times over. But I guess what I'm trying to say here is that, like AI is very good at retroactively understanding what has worked in your account. Like Matt just showed, like he built his own motion effectively. And motion is a great tool that you can use out of the box as well, but it's not going to be the tool for you to come up with new ideas.
(44:07) And I think that is where a lot of folks get into trouble, because they are relying too heavily on a tool that is looking at history rather than sort of looking forward. Yeah, if I could jump in like I think like it's like you can vibe code a dashboard, but why do you need it? Right. And like, it's so fun to be like, I made this, I mean, this, but it's like, no, no, no, but like, how are you actually using this thing? Right.
(44:30) And that's why I was like, there were things that I thought like, oh, this would be helpful. And then I'm like, this is not helpful. Like, I'm not even using this like, get rid of this thing. Right. So I think that like, that's why I have issue with a lot of like sass because it's like they are trying to like feature Max like the heck out of it to justify, like we're bringing you value or whatever.
(44:50) But it's like most of the time you don't really need a lot of that. I think that, like, what's great about AI is that there are some really like core things that it can do well, like whether it's it can take an idea and then like iterate off of that idea and like do it more. So if you're like, I need ten or like this like great.
(45:11) And like that honestly is a lot of work that's like not even fun anyway. Like for the strategist. Right. And so it's like, that's great. Let AI duplicate a lot of stuff so that you again, have more time to be like, what's the new thing that I can like generate? And I think that's really cool. One other thing to think about in terms of the like coming up with new ideas and how you do that also in this tool and this can be completely shared.
(45:41) We have this kind of like we can save ads basically. So these are some ads that like we've saved. And what's cool about it is like we have like it generate the script of the video. I started getting this bread delivered. You know you can download that video. So basically what is foreplay. What is trea. And then we have like like what the verbal hook is.
(46:13) The on screen hook is and then like what the visual hook is. And you can always change this but like very cool because like you can also just like use this as, like a way of like, man, I really like the framework of this video and I want to use it for different, like whatever. But like sometimes you see good frameworks and you're like, yeah, I want to make that.
(46:35) And it like makes it very easy. There's a bit of like an analysis here. I don't know some of the stuff. I'm like, yeah, I might as well just like take it out. I don't know if we use it completely, but I think it's really interesting. And then, you know, we have a board you can like make the board for a client.
(46:51) So you have that. So these are like interesting like elements that I think are like good. And like we have this thing where you can like star the verbal hooks or like any of these hooks. And so we have like a hooks library if you will. This is like on the newer side. So like still building it out. But like if I was a strategist and we had like 100 hooks, it'd be like, well this is a great hook.
(47:14) Like I want to use this, but instead of it being like, if you're a cocktail by the pool type of person, you need this. It'd be like, if I'm a, you know, ten step skincare person, like, you need this or whatever, right? Like you can start to like, think about how that, like curation can help you with coming up with ideas and kind of, again, blending things.
(47:34) And so we think about that a lot as well. And again, super simple tool to kind of like build out and again, like it's like there's purpose behind it. The goal is how does this help the strategist come up with ideas and do their job better. And I think that that's like that's important. The the thing I will say is that, like with anything that you're building, like making sure you get team by in and getting them educated is important.
(48:00) I find that a lot of leaders are like, this is so awesome. And then like, it's not being used and whatnot. And so I think, like just making sure that you understand that the adaptation of your tools and what you're doing is actually takes a lot longer. But we find that it's been very helpful, like traditionally speaking, because of just how like Facebook and all that stuff was working.
(48:23) You know, our editors maybe not didn't always have like a view of like what's happening in the accounts. And now they can just log in and see everything. And so there's been a lot of like value add from the tool itself. But like also know that like you've got to do trainings, you've got to walk through people and you've got to encourage them to use it because they may not use it if you don't.
(48:43) Yeah, I think it's a really good point. The buy in, something I'm even guilty of, it's very, very hard. It's very, very hard to get your team fully bought into this stuff. Okay. We do have to wrap, but if I were to sort of encapsulate everything here, it's just like, you know, iteration and building upon existing winners and concepts.
(49:01) Use AI, right? Like you have an incredible tool bank. You have all this data. Matthew showed a really, really powerful tool they've built internally that sort of dissects ads that they pull in for meta. They utilize that and as their foundation to build maybe a hypothesis that they came up with on their own, but then let the AI really, really help you with iteration, but free up your own time to do your own ideation and come up with sort of.
(49:26) Net new concepts. Is that Sarah? That's exactly it. Cool. All right. Any any sort of last questions. Are you reading anything interesting any any sort of parting words you like to share? I think similar to you. There's been times where I've gone maybe too deep with the AI, and I think that, like, there's there's a balance in the process of creativity.
(49:48) And so I think find your final works for you and that's different for each person. Spend the time to like build out the context documents to like do that. Know that you're going to have to refine it over time, but spend the time to do it because you will get you will have gains from that, but also know when you need to write down, you know, pen and paper, some ideas and like come up with headlines and like push yourself for that.
(50:12) So you know I think try to flex between varying different, you know, ways in which to create. I think a great creative person knows how to do that. And so I think like, you know, find what works for you to get you the best ideas. At the end of the day, if you're in advertising, the goal is to make ads that win that.
(50:31) That's it. Right? And you may not need 100 ads, you may just need a few 1020. And most people are spending not enough money to need hundreds of generated ads anyway. So you probably should focus on less is more, and most likely that's going to be you. So I think just thinking about that and that can maybe ease your process and kind of build it in a thoughtful way for how those two things come.
(50:56) AI and your own creativity kind of come into harmony with one another. You need both of them at this point, but I think they only work if you have that harmony and you can blend it together. And that's going to be different for each person. So, you know, you got to find what works for you. But I think spend the time to kind of find that harmony is going to be where you can be the most effective.
(51:19) Nice spoken from the man himself. Appreciate you coming on and we'll talk soon. Thank you.
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