The brand->personalities shift, creative direction jobs, and automation that actually helps
Creative direction shift
In this week’s HYPER I cover how creative direction is becoming more about personalities and less about brand, some serious job opportunities, and marketing initiatives that can be AI-driven that aren’t a waste of time.
Let’s get into it.
First, a few interesting opportunities:
Darkroom is hiring a Director of Creative Strategy, check it out here.
Lululemon is hiring a global creative director, here.
Thesis is hiring an ECD here.
David is hiring a senior social creator for a new venture here.
Creative Direction Shift
It’s hard to keep up with how fast social media changes, especially when you’re in the trenches creating it. I have spent every day for the last two years working on my own content and ads or organic content for brands in different categories.
I live and breathe inside of creative strategy.
I’ve noticed something in the last 90 days across all my feedback, across everything that we’re testing in terms of what performs. Almost anything that is not related to a personality underperforms content that is.
So what do I mean by that? Social media has become collections of personalities, people that are showcasing stories, humor, moments, and experiences through a whole number of formats.
But the content without people, the news carousels, the aggregation, the fancy unboxing video, the get ready with me routine, all underperform versus if there’s a personality involved, someone talking about it, sharing a story about it, if someone is getting to know them.
And this is happening at a pretty massive scale because you’ll notice that the format that most brands have is they have a couple of people on their team that make content, maybe an executive.
They have a couple of creators they rely on and then they outsource to way more affiliates and creators on top of that. This happens in software, it happens in consumer electronics, and it happens with teams of employees in B2B.
You’ve heard me break this down before but really what it is, is that a brand’s social presence is a collection of personal brands.
But why I’ve noticed what I’ve been working on has had a high degree of efficacy is that I build personal brands, both my own and the thousands that have gone through Cut30 now. When I feedback a piece of content for a brand, we’re not briefing an ad or building a personality. And then as we’ve begun to discuss more advanced strategy, breaking into new networks, trying new content techniques, it almost always comes down to: what personalities can we leverage?
Can we give this creator their own separate TikTok channel?
We’re going to start on YouTube. Who’s the creator that we put on there?
We want to do a new ad style. Is there a creator that’s an expert in it?
Operating, this means you’re less of a creative strategist for ads or a creative director for a brand and more a creative director for individuals.
The Sauce is personality management: how to help someone tell their true story, come across authentically, have their unique look and feel, set perspectives, collaborate with others, build their world around the content that you create.
You’ve heard the concept from me every time I’ve talked about influencer marketing in the last two years. That brands should think of influencers as teams.
You have your superstar that you probably pay really well and you want to have on a long-term contract.
You have a couple supporting players with varying degrees of efficacy.
You have a bench of people to support them.
You have rookies that you’re bringing up around them.
You’re constantly having tryouts of people that you want to audition or keep an eye on and you’re scouting.
Excellent metaphor for creators. And applies for your internal on-camera and on-social media talent.
But then what is the role that’s most useful here in this era of brand marketing?
Where perhaps the campaign that has the most efficacy to drive leads is a multi-personality campaign of employees on LinkedIn...
Where to scale your software brand you need to lock in on ten awesome creators and a hundred more coming up around them…
Where whatever campaign you do is supported by multiple anchor influencers…
Where you’re building an EGC program where your employees are rewarded.
Creative strategist has been the hot button topic over the last year, so much so that 90,000 people joined Motions Creative Strategy Bootcamp that I guested in the other week, shocking numbers.
The company demand and the demand to learn it is at an all-time high and this is the starting point. Those strategist are people that can brief in this, they can add to the ad account, and they can begin to do the basics of what’s needed to support this.
But really what we need is creative directors but not for the brand itself, for the personalities the brands work with.
From the executives that they have on camera, on X, and on LinkedIn, to the team members that contribute content, to the creators they have, the sets in their warehouses, their UGC and briefing.
Creative direction for personalities is the edge.
I often have to take a breath because being deep in the trenches on this means that often you’re over your skis or just far ahead of what other companies are. So much so that even giving the advice just doesn’t help anyone, perhaps the biggest struggle I have with this newsletter.
This is even more so lately as conversations go wild around clipping, multi-account strategy, social shops, and an endless amount of things are thrown out there that brands may or may not actually need.
I often have to look at if I want to give some genuine advice about what brand should approach something. It needs to be rooted in what is really happening in the zeitgeist, what can most brands activate on.
but we see it more and more
The founder’s Instagram account
the YouTube to drive leads for the agency
the LinkedIn for the website development firm
the sales team with a DM strategy
Creator, creator, creator.
I can firmly say that everything is about personality management whether for ads, for affiliate, for influence, or for brand campaigns.
Anyone that is not squarely operating in that space is behind the curve
So I’m taking a stab at something new. How can we help people become those creative director roles for personal brands?
Whether that’s their own personal brand that they can think of more strategically
Whether that’s supporting people inside their companies that create content
Whether that’s supporting creators that get briefed
Or whether it’s helping the new creator generation (of which there are far more than you can ever imagine) begin to learn how to scale their businesses
We’re covering that on Sunday’s Community Call. This will also be recorded. If you’re all interested in this, I’m going to be sharing my thoughts, tips, tricks, and tactics.
Join here.
Marketing Initiatives with AI that aren’t a waste of time
A question CMO’s and marketing leaders are being consistently asked is how they’re integrating AI with their teams.
The answers generally are
marketing copy
agentic customer service
and then maybe something like Swap or a commerce layer
I worked with Perplexity Computer on a thorough set of actual initiatives you can build with Computer that will drive value.
First… what is Computer, and why would you use it:
Use cases:
Related, I built out a landing page copy generator that will give you copy for your product or marketing angle in 3 voices. I made this in 20 minutes with computer, I encourage you to find your own OR even better connect your site/vercel etc and be able to deploy full pages to test with your ads by angle and content.
Check it out here.
Until next week,
Oren
PS: If you’re in Cannes don’t forget to RSVP to our (loaded) strategy sessions on Tuesday: https://luma.com/84zpmtal