I fell in love with a specific product feature once and almost killed the ad because of it.

It was a feature I thought was genius.

The kind of thing I would tell my friends about. I wanted it to be the headline. I wanted everyone to see what I saw.

And the ad we built around it did nothing.

The problem was not the product.

The problem was that the ad was about what I wanted.

About what I loved.

And it was not for the person who was supposed to buy it.

You Are Not The Judge

Everyone gets excited about selling their product. That excitement is the reason it exists. You built it because you loved it and believed it needed to be in the world.

But you do not get to decide if it deserves to exist. The customer does. The market does.

This is the part founders forget the second they start making ads. We look inward. We talk about why our product is great. We assume we beat our competitors. We get protective of the feature we personally love. And without noticing, we make the ad about us.

The hardest skill in advertising is killing your own bias. Setting down your story about why the product works and getting genuinely curious about why other people like it.

Most brands say they care about this. "We need to talk to our customers." Then they never do. They say they are listening and never check. That gap is where bad ads come from.

The questions that matter are not about you. How does the product make them feel. What does it actually fix in their life. What words do they use, not the words you use. The feature you are proudest of might not be the thing the market cares about. If that is true, it has no business being your headline.

Get Specific Or Get Ignored

Once you are thinking like the customer, the next move is to stop speaking in general.

General ads make the audience do the work. "This helps you," and you hope the right people self-select in. They mostly do not. The ad that converts names the person. It names the exact problem. It makes one specific human feel like you are talking only to them.

We have a brand right now with a single product. Instead of one ad that says "this helps you," we mapped how that one product fits into the lives of completely different people. We found close to 46 situations it helps with, across different life stages, then grouped those into personas.

One angle speaks to parents whose kids have ADHD. Another to men who want better sleep, which ties to testosterone and recovery. Another to people managing anxiety or other forms of neurodivergence. And inside each of those there is more. The "male" angle alone splits into a sleep version and a biohacker version, because those are two different people who want two different things.

We want each of them to feel heard. We do not want them doing the work of figuring out if this is for them. We do that work inside the ad.

The bonus is that hyperniche targeting is a creativity engine. There are only so many ways to say "sleep better" before you run dry. Once you are calling out specific people in specific moments, the angles multiply on their own.

And you should not be scared of narrowing. Meta is good at delivery. Barring some strange manual targeting you set up, which you probably should not be doing anyway, the right message finds the right person. A menopause angle is not going to a 25 year old guy. A parenting ad is not landing on a single 22 year old. The platform sorts it out. Your job is to hand it sharp, specific creative to sort.

Match The Page To The Ad

We spend so much time hunting for new styles, new angles, new personas in the creative. Then we dump all of it onto the same landing page or product page.

That throws away the entire point.

You did the research. You learned how this product helps a parent whose kid has ADHD. You wrote the specific ad. The person stops, feels seen, and wants to go deeper. The next thought after a great ad is "I want to understand how this helps with my exact problem."

If that specific ad sends them to a general page, one that gestures at some of the benefits but speaks to everyone at once, you lose everything that made the ad work in the first place.

So we started carrying the research the whole way through. The same persona work that built the ad now builds the page. Same person, same problem, same feeling, start to finish. It drives a deeper connection with that message and that creative angle instead of dropping the thread the moment they click.

When the ad is built for the customer instead of for you, the page can be too. Keep that focus from the first impression to the final scroll and you sell better at every step.

What To Do With This

Take your one product and do not write a single ad yet. Open a doc and list every distinct situation where it genuinely helps someone. Push past five. Push past ten. Name the person, name their stage of life, name the exact problem.

When the list gets long enough that it feels almost ridiculous, group it into personas. That list is your creative roadmap for the next quarter. You will never run dry on angles again, and not one of them will be about you.

Keep creating!

Matthew Gattozzi

Get a free assessment with Goodo Studios

My team and I create hassle-free creatives for consumer brands. If you are thinking about getting content, let’s set up a chat.

Content you should watch

Did you know we had a podcast called In the Cutting Room. Episodes drop every Monday. Make sure to listen to it on Apple, Spotify, or Youtube

Social media has an "old way" of doing things now.

Think about that for a second. A medium that didn't meaningfully exist 20 years ago already has a legacy approach. An outdated playbook. A wrong answer.

That's how fast this has moved.

And if you're still operating with the old mental model, you're not just behind. You're actively working against yourself.

Pre PS. We have launched something for our clients, I am stoked about sharing.

How We Got Here

The original game was simple: build a curated feed, post one polished photo a day, run giveaways, chase followers. Follower count was the scoreboard. More followers meant more impressions, which meant more reach. That was the whole strategy.

Then TikTok changed everything.

When short-form video exploded, follower count stopped being the primary driver of distribution. The algorithm started rewarding content quality over audience size. Suddenly, a brand-new account with one great video could out-reach a page that had spent years grinding to 100K followers.

For a while - it felt impossible to grow on Instagram and social until the the For You Page was inventer.

Organic felt like it was working again. Brands were growing without paying for every impression. There was a real renaissance happening in social.

But then the landscape kept shifting.

Streaming, affiliate programs, TikTok Shop, clipping, creator collabs, spark ads, whitelisting. The way people use social has gotten more complex. The way platforms distribute content has gotten more sophisticated. And the strategy that made sense three years ago is now leaving brands confused about why their numbers are flat.

The Rude Awakening

Here's what I see constantly: brands treating their brand account like the center of their social strategy.

Post once a day. Stay consistent. Grow the following. Drive sales.

That approach isn't going to work in 2026.

In fact, it might be better to not post on your brand page at all.

I know that sounds extreme. But let me explain what's actually working right now.

The Pay-to-Play Problem

Before we get into what's working, let's be honest about the alternatives.

Gifting and seeding sounds appealing. You send product, creators post about it. The problem is you can spend a lot of money and have no idea how much content you're actually going to get back. It's unpredictable, uncontrollable, and hard to scale.

Influencer marketing is the more structured version, but it comes with its own issues. Follower count has become a misleading metric. Think about it: if you have a creator with zero followers and a creator with a million followers, and the creator with zero followers makes the better video, that video is going to get more views. More impressions. More reach. Which means it's more valuable to you, and it probably cost you a fraction of what the influencer deal cost.

There are absolutely situations where you want a specific person attached to your brand. Credibility, fit, community. That makes sense. But from a pure impressions standpoint, follower count is not the ROI driver people assume it is.

And then there's paid ads. Ads work, but they're auction-based. Costs rise. CPMs creep up. And as I said earlier, even your best "awareness" ad is still a middle-funnel play because you're running it for conversions.

So where does that leave you?

The Multi-Creator Model

The brands winning on organic social aren't doing it through their own accounts. They're doing it through a network of creator accounts, each one dedicated entirely to their product.

Here's the distinction: this isn't influencer marketing.

Influencer marketing is paying someone with an existing audience to promote your product. What I'm describing is different. You recruit creators, people who enjoy making content, who want to build something. They start a new page, from scratch, and that page exists entirely to create content about your brand.

Their job isn't to sell. Their job is to get as many impressions as possible.

They might make informational content. Long-form breakdowns. Short punchy videos. Reaction-style clips. Whatever they think is going to get attention in their category. The format doesn't matter as much as the volume and the quality of ideas being tested.

A big part of what makes this model work financially is the structure. A lot of this can be performance-based, paying by CPA rather than flat fees upfront. The creator has skin in the game. You're not paying for posts that may or may not land.

And because you're running multiple accounts simultaneously, you're building a flywheel.

Why This Solves a Bigger Problem

Let's talk about your ad account.

A lot of brands say they need more top-of-funnel ads. And technically, they're right. But here's the thing: an ad is still selling. Even your "awareness" campaign has a CTA, a landing page, a conversion goal. It's a middle-funnel play at best.

True top of funnel is just impressions. Attention. People learning your brand exists.

Think about your funnel as a math problem. You have two levers:

1. Improve conversion at every stage of the funnel

2. Get more people into the funnel

Both work. But improving conversion is hard. It's testing, iteration, landing page optimization, offer refinement. There's a ceiling on how much you can improve, and it moves slowly.

Getting more people into the funnel is a volume game. You keep the same conversion rate and just grow the inputs. If your funnel converts at 2% and you double your top-of-funnel impressions, you've doubled your output without touching a single thing downstream.

Right now, most brands don't have enough people entering the funnel. That's the actual problem. Not conversion rate. Not creative quality in the ad account. Not ROAS targets.

Not enough people know they exist.

Where the Alpha Is

The multi-creator organic model solves this in a way paid advertising can't. It's building genuine awareness, not sponsored awareness. It's reaching people before they're in buying mode. That's what makes it top-of-funnel in the truest sense.

And it has a second benefit that people miss.

Your best-performing organic content becomes your ad creative. You whitelist top videos through those accounts on TikTok or Instagram. You run spark ads. You take the content that already proved it could earn attention organically and push spend behind it.

Now you've got diversity in your ad account that your internal team would never produce alone. You're feeding it with real, tested content, not just polished creative that looks good but hasn't earned anything yet.

We're seeing this work across categories. DTC brands. Consumer apps. Tech companies. This isn't a niche tactic for a specific kind of business. It's a model for any brand trying to cut through the noise in a market where paying to get in front of people is more expensive than it's ever been.

What This Actually Requires

This is not set-it-and-forget-it.

You need to find and recruit creators who actually want to build something. You need to brief them clearly on the brand, the product, and the goal. You need to let them create without over-controlling the content, because over-produced, on-brand content is the thing organic is moving away from.

And you need volume. One creator account isn't the model. Multiple accounts, multiple content styles, multiple formats being tested simultaneously. That's the engine.

We've run organic channels and brand accounts for a long time at Goodo Studios, and when TikTok first took off, we had real success building those out. But over time it became harder and harder to scale a brand account alone. The platform started rewarding creators, not brands. Audiences started gravitating toward people, not logos.

That's why we built a creator program.

We're launching it with a few brands this month, and the core belief behind it is simple: the efficiency of your ad account improves when you have more real, tested, organic content feeding it.

You're not just building awareness in isolation. You're building a library of content that works across every channel.

This is going to change how brands think about content creation. The brands willing to let go of the control they think they have over a brand page, and instead build an army of creators who are each growing their own pages around your product, those are the brands that are going to win. Not just in 2026. Beyond it.

The goal is wider surface area. More places where someone can encounter your brand before they've ever been asked to buy. That's top of funnel. That's the game.

Stop waiting for your brand account to carry you. Build the machine that earns attention before anyone's been asked to buy.

Thank you for reading. I really appreciate it.

My team has launched this service for our clients. If you need help, let me know, and I can share how we are building this program.

Until then, keep creating!

Matthew Gattozzi

Get a free assessment with Goodo Studios

My team and I create hassle-free creatives for consumer brands. If you are thinking about getting content, let’s set up a chat.

Content you should watch

Did you know we had a podcast called In the Cutting Room. Episodes drop every Monday. Make sure to listen to it on Apple, Spotify, or Youtube

I jumped in to fix an edit recently.

The cut wasn't landing. The pacing felt off.

I stepped in to make a correction - which is fine. That's part of the process.

But I sat with it afterward and asked myself a harder question: how did it get to that state?

Because the edit wasn't the problem.

By the time the video hits the edit, the creative decisions that matter most have already been made.

Who got cast.
How the shoot was framed.
What the creator was even trying to accomplish.

Every one of those decisions pointed back to the same place: nobody was fully clear on the angle and goal of the video before we started.

I was too late to fix it at the edit.

And the honest answer is I should have been more helpful earlier - before the brief was even written. That's on me. I learned something from it.

The Chain You Can't Undo

Here's what actually happens when a brief is fuzzy.

The creative strategist comes up with an idea and starts writing the script. They have a vision in their head - how this ad should feel, what it should accomplish, what the angle really is. They share that script with the team and production starts moving.

But here's the problem: they shared the script. They may not have fully shared the vision behind it.

The videographer shows up to set and frames shots based on how they read the concept. The creator performs based on what they think the ad is trying to do. The editor cuts based on what they think the goal is. Every one of those people is making a creative decision. None of them are doing it wrong. They're doing their job with the information they have.

But they're each filling in the gaps with their own interpretation.

This is actually two problems layered on top of each other. The brief needs to be clear. And the creative strategist needs to clearly communicate their vision so every person downstream can do their job in service of it - not in service of their own read of it.

By the time the edit comes back, those decisions are baked in. You can change the cut. You can't change the performance. You can't change the framing of the shot. You definitely can't change the casting.

The mistake I made was thinking I could fix downstream what was actually a problem upstream. When the angle isn't clear and the vision isn't shared, every person in the chain is solving a slightly different problem - and they won't know it until post.

The Brief Is a Contract

I keep coming back to this framing: the brief is not a creative document. It's a contract.

When the angle and goal are clear before production starts, every person who touches the ad is working toward the same thing. The strategist who writes the script. The producer who schedules the shoot. The videographer who chooses the frame. The editor who decides where to cut. The creator who decides how to perform.

Every one of those decisions gets made at a different time, in a different room, by a different person.

The brief is the only thing connecting them.

When it's clear, the decisions compound. When it's fuzzy, they drift - and the drift compounds just as fast.

What "Clear" Actually Means

A clear brief answers two questions before anything else happens.

What is the single angle? Not a category, not a theme. One specific claim, story, or insight the ad is built around. If two people on your team can read the brief and describe the ad differently, the angle is not clear yet.

What is the goal? Not "drive conversions" - every ad is supposed to do that. The goal tells you what behavior you're trying to change and why this specific ad, in this specific format, for this specific audience, is the right way to change it.

Those two things in writing, agreed on before the shoot, before the script, before anything gets made. That is the contract.

Everything else in the brief - references, tone notes, format specs - is supporting context. It's useful, but it's secondary. If the angle and goal are solid, a good team can figure out the rest. If they're not, nothing else in the brief saves you.

The Part Most People Rush Past

The pressure to get into production is real. There's always a deadline, always a client who wants to see output. So people write a brief that's good enough to start, and they move.

That's usually where the problem gets created.

At Goodo Studios, what we've been doing is not changing our brief format or adding new tools. It's simpler than that: we're spending more time on the angle itself. Making sure it's specific. Making sure it's not just written down, but that everyone on the team actually understands what the goal is before anything starts moving.

That sounds obvious. It's harder than it sounds.

The brief will tell you what the ad should accomplish. But the angle - the one specific thing the ad is about - is what every downstream decision should be in service of. When that's clear, the brief does its job. When it's not, you're giving your team a document and hoping they fill in the gap themselves.

And there's a second piece that's just as easy to skip: the creative strategist needs to share their vision, not just the script. What did they see in their head when they wrote it? What is the ad actually supposed to feel like? That conversation - between the strategist and every person who will touch the production - is what closes the gap between "here's the brief" and "here's what we're actually making."

The document can be clear. If the vision behind it isn't communicated, you still end up with everyone filling in the gaps themselves. They'll all fill them in differently.

What to Do With This

Pull the last three ads you made that disappointed you. Not the ones that underperformed after launch - the ones that came back from production not quite right.

Ask one question about each: was the angle specific before the shoot started? Written down, agreed on, clear enough that two people on your team would describe the ad the same way?

If the answer is no for two of the three, you don't have a creative problem. You have a briefing problem.

And that's actually better news, because you can fix a briefing problem before the next shoot. You can't go back and fix decisions that were already made.

The brief is what makes everyone who touches the work responsible to the same goal. Start there - before the script, before the shoot, before any of the downstream decisions that are going to be very hard to undo later.

I hope this was helpful - if you have questions about briefing, feel free to reply and ask me questions.

Until then, keep creating!

Matthew Gattozzi

Get a free assessment with Goodo Studios

My team and I create hassle-free creatives for consumer brands. If you are thinking about getting content, let’s set up a chat.

Content you should watch

Did you know we had a podcast called In the Cutting Room. Episodes drop every Monday. Make sure to listen to it on Apple, Spotify, or Youtube

There's a Raspberry Pi sitting on a desk in our studio right now. It's about the size of my wallet.

Just a small computer connected to a few different AI models, quietly doing work in the background.

Every single day, it creates briefs, runs reports, checks in on projects, and more.

Sadie Dunhill is our newest employee of Goodo Studios.

Today I'm not going to talk about what Sadie can do. I want to talk about why I hired an AI employee in the first place.

The Real Problem at Companies

What kills most team members is the repetitive work.

There is a lot that goes into creative strategy.

Pulling reports. Digging through data. Researching competitors, the science behind a product, the culture around a brand. Understanding who the customer is and why they're buying.

And that's just the setup.

You still have to know what makes great copy, great video, great editing. You have to compress all of that research and training into something actionable. It's a lot of manual work just to get to the starting line.

Great work takes time. And when a creative strategist spends their day writing updates, pulling reports, and doing admin work, they show up to the actual creative work depleted.

The Executive Assistant Analogy

Here's how I think about it. Take AI out of the equation for a second.

Think about how executives work. CEOs hire executive assistants so they're not stuck managing email, planning meetings, and doing admin. The assistant creates capacity for the CEO to think more critically about the business. It's leverage.

That's exactly what I'm trying to do at Goodo Studios. We've got incredible strategists. If I can give them more capacity to just think about the best ideas possible, while somebody else is pulling their reports, organizing their queue, and helping them come up with starting points, then the work gets better. That's the goal.

I'm not looking for AI to replace humans. I'm looking for AI to give really incredible creative people the time to actually be creative. That's their genius zone. And the more time each person on my team can spend in their genius zone, the better the output is going to be.

Meet Sadie Dunhill

Sadie Dunhill. She's our first AI employee at Goodo Studios.

Every day, Sadie reads through brand documents, goes through our intelligence, and draws on all the training I've given her about what makes a great creative strategist. She helps us come up with ideas, pulls reports, maintains project management queues, and keeps me updated on where everything stands in the business.

She's also got a newsletter, a YouTube channel, and a Twitter. Yes, our AI employee has social media. She's out there creating content alongside me.

Now, here's the honest truth.

We're not using every single brief Sadie puts out right now. She's not fully autonomous. I don't think she's there yet.

But what is cool is that she's learning. She sees what we actually publish. She gets coached. I've treated her training exactly the way I would treat onboarding a new creative strategist.

You wouldn't expect a new human hire to produce their best work on day one. It takes time to onboard, to learn the standards, to understand the clients. The same is true with AI.

Why This Matters for Your Team

I think you should focus on how to make a few ideas incredible. And it's really hard to make those ideas incredible when your team is bogged down by everything else that comes with the job.

If you can figure out how AI fits into your workflow, not to replace your people but to open up capacity, I think you're going to succeed.

No matter what ends up happening with the tools, I know this: Goodo Studios is building for the future. We want to make the best ads in the entire world for our clients. We want our clients to make money. Period. If that means an iPhone, a cinema camera, an AI script, or a human script, it doesn't matter. We are going to leverage every tool we can to create the most creative environment possible for our people.

As of right now, we've got one AI employee. Maybe we'll have two, three, ten. I don't know yet. But we're starting, and I'm going to keep building this in public. I'll show you what works and what doesn't.

I don’t think you should have FOMO to go an make your own AI employee, but I do think you should start to normalize how AI can be on your org chart and SOPs.

Go follow Sadie. She's out there doing her thing.

Thank you for reading. I really appreciate it.

Until then, keep creating!

Matthew Gattozzi

Sadie's Twitter: https://x.com/sadie_goodo?s=20
Sadie's Youtube: https://youtu.be/BikK3MuQ8ro
Sadie's Newsletter: the-creative-record.beehiiv.com/

Get a free assessment with Goodo Studios

My team and I create hassle-free creatives for consumer brands. If you are thinking about getting content, let’s set up a chat.

Content you should watch

Did you know we had a podcast called In the Cutting Room. Episodes drop every Monday. Make sure to listen to it on Apple, Spotify, or Youtube

I'm going to share something that might feel counterintuitive, especially if you've been deep in CRO dashboards and conversion rate spreadsheets.

Your biggest problem right now probably isn't conversion. It's that not enough people know you exist.

Think About Your Surface Area

Right now, your content engine reaches a certain number of people. Think of it like a service area, the coverage zone of everything you're putting out into the world. Your organic posts, your ads, your emails, whatever it is you're doing to get in front of people.

That surface area has a size. And your job, if you're a founder, a head of marketing, or anyone responsible for growth, is to figure out how to expand it.

Not by doing something completely new. Not by chasing the next platform. By doing what you're already doing, but better and more of it.

The Three Levers (In the Right Order)

Here's where most people get this wrong. They jump straight to lever three when they should be starting at lever one.

1. Get better at what you're already doing. Before you make more content, before you explore new channels, look at the content you're already creating and ask yourself, how can I make this better? Better hooks, better storytelling, better creative. Same volume, higher quality.

2. Do more of what's working. Once you've improved the quality, now you scale the quantity. More content on the channels where you're already showing up. More creative in your ad account. More touch points with your audience.

3. Then, and only then, explore new channels and formats. New platforms, new formats, new distribution strategies. This is the last lever you pull, not the first.

Most people reverse this order entirely. They get bored of what they're doing. They get distracted by trends or whatever the new thing is and spread themselves thin before they've actually maximized what's already in front of them.

Why We Get This Wrong

Look, I get it. Doing the same thing over and over doesn't feel exciting. There's always some new channel, some new tool, some new format that promises to change everything. And yeah, sometimes those things are worth exploring.

But a lot of the time, the answer isn't in something new. It's in doing the same thing, just doing it better. And then doing more of it.

Think about it.

If you're posting three times a week on Instagram and getting results, have you actually explored what happens when you post five times a week with higher quality creative? Have you tested that before jumping to a new platform where you're starting from zero?

The Funnel Math That Changes Everything

Here's the thing. Let's say your website converts at a decent rate. Maybe 2%, maybe 3%. You're getting sales. The product works. People who find you are buying.

So what's your actual growth problem?

It's not conversion. It's traffic. It's awareness. It's that not enough people are entering the top of your funnel.

Ask yourself this: would you rather have a 4% conversion rate with 10,000 visitors, or a 2% conversion rate with 100,000 visitors? The math is pretty clear.

I'm not saying you should ignore conversion rate optimization, but if you're a brand that's converting at a reasonable rate and you're spending all your energy trying to squeeze out another half percent, you're solving the wrong problem.

You don't have a conversion problem. You have an awareness problem.

What Your Focus Should Be Right Now

If you're running a brand, here's what I'd be focused on right now:

1. Audit your current surface area. Where are you showing up? What's working? What content is driving traffic and awareness?

2. Improve before you expand. Take your best-performing content and make it better. Better creative, better messaging, sharper hooks. Get more out of what you already have.

3. Then increase volume. More content on the channels that are working. More creative in your ad account. Feed the machine.

4. Build out your full funnel. True top-of-funnel awareness content. Middle-of-funnel nurturing. Bottom-of-funnel conversion content. Most brands are missing at least one of these stages.

And remember, this compounds. Every year, you're expanding that surface area a little more. You're reaching more people. You're getting better at reaching them. And as you add products, improve your website, and refine your offers, that growing audience becomes more and more valuable.

You probably have an awareness problem, not a conversion problem. And the solution isn't a new channel or a new tool. It's doing what you're already doing, better and more of it, until your surface area is big enough that growth takes care of itself.

More people need to know about you. That's where your focus should be. It's not going to solve every problem, but it's going to solve a lot of them.

Thank you for reading. I really appreciate it.

Reply here and ask for anything you need.

Until then, keep creating!

Matthew Gattozzi

Get a free assessment with Goodo Studios

My team and I create hassle-free creatives for consumer brands. If you are thinking about getting content, let’s set up a chat.

Content you should watch

Did you know we had a podcast called In the Cutting Room. Episodes drop every Monday. Make sure to listen to it on Apple, Spotify, or Youtube

Look, I'm not here to fear-monger about AI.

We're living in an incredible moment. The technology available to us right now, what we can automate, what we can create, what we can build, it's genuinely overwhelming in the best possible way.

If you're a creative person, this is a beautiful time to be alive.

But here's what I'm seeing as we build out more automations for our clients, as we hire and train new people, as we implement all these productivity tools everyone's talking about:

We're at risk of losing something fundamental.

The Flashiness Problem

It's so easy to get caught up in what's possible.

We can generate 50 ad variations in an hour.

We can automate our entire briefing process.

We can hit scale and volume that would've been impossible two years ago.

And somewhere in all of that, we forget the most important question:

Why would someone actually want to buy this product?

That's the thing about fundamentals. They're not sexy.

They don't make for exciting LinkedIn posts about your new AI workflow.

But fundamentals separate brands that build momentum from brands that just make noise.

What We're Forgetting Exists

Here's what kills me about the current AI obsession: we're so focused on the new tools that we're ignoring what already works.

There are books. Incredible books. Books on copywriting and advertising that built billion-dollar companies.

And just because we have AI tools now doesn't make those principles obsolete.

In fact, I'd argue it's more effective to read a book about advertising than to rely purely on automation tools.

Those books contain decades of tested principles. They explain the why behind what works. They give you the foundation that makes you dangerous with any tool you pick up.

But if you skip straight to "here's the prompt that generates hooks," you miss all of that.

What We're Teaching at Good Studios… and What We're Not

When I bring new people onto the team now, I'm laser-focused on one thing first: the fundamentals of advertising.

Not which AI tools to use.

Not which prompts work best in Claude.

Not the latest automation hack.

The fundamentals.

If your first experience creating ad copy is typing a prompt and getting AI-generated options, you never develop the intuition for what makes good advertising. You never build the discernment.

You learn to recognize what sounds good. But you don't learn why it's good. You don't develop the instinct that tells you when something will actually move someone to action versus when it just sounds clever.

I want someone on my team who understands advertising using AI tools. That's powerful.

I don't want someone who's just really good at prompting. There's a massive difference.

You always need to go back to the why.

People Haven't Changed

Here's what I'm trying to pass down to my team: read what worked in the past, because it's still going to work today.

Why?

People haven't changed.

The psychology that made people buy 50 years ago is the same psychology that makes them buy today. The principles of persuasion, the fundamentals of good copy, the understanding of human motivation, none of that is outdated.

Tools should allow you to execute at a higher level. They should help you move faster, test more, reach further.

But they shouldn't replace your thinking about what can we do differently.

The Middle Lane Is Getting Crowded

Over time, as more brands lean into the same AI tools, using similar prompts, optimizing for the same metrics, everything starts to look the same.

We're creating a massive middle lane of perfectly adequate advertising.

And if you want to build a real brand, not just a product that sells, but a brand that people remember and care about, you need to stand out from that middle lane.

That takes breaking rules.

That takes understanding what good advertising actually is, not just what AI tells you good advertising should be.

When you think about the brands that truly broke through, the ones that created that initial spark, that fire that turned into a movement, did they get there through automation?

No.

They got there because someone had a vision for something that didn't exist in the world yet.

Something that broke the mold.

Something that came from human intuition and taste and the willingness to try something different.

Don't get me wrong, automation absolutely helped them scale once they found that spark.

But the spark itself? That came from somewhere AI can't reach.

What This Means for You

I'm not telling you to abandon AI tools. That would be absurd, and frankly, you'd be leaving efficiency on the table.

But I am telling you this:

Don't let the tools replace your development of discernment.

If you're training a team, start with fundamentals first. Get them reading the books that built the industry. Teach them why something works before you teach them how to generate it faster.

If you're running your own creative, make sure you understand the principles before you automate the execution.

If you're building a brand, remember that standing out requires breaking rules, and AI is really, really good at following them. You need to be the one thinking about what's different, what's new, what stands out. Don't hand that thinking off to automation.

The technology we have access to right now is incredible. Use it. Just don't let it make you a worse advertiser in the process.

Thank you for reading. I really appreciate it.

Reply here and ask for anything you need.

Make sure to check out the podcast.

Until then, keep creating!

Matthew Gattozzi

Get a free assessment with Goodo Studios

My team and I create hassle-free creatives for consumer brands. If you are thinking about getting content, let’s set up a chat.

Content you should watch

Did you know we had a podcast called In the Cutting Room. Episodes drop every Monday. Make sure to listen to it on Apple, Spotify, or Youtube

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There's a swell of confusion right now.

A million new AI tools launching. Each one promising to supercharge your creative, completely replace your ad production, and revolutionize everything.

And if you're like me, you're feeling it. That gnawing sense of: Am I even doing enough?

If you're really close to what's happening in AI, it feels like a lot. But step back for a second. Most of these tools aren't fully working yet. And most people haven't even heard of half the things that are launching.

The FOMO you're feeling? You're creating it yourself.

I'm writing this newsletter partly as a journal entry to myself. A framework for how I should be approaching new tools and knowing when (or if) to implement them into our process at Goodo Studios.

Because the truth is, we're all drowning in noise right now. And we need to get clear on what actually matters.

I'm going to walk you through our exact process for evaluating tools. Then we'll talk about what's really happening in the AI tool landscape. And at the end, I'll share the one tool that can probably get you 90-95% of the way there without all the complexity.

Let's get into it.

Our Framework for Evaluating New Tools

Here's how we're actually approaching this at Goodo Studios.

We've built a step-by-step process for deciding whether a tool is worth implementing:

1. Detail out the whole workflow

Before we even look at tools, we map out exactly what we're doing. Every step. Every handoff. Every decision point.

You can't optimize what you don't understand.

2. Audit your current tool stack

What tools are we already using in this workflow? Are we actually using them well, or are there features we're ignoring?

Most people have way more capability in their current tools than they realize.

3. Identify the bottlenecks

Where is the workflow slowing down? And more importantly, why is there a bottleneck?

Is it something we can automate? Is something going wrong? Or is it just a hard problem that takes time?

4. Can your current tools solve it?

This is the question most people skip. Instead of immediately looking for a new tool, ask: can we do something differently within our current workflow?

A lot of times, the answer is yes.

5. If not, evaluate new tools through the lens of workflow friction

Here's where most people get it wrong.

They find a tool with cool features and assume it'll work. But then they realize: it takes forever to go from one program to the next program and back again.

If the new tool slows down your workflow more than it speeds it up, it's not worth it. Even if it has interesting features.

6. Ask: Should this tool change our workflow?

Sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes a tool is good enough that it's worth rebuilding your process around it.

If that's the case, rewrite the workflow. Figure out the fastest way to use that tool. Then train your team and implement it properly.

But don't do this lightly. Changing workflows is expensive. In time, in training, in momentum.

What's Really Happening With AI Tools

Now let me be direct about what I'm seeing in the landscape right now.

The Problem With Shiny New Tools

You might not be the only end user.

If you have a team, especially a big one, you can't just say, "Oh, this tool is awesome. I saw it on Twitter. My whole team's going to start using it."

Think about it from your team's perspective.

They're deep in work. Actually executing. Creating. Editing. Shooting. And every week, they're getting pinged about some cool new tool they're supposed to learn.

Three things happen:

1. They're confused about what this tool even does

2. They don't have enough time to fully integrate it into their workflow, so they don't get the most out of it

3. They don't have an incentive to change anything, because what they're doing is already working

And here's what I keep seeing: people are so busy looking for something new that they're not asking the right question.

Ask Yourself: What's Actually Broken?

Not "What's the coolest tool I saw this week?"

But: What's actually broken in my process?

Do you need 10 research tools? Or was your research already good enough to write copy?

If that part's not broken, then you don't need to implement it and distract your team with it.

If you didn't have a problem coming up with briefs, you probably don't need a tool that generates 100 briefs in one click.

Start by identifying the actual core problems you're facing in your business. Then, and only then, find tools that solve those specific problems.

The Hype Cycle Problem

Here's something I've noticed: the people hyping up tools aren't always the people using them.

Often, they're hyping them up because they weren't able to do that skill before. But that doesn't mean they're suddenly good at it now.

Take animation tools like Remotion, for example. Everyone's saying, "Oh my gosh. In one prompt, I can do animations. I'll never need to pay an animation editor again!"

That tool is extremely limited. A great animator can still do way more, way better, and quite quickly.

For somebody who's never animated in their life, yeah, sure. It's a cool gimmicky thing. But how often are these people actually animating videos? Or even making videos?

Not very often.

So what you really want to be doing is finding people who are actually doing that type of work and asking them what tools they're using. See what their real workflow looks like.

The Danger of Feeling Busy

There's a lot of risk in spending so much time trying a bunch of different tools.

It's so easy to feel busy. You're trying tools, you're testing things out. It feels like you're doing a lot.

But if you step back, you'll see: you actually haven't done much work.

Instead of trying to find the latest, newest tool, focus on what makes great advertising. What makes great content. And focus on executing there.

AI Won't Replace Execution (Yet)

Let me be direct about this: most people don't want to face the truth.

AI is not going to replace the actual creation of content.

You may have a lot of ideas. But who's going to go out and shoot that? Who's going to edit that? Who's going to actually make those things?

You can't just sit on your computer, tap a few buttons, talk to Claude, and suddenly ads appear. That's not how it works.

Real people have to shoot real products and create real ads.

If you're so focused on all these tools, you're optimizing a part of the process that's not even the longest part of the process.

Yeah. You can get briefing down from a few hours. But shooting and editing still takes 10 to 20x that amount of time.

That part is still there.

So if you have 100 briefs, those still all have to be made. Sure, there's some automation with graphics and things like that. Cool. But for the most part, most of these things can't be automated today.

That may happen in the future. But as of right now, that's not true.

The One Tool That'll Get You 95% of the Way There

Here's what we've actually landed on.

We've been using Claude. We've always used Claude over ChatGPT. And when you see what Claude is doing recently, connecting a lot of apps into the platform, it almost feels like the smart move is to just get really good at using Claude.

Let a lot of the dust settle. Then figure out where these other tools actually fit.

Here's something else to consider: even a lot of these external tools use the same Claude models under the hood.

So in theory, if you're just good at prompting and you save those prompts, you can do a lot of what these tools can do. Yeah, it's not fully automated. But if you really wanted to, you could just get good at prompting in Claude and probably get 90-95% of what you need.

Think about it. All these specialized tools, they're often just Claude with a specific interface and workflow. If you understand how to prompt well, you can replicate most of that functionality yourself.

And you won't have the friction of jumping between 10 different platforms.

The Bottom Line

People are over-complicating all of this.

I think it's because a lot of people are trying to capitalize on this moment. They want to be this big software company that does all this stuff.

But as creatives, as people who are actually making ads, we have to be careful.

Clear out the noise. Look at your process. Understand what you actually need.

Use the framework I outlined. Evaluate tools based on whether they actually solve a real problem in your workflow. And don't be afraid to just master one tool, like Claude, instead of chasing every shiny new thing.

The FOMO is real. But it's also mostly in your head.

Focus on making great work. The tools will follow.

Thank you for reading. I really appreciate it.

Reply here and ask for anything you need.

Make sure to check out the podcast.

Until then, keep creating!

Matthew Gattozzi

Get a free assessment with Goodo Studios

My team and I create hassle-free creatives for consumer brands. If you are thinking about getting content, let’s set up a chat.

Content you should watch

Did you know we had a podcast called In the Cutting Room. Episodes drop every Monday. Make sure to listen to it on Apple, Spotify, or Youtube

Your Content Should Sell is a free a newsletter that gives you practicals about creating content for your brand. It’s a must-read among DTC marketers and business leaders.

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You made it through 2025.

The campaigns ran, the ads went out, Black Friday happened (somehow).

But if I'm being honest, most brands are operating in a constant state of creative chaos.

Brands are surprised by predictable events, scrambling at the last minute, and wondering why their ads aren't performing better.

Here's the thing: it doesn't have to be this way.

Planning your creative for 2026 isn't about building some elaborate system that looks good on paper but falls apart in reality. It's about getting ahead of the chaos so you actually have space to be strategic. So you can think instead of just react.

Let me walk you through how to do this properly.

Start by Looking Back

Before you get excited about what you're going to do in 2026, you need to understand what actually happened in 2025.

I'm talking about two specific things:

First, look at your creative angles and strategy. What worked? What didn't? What did you try that you thought would crush it but fell flat? Did you learn anything new about how to communicate your product? Did you discover anything about the strategy behind your ads that actually moved the needle?

Second, look at your creative operations. When did you not have enough creative? What happened before that moment where you found yourself short? When did you feel unprepared? When did you have too much creative sitting around unused?

Reflecting on the operations side is just as important as the strategy side. You can have brilliant ideas, but if you don't have the systems to execute them, they're worthless.

I find that a lot of times when strategy doesn't work, it's because the execution behind it fell flat. In order to excel in the creative strategy, you need to make sure that you are on top of your creative operations.

Map Out 2026 Before You Get Tactical

Now that you know what happened last year, it's time to look forward.

Before you start brainstorming cool new ad angles or creative concepts, you need to map out the entire year first.

• Where are your sales periods?

• When are your product launches?

• What does your ad spend forecast look like month by month?

If you took time to reflect on your 2025 creative operations, you can see what you can preplan for so you don’t fall into the same mistake.

You're going to notice ebbs and flows. Some months you'll need way more creative. Other months you can coast a bit. Mark these on your calendar now. Know when you need to ramp up and when you can pull back.

If you have a product launch in April, don’t wait till March to rush into getting the content.

GET AHEAD OF IT.

Plan in February, execute in March, enjoy in April.

This isn't exciting work, but it's essential. You can't build a creative strategy if you don't know what the year actually looks like for your business when it comes to creative operations. You want to be on the offense.

Don't Forget the Basics

While you're thinking about all the exciting new stuff, you still need to handle the fundamentals.

You have known events on your calendar. Labor Day. Black Friday. Cyber Monday. Whatever matters for your brand.

Work backwards from these dates and build an actual content calendar:

• When does the content need to be delivered?

• When should creation start?

• When should planning begin?

• When do you need to have conversations with agencies or allocate internal resources?

For example: you need Black Friday content by November 1st. That means you should start building it out in September. Which means you need to have agency conversations or resource planning done in August.

See how that works? You're not waiting until October to figure it out.

Also, think about your forecasted spend. If you're projecting higher spend in Q4, you're going to need more creative to support that. Can you handle that volume? Do you need to scale up your capacity? These are questions you should be answering now, not when you're already behind.

Plan for What's New

Once you have the big picture mapped out, then you can start getting into what is new.

What are the things you haven't done yet that you want to try? What new approaches do you want to test? Are there new channels you want to explore? Is there anything you're planning to do differently in 2026?

Start making that list.

But here's where most people stop thinking: if you're going to do all this new stuff, who's actually going to do it? Are you doing it yourself? Are you building it in-house? Do you need to bring in experts?

These questions force you to think about where you need to build systems and creative operations to support the work your brand actually needs. Don't skip this part.

The Biggest Thing Most People Miss

Here's what I see happen constantly: brands act surprised by things that happen every single year.

"Oh wow, Black Friday is here! We need creative!"

Yes. You do. Just like you did last year. And the year before that. And every year since e-commerce became a thing.

Unless this is literally your first Black Friday ever, you should know you need content well in advance. Don't wait until a week before to realize you should probably get some ads made.

This happens way too often. Brands rush it, scramble it together, and end up leaving money on the table because they weren't prepared.

If you're ahead of your planning and ahead of your creative operations, you're able to actually scale. You can spend your time thinking about strategy instead of constantly putting out fires.

Strategy: The Final Piece

After you've mapped out the operational needs for the year, then, AND ONLY THEN, should you focus on the strategic angles.

What worked last year and how can you do more of that?

What are the bigger bets you should take and what haven't you tried yet?

Look at your calendar. You might start to see themes emerge naturally. Is there a New Year's angle you can hit? A spring theme? Are there cultural moments or events you can align with?

The key is making your strategy proactive instead of reactive. Most brands don't look at the overall year, the seasons, and what's actually happening in their business. So their strategy becomes entirely reactive. They’re constantly responding to whatever's in front of them instead of working toward clear business goals.

When you plan ahead, you put way less pressure on your creative system. You get better results because you have space for actual creativity instead of operating in constant frantic motion.

You can get away with last-minute creative sometimes. We've all pulled it off. But if your entire year is last-minute, you're making it exponentially harder to be creative and to succeed.

The Bottom Line

Get ahead of your scheduling.

Map out your year.

Know when you need creative and work backwards from those dates. Build the systems and operations to support your strategy. Then focus on the creative angles and bigger bets.

That's how you plan for 2026.

That's how you create space for the work that actually matters.

Want help planning your 2026 creative strategy? Book a consultation with Goodo Studios and let's map out a system that actually works for your brand.

And if you haven't already, check out the latest episode of In the Cutting Room where we break down ads.

Until then, keep creating!

Matthew Gattozzi

Get a free assessment with Goodo Studios

My team and I create hassle-free creatives for consumer brands. If you are thinking about getting content, let’s set up a chat.

Content you should watch

Did you know we had a podcast called In the Cutting Room. Episodes drop every Monday. Make sure to listen to it on Apple, Spotify, or Youtube

Your Content Should Sell is a free a newsletter that gives you practicals about creating content for your brand. It’s a must-read among DTC marketers and business leaders.

Was this email forwarded to you? Subscribe here

I will spare you a Black Friday Cyber Monday recap.

Let’s get into something more meaningful to your brand as you plan for the new year.

Last newsletter, I talked about how everyone's panicking about Andromeda and how you shouldn't be. The principle has always been the same.

Find new ways to talk to customers to get new customers.

This week, I want to go a little bit more in-depth about some of those nuances and exactly how we're thinking about what creative diversity actually means.

We've had to challenge ourselves internally here at Goodo Studios about that definition. We want to make sure that the services and the content we provide works for brands today, not what worked yesterday. And so there are some changes and some things that we're learning about.

Holistically, as I said in last week's newsletter, nothing is truly changed because we've always been really focused on net new ideas and bigger swings versus iterating to the 40th degree. But there are some things that we're even pushing ourselves on when it comes to edits.

Let's Just Look at an Ad

One ad unit can consist of 4 components.

1. There's the medium. So is it a static? Is it a video?

2. There is the style in which that's shot. There are many different styles of video. Street interview, hi-fi, lo-fi, UGC, testimonial, very scripted, unscripted, etc. There are so many different styles of video. And then even with graphics, there are a lot of different styles. You can be more polished, or more of an IG story type organic post. There are a lot of different things.

3. Then beyond that, you've got what the message is. The message could be really broad. It could be about a lot of things. It could be about the brand. It could also be very specific about one benefit of your product within the season of winter.

4. You also have the person or the persona. Who are you actually trying to reach? And who you're trying to reach will also affect or change your messaging and the angle, what you're talking about, but also even the style.

These varying aspects of what makes an ad unit.

The Problem We're Seeing

A lot of times when people are focused on creative diversity, they're really focused on just one part of the ad unit and changing that up.

An example could be messaging is different but the image is the same.

And so when Facebook is looking at that, they're saying, well, this looks like the same thing.

Just changing one component is not diversity to Meta.

If you can scroll through Ads Library and the messaging is the same or the look is the same - this is not diversity.

What we're trying to focus on when we're briefing out an ad unit is we want to look at all four components of the ad and say, how can we provide a different mashup of components.

Now, the reality is that you're going to circle around similar personas. So if you have a product that's for women, you probably don't need to have personas that are for guys. You can't just be different to be different. It still needs to make sense to the brand and product.

What you want to be thinking about is how are we going very specific on certain personas. How are we speaking directly to them? How are we creating content that's just for them? How are we thinking about top of funnel with the brand and big picture and thinking about all of these different mediums and ways in which to layer on communication.

Because Here's the Thing

Ultimately, no matter what the thing is called, Andromeda or whatever it will be in the future- the principle of advertising has always been the same, which is you want to continue to find new messages and angles to speak to new people to build a greater audience for your brand to bring in more sales.

That's been true in the twenties, the fifties, and today. It's just now with an algorithm it's called Andromeda, but the truth has always been the same.

The principle has always been the same.

We want to be thinking a lot about those different components of an ad unit.

What About All the Footage You've Already Created?

It is easy to get creative diversity with new ideas because you can get new footage for a new brief.

But what happens to all the footage that you've already created?

There's been a push maybe in the last five years to just edit your content, iterate, maybe just change the hook. And that's it. I think that you're going to see a lot less of those 40 hook testing sequences.

To be honest, I never thought that really moved the needle and so to me, I don't think that's where the true alpha was.

What you want to be able to do is take the footage that you have and change up the style of the video, the personas, the messaging, and that's how we're cutting things up.

Internally, we've really been pushing ourselves to say, is this truly different? Can we look at this content and say is that different than the last batch of content we created?

Creative diversity at Goodo Studios is going to be kind of an ongoing thing of just pushing ourselves to come up with new ideas and new visuals. When it comes to shooting new stuff, we want to excute differently shoot to shoot. Even within editing and iterating, we want to push new styles that are needed in the account.

What This Actually Looks Like

Structurally, what this will look like is we'll probably reduce a little bit the amount of content that we're producing and focus more on the differences.

The other thing that we're thinking a lot about is just how do we get brands more new raw footage. A lot of times brands are sitting on a lot of footage and they're like, "No, we've got a lot of great footage. We don't need more."

The reality is now more than ever you're going to need more because once you use footage a lot of times, it is seen the same to Meta.

Meta is looking for new visuals which means there should be a push for new content as much as possible. You want to have as much new visuals.

We're more focused on the new visuals versus giving a brand the 50th iteration because that's not the thing that's really going to move the needle.

So Those Are the Changes

I hope this you more of an insight of how we're thinking about creative diversity.

Ultimately, you'll always want to be trying to find new ways to talk to customers in different formats because how people take in information and take in media changes, and it's always different and it has been different. You want to match that if you want to continue to scale efficiently.

When you're not scaling efficiently, most likely it's because you're not trying new messaging and new ways in which to communicate to customers. That's just the principles of advertising.

Thank you for reading. I really appreciate it.

Until then, keep creating!

Matthew Gattozzi

Get a free assessment with Goodo Studios

My team and I create hassle-free creatives for consumer brands. If you are thinking about getting content, let’s set up a chat.

Your Content Should Sell is a free a newsletter that gives you practicals about creating content for your brand. It’s a must-read among DTC marketers and business leaders.

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There's a lot of fear-mongering around Meta's Andromeda system right now.

I've seen countless posts, threads, and "urgent updates" claiming everything has changed. People are saying your performance is tanking because you don't have creative diversity or that everything you know about Meta ads is suddenly obsolete and you need unique ads everywhere or you'll fail.

There's just a lot of conversation about this that I think leaves a lot of people confused.

And even myself, I've at times second-guessed, like, what the heck is going on?

Here's what you actually need to know about Andromeda

The truth is that Andromeda has been running internally at Meta for over a year now if not longer. I think a few people picked up this word and started to really hype it up, and I think again, just used that fear-mongering where now it feels like everybody's talking about it.

But the reality is that Meta wants you to give them a lot of different creative so that they can go and find you new audiences to get you new customers.

At a very basic level, that is what the ad auction is.

And Facebook has gotten better at finding audiences for you as a brand. And the more that they've gotten better at it, the less you need to button-click and the more you need to just focus on the creative itself.

Now, it's hard for Facebook or Instagram to find you new audiences when you are saying and showing the same things over and over again. So what Meta is asking is, “hey, can you give me different creative that looks different, feels different, says different things, and would work for different people?”

And ultimately, I think there are some specific nuances of what is different, but let's just take a step back and look at Andromeda from a principles perspective.

The principle has always been the same

Before something was called Andromeda, the principle has always been the same.

You want to find new ways to talk to customers in order to get new customers.

And there are some messages that will work for one set of customers and some messages that will work for others. And they don't have to be all the same. They could be very specific. It could be dependent on the setting, the channel, the medium that already existed.

The need for creative diversity already existed. You should have already been thinking about those message diversity. This is not something that is new.

And Andromeda is just the AI-coined term that they are using to help explain to people what their algorithm needs. But you as a brand should always be doing this regardless of that.

Everybody is unique.

Everybody is different.

What works for Sally is different than what will work for John.

And even though the product may be good for both of them, it might be good for both of them for different reasons.

They have different humor.

They have different styles of content that they're interested in.

And so we need to be matching all of those unique, different styles of content.

What you should actually be doing

I think if you are a brand, you should be thinking about all those new ways.

I've said this before, which is that you should be focusing more on net-new concepts and taking bigger swings versus iterating to the 10th degree. And I think there's more clarity now that iterating to the 10th degree is probably not going to do much in the AI algorithm of Meta.

I think that you should really consider what is different. It's easy to be like, “oh, okay, well, we just changed the headline and that's it.” No. You really need things to be different. Visually, it needs to look different like the setting in which the photos are taken needs to be different. The messaging needs to be more specific, maybe more broad. You really want to be thinking about the funnel of content.

When you think about what content you want to be investing in, you want to be investing in a lot of new content. So whether that's creator content, studio videos, hi-fi, lo-fi, static, videos, you want to be going after a lot of different styles of content and mediums and ways to communicate your product.

But everything I'm suggesting, I would have suggested at the beginning of the year, last year, or years before.

So I think that there's a lot of fear of what to do, but I don't think that if you actually break it down, there's anything truly, truly different that you shouldn't have already been doing.

And so I think you really want to focus on those net-new concepts because that's how you're going to help Meta find you your new audiences. And that's always been true, and I'm sure that's how it'll always be.

Don't freak out. Focus on new ways to communicate your product to new audiences. And you'll be in a good spot.

Thank you for reading. I really appreciate it.

Until then, keep creating!

Matthew Gattozzi

Get a free assessment with Goodo Studios

My team and I create hassle-free creatives for consumer brands. If you are thinking about getting content, let’s set up a chat.

Content you should watch

We are dropping Youtube videos every few weeks.

Did you know we had a podcast called In the Cutting Room. Episodes drop every Tuesday. Make sure to listen to it on Apple, Spotify, or Youtube.

Your Content Should Sell is a free a newsletter that gives you practicals about creating content for your brand. It’s a must-read among DTC marketers and business leaders.

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Let me be direct.

There are two types of companies in the world.

Those with a brand and those without one.

Unfortunately, most companies fall into that second category, even though they'll swear they have a brand.

They point to their logo, their fonts, their color palette. "Look," they say, "we have brand guidelines!"

But that's not what brand is.

Others will say, “We sell to consumers. We are a brand.”

Just because you sell to consumers, does not mean your company has a brand.

Brand is the relationship between a company and a consumer. 

Nothing more, nothing less.

The stronger that relationship, the more the consumer trusts the company. The more they trust, the more they buy and the less you actually have to sell them, because they're already sold. They're already loyal.

What This Means for Your Advertising

If you build a strong brand, your advertising becomes exponentially more efficient. You spend less time convincing because you've already built loyalty.

I think most companies miss this completely. They're trapped in the endless cycle of testing small tweaks, chasing that extra dollar of efficiency through iterations and optimizations. All that effort should be spent building a point of view instead—crafting a perspective that consumers can understand and want.

Case Study: Bogey Bros' 5,540% 3-Year Growth

I was just talking to a golf brand called Bogey Bros. According to the Inc 5000, they've grown over 5,540% in the last three years.

Their explosive growth doesn’t come from just direct response ads.

They have built:

• Great top-of-funnel content on Instagram

• A clear point of view that resonates

• Products that align with their brand identity

• Creative testing through product development and content

The ads simply fulfill the demand that their brand building creates. They're not generating demand through ads. They're doing it through building an actual brand.

When you look at Bogey Bros' content, you immediately know exactly who it's for. Maybe it's not you, but you know someone in your life who would absolutely love this brand.

That's a strong indicator of brand clarity.

Compare that to so many other companies where it's hard to know who the product is actually for. They're not standing out. They're not memorable.

The HexClad Example: Brand Efficiency in Action

Here's another perfect example. For their Memorial Day sale, HexClad's CEO Jason Panzer shared something remarkable. They kept their ad spend exactly the same year-over-year from 2024 to 2025, but achieved 80% year-over-year growth.

Their offer wasn't dramatically different, in fact it was about the same. So how did they become 80% more efficient without changing their budget percentage?

They spent the previous year building their brand.

• Building partnerships

• Getting a Super Bowl ad

• Investing in top-of-funnel brand building

• Establishing themselves as THE premium cookware brand

Now, not everyone can get a Super Bowl ad but the principle is universal.

They invested money in brand building so that a year later, they could be dramatically more efficient in their acquisition costs.

They have a point of view. They align themselves with people who represent what HexClad could be. They built a real brand, not just a company.

The Purple Cow Principle

This goes back to Seth Godin's concept of the purple cow. A purple cow stands out. You notice it, you remember it.

Brands need to spend more time crafting how they're going to be memorable.

If you do that, you can create massive efficiency gains in your ad account. This is something that's not talked about enough in our industry.

Why This Matters for Your Team

When we work with brands that have real tailwinds behind them, where things are moving forward because of strong brand foundations, our jobs become exponentially easier.

The products are being developed with intention. There's strength behind the brand itself, not just the company. The creative work becomes about amplifying something that already exists rather than trying to create demand from nothing.

Most companies are trying to use advertising to do the heavy lifting that brand building should be doing. That's backwards.

Build the brand first. Let the ads amplify it.

I always want to write on things that can help you.

Is there anything you want to see me write about for you? Reply here and ask for anything you need.

Thank you for reading. I really appreciate it.

Until then, keep creating!

Matthew Gattozzi

Get a free assessment with Goodo Studios

My team and I create hassle-free creatives for consumer brands. If you are thinking about getting content, let’s set up a chat.

Content you should watch

We are dropping Youtube videos every few weeks.

Did you know we had a podcast called In the Cutting Room. Episodes drop every Tuesday. Make sure to listen to it on Apple, Spotify, or Youtube.

Your Content Should Sell is a free a newsletter that gives you practicals about creating content for your brand. It’s a must-read among DTC marketers and business leaders.

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My wife and I were shopping for a new coffee pot recently. Usually, we're doing pour overs for every single cup of coffee, but we wanted something kind of simple because we wanted to have more coffee when family came over, friends came over, and it wasn't like making individual cups of coffee.

We also didn't want to spend like a ton of money - although I am a coffee snob, I didn't want to spend like $300 plus for a fancy coffee pot. I just wanted something simple that we could use.

So we looked at things on Amazon and different websites.

Yes, there's a lot that we could compare, but one of the biggest things was just like what does the photos look like so we could see how big this thing is in the space? Will that fit on to our counter? Will it look good? Is it the colors that we want? But then also, like, how does this thing work? So we're looking at video and seeing if it works well.

And I was just so surprised by how there was just not a huge attention to detail to the carousel on the product pages. The better the photography was, the better the video was to explain how the features worked, the more likely we were to buy.

Now somebody that I'm always watching on how they're shopping and what motivates them is my wife, and it was so interesting to see how she was making decisions because I probably was focused a lot more on the utilitarian part of the coffee pot, whereas for her, she was focused on the looks.

If you have bad photography, then she's not gonna want to buy that coffee pot even if it was a good coffee pot, if it didn't look good in the space, she wasn't gonna say yes.

If we don't focus on the visuals, we are missing out on a lot of the buying decision.

This has been bugging me lately. I keep seeing brands obsessing over their ad spend, tweaking their targeting, analyzing their ROAS down to the penny... and then I visit their website or Amazon listing and it's like they completely forgot that people actually need to see what they're buying.

Look, I get it.

Ads are exciting. There's something addictive about optimizing campaigns and watching traffic pour in. But here's the thing everyone's missing.

What happens when that traffic actually lands on your page?

What are people experiencing on your website?

There is a lot of talk about CRO (conversion rate optimization). And yes, website layout matters, user experience matters, all that technical stuff is important. But I'm telling you, one of the biggest factors that gets treated like an afterthought is your photography and video content.

Think about it from your customer's perspective for a second.

They don't have the same emotional connection to your brand that you do. They're not thinking about your mission statement or your founder's story when they first land on your page. They're looking at it almost like a detective, trying to figure out: What exactly is this? How does it work? Is this legit?

This coffee pot experience really drove home something important which is we're not as logical as we think we are when making buying decisions. Especially when we're not experts in the product category or we're shopping for something for the first time. The visuals create a feeling that either says "oh, this would be nice to have in my life" or "nah, I'll keep looking."

And here's what I see happening over and over again.

Brands create some basic product photos when they first launch, stick them up on their site and Amazon, and then never touch them again. Meanwhile, they're pouring thousands into ads to drive more traffic to those same tired, unconvincing photos. It's like trying to fill a leaky bucket.

The crazy part is, this is such low-hanging fruit. A few tweaks to your visual content can make a massive difference in how people perceive and interact with your products.

What content you need today

First, get some real lifestyle photography. I'm talking about actual people using your product in real situations. Not just the product floating on a white background - though you need those too - but images that help people visualize themselves using what you're selling.

Second, create stylized product shots that show your product in its natural environment. If you're selling kitchen gadgets, show them in an actual kitchen. If it's skincare, create that spa-like bathroom setting. Help people see where this fits in their life.

Third, and this is huge, create information-rich graphics that work like a visual story. Think of your product page photos like a carousel that walks someone through everything they need to know. You've got your clean product shots, your lifestyle images, and then you need those graphics that break down the ingredients, highlight the benefits, answer the common questions. Make it so someone could understand your entire value proposition just by scrolling through your images.

If you can swing it, add a simple explainer video. Nothing fancy - just something that shows the product in action. This works incredibly well on both your website and Amazon.

The value of fresh content

And here's the thing that makes this investment even smarter: these aren't just photos for your website. You can repurpose this content for your email campaigns, your SMS marketing, your social media ads, your static advertising.

One photoshoot can feed your marketing machine for months.

I know it doesn't sound as exciting as launching a new ad campaign or testing a new audience. But I've seen brands increase their conversion rates significantly just by updating their visual content.

At the end of the day, people need to trust what they're buying, and trust starts with being able to clearly see and understand your product.

The simple stuff often makes the biggest difference. While everyone else is chasing the next marketing hack, maybe it's time to make sure the basics are actually working for you.

Thank you for reading. It really does mean the world to me. I am here to help so just reply here and ask for anything you need.

Oh - we also have a podcast that expand on a lot of the topics I talk about here in on the newsletter.

Until then, keep creating!

Matthew Gattozzi

Get a free assessment with Goodo Studios

My team and I create hassle-free creatives for consumer brands. If you are thinking about getting content, let’s set up a chat.

Content you should watch

We are dropping Youtube videos every few weeks.

Did you know we had a podcast called In the Cutting Room. Episodes drop every Tuesday. Make sure to listen to it on Apple, Spotify, or Youtube.

Your Content Should Sell is a free a newsletter that gives you practicals about creating content for your brand. It’s a must-read among DTC marketers and business leaders.

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The biggest lie DTC marketers have been telling you is that you need to make content that looks "native" to the social feed.

This has resulted in a lot of people trying to do lo-fi content or follow what are considered "best practices" of a platform.

But here's the reality: that's not how the algorithm actually works.

The algorithm is there to serve the best content to people so that they stay on the platform as long as possible. They are agnostic to how content was shot. All that matters is that the content is worth watching and keeps people on the platform.

And I found proof of this in a new TikTok trend.

An editor created a video that had a Kendrick Lamar song with this crazy edit using Creed movie footage. It went viral - over 150 million views by the time I'm writing this.

@areqaep

CREED | #creed #creededit #edit #fyp #viral

Then many other people went on to create this same style with the song, and it became this massive trend.

The funny part about this - or the ironic part - is that it breaks literally every "best practice":

• It's horizontal footage on a vertical screen

• It's all high-fi footage because it's from a movie

• It literally is not like an "organic" TikTok

• It is a very well-edited video

All of the other videos based on this trend are also high-fi footage with great edits, and they've all gotten millions of views as well.

They've been doing edits with sports people, Michael Scott from The Office, Walter White, Maverick, even Timothy Chalamet hype videos.

But in all of it, it just shows that the best content always wins.

It's not about what's the "best practice."

I think it's easy to just say, "Oh, we need to make this native to the platform content." But the reality is what's native to the platform IS the best content.

I think it's just an excuse to make a certain style. What happens is brands feel afraid to do other styles that may not be what feels like a "best practice" because they have been told, "Oh, that stuff doesn't work on TikTok or on the other feeds of other social media platforms."

When in reality, the data shows - and there are countless examples - that high-end visuals work best because it's the best style to tell the story for that brand.

There are also opposite examples of how hi-fi doesn't help tell the brand story, and lo-fi does.

I think every brand needs to use whatever resources they have to make the best content they can make.

If you're just starting out, yeah, maybe UGC can work and is probably your best bet to start. But over time, that doesn't necessarily always have to hold true.

You always need to be pushing the boundaries of what's the best way to communicate your brand.

And that can look very different.

We need to go away from "Oh, it's gotta be one style or it's gotta be a certain way" and focus more on what's the best way to describe your brand story.

Thank you for reading this week’s content.

Let me know if you want me to address anything in the future for you. Just reply and I can write about it.

Make sure to check out the podcast.

Until then, keep creating!

Matthew Gattozzi

Get a free assessment with Goodo Studios

My team and I create hassle-free creatives for consumer brands. If you are thinking about getting content, let’s set up a chat.

Content you should watch

We are dropping Youtube videos every few weeks, this was a fun one to dive into predictions of advertising. Let me know if you agree or disagree.

Did you know we had a podcast called In the Cutting Room. Episodes drop every Tuesday. Make sure to listen to it on Apple, Spotify, or Youtube.

Your Content Should Sell is a free a newsletter that gives you practicals about creating content for your brand. It’s a must-read among DTC marketers and business leaders.

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I'm going to give you the simplest piece of advice you'll ever hear.

Make more ads.

That's it. That's the newsletter.

But since you're here, let me tell you why this obvious advice is the hardest thing for brands to actually do.

The Problem with Being Precious

We've gotten too precious about our creative process.

Too precious about our systems.

Too precious about our strategies.

Too precious about finding "the perfect ad."

MY TEAM AND I FALL FOR THIS ALL THE TIME. (I am trying to listen to my own advice)

Here's what I see happening:

• Brands spend weeks planning the "perfect" creative brief

• Teams debate endlessly about messaging angles

• Everyone wants to find THE ad that changes everything

• Analysis paralysis disguised as "being strategic"

Meanwhile, your competitors are shipping ads.

Acquiring customers.

Growing.

Let me remind you what business you're actually in.

You're in the customer acquisition business.

Your job is simple

Everything else is just supporting that one core function. And to consistently acquire customers, you need to consistently make ads and content.

It's not complicated. It's not mysterious. It's just hard work.

The brands that win are the brands that:

• Create consistently

• Test consistently

• Learn consistently

• Repeat consistently

Notice I didn't say "perfectly."

I said "consistently."

Build the Muscle

Creating content is a muscle.

Like any muscle, it gets stronger with use and weaker with neglect.

The more you create, the better you get at:

• Spotting what works quickly

• Writing compelling hooks

• Understanding your audience

• Moving from idea to execution fast

The less you create, the more you:

• Overthink every decision

• Second-guess your instincts

• Get paralyzed by options

• Lose touch with what resonates

Which muscle are you building?

Look at any great artist.

Picasso created over 50,000 artworks in his lifetime. Van Gogh painted over 2,000 pieces in just 10 years.

They didn't sit around waiting for the perfect inspiration.

They painted.

Every day.

Sometimes multiple pieces a day.

The masterpieces came from the practice, not the planning.

Your ads work the same way.

You don't think your way to great creative.

You create your way to great creative.

When Perfectionism Becomes Paralysis

I get it.

You want to scale.

You want greatness.

You want that breakthrough ad that changes everything.

But here's the trap:

Your desire for scale can become the very thing that prevents you from scaling.

Your pursuit of greatness can stop you from getting good.

Your search for the perfect ad can prevent you from making any ads at all.

The Simple Rule

When in doubt, make the ad.

Got an idea? Write it down. Find a way to create it. Get your team around you and just make it.

Stop asking, "Is this going to be THE ad?" or "What if it doesn't work?"

Start asking, "How fast can we test this?" or "What's our next three ideas?"

It's easy to sit in meetings.

Analyze data.

Create frameworks.

Build processes.

But you know what actually moves the needle?

Making the ad.

Shipping the creative.

Getting it in front of customers.

The market will teach you more in one week of testing than a month of strategizing.

Data is important. Strategy matters. But they're not substitutes for creation.

The Reality Check

Not every ad you create will be a winner.

Actually, let me be clearer: most of your ads won't be winners.

But every ad you create gets you closer to the ones that will win.

Every ad teaches you something.

Every test reveals something.

Every piece of creative builds your understanding of what resonates with your audience.

The ads that never get made teach you nothing.

What "Make More Ads" Actually Means

This isn't about mindless volume. It's about productive volume.

Make more ads means:

• Having a bias toward action over analysis

• Testing ideas quickly instead of debating them endlessly

• Building systems that enable creation, not complicate it

• Celebrating learning, not just winning

• Making creation a habit, not an event

The brands that are scaling while you're stuck in planning meetings have one thing in common:

They make more ads.

They're not smarter. They're not more strategic. They don't have better tools or bigger budgets.

They just create more consistently than you do.

And consistency compounds.

Every ad they make builds on the last one. Every test informs the next one. Every piece of creative makes them better at creating the next piece.

While you're perfecting your creative brief, they're perfecting their creative muscle.

The Bottom Line

Stop overthinking. Start creating.

The brand you've always hoped for is on the other side of more ads.

Not perfect ads.

Not revolutionary ads.

More ads.

The breakthrough you're looking for isn't hiding in your strategy deck.

It's hiding in the ad you haven't made yet.

I hope this was helpful. Let me know if you want me to address anything in the future for you. Just reply and I can write about it.

Make sure to check out the podcast.

Until then, keep creating!

Matthew Gattozzi

Get a free assessment with Goodo Studios

My team and I create hassle-free creatives for consumer brands. If you are thinking about getting content, let’s set up a chat.

Content you should watch

We are dropping Youtube videos every few weeks, this was a fun one to dive into predictions of advertising. Let me know if you agree or disagree.

Did you know we had a podcast called In the Cutting Room. Episodes drop every Tuesday. Make sure to listen to it on Apple, Spotify, or Youtube.

Your Content Should Sell is a free a newsletter that gives you practicals about creating content for your brand. It’s a must-read among DTC marketers and business leaders.

Was this email forwarded to you? Subscribe here

I'm going to make a bold statement today.

Every brand should be running founder ads.

Not some brands. Not big brands.

Every. Single. Brand.

In the majority of accounts we manage, founder ads are the top performers. They outscale everything else. They don't fatigue like other creative styles. And they tap into something that no other ad format can replicate.

Yet most brands aren't doing them.

Why Founder Ads Hit Different

Here's what makes founder ads special: authenticity at scale.

People chase after getting influencers and creators to get “authentic” content but the purest form of authenticity is the founder.

No one can replace that depth of truth.

When someone sees a founder talking about their product, they're not seeing another faceless brand pushing features and benefits. They're seeing the person who wakes up every day thinking about solving their problem.

That hits different.

Founder ads work because:

• Trust transfers faster. People buy from people

• Stories are stickier. Founders have personal stories that resonate

• Authority is instant. Who knows the product better than the person who created it?

• Fatigue is minimal. Unlike trending creative styles, authenticity never gets old

The Execution Problem

Every time I've heard someone say "founder ads don't work for us," it comes down to execution, not the concept.

Common mistakes I see:

• The script is about the founder and not about the viewer

• Founder feels awkward on camera (we'll fix this)

• No clear structure or script (founders know their stuff, but need direction)

The worst one is when the founder is just talking about themselves. Yikes.

Founder ads are not to pump up your ego. They are a way to give a unique POV to communicate your product to the viewer.

All ads should be about the viewer.

The beauty of founder ads is that they can work in multiple styles:

• High-end production with professional lighting and sets

• Lo-fi smartphone recordings that feel authentic and raw

• Podcast-style sitting down conversations

• Behind-the-scenes glimpses into the business

You can do multiple founder ads with different styles to have a diversity of messages and visuals from the founder.

The Scale Breakthrough

I have one client who was resistant to being on camera a year ago.

Now we're spending the majority of their ad budget on founder content because nothing else can scale like it.

We went from zero founder content to it being the backbone of their entire acquisition strategy. And this isn't a one-off story - I've seen this pattern repeat with brand after brand.

Here's what happened:

1. Started small - Just 10% of budget allocated to founder ads

2. Found their voice - Took a few iterations to get comfortable

3. Hit scale - Founder ads outperformed everything else

4. Doubled down - Now it's 60%+ of their creative strategy

It really started out small.

Over time, the founder got better on camera.

We expanded the amount of content we were creating with her.

Now founder ads are the cornerstone of the strategy.

Making It Easy (Because That's The Real Barrier)

The biggest obstacle isn't camera shyness - it's time.

Founders are busy.

The last thing they want is a complicated, time-consuming content creation process.

Here's how to make it effortless:

Pre-Production

• Give them 3-5 questions to answer (they know their product better than anyone)

• Focus on customer problems and personal stories

• Keep sessions to 30 minutes max

Production

• Use their phone (seriously, some of our best performers are iPhone recordings)

• Natural lighting or a simple ring light

• Their office, home, or warehouse - familiar environments work best

Questions That Work

Instead of "tell me about your product," try:

• What's the biggest misconception people have about [problem your product solves]?

• Why is your product different than others on the market?

• This customer asked, [Insert comment or question from customer]. What’s your answer?

• How does your product work?

The Content Goldmine

Your founder already has the best content sitting in their head:

• Origin stories - Why they started the company

• Customer insights - Problems they've heard a thousand times

• Industry expertise - Things they wish everyone knew

• Personal experiences - They might BE the customer

You want to extract the stories and insights to get great ads.

If you are a marketer, just ask the founder questions to get those stories.

If you are the founder and doing this yourself, have Claude or ChatGPT ask the questions.

Most likely your top ad is in the founder’s head.

Different Strokes, Different Folks

Not every founder needs to be a polished spokesperson.

There are a few different vibes your can go for.

The Educator: Breaks down complex topics, teaches concepts
The Storyteller: Shares personal experiences and customer stories
The Expert: Provides industry insights and controversial takes
The Problem-Solver: Focuses on customer pain points and solutions

Find your founder's natural style and lean into it.

This also depends on the industry you are in which can help you pick which one you want to be.

Your Next Steps

If you're not running founder ads yet, this is your biggest opportunity for creative diversity and scale.

GO CREATE THEM NOW.

Like, stop everything and make them today.

But here is a good plan

Week 1: Have your founder record answers to 5 customer objections (phone is fine) Week 2: Test these 5 ads
Week 3: Analyze performance and double down on winners
Week 4: Plan your next batch based on what worked

Remember: the only limitation to making founder ads is getting your founder in front of the camera. Everything else can be figured out.

The Bottom Line

Founder ads aren't a trend.

They're not a hack.

They're timeless.

People have been buying from people they trust for thousands of years. That's not changing anytime soon.

The question isn't whether founder ads will work for your brand.

The question is, how much growth are you leaving on the table by not doing them?

We have been dropping some fire podcast episodes I want you to check out. Let me know your thoughts for this newsletter or any of the content we are putting out.

Until then, keep creating!

Matthew Gattozzi

PS. My team has some openings and I want to work with you. If you need creative that scales, reach out to me here.

Get a free assessment with Goodo Studios

My team and I create hassle-free creatives for consumer brands. If you are thinking about getting content, let’s set up a chat.

Content you should watch

We are dropping Youtube videos every few weeks, this was a fun one to dive into predictions of advertising. Let me know if you agree or disagree.

Did you know we had a podcast called In the Cutting Room. Episodes drop every Tuesday. Make sure to listen to it on Apple, Spotify, or Youtube.

Your Content Should Sell is a free a newsletter that gives you practicals about creating content for your brand. It’s a must-read among DTC marketers and business leaders.

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There's this massive push right now for more creative and cheaper creative. Everyone's talking about volume like it's the holy grail of advertising success.

But here's the thing.

We're completely missing the point.

Think about basketball for a second.

If you spend 1,000 hours practicing your shot incorrectly, you don't get better at making baskets. You just get really, really good at missing them.

The idea that "practice makes perfect" is fundamentally flawed because you could be practicing something wrong and actually reinforcing bad habits.

The same thing is happening with your ads.

The Cop-Out Problem

There's this convenient cop-out happening in advertising right now. When ads don't work, instead of acknowledging that the creative might just be bad, teams hide behind the "we need more ads" excuse. "Oh, this didn't work? We just need to test more variations."

This mentality is dangerous because it's incentivizing thoughtless ad creation instead of brand-forward advertising. And I'm not talking about style guides with specific colors and fonts. I'm talking about how you want to present yourself as a brand. What you want to be known for.

Goodo Studios does make ads that do not work.

We have to own that. And we do.

It is not enough to chalk it up to “not enough volume.”

If you're just hacking your way through thousands of iterations without pausing to think strategically, you're creating thousands of ads that don't move the needle.

What’s worse is if you're not learning anything from the process.

The Real Driver: Creative Diversity

Here's what people don't understand: when you see an ad account with thousands of successful ads, it's not because they have a thousand of the same ad. It's because they have diversity of content.

Different messages.

Different formats.

Different ways of communicating with different types of people.

Nobody falls in love with brands because they have thousands of ads.

They fall in love because that brand has a point of view.

The brands you admire aren't just pumping out volume. They're creating diverse content across different mediums and channels with genuine variety of ideas. The volume is a second-order effect of pursuing diversity, not the primary goal.

When teams focus solely on volume, they're trying to correlate numbers to success without looking at what's actually driving performance: strategy and diversity.

How to Build Real Creative Diversity

Here's your action plan to escape the volume trap:

1. Audit Your Current Account

Open your Facebook Ads Library right now.

Scroll through your recent ads. What do you see?

If everything looks similar, you've found your problem.

What style of content do you have? What content do you not have in your account?

2. Reimagine Your Top Performers

Take your top 10 performing ads and ask: "How can we recreate these in completely different ways?"

You already know the messaging works, now make it look and feel different.

This alone could give you 10+ new ad concepts that are "same but different."

3. Explore Different Formats

Think beyond your usual approach:

• Could your top performer work as a podcast-style ad?

• What about a high-end brand shoot version?

• How would this look as an organic social style video?

• Is there a trending format you could adapt?

Take 4-5 different styles and apply them to your top 10 performers. Suddenly you have 50 strategic ad briefs instead of 50 random concepts.

4. Think Beyond the Obvious

The first three steps are there to help you bridge the gap of not feeling creative.

Everyone feels stuck when starting to do something new in the ad account.

But once you do this exercise, you probably will have a lot of other ideas that you could start working on and really create amazing content.

The Bottom Line

Creative diversity and volume are connected, but they're not isolated metrics. When you focus on diversity first, you naturally get the volume you need. But volume without strategy is just noise.

The brands that scale successfully aren't counting ads.

They're counting the different ways they can authentically connect with their audience.

Stop hiding behind volume metrics.

Start building a brand people actually want to pay attention to.

I hope this was helpful. Let me know if you want me to address anything in the future for you. Just reply and I can write about it.

Make sure to check out the podcast.

Until then, keep creating!

Matthew Gattozzi

Get a free assessment with Goodo Studios

My team and I create hassle-free creatives for consumer brands. If you are thinking about getting content, let’s set up a chat.

Content you should watch

We are dropping Youtube videos every few weeks, this was a fun one to dive into predictions of advertising. Let me know if you agree or disagree.

Did you know we had a podcast called In the Cutting Room. Episodes drop every Tuesday. Make sure to listen to it on Apple, Spotify, or Youtube.

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I used to be obsessed with optimization.

Like most marketers, I'd take a decent ad and iterate on it endlessly. "Let's try a new hook. Let's swap this shot. Let's rearrange the value props." Before you know it, I'd have created 20+ versions of basically the same ad.

But over the past year, my approach to creative testing has fundamentally changed.

Now I focus far less on optimizations and far more on generating completely new ideas. And the results speak for themselves.

Why endless iterations are killing your performance

Here's the harsh reality most creative agencies won't tell you:

Creating 20 versions of essentially the same ad is not "high volume creative production." It's a waste of resources.

Think about how the Meta algorithm actually works.

It's constantly searching for new buyers for your product. But when you're putting out 20 variations of what is essentially the same ad, you're not giving the algorithm anything truly new to work with.

Sure, you might see minor performance improvements between hook version #1 and hook version #3, but ask yourself:

• How much time did that take?

• Could that time have been better spent developing entirely new angles?

• Is Meta even seeing these as truly different ads?

The new framework that's winning in 2025

Here's what's actually driving results for our clients now:

1. Focus on big swings, not tiny tweaks

• Aim for 2-3 completely new creative concepts each month. This concept is not just a new creator video. I am talking BIG SWING.

• Limit iterations to 2-3 versions per concept (not 7+)

• Prioritize diversity in messaging and visuals over micro-optimizations

2. Spend your creative energy wisely

• Dedicate 70% of resources to developing new ideas

• Use the remaining 30% for strategic optimizations

• Never get caught in a cycle where you've spent a month on tweaks with no new concepts

3. Consider what the algorithm actually "sees"

• Meta likely views your slight hook variations as essentially the same ad

• Fresh concepts with different visuals and communication styles stand out

• The algorithm favors genuinely new creative over minor iterations

The counterintuitive truth

Yes, there are examples where the 5th iteration outperformed all previous versions. I've seen it happen myself.

When I analyze what has consistently driven the most success for our clients, it's always been a steady pipeline of fresh, new creative concepts, not endless optimization of existing ones.

The brands seeing the biggest wins aren't just iterating – they're innovating.

The hidden benefit beyond performance

When you focus on net-new concepts rather than endless tweaks, something magical happens: you discover entirely new ways to communicate your product's value.

This diversification isn't just good for immediate performance- it builds long-term brand strength and helps you reach audience segments you might have been missing.

Your creative testing reset

If you want to improve your creative testing approach:

1. Audit your current process: How much time are you spending on iterations vs. new concepts?

2. Establish a sustainable cadence for developing genuinely new creative ideas

3. Set a hard limit on iterations (I recommend no more than 3 per concept)

4. Reserve at least 70% of your creative resources for fresh approaches

Remember, in today's algorithmic environment, volume without diversity is just noise.

I hope this was helpful. Let me know if you want me to address anything in the future for you. Just reply and I can write about it.

Make sure to check out the podcast.

Until then, keep creating!

Matthew Gattozzi

Get a free assessment with Goodo Studios

My team and I create hassle-free creatives for consumer brands. If you are thinking about getting content, let’s set up a chat.

Content you should watch

We are dropping Youtube videos every few weeks, this was a fun one to dive into predictions of advertising. Let me know if you agree or disagree.

Did you know we had a podcast called In the Cutting Room. Episodes drop every Tuesday. Make sure to listen to it on Apple, Spotify, or Youtube.

Newsletters to Check Out

Eli's Newsletter

A newsletter that will make your customers love you. Read tips from the best DTC brands in the world.

Subscribe

Express Checkout

Weekly CPG news, trends, and analysis covering consumer brands, grocery stores, retail, and ecommerce updates.

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Your Content Should Sell is a free a newsletter that gives you practicals about creating content for your brand. It’s a must-read among DTC marketers and business leaders.

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I'm going to share something that might contradict everything you've been told about advertising in 2025.

Long-form ads aren't just viable – they're becoming essential for DTC brands.

This revelation came from one of our most successful recent ads, and the results were so compelling that I had to completely rethink our creative strategy.

The 2.5-minute ad that outperformed everything else

Recently, we created a 2.5-minute video for a client that completely outperformed our expectations. We also produced a 3.5-minute piece for the same brand.

Most marketers would have immediately dismissed these as "too long" for today's short attention spans.

But here's what happened:

1. The long-form ads performed exceptionally well on their own

2. We created a treasure trove of shorter assets from the same footage

3. The overall campaign efficiency skyrocketed

Why long-form content works in a short-attention economy

There are two core reasons why longer ads are becoming crucial for DTC brands:

First, they force your creative team to think differently.

When you're no longer constrained to 30 seconds, you have to rethink your entire communication strategy. This pushes your team outside their comfort zone and often leads to more authentic, compelling storytelling.

Second, they give you content versatility that short-form simply can't.

Think about traditional TV campaigns – they always shoot for the 60-second spot, knowing they'll also create 45, 30, 15, and 5-second cuts. It's a proven strategy that digital marketers have largely abandoned, and it's costing them.

The content multiplication effect

Here's what happens when you prioritize longer content:

• You shoot once but create dozens of assets

• You can test different segments to see which resonate most

• You discover hooks and angles you wouldn't have captured in a short-form-only approach

• You build a content library that can be deployed across channels

For our client, we used the longer videos as the foundation, then created numerous shorter cuts optimized for different platforms and objectives. This gave us significant testing volume without needing multiple shoots.

Rethinking production for long-form success

One important consideration: longer content may require different production approaches.

The typical single-creator, talking-head style that dominates social ads often struggles to maintain engagement beyond 30 seconds. To succeed with longer content, consider:

• Multiple presenters or testimonials

• More sophisticated production value

• Stronger narrative structure

• Visual variety and pacing changes

This might require adjusting your production budget, but the content multiplication effect more than justifies the investment.

The big opportunity most brands are missing

The most surprising insight from our recent campaigns is just how few brands are taking advantage of this approach.

While everyone obsesses over creating the perfect 15-second TikTok, there's a massive opportunity in the longer-form space – especially for brands with more complex value propositions or emotional selling points.

In 2025, the brands that master the art of long-form content that can be atomized into shorter assets will have a significant competitive advantage.

How to get started with long-form content

If you've been exclusively focused on short-form, here's how to begin incorporating longer content:

1. Identify your most successful existing ads – what story could you tell if you had 2+ minutes?

2. Plan shoots with "content multiplication" in mind from the start

3. Create a shot list that ensures you'll have enough variety for both long and short edits

4. Develop a stronger narrative structure that can sustain longer viewing

5. Edit modularly, creating the long version first, then extracting shorter clips

Remember, the goal isn't just to create longer ads – it's to develop a content ecosystem where your long and short assets work together to drive maximum performance.

I hope this was helpful. Let me know if you want me to address anything in the future for you. Just reply and I can write about it.

Make sure to check out the podcast.

Until then, keep creating!

Matthew Gattozzi

Get a free assessment with Goodo Studios

My team and I create hassle-free creatives for consumer brands. If you are thinking about getting content, let’s set up a chat.

Content you should watch

We are dropping Youtube videos every few weeks, this was a fun one to dive into predictions of advertising. Let me know if you agree or disagree.

Did you know we had a podcast called In the Cutting Room. Episodes drop every Tuesday. Make sure to listen to it on Apple, Spotify, or Youtube.

Newsletters to Check Out

Eli's Newsletter

A newsletter that will make your customers love you. Read tips from the best DTC brands in the world.

Subscribe

Express Checkout

Weekly CPG news, trends, and analysis covering consumer brands, grocery stores, retail, and ecommerce updates.

Subscribe

Your Content Should Sell is a free a newsletter that gives you practicals about creating content for your brand. It’s a must-read among DTC marketers and business leaders.

Was this email forwarded to you? Subscribe here

For years, I've felt like I was alone on an island.

Between 2020 and 2024, there was an overwhelming chorus of voices all shouting the same message: "High-production ads don't convert. Keep it simple. Keep it low-budget."

This "rule" became so deeply entrenched in DTC marketing that questioning it felt almost heretical.

But I'm finally ready to say what I've known all along: This rule needs to be broken. And I'm no longer alone in thinking this.

The false dichotomy that's been hurting your performance

The anti-high-production sentiment largely came from people who had previously worked in traditional media. They observed expensive, glossy ads failing while scrappy, simple content sometimes converted well.

But there's a fundamental flaw in their analysis: They were comparing non-performance-focused high-production with performance-focused low-production.

Of course the high-production ads performed worse – they weren't created with performance in mind!

But what happens when you combine the visual impact of high-production, the conversion principles of performance marketing, and a deep understanding of digital platforms?

You get content that both stands out AND converts.

Why high-production is making a comeback in 2025

There are several reasons why more brands are rediscovering the power of high-production content:

1. The timeline is saturated with sameness

When every brand uses the same handful of creators with the same shooting style talking about products in the same way, nothing stands out. What was novel four years ago is now the default template.

Higher production quality immediately breaks through this visual monotony.

2. Premium visuals build instant trust

We live in a visual culture where production quality acts as an immediate trust signal. Higher production values can communicate brand legitimacy before a single word is spoken.

3. Creative capabilities expand dramatically

There are shots, angles, lighting setups, and creative concepts that simply aren't possible with a smartphone and a ring light. High-production unlocks creative approaches that otherwise wouldn't exist.

4. It drives creative diversity in your account

If all your ads look similar, you're limiting your algorithm's ability to find new customers. High-production content introduces welcome diversity into your creative mix.

The false economy of "cheap" creative

I often hear: "But high-production is too expensive and risky!"

Let's challenge that assumption:

• Yes, each high-production asset costs more upfront

• But the "cheap" alternative is producing dozens of nearly identical low-production assets

• When most of those don't work (and they won't), did you actually save money?

• If your conversion rate improves by just 15% with higher-quality assets, that can completely offset the additional cost

What looks like frugality can actually hurt you.

Finding the right balance

I'm not suggesting you abandon creator-style content entirely. The most successful brands in 2025 are finding the right mix:

• High-production hero assets that can be cut into multiple formats

• Mid-tier production with professional equipment but simpler setups

• Creator-style content for specific use cases and authenticity

The key is creative diversity – giving your algorithms different types of content to find different types of customers.

The competitive advantage most brands are missing

As the founder of Goodo Studios, I've seen firsthand how many content agencies have optimized their entire systems around creator content. Many simply don't know how to execute high-production shoots anymore.

This creates a massive opportunity for brands willing to break this "rule."

While everyone else is creating variations of the same low-production approach, you can stand out with strategically deployed high-production content that both captures attention and drives conversion.

How to incorporate high-production without breaking the bank

If you've been exclusively in the low-production world, here's how to start breaking this rule:

1. Begin with one high-production hero asset per quarter

2. Ensure your production team understands performance marketing principles

3. Plan to create multiple assets from each shoot

4. A/B test against your best-performing current assets

5. Analyze both immediate performance and longer-term brand metrics

Remember, the goal isn't high production for its own sake – it's using production quality strategically to break through the noise and drive better results.

I hope this was helpful. Let me know if you want me to address anything in the future for you. Just reply and I can write about it.

Make sure to check out the podcast.

Until then, keep creating!

Matthew Gattozzi

Get a free assessment with Goodo Studios

My team and I create hassle-free creatives for consumer brands. If you are thinking about getting content, let’s set up a chat.

Content you should watch

We are dropping Youtube videos every few weeks. We break down two productions we recently did. If you want to see the BTS of Goodo Studios, these are two good videos to watch about our work.

Did you know we had a podcast called In the Cutting Room. Episodes drop every Tuesday. Make sure to listen to it on Apple, Spotify, or Youtube.

Your Content Should Sell is a free a newsletter that gives you practicals about creating content for your brand. It’s a must-read among DTC marketers and business leaders.

Was this email forwarded to you? Subscribe here

I've analyzed hundreds of brands' strategies, and there's one mistake I see over and over again that's absolutely killing performance:

Too many brands are severely UNDER-INVESTING in content creation.

Here's what blows my mind.

We all know we live in a content-driven world.

Traditional media is no longer the attention powerhouse it once was. People aren't turning to TV for news, sports, or entertainment like they used to.

Where is the attention?

It's on social media.

Even when people watch Netflix shows, what do they do immediately after? They jump on social to see:

• Behind-the-scenes content

• Commentary about the show

• What other viewers think

The attention is there, yet brands are hesitant to fully invest in capturing it.

There are limits everywhere EXCEPT with content

Think about it:

• There's a limit to how many emails you can send before fatigue sets in

• There's a limit to how many text messages customers will tolerate

• There's a limit to how much mail you can send customers

But with content?

There's virtually NO LIMIT where there's "too much content."

More content means more surface area for opportunities - new customer cohorts, new audiences, and ultimately, more success.

Content isn't just ads

Remember that content extends far beyond the ad space:

• Influencer content

• Organic social

• Email newsletters

• Blog posts

• Podcasts

• Community engagement

The key comes down to consistently investing in getting more creative assets across ALL these channels.

The dangerous second-order effects

When brands don't invest enough in content, the negative effects cascade:

1. You can't scale your spend - without fresh content, ad fatigue kicks in faster

2. You lack content diversity - limiting your ability to speak to different audience segments

3. You miss new ways to communicate your product's value proposition

4. You can't properly run creative tests because you don't have enough variations

5. You sacrifice channel efficiencies - organic and influencer content feeds your paid channels

What's frustrating is seeing brands try to media buy their way out of these problems when the core issue is content investment.

Your P&L reveals your true priorities

Here's a hard truth: Your P&L should reflect what matters most to your business.

If you're spending more on software than on content creation, that's a serious problem.

Content should be a major line item on your P&L. You need to find efficiencies elsewhere so you can properly fund what actually drives customer acquisition and retention.

Success is a numbers game

Not every piece of content will work. That's the nature of the game. But if you have a consistent system of pushing out content week after week, you WILL find winning creative that drives performance.

The brands that win in 2025 will be the ones that understand this fundamental truth: content investment is the foundation of sustainable growth.

I hope this was helpful. Let me know if you want me to address anything in the future for you. Just reply and I can write about it.

Make sure to check out the podcast.

Until then, keep creating!

Matthew Gattozzi

Get a free assessment with Goodo Studios

My team and I create hassle-free creatives for consumer brands. If you are thinking about getting content, let’s set up a chat.

Content you should watch

We are dropping Youtube videos every few weeks, this was a fun one to dive into predictions of advertising. Let me know if you agree or disagree.

Did you know we had a podcast called In the Cutting Room. Episodes drop every Tuesday. Make sure to listen to it on Apple, Spotify, or Youtube.

Newsletters to Check Out

Eli's Newsletter

A newsletter that will make your customers love you. Read tips from the best DTC brands in the world.

Subscribe

Express Checkout

Weekly CPG news, trends, and analysis covering consumer brands, grocery stores, retail, and ecommerce updates.

Subscribe