How To Actually Build Your Meta Ads Creative Supply Chain transcript

Creative supply chain is the analogy that Taylor Holiday used a while ago about how creative work ought to happen for your meta ads account. That you should think about creative output. If you want to [music] produce great creative at scale for your meta ads account and really for any kind of creative work you're doing, you need to think about your creative output as a supply chain with a bunch of individual parts that all require a bunch of effort to get more efficiency across the supply chain.

That's how you create more ads [music] faster and better all the time. I have said that a lot of times in this podcast. You've heard that kind of idea from a number of people. So today on the show, what I want to do is talk about the details of the supply chain, the mechanics of the supply chain. And so we're doing that with Patrick Adoo, my business partner and COO at AJF Growth, who's been a huge part of that process for us, the critical part, and special guest AC Gardner, the CEO of Behind the Scenes Studio, which is a critical part of our process as well.

AC and Patrick represent together the creative supply chain. They represent the reason that AJF growth can grow despite my massive limitations in this kind of skills in in thinking. So, this is going to be a really good episode to talk about how people and technology and AI come together to create a bunch of ads that work at scale. Not just what kind of ads work strategy and script-wise, but like how do you actually turn those ideas into a whole bunch of ads fast at scale that are really good and that really perform.

I will not delay it anymore. Let's get into it with Patrick Adu and AC Gardner to talk about how to build your creative supply chain. [music] >> Thank you, Patrick. And thank you, Andrew, for having me here. >> Yes, AC, welcome. I'm so glad you're here. I This is the first time you've been on the show, right? >> I think it's the first time to do podcast guesting ever. >> Really? >> Oh my [laughter] goodness. Everybody, go get AC on your podcast.

She's She's the best. Uh, Patrick, I'm gonna wait to intro you much more because people know who you are and who who cares really. >> Yeah, forgive me. [laughter] >> No. Uh, AC, let's talk just for a second. You run Behind Scene Studio. Behind the Scen Studio is, uh, I always say like a design and edit agency based in the Philippines, helping brands specifically with their ads. You are from the Philippines originally.

You live in Colorado now. >> So, uh, so yeah. So, okay. So, what I I want to start with here is like a little bit I want to kind of get right into this creative supply chain thing and just talk a little bit about like what the different elements of this are. And the way I want to do that is by talking about first what happens in our process which is like somebody has an idea. Okay, we we build our whole process around the message.

Let's say I'm the growth strategist for a brand. I'm like, okay, this message is working in the ad account. Patrick, I want to send it to you kind of first basically to say like what do we do as the very first step in this process before it ever touches a human? What do we do to turn that message into an ad? >> So if we start with where the growth strategist identifies what the messages and the ads he wants to make. Then the next step is he or she puts together a bunch of notes in our creative supply chain that basically just kind of a long form just running list brain dump of all the messages he wants to focus on that week and the you know general idea of ad formats that that want to be focused on.

So then uh our creative strategist takes those notes which are in notion and plugs them into our Prometheus tool which right now lives inside of Claude and says hey here are the notes from the growth strategist. Let's go turn this into a brand plan. And so our brand plan is a basically long notion document that has a bunch of tables in it and lists out, you know, in great detail before we go actually do any work. Hey, these are all the ads we're going to make.

These are the messages of the ads. These are the formats, the frameworks, the influencers we're going to use to film them, etc., etc. All the details of the ads that we're going to make that week. So, we do this every week. It's our weekly brand plan. And that's kind of step one before we go actually make any ads. >> And that's so that whole brand plan is written in part. The reason we can put that much detail together without getting lost in the grunt work is because Prometheus doesn't just help us write ads.

Like I sometimes refer to it as an AI co-writer, but that's really underst it is because what it actually does helps you form the message helps you know we actually have other sort of connected tools to Prometheus to like identify messages in existing ads if we want to go expand on those etc. And then it turns those into a detailed brief for a designer or editor. Yeah. Which shows up in the brand plan. Is there anything else you want to say about sort of that side of things, what things we include in that brief, why that matters for building a creative supply chain? >> Yeah, I'll say why it matters.

And um uh it's because we need to we really need to focus every week on like taking a step back. Like I I basically wanted to force our strategists into really taking a step back and going what is it we need to actually do this week rather than just just kind of getting in the execution mindset and just hey let's go make a bunch of ads what what ads feel good okay we got to step back and make a plan for what we're going to do this week and this was really I think a missing piece that we had before like it's not like we weren't planning but it just we weren't doing it robust enough to go here's our production capacity here's what we think we can get done this week here are the brands 's priorities and like let's go make a plan before we actually go do that.

So, at first when I made this step in the process, I was concerned it was it was a little more human kind of interactive and I was concerned I was like forcing the growth strategist or the creative strategist to do too much and like it would really slow them down and it would be a slog and it make them hate their job. But by by you know eventually we got basically Prometheus to write it for us. Um, obviously with the growth strategist involvement that it's not I don't think you could tell me, Andrew, I don't think it's a a slog anymore.

I think it's it's probably an enjoyable part of the process that helps you orient yourself at the beginning of the week. >> Yeah, it's the opposite because I think this whole process start the opposite of a slog. The whole process starts with this idea of like, well, what ads should we make? And [clears throat] it's it's it's sneaky how important that is if you want to build a creative supply chain to like solve that part of the problem because otherwise and I think this happens a lot in creative work.

Otherwise what you end up with is is a bunch of creative people with like whether they're writers or designers or whatever with a completely blank canvas. And that's the worst place to be. It's like if somebody asks me to come to a conference and they say like hey we want you to speak you know speak on anything you want. It's like you you you know we tr we trust you. We trust you. you you you know e-commerce really well, speak on whatever topic you think is good.

It's like, well, I mean, I can do that, but actually like there's so much to talk about about growing e-commerce businesses that if you give me that blank of a canvas, then I like it's really hard for me to know where to start. I need to know who am I talking to and what is going to resonate with them and what's the state of, you know, and like and where is my best expertise and what are what am I well positioned to do?

What can I support with assets and like visual, you know, whatever. >> Um, what stories can I share? All those things. So, so, so being able to kind of start to narrow that and what that what the with the brand plan and and this is where AI is so helpful. AI is so good at taking a bunch of information and organizing it so that we can then like go, okay, this is now going to narrow the scope of all of that kind of work and do that.

So then that work then gets over to the creative to the to our creative strategist who actually goes towards as the lead of the execution. And that creative strategist for us is somebody provided by BTS built uh built in the Philippines. And this is where like people should know that at this point in the process, a lot of the takeover happens all with Filipino talents because they are so good and because what you have built AC is like an incredible extension of our team and will continue to do.

So AC talk about sort of like a little bit of sort of how we're organizing that team, who's going to who's going to get that brand plan from there and who are all of the different parts? Because I think there's probably more here than people would think. If I say design and edit studio, it sounds like what you have is just a bunch of graphic designers and editors, but there's a bunch more going on there than that. Can you describe sort of what our team structure is looking like and what you're providing with us and our clients and how many people are touching all of this creative? >> Definitely.

I think one thing that I'm super appreciative working with you and us you as our client is because you're very clear about the brief that you're giving to us. I always say garbage in garbage out. And if you're not feeding >> the artist with the right inspiration, with the right brief, then it's so hard for them to design, it's just like that black canvas will be very different from your vision. So the touch points are you have your creative strategist but if you do work with us and then our account manager is actually super um within your team ingrained in your team.

You have the account manager who reviews everything and anything that the files are accessible. Are the fields complete? What are the things that are needed? And that the creative strategist reviews that and understand what will be done to create from the brand plan that you guys have provided. And from there there is the touch points with is it going to be with a designer for the stills and graphics and sometimes multimedia is within um stills or graphics and then you have the video editing team and then from that video editing team they create that but you still have another layer of quality assurance and that quality assurance reviews three things.

Number one technical pixels, alignments, colors here and that how sharp is it and the likes. Number two after technical messaging and after messaging are you following that from the brief in itself and third from the eye of a customer. How is this? Um usually the third quality assurance is your account manager because >> she is a step behind or a step outside the process. Is this something that a customer will click.

So it's just and then from there it goes back that if the client has a feedback from the account manager and creative strategist then it goes back again to that loop of who of which asset are you working on you're working. >> So we go creative strategist turns the brief working with AI with Prometheus for us into actual ad copy. Then you take copy and and Prometheus also helps spit out some little edit notes here and there that the creative strategist can mess with and say we want this is the ideal kind of shot here, you know, something like that and and that that creative strategy doing a mix of sort of editing Prometheus, a little bit of writing, a little bit of extra direct direction from all that kind of stuff, making sure everything is going right.

That creative strategist hands it off before they go to a designer or editor that's moved on a board all in notion, right? Uh, so then that that person is is all there so you can see each each individual ad that then goes to somebody who whose job it is to like dole that out to the right person on the team, right? There's like a project manager in there somewhere, AC, is that right? >> There is a project manager somewhere in there.

Yes. To review everything and anything in between the handoff and definitely thank you for calling that out. Notion board handles that and then it goes straight to the designer and the editor. So it's just yes the project manager but project manager oversees that it's moving it is moving there is no delay because sometimes yes AI can do it everything is automated but you just have another eye to ensure that things are moving. >> Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So creative strategist designer editor QA happening somewhere in there. There's so many little things. Another thing people misunderstand is like there's like just little like you know copy treatments that we want and uh and design specifications about sort of like safe zones for meta ads or something like that you know that come into play. There's something about making sure that like uh you know for some brands there's like claims that we want to avoid making and things like that.

There's like and all of these things can get missed at different times and so there's sort of QA happening and then it goes back out to the client for for review process. Did we catch everything in there AC? >> Yes. Yes, we did. >> Great. Okay. So, where does this break on your side, AC? I'm curious when you see clients struggling. You called out one problem there. You said like sometimes briefs aren't detailed enough.

Is that like a common thing you see and and a reason that people have a hard time like sort of generating good quality creative scales that the briefs are just not not clear enough? >> Oh, super super. Because sometimes you have clients where in you have the creative freedom. You have the creative freedom. Go take a stab. >> All right. And then you create it and then when they saw it, you're just like, "No, not really.

I want a more polished look. Oh no, not really. I want it more organic and here and there. So, it's very very important for us to know, well, first of all, do you want it to be native? Do you want it to be a before and after? Do you want to be a call out for um benefits? Do you want it to be a an aspirational polished or what direction and what emotion do you want it to evoke to your customers when they're doing that?

And sometimes it's just like when you say you have the creative freedom that is similar to that black canvas that's just like it can go anywhere and everywhere and you'll be surprised that actually they know what they want >> the moment they see a sample. >> I have uh had this conversation with a lot of clients. I think it's a very common problem. Patrick, I'm actually curious if you ever got this feedback when you ran a brand um or if you ever ran into this where you say to somebody on the creative side of things like, "Hey, yeah, you know, I trust you.

You can do what you want." But then, but then it comes back and you say like, "Oh, that doesn't meet brand standards or something like that." And I have I think this is actually a really big deal, especially with working with overseas talent. So, two things happen. First of all, every creative relationship I've ever seen takes some time. One of the things that can go wrong is that like two, three months into this process, you start handing a client creative or let's say two, three weeks into this process, you start handing a client creative and they go, "You guys just are not getting it.

You're not, you know, this is not meeting the kind of things that we would do. We would never post that kind of creative." And they get really discouraged, disappointed, and they even will start saying, you know, giving feedback. You guys just aren't good enough or whatever. And I always stop people when that happens and say, "Hold on. What I need you to do is get as specific when you say this doesn't meet brand standards." I need you to be as specific as you possibly can.

Are there words that we used that you wouldn't use? Is it a design style? Is it an edit treatment or whatever? And I am telling you so much of the time the problem even in so far as it is a problem. Like the problem is on the brand's side. And uh and it can be solved as long as you can just have a feedback loop and and problem is sometimes even the wrong word. It's not even really a problem. It's just a matter of like it just takes some time.

It just takes a few rounds of feedback those early days and then everybody kind of gets it. And then I think the thing that sometimes happens is particularly with overseas talent, people will kind of come into it and go like overseas equals not as good as the US. That's kind of like this preconceived notion people have. And so then when something comes back that doesn't meet their their standards, they immediately equate it to that.

I don't know. I don't know if I have ever seen a video editor from the Philippines be able to accomplish this. That's I don't know this designer who's who's uh who's in Eastern Europe or whatever, you know, like they that's they're just not as good, you know. And it's like, wait a minute. I have seen a lot of work from Filipino designers and editors that has been extremely good and I know the problem is not that they can't edit a video.

The it's just that you have to you just it's just a creative relationship. You have to give time and so so much of this which which comes back to you at the process level so much of this creative problem comes in at the level of briefing clarity of expectations even even a layer before that for brands like a lot of brands just need to do more work to say like what are my brand standards? are my brand standards actually just a few ideas that live in my head as the founder which is actually what a lot of brands like quote unquote brand standards are uh they're not really brand standards at all but this is where like the detail kind of work of getting clear about that >> you know really really matters Patrick I you know did you experience this on the brand side do do you remember this back and forth or or was that not really something you struggle with >> I mean I don't remember the back and forth I'm sure plenty of agencies that work for me felt it but I I can very you know I can raise my hand and say guilty that the brand standards were whatever lived in my head, you know, by the way, at that moment in time, you know, that may have been different from the last time we t we spoke.

And so, I see I actually see this as a really >> a really important function that we provide >> um through our services is we we sit down and we define, okay, here's what we think the brand standards are and we're going to go execute to those. And I I think I think that's a really important thing we do, which is like really try hard to nail them down in a way that maybe maybe the client doesn't even understand or know or have any idea of.

So yeah, I I can completely relate to that on the brand side and on the agency side. And I think one thing to add there is that it's super important aside from the briefs too knowing what are your aspirational brands because yes they they have a brand style guide but they have their personal bias of what kind of ads they personally like and when they personally like it it's just like sometimes it's not aligned with their brand style guide and then they wanted it's like that's why it's so important when you ask them and we ask the clients what are your aspirational brands What are the brands that also your competitors are doing and what are the ads that you really don't like?

You just don't like it. So that you already have what's good and what's not and you have some guard rails right there. >> Yeah. The truth is that the more people you have touching like the path to creating scale here is getting a a larger team doing more work like in terms of scaled out at some point no matter how much AI helps it it's not doing all of the creative work for you and so if you want to create a lot of output and this even includes if you want to add additional agencies beyond BTS or beyond AF growth or something like that you know uh which which I encourage for some of our clients yes get get more agencies involved get something like that the more people are touching your creative work the better You have to be about clarifying these things in written documented form that actually travels through all of the organizations.

Otherwise, it will never it will never satisfy. You will never get people being able to operate on their own. And that's the thing you need. The thing you need is a bunch of smart people using their talent and deploying it into your business at all of these different levels. Design, edits, writing, you know, briefing, all of these different things. And so, you've got to get clear about that stuff for any of this stuff to work.

If you are thinking about hiring in the Philippines as quote unquote cheap labor, or if you think about hiring in the Philippines as $5 an hour virtual assistants and that's it, you are badly missing out on the opportunity of what that country of some 90 million people can bring to your business. There are amazing employees across the [music] Philippines who are ready to do great work in your e-commerce business who you can hire from the top of hiring markets in the Philippines and more staffing can get you access to them specifically for your e-commerce business.

The reason more staffing can do that is because Moore, which is a sister company by the way, a behind the scenes studio whose CEO AC Gardener is on this episode. Okay, Moore was built off of a US-based e-commerce business and they built a whole bunch that business originally built a whole bunch of their team in the Philippines. They did great work there and that opened the eyes of a combination of Moors founders in the Philippines and in the US to say we should bring this same skill set to a bunch of different e-commerce businesses.

If you know me, you know that I love the beauty of e-commerce businesses scaling with a very low opex as a percentage of revenue. And one of the ways you can lean into that more is not only to be disciplined about how much you hire, but also to hire at lower rates by hiring in the Philippines. And what I mean by lower rates, not underpaying people and not just $5 an hour assistance. What I mean is going and hiring great manager, director, executive level talent in your business across supply chain, across operations, across advertising, [music] graphic design, video editing, all of it.

Find those people and be able to go get really, really good quality people at a much lower price than it would cost to acquire those [music] to get those same people to work in your business in the US. That's what I mean. So, more staffing can connect you to those people. They're really awesome. I am building all of my businesses with help from more staffing. I think you should do the same thing. Go to morestaffing.co/af morestaffing.co/ /af talk to them about what is possible in your business today.

I want to actually talk about another element of this which is the idea of like templatization uh and like sort of format libraries. Um >> so I I just looked we have right now in our format library Patrick we have 18 different formats. Now, that kind of undersells the true number of different kinds of ads that we have, but they're just like a bunch of styles because we actually have within those formats different copy framing and storytelling devices and stuff like that.

You know, long form explainer is one of those. >> I mean, long form explainer is actually like a million different things, right? So, like um but but those are all those million things are defined right now. There's probably, you know, I don't know 10 or 15 different versions of long form explainers that we that we sort of use within that within that framework. Can you talk a little bit about uh Pat start with you Patrick and then I I want to kick this to you as well AC.

Can you talk about a little bit about sort of the building of a format library and what role that plays in the process? >> Yeah. Well, it really started with us going okay how do we train Prometheus on what these formats are and that's where where it started. Um because Prometheus needs to know what format he's creating ads in uh before he's going to brief them or script them. So that's where it started and then then it turned into oh well now we got to really clearly communicate to our editors what's expected when it comes to when we're asking them to do this format.

So, um I mean it all makes complete sense and sounds kind of simple saying it out loud, but I think one of the um unique things we've done is we've made it a like a critical part of our workflow that like every single ad we make links back to a format in our library that you mentioned and or a framework in our library that you mentioned. And I don't know, I think that's really unique. And and by the way, you're you're always adding new formats, which I think is really fantastic.

Um it's we've basically nailed the workflow to where it's easy. It's it's like, you know, it's almost like this where we go, hey, that's a new ad we want to make, upload it to Marius, and now basically, you know, the team isn't fully trained on it, but they know how to get trained on it when they're briefed. So anyways, I don't know if that answers >> just to give people a it does just to give people a sense of what I mean by format here.

I'm just gonna read some names of some of our formats that we use and that and and I I won't even show any examples of them because it's always hard with like uh with other brands and stuff that we don't necessarily have permission to show, but you I think people will hear what I mean. So there's the there's like the long form explainer, like I said, there's also the midform and short form explainer. There's the standard UGC video, there's the social comment overlay video, there's the socially native still long form, there's the socially native still short form, there's the pretty texton still, there's the status update.

There's like all of these different and those are all referencing things and then each one of those has a notion card associated with it with a positive example of why it works with a bunch of dos and don'ts and all of these things so that any designer or editor can do that. And you said you mentioned Patrick that I'm kind of adding new ones. This is actually kind of one of the things I see as a main job of mine as a sort of like strategic lead at AJF Growth is it's like I'm I am a hunter in the jungle combing through the Amazon >> combing through the Amazon of of Instagram >> and and looking to try to spot and name new species of ads and identify that genus and species.

Uh, I'm looking for the for the genes and species and I'm trying to describe it and say, "Oh, a pretty text only still has these features and these characteristics and um I should come up with a little Latin name for all of these, Patrick." Um, but [laughter] like but but yeah, that's the way I think about it. And then I want to I want to name it and identify it and then pass it to Patrick and say, "Here's what I think makes this good and bad." And pull that in.

And I actually think it matters a lot. And then I I want to keep getting other people from my team doing this who are going to have very different Instagram feeds than me. I actually had a friend at CTC who had a separate like sort of like kind of burner Instagram account, but it really wasn't a burner account the way people mean it. It was just a separate thing where he registered himself as a female of a very different age than he was and then started following a bunch of accounts just entirely to try to get that algorithm in that account to give him different kinds of content that he got on his main account so that he could do this same kind of work, you know.

Um, and and I I think that's like an important part of this as well. What do you say, Patrick? >> Well, I think this is a really fascinating topic. Like, basically what you're saying is we we approach creative from first principles. And it's it's completely different from how like I used to approach things when I was a brand owner or I could I would see my team do it. And what I'm constantly seeing in my X feed, which is new like tools that allow you to go copy a competitor's ad and like make it in your style.

We always used to at my old brand, we'd sit around going, um, hey, I saw this ad. Let's go make an ad like this one from this person. Like, every I saw this. >> Yeah. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but the we were chasing what the other Brad brand was doing rather than reasoning from first principles, which is, hey, I saw this ad. What is it about this ad that makes it a really good ad? And breaking it down into what you're doing, which is a format.

Okay. Well, this is a, you know, pretty texton still, you know, and so now we're going to templatize that format instead of like every week chasing some other brand's ad, you know, we're learning. We're going, "Oh, that's actually a great ad. I'm going to steal that one." And we're we're kind of pulling the framework and we're putting it in the library. So, we're not doing this like we're going to just copy other ads all the time.

We're we're like ingesting them into the matrix and like, "Oh, I know kung fu now." And >> trying to get very clear about what we like about the ad. And by the way, often they are not actually ads. They're organic posts that uh that I just see a format. And what I'm looking for when I look for those is formats that are easily replicable. So if it's like a if it's a Nike video, like I'm not sending it to this because I just know we're not going to be able to make that.

But I'm looking for things that are different than other stuff we have that we could replicate really really easily. And that would be like a simple part of that because the more of those we can do then the more our designers and editors can work within constraints like I said and they don't have a blank canvas and then they can say it's not just a script and then like go make it. It's like okay how can we do it within these kinds of things and try to give as much clarity as possible. the the net effect of that over time also is the expansion of creative variety in the account because the more of these kinds of things you can create the more you can do this and every one of those really the format is just the clothing on the ad like the yeah this is analog is breaking really fast but like the person is the message right the main the main the main thing that you're bringing along but then you can put that message in a bunch of different clothes and the different clothes are the different formats right and so um and so the message is still the thing that we start with that's the true first principle but then but them by adding these formats.

And what that allows us to do because the point here is create a supply chain is to enhance those to designers and editors and allow them to work quickly because now they know when we say do this theoretically they can move that fast. So AC I want to kick back to you. >> Yeah. >> Um when when when we send over these different formats um can you just talk at all about sort of first of all I'm like anything you have to say about sort of how that allows designers and editors to work.

But secondly I'm also curious we've actually never talked about this and so there's no right answer here. I'm I'm uh happy to do this or not. Uh how many of those you're stealing for non AJF growth clients and using elsewhere? [laughter] >> I hope the answer is a lot. For the record, I hope you're doing this all the time. Okay, great. Good. I want you to >> a lot. A lot lot. >> One thing is that it's like if we're using the creative supply chain, right?

It's like the formats are like the molds. It's like you have different molds that you can use variety of form. That's such a good analogy. Just like you have different molds that when the designer is thinking about it, oh I know exactly these are media press design, native ads, comparison ads or here and there. It allows them to envision beyond that mold that not only they do they have to think about what kind of format is this to begin with.

You already have the format that they that they can expand the idea from. So that is super important for us and I think more than anything when the team sees the format it's super super helpful they have the mold and they have the lens to look that ad from and it makes the creation faster because you already have guard rails for them >> and you just said the magic words right which is faster because that's the point of working on the supply chain.

The point of the supply chain is that you take formats that you think work so they have to be good. The point isn't just fast and the point is not just cheap, but it it has to be good. And so you have to take formats that work and you have to have a way to isolate good messages. But when you do that now, the mold allows you to go faster and allows you to create more output. And what we actually do a lot of is instead of iterating individual concepts, right?

We'll take, you know, one of these formats with one message and we don't just change the hook on the message. We redesign it three different ways. So it'll be like within one format, but it'll be different visuals, different copy because we have the AI tool that can help write a lot of copy fast. And now you've got two or three versions of the concept. And it's like quote unquote versions, but it's really more than iterations.

It's like different colors, different core imagery, different copy, all around the same message within the same format. And again, that allows you to create variety at scale. Uh so that you can take one concept and actually create variety within that. And then meta doesn't cohort your ads and sort of, you know, all those kind of things. And so now you create a bunch more volume. Go ahead. >> And I think that is one thing that is super important for every artist and editors.

Is this 70% different from the other? Because we have that rule that Andromeda if it's less than 70% it will be cohorted as one. So they already have that layer also that when they do their initial QA is that is the 70% different from the other and then if it's not okay this won't pass. They already have that lens to review from. >> Yeah that's right. And that's that's part of the deal here, right? Is that is that as many people have pointed out, including Meta themselves, if ads look too similar, its internal system will not view them as different ads.

And so if the ads are too similar, this is this is the reason we got away from iterations because if the ads are too similar seeming, Meta will not even recognize them as different ads. And therefore, your work of iterating is literally useless. Meta will just sort of suppress one of them randomly. You know, it's not even it's not making a educated choice. It just randomly suppresses one of the ads. So yes, you have to find a way which which creates a problem for for the creative supply chain, right?

Because now you have to create a high volume but also a bunch of distinction, a bunch of variety within that volume. It's a lot easier to create a high volume if you can just change the hook six times, you know, or change the headline on the still image six times. That's really fast. And you can make hundreds of ads. I I made an ad I made an episode a long time ago of the podcast called like how I turned one idea into 300 ads.

And I think I deleted it at some point. I think I took it down because it's no longer relevant. Um Oh, and also don't worry, nobody was watching or listening to it anymore anyway. It was really old. But for a while, I believed in it and and there's still some core principles there, but eventually it was like actually this doesn't work this way anymore. So that so that the supply chain has to allow designers and editors to to be able to move quickly within formats they know and have different approaches.

What were you going to say? So it's like because that people are trained with the supply chain mindset that mostly most ad companies are ad agencies are also handled by designers themselves. But I think what makes BTS different is because of this creative supply chain. I have supply chain background. So whenever I discuss it with them to imagine >> imagine like fastmoving consumer goods. You have a shampoo as your number one um as your umbrella.

Then you have different SKs of different formats and different um packaging, different color, different flavors, different scents, different this but they know that they're working for a shampoo. similarly for ours. It's like they have a one messaging with different flavors, different scents, different packaging, different sizes, different this that really makes them think about one idea into multiple aspects. And then and then with different molds that you can ship it faster >> and volume and the >> new sponsor and it's one I'm super excited about.

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And when you're trying to run prospecting ads with different economics than your retention ads, it's so frustrating because some amount of your spend is always going towards retention efforts because you're you're targeting existing customers even when you're not trying to even when you're trying to exclude them. Everybody's experienced this problem on Meta and for that matter across other ad platforms as well. And Wastenot [music] has solved it.

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By every possible measure that I could see, this solved it completely. We measured this down to the UTM lastclick basis. I've seen other people measure it with thirdparty attribution tools, new to brand customers, etc. materially more spend was going to new customers and to people [music] who had not actually bought from the brand before after installing Wastenot because Wastenot allows you with their software to actually exclude existing customers from your ad targeting campaigns.

That is the promise of what Wastistnot allows you to do. They allow you to do it across platforms and you should check it out for yourself. [music] If you have tried very hard to get exclusions to work properly in your business, you should go to wastenot.io. Look into it. I'm telling you, it worked for me. I know it beyond a shadow of a doubt. I think it will work for you as well. Go check it out today. wasten.io waste.io.

[music] The link for that is in the show notes as well. Go check it out today. Do the designers and editors AC give any feedback ever that they don't like feeling that constrained? Like do because this is something I worry about sometimes with creative people is like are they feeling like uh this is boring and repetitive work like like working on an assembly line or something like that. Uh, do you ever get that? >> So, so far no.

And I think because they know that they got to be they need to be supported with that volume because the name of the game is velocity, speed and volume. >> And some clients don't have Prometheus because it's like we don't have Prometheus for everybody else. >> So, we use Adn Nova. With Adnova.ai AI is that they see the themes, they see the ad spend and the likes that when a designer, all designers by the way on BTS know how to read the numbers, what's getting the ad spend, what is getting the um what row is this?

What is it's like the analytics from meta is included and ad Nova that they can see. It's like oh it's not getting the ads Spencer. It's just like it's not that it's not good. It's just like well it does not pass with algorithm and meta things like that. So to them even if it's like boring they know that they are competing not only with the design or pretty designs they know there's another ma that has to pass that ad that it's either be you become friends with it or you're going to repel it.

So yeah, so far >> great. >> Um, I want to talk I want to switch over a little bit towards what metrics we're using now to sort of think about measuring the supply chain and all of that. I'm I did an episode a while not that long ago about my my favorite creative metric. By the way, I also wanted uh to mention I I'm going to link an episode I recently did about sort of creative formatting. This idea of like a template library.

Um it's a shorter episode uh especially by the standards of AF or of the inter affairs podcast which often is arguably verbose. Um uh the but it's a short episode I did about the problem of creative FOMO which I actually think is one of the things that really holds people back from creative is that like one thing I love about the template library idea is it allows you to not only have some constraints in the creative process but it also allows you to get better at some things by by doing them more.

So by by sort of limiting the number of things you're working on, you you go like, oh, we're getting now like I have I have brands I have editors who just pump out two and three minute long form explainer videos, you know, five minute videos even and they are great every time because now they've made those formats within these certain things. They know what we're looking for on hooks and stuff every time and and because they've had this ability to effort this kind of style or or again a whole bunch of these different formats.

So by replicating this format over and over, seeing what works, seeing what spends, etc., you actually get better at it. And if you are constantly doing the thing Patrick described earlier, which is looking at all these ads that are out there and going like, "Oh, I want to copy this brand's thing or whatever, you're actually never going to develop that skill set within a lower uh within sort of some frame some formats that you can really do well." So anyway, I I put a whole episode into that.

You should listen, you should watch that. I think it's sort of a sneaky important part of the creative process is is sort of resisting resisting FOMO. But I want to I want to um uh head over to sort of uh the metrics. I did another episode about FPAR, this metric that I love, first pass approval rate. The idea that the idea that like one of the things that really clogs up creative machines is approvals and revisions.

And and so if you can increase your your first pass approval rate, you're likely to to experience the value of that at the level of ad spend going up because you're going to get more ads through the machine faster by by having less revisions. So I'm just curious AC for you to talk about sort of where the clogs in the machine are and what you're doing to measure that on the people's side to sort of um unclog uh the supply chain. >> Definitely.

So one of the things is that I have mentioned earlier that our artists are knowledgeable with metrics of their thumb, their spend, their row was their click to purchase and the likes because they need to know because they have to increase their FAR or the first pass approval rate. From their first pass approval rate at any given point of time, each designer they know that it has to be at least 90%. they only have a room for 10% provision rate.

That is a big KPI for all designer across the board. So you have your first pass approval rate and then the client approval rate. So what are those? So every designer has a dashboard in terms of seeing what's the utilization and then from the utilization what is the complexity is it high, medium, low and then from there too what is your F bar? If your F bar is low, then you check where is it breaking? Is it because of the you as a designer miss?

It's like it's because we missed this. We didn't have the assets yet. We did not have the right inspirations. We did not have a clear brief. So, it's just like usually when your FR is low, it's not because the designer is not good enough. It's just that we didn't have the right brief to start it with. >> Do you know what our FPAR is as AJF Growth like or how ours compared to your other clients? Uh I I'm like you don't have to have the exact number across the board, but are we doing well at this AC or do we need to get better here? >> I think our FAR when we started was really low.

Our F bar was really low in the first three months. I know that. >> Was that because of me? that I >> it is because we're learning the brand >> and that's why when we are on boarding I cannot get a client that okay we have to do 10,000 10,000 ads yeah >> the first month will always be 54 ads 54 ads and we need to have an FR of 90% from there our F bar with you right now is at least 90% because we know already what you want what you don't want and with Prometheus it's very very clear but for other clients to start FAR passing grade is 80% but has to be higher than that after a while. >> Yeah. >> After two months of onboarding >> and do you think that's because of the details that Prometheus provides that like essentially there's so much >> clarity at the brief level?

Is that is that the main thing that's happening there or is it about longerterm client relationships? Like >> yeah, I'm just curious. Yeah, >> I think it's both because sometimes because the FAR increases when your brief is clear and when your feedback is clear and over time as a client and as a client and as a vendor is that you will realize through the ways of how to provide feedback that will click the designer. >> So it's just like yes it is client relationship and um brief in the very beginning.

So it's just like from Yeah. Whatever. >> Patrick Yeah. Yeah. Patrick on our side of things at AJF growth of what we're building whether it's notion boards or Prometheus or whatever else. What am I not thinking of that you have built or that has been an important part as far as you see it of like creating so much more velocity over time. I mean, it could be something as simple as our Slack approval system, which has actually been really helpful because a bunch of volume comes out now and now we have an automated way to kick every new ad into Slack with a very clear approval process. >> Like what what are the other kind of elements of this that are that make the whole thing run smoothly that maybe I'm not thinking about?

Yeah, it's um it's devious in its simplicity, but like I really tried to apply I I am not like a full-on operations engineer, but I have an operations engineering background with like green belt, you know, and lean six sigma. And if you don't know what any of that is, it's just like, you know, the Japanese way of like making an automotive supply chain work quickly. And so like I came in and really did a bunch of just hacking away of like um just all of this just kind of I'll just say nonsense, you know?

It's like one example like there would be you know there were some there were a lot of kind of just internal practices like you know um I'd find an ad concept that had been stuck for like 30 days and hadn't moved and then people people would be like yeah it's okay we can leave it there. And it's like no we cannot leave it there. Like we you know the the point of a supply chain is to move things through the supply chain.

They cannot get stuck. Like that's like that's like rule number one. Like >> when you say people say that you mean Andrew Andrew would say [laughter] >> no no no I I am people. You're not the only one. Actually you're not the only one. Uh you weren't the first name that came to mind. >> But um and I'm not I'm not complaining but it's like this kind of organizational inertia that we've gotten through and we're just phenomenal at it now. just like cranking stuff through and automations, you know, approval automation.

So, let me just say a few things. So, like in our pipeline, if anything doesn't move after x number of days, it gets automatically marked dead. You know, I'm not going to wait for you to go through and like prune everything. Um, once a concept is pushed to uh internal review, you know, basically all you have to do is press review or approve or disapprove. This was like a huge deal to set up, but like you know you Andrew or whatever press approve, it gets immediately sent to Slack to the client with a link to the to the frame and a link to the notion and then they can give an emoji approval yes or no based on what they say.

It goes back. We didn't even talk about re-edits. there's a re-edit process, you know, that it goes back through and basically just kind of automating and making all of these things just kind of putting grease on the wheels to where just things aren't aren't like just, you know, getting stuck or what we don't spend time wondering like what's the process here? What's what's like what's the status here? So just like just without going into any more details like take a real opera like I love the word supply chain take a real operations engineering approach to this pipeline and go where are things getting stuck and just solving every single problem one by one till you get to the point we are now where it just it just works.

There's tons of stuff we can improve but it's just working now. >> Yeah. >> Can we talk about the approval process a little bit because I actually think this is a sneaky clever thing. So right now what happens when it when an ad goes through or is designed and edited internally approved >> the creative strategist uh writes the ad and then at the end of the process the creative strategist also reviews the final output and first can give some internal approvals or not but then let's say they say yes okay that's all good then they kick it out to notion card that automatically kicks it into slack and slack has a link to frame where which we use frame.io We use that for all of the sort of like you know timestamp reviews and and comments that clients want to leave about ads and videos. 30 seconds in that's the wrong shot and the very easily the client can can say okay 30 seconds and and internally we can do that too. >> There's approval instructions linked to every single one of them.

And I think something beautiful uh is that within like a day or two I what I don't remember is it one day Patrick that the client has to approve it and if the client doesn't approve it >> then and we tell the client this then we're just going to push it live and yeah >> and the client might not get to it and of course what we can always do is we can kill it if the ad shows up in somebody's feed and they don't like it and they don't remember approving it.

No problem. We just turn it off and say here's where it was. It's labeled in in Ads Manager. We can we can go right back to the notion card or whatever and say what didn't you like about it. do you want an edit or do you want it to die or whatever. But that approval process where there's just a Slack channel where the whole point is automations and then there can actually be some replies and comments on an individual ad in Slack is like really helpful.

It's the best way I've ever seen anybody do this actually. It's like really really small thing but like it's a real part of the process when you're dealing with a bunch of people. It really helps, you know. >> Yeah. And when you have different clients like we have one client who has never reviewed ever a single ad that we've ever put out and we have other clients that literally go through each one one by one and approve or deny them. and we love them both.

Like they're both amazing clients. It's not like there's not a judgment call there, but we want to be flexible enough to be able to serve both of them. So for the one that never reviews them, his autom we still send him the review. We say if you want to look at it, here's a look at it. But you know, it's going to get approved tonight at midnight anyways automatically. So like he's never the bottleneck his name. I'm tempted to say his name, but [laughter] I don't I think he I think I I just in case he doesn't like but that's okay. >> Well, I I love that.

I love that he's like I don't care. You're doing great. like, you know, we, you know, frankly, we'd love to get there with all of our clients. You know, it's like, I don't need to look at what you're doing. I trust you. Um, >> and that is kind of what happens over time. And I'm sure you guys see this too, AC, with other clients where like after you do the sort of give a lot of feedback early on, what that actually creates in the long run is a whole bunch of trust.

And then eventually the feedback gets >> quicker and looser and all that kind of stuff. Being willing to put in the time on the front end is what creates that relationship in the long term in my experience. >> And I think that's also that feedback repository. It's just like that feedback repository is within also the brief. It's like they know the guard I I keep on saying guardrails because it really allows them to see it.

It really allows them to remember things because sometimes they might forget >> but that's where QA comes in as well. Whenever you do the QA you check technical messaging >> and for customer sake. So super important for that process. >> All right. Uh this is this has been exactly what I wanted this conversation to be. I appreciate it so much. What I really what I told Patrick and AC before this conversation started was I want people to be really helped by the details of this.

I want them it's very easy to say build a creative supply chain. It's much harder to say what are all the actual details that are going into it. Where are all the places it gets stuck? Where are the moles breaking? All that kind of stuff. So I just want to try to bring some insight into that as people are trying to build this on their own. So I want that to happen. I also want you to hear how hard it is and how much work and how much time and effort is going on.

This is basically AC and Patrick's full-time job. It's a large part of what both of them are doing all the time, building these things out or somebody on one of the on AC's team if it's not her doing all of it, you know, she's got to sell and all that stuff, too. But uh but uh but all of those things are happening. So uh so I want you to hear that in part because I have this theory that people think about their creative work and they go like, "Oh man, right now I get I get part of this person's time.

I'm going to in-house it and I'm going to get all of somebody's time and that's going to give me a bunch more output." And I think you're wrong. I think like you are not actually going to be able to replicate what we are accomplishing here and what you should do instead is work with great people who who do this. So um so uh because it's so much effort to get this right at every single level of the process from strategy to the hunting through the Instagram jungles to labeling formats to getting those formats into an AI coowriter and then having the AI coowriter actually be something that's an AI briefer and then having the AI briefer publish those things into notion and having the notion it's a huge amount of work before you even talk to all all of these people um to you know uh who are you're actually getting the humans and finding them and putting them on the team and all this kind of stuff.

So, um, you two, uh, have been, um, insane people to work with in this process because it's such a skill set that I don't have and so I'm I'm so grateful for it. So, a few things. First of all, you should subscribe wherever you're watching or listening. If you made it this long in this show, you're going to like my future episodes. Subscribe. Secondly, I referenced a couple of episodes in as I was talking of previous things.

One about FPAR. If you don't know what that is, one about sort of ad formats and and all of that. Both of those are linked in the show notes. The third, if you want to work with AJF Growth on the full suite of services that we do, you can go to afgrowth.com and check that out. But you should also consider working with behindthe-scenes studio if what you need is design and edit extensions of your team who can bring this process to your team.

You don't you've got media buying, you've got forecasting, you've got all the stuff that that we also bring. You just want that kind of element of things. Behind the scenes studio is awesome and I gladly recommend them. I recommended them to a coaching client of mine just the other day who wanted to hire us and I said, "You actually don't want us. you want BTS because they're going to give you part of that. So go to btsstudio.co, get on a call with AC, talk about what you are looking for and what you need and see if maybe what they offer is the right solution to you.

AC, do you want to give an email address in case people just want to email you directly or something like that? >> Yes, it's acebtstudio.com and we're gonna link it also in the show notes. >> Yes. Oh yeah. Oh yeah, all those links are in the show notes as always, of course. AC Patrick, thank you guys very much. Thank you, Andrew. Thank you, Patrick. >> See you, AC. >> See you. [music] >> Okay, I hope that was helpful for you.

Do go check out behindthescenes studio atbtsstudio.co. Do go to afgrowth.com, fill out the intake form, tell me a little bit about your business, and I would love to see if we are the right fit to work with you. And of course, email me podcastfgrowth.com. And while you're doing those things, don't forget to subscribe wherever you're watching or listening. I've got all kinds of great episodes coming up that you should check out and you're not going to want to miss.

Big thanks to Morstaffing uh for sponsoring this episode. Staffing.com/af to get connected to incredible Filipino talent across your business, not just in the design and edit side of things, not just as an agency specifically focused on meta ads, but really across the business. They're awesome. [music] And of course, Wastistnot, new sponsor, like I mentioned, wasten.io. Get proper exclusions [music] in your ads. Finally.

Finally, there's a way to do it. Uh thanks so much for watching or listening. I will see you next