Creative Strategy Is Dead (Here’s What Actually Works in 2026)

[00:00:00] Taylor Holiday: Historically, there has been this sequence where there is a loop that goes from some ideation based on historical performance.

So you would sort of upload an account, analyze all the ads that ever were, find the best ones, use that to inform some sort of inspiration about what you should then make in the future. Write briefs. Develop some new batch of ads, analyze the results in a tool using metrics like hook grade or CTR or whatever your favorite creative metric is.

Use that to inform net new ideation and rehash and go on this sort of like cycle. And that whole process is just a fugazi, like it's just there. There, it's some of the worst. Thought work in the world

[00:00:53] Richard Gaffin: Hey folks. Welcome to the Ecommerce Playbook Podcast. I'm your host, Richard Gaffin, Director of Digital Product Strategy here at Common Thread Collective. And I'm joined as I am not so frequently joined anymore by our CEO Mr. Taylor Holiday. Taylor, what's going on, man?

[00:01:08] Taylor Holiday: Oh, you know, just raging against the machine this morning, Richard. 

[00:01:12] Richard Gaffin: That's right. 

[00:01:12] Taylor Holiday: trying to get all of our tech to work.

[00:01:14] Richard Gaffin: I know it's one of those things. We are a digital marketing company. You'd think we'd have this figured out by now,

but 

[00:01:19] Taylor Holiday: that gives, that gives you no it competency, I'll tell you 

[00:01:21] Richard Gaffin: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, there's a really, like a physician healed thyself sort of thing that goes on, I think on our side with a lot of this stuff. But anyway, we're sitting here today.

Thinking through again, obviously it's still January, thinking about 2026. And, and one thing that we wanted to chat about a little bit today was creative and particularly what creative looks like here in 2026. I know Taylor has been sort of communicating publicly recently this idea that creative strategy is dead, or at least that's been a conversation that's been had, and, so I think we wanna dig a little bit into a, what that means, and then b, what our system is for replacing kind of the old way of doing things. So Taylor, why don't you set up for us, for us a little bit this kind of concept of, or, or maybe maybe the the sort of creative strategy is dead headline.

Maybe dig into that a little bit and then kind of we'll get into our system. Mm-hmm.

[00:02:10] Taylor Holiday: Yeah, so I think this term obvi, like many in our industry, has so many meanings that it's kind of devoid of meaning in its ambiguity. But I really mean by this. Idea is that historically there has been this sequence where there is a loop that goes from some ideation based on historical performance.

So you would sort of upload an account, analyze all the ads that ever were, find the best ones, use that to inform some sort of inspiration about what you should then make in the future. Write briefs. Develop some new batch of ads, analyze the results in a tool using metrics like hook grade or CTR or whatever your favorite creative metric is.

Use that to inform net new ideation and rehash and go on this sort of like cycle. And that whole process is just a fugazi, like it's just there. There, it's some of the worst. Thought work in the world that happens at that layer of things. There's also inserted into that sequence some sort of subjective gating around brand controlled by somebody about what's allowed through the funnel under some pre-existing set of definitions around color, font style tone.

Aesthetic that go into brand standards. And so it has to pass through that gating process and it tends to be slow and not deeply rooted in any sort of thoughtful. Data interpretation. And so what I found for us, and, and this has been a long quest, CTC has participated in creative in every imaginable form factor.

We have run a studio, we've done TV style level production for commercials and big brand videos and stories and influencer contents and big sets. We used to have a huge studio in our office to iterative graphic design to motion graphics department at one point to. So, we've, we've participated in every portion of this.

So when I, when I criticize it, I wanna be clear that I'm criticizing ourselves as much as anything like we, we have been complicit in every version of this process. And what I wanna sort of focus on today is where I think I see the whole industry of this role, this creative strategist role. Moving towards what I've referred to more as like this creative supply chain manager.

And in our world, we're actually seeing this skill converge into the growth strategy expectation, where I don't actually think that these are distinct people in a new world. I think they're collapsing into a singular focus, and it happens through a set of tooling. And then there's this sort of still production.

Element, which is like, how do the end assets get made? That's still a problem to be solved. And I'll talk a little bit about how we solve it. But I wanna focus today on what I think the job primarily is to do as this creative supply chain manager and think about creative operations as a system to be developed inside of an organization for the sake of your meta account, for the sake of driving growth in paid media.

[00:05:10] Richard Gaffin: Okay. Well, so let's, I, I'm, I'm gonna refer then to this expost that you put out. I guess this would've been on the 15th, so last Thursday. CTC has been responsible for delivering tens of thousands of ads a year for over a decade. Here's the process we've built. Parentheses, it's evolved a lot. You won't be surprised to find that it begins with the clarity of the financial objective and flows out from there.

So that's kind of the setup for it. In other words, like to some extent we're gonna be talking about the set of things that we usually talk about, but as the kind of like end goal, we're going to get to how that produces creative at the volume we need to produce it. So, let's start with the financial forecast then.

Like where, where does this

[00:05:45] Taylor Holiday: Yeah, so, so, just like inventory planning or forecasting, what I have experienced is that these siloed portions of your business are devoid of connection. Like they have no actual way in which the job to be done is collectively defined and then executed against. And creative is this thing that will exist.

Like sort of independent, the need or actual obligation of the organization because it just gets built that way. It sort of gets built to like either produce a certain number of ads each week or on an sort of as needed basis, but instead what we're trying to do is say, no, no, no. Okay. We are going to root the entire operations of the marketing department in the job to be done, which is a financial reality built into the financial forecast.

From there, we now have the opportunity to begin to build a. A really important term in the creative world, which is the set of constraints that we're asking of the system. What is the system need to produce? And then, and then only from there can you define the actual system that needs to be created. And this is where what I see is that one, it's important to acknowledge that this is not the same every month.

The job to be done is not the same every month in the creative world. And so this is part of the reasons why. I've talked a lot about like that, that e-commerce is not an FTE business. It's because the, the, the output requirements at different moments in time are always variable. They're, they're different constantly.

But the first question we have to answer is, what is the job to be done? And that flows from, okay, we have a financial objective. Then there's a media budget. That media budget's turned into a channel allocation. So we know how much money we're trying to spend on meta. Then we can begin to look at, alright, what is the marketing calendar asking of us this month?

What stories do we, are we obligated to tell? And so there's this sort of sequential process that eventually works its way down to. Okay, what's the gap? What do I need to do versus what's presently there? And so we'll talk a little bit about each of those stages. But the point is, is that this is a system, it's a supply chain, just like your inventory, purchasing, and the manufacturing flows from.

I wanna sell this much stuff. On this date. Therefore, I just need this many units. And then the manufacturer goes and makes a specific amount of units. The same is true on creative. I need to generate this much revenue at this time period across these SKUs, servicing these moments. Now your Manu, your creative manufacturing chain, can begin to work to service that goal.

But without it, you're just running around in circles, chasing made up numbers, trying to loop around making, who knows how many ads for who knows what reason.

[00:08:14] Richard Gaffin: So, I mean, I, I'll refer back to, actually speaking of last Thursday, we had our agency owners workshop. We had a bunch of agency owners come in Taylor and the crew. Basically sort of laid out some of our systems and kind of, dug into the, and, and honestly it went great. But one thing that Taylor kind of set the whole workshop off on was this idea that clarity and confidence equal happiness.

Essentially, when you're thinking about the level to which that you can, let's say, even enjoy your job if you have clarity that gives you confidence in really what we're talking about today. Is a world creative where there's often not a lot of clarity. I'm remembering being a creative strategist like five years ago and when we were really deep in the woods, like a lot of the issue was even with this first step around forecast would be like, Hey, we have this campaign coming up. Let's just make as much creative, I guess, as you can think of, right? So, hey, we had, I had five ideas. We can make three ads out of each of those ideas. That's 15 ads. Great. That's, that's what we're gonna

[00:09:10] Taylor Holiday: Good luck. Go get 'em. 

[00:09:11] Richard Gaffin: right? Exactly. But what this shows us what we're gonna, in each one of these steps, it actually defines a very clear restraint, like you're saying around creative.

So this first one is how much needs to be made. You have an actual objective answer to that. So, let's let's

[00:09:25] Taylor Holiday: Well, let's, I wanna clarify that the phrase objective, because I, I think that's what's really important is that this is an exercise in modeling, just like the forecasting is which we know that all models are wrong and some that are, some are useful. So let, let's talk a little bit about this idea of how many things to make and where we come up with this term and why I believe it's a good starting point.

And then from how many, we'll talk about what then specifically should be the focus because just giving you a numbers isn't actually all that useful. If we think about this job, so we just talked about there's a financial forecast that leads to a media budget that through our MMM planning gives a channel allocation and that channel allocation, right?

So it ends up with, in this case, we're talking about how many meta ads do we need to make. That's the primary creative production obligation for most organizations, where the bulk of the creative task is to be done. Now, there's also stuff on YouTube, potentially your Snapchat or TikTok, or app webinar, or these other places.

But for the sake of this, let's just say you end up with a media MetaMedia budget. Easy numbers. It's a million dollars you're trying to spend in the month of February. Okay, well the reality is you're not starting at zero, right? You have an ad account that's running today, that's spending money right now and that begins to form the foundation of next month's million dollars.

The question of how many ads are coming with me, what is the likelihood that I get a sort of basis of spend if I were to make no new ads? In the month of February, what would occur? Okay, so that's a, that's a thing to be analyzed. And we look at, like, spend degradation rates. We look at ad concentration. We look at how many a, how many of your pieces of creative are currently getting $0 of spend?

Like we wanna look at the risk of the current portfolio. We wanna understand what is likely to occur for what is already there. Okay. Then we ask this question of what does the marketing calendar say about net new things to be done in February? If we have a Valentine's Day sale, then that creative is not gonna exist in the account.

In January, there's gonna be some obligation to a net new story to be told, or there are a net new product launch. And so whatever the marketing calendar demands we're going to talk about, we have to include that in the things to be done. That's like your next layer. So you have your foundational layer of things that are already there.

You have the marketing calendar that obligates to what is yet to be said or needs to be said. That's net new to the account. And then from there you have evergreen supplementation. Okay. Now this idea of evergreen supplementation is okay, after the moment, after the foundation, where do we need to make more ads?

Now, this is a question of product and inventory. This is a question of what SKUs are our best sellers? How are the campaigns that are running those core SKUs doing? Are they fatiguing? Do we need to refresh some of our. Best selling units are there we call them like hidden gems, where there are products that are getting more sales velocity than ad spend.

And so we have this relationship between how the inventory mix is currently doing relative to the amount of money being spent on those SKUs, and that helps us in what we call our creative demand plan, which Corey, you can pop up a screenshot of right now that's going to help you decide which ads to focus on.

And which skews to make ads for. Excuse me. So you have your marketing moments, you have evergreen supplementation, and out of that we're gonna get to a basis number of this many ads is what is the most likely requirement to achieve this outcome? Now this is really important. Okay. It does it mean that if we say 276 is the target number of ads that if you make exactly 276 ads, you will spend exactly this amount of money.

Absolutely not. This is a probabilistic model about the relationship between ad volume and spend historically in your ad account. Can you outperform that? Sure. Absolutely. Could you underperform that? Absolutely. But this is a. Scenario that gives us the most likely result to occur. And so it gives us a starting point for the conversation now.

Go ahead. I'll stop here. I'll 

[00:13:24] Richard Gaffin: Well, no. No. Oh, I, I was gonna say no. I mean, I think it's. Yeah, it's important to define or, or to make sure that we're clear, that like it's merely a model, but the bar for this is so low that I feel like this is a, like this gets towards objectivity in a way that, I mean, I've just, in my experience at least, we just never had anything like this before, right.

Where what we're saying is like, okay, in, in particularly in this screenshot, let's save the demand. Plan it mentions we'll probably need 276 ads. A certain percentage of 'em are gonna be marketing moments, a certain percentage are gonna be evergreen ads. That that level of clarity alone is so much more than I would wager most creative production teams have.

right.

There's still living in

[00:14:10] Taylor Holiday: And, and because layered into the marketing moments is the event effect model, we have some sense of how big the moment is, right? Because remember, our monthly spend got broken down into daily spend. And so if the daily spend on a moment goes up a lot. That gives us a sense that this is a large amplification opportunity and therefore will demand more creative.

The other thing to consider is it doesn't just stop on moments versus evergreen ads. It also breaks down into images and videos, which is a big question. And that's based on the historical analysis of your performance of image and videos. And so again, does, if I tell you for marketing moments, you should do 66 images and 77 videos, does that mean that if you do that exact thing, this exact thing will occur?

Not at all, but it's a directional starting point. And with any plan, what we wanna do is make this a collaborative discussion where we're actually going to say, what is our production capacity? What sourcing do we have, who's doing what? And if, if 2 76 is the goal, and we end up and we, we agree together that the plan is actually, we're gonna do two 30 and it's gonna be a little image heavier than video.

I don't actually care. We want this to be a progressive truth. We wanna move towards the best possible scenario. If we think we can outproduce those ads and it's the system has the capacity to do so, then great. But the next job to be done is to take the 2 76. This, again, this is just the starting ad point to produce this budget broken down by moments in evergreen ads, broken down by images and videos, and turned them into dates.

Right, because it just saying we're gonna make 276 videos, does nothing for February, if I deliver them all on February 27th. Right? So then we turn them into what we call the ad log, which has a really important column in it called the Go Live date. So every one of those. Ideas turns into a specific date that then maps back to the production process.

So the team doing the production, whether it's us in some cases, whether it's the client, everybody has visibility to, you have this obligation on this date to make creative for this moment that's going live in the ad account on this day, the media buyer can see when they're supposed to build, and in our case, click push to build.

Automatically they can see. Who's responsible. They can see which campaign it's going into. They can see what product it's focused on. And so for us, our job is to define that systemic process. Now, you'll notice what's missing from there. Is anything about what the ad should look like or say. And that's where we so CTCs work is we work with creators.

So we have a creator content program where the creators are given, we need to focus on this product or this marketing moment, and they provide back the, the creative or the brand is doing that themselves. Or we have a service that does AI imagery. So the only work C is gonna do on the production side is we're either gonna do AI imagery in support of that.

Within that system, we're gonna do creator content within support of that system, or the brand's gonna contribute. So you have like many brands, you have multiple production sources, and that's almost always the case. And this is where I talk about like creative supply chain. We have multiple manufacturers of creative providing for us, and we have to organize all of them.

You're gonna make this many, you're gonna make this many, they're due on this date, they're gonna go live on this date. And that is our role. Is we're going to build the underpinning trellis on which all these manufacturers are going to participate, and we're gonna know how it's connected to the overall financial goal of the organization, right?

And we can build those costs into the cost model. We can make sure it all maps to where we're trying to go so that we have a plan before the month started about what we're trying to accomplish. If we learn that, hey, we actually had some ads that are carrying that are expanding more and more spend that we might need to do less next month, and the model will update that.

And so the goal is actually to need less because we have a healthier concentration of diverse ads that are spending for a long time in the ad account. That would be great, but the reality is, is that's variable all the time. We need eyes to it and then we need to adjust the system accordingly.

[00:18:03] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. And, and this to me by the way, is like the most obvious way that this is an evolution from the old creative strategist model of the diversification of the creators, right? So it's all well and good to say we need 276 ads, but how are you gonna get there? And the way you're gonna get there is not gonna be one person. Typing up briefs and then sending them to the designer to make still images out of or whatever, right? Which is what we used to do and what many people still do. And so what we're talking about here is, or, or rather, I, I guess with the diversification of execution, it also diversifies the actual like. I guess briefing process or like the, the ideation piece, like that's all kind of democratized as well and sent off into

the ether. So let's, let's dig a little bit more into execution then. So you mentioned obviously the, the ad log and the one click build, enabling or, or process rather. Let's dig into that a little bit as well.

[00:18:51] Taylor Holiday: So in the ad plan process so going back to the, in the creative demand plan, you're gonna, there's a column, and I have the imagery here. So it's what product is being focused on, who's the producer? Right, so, so there's these options. C-T-C-U-G-C, the client, CTC, ai. So you assign a manufacturer of the unit, right?

And then it goes into their process, right? So this is where, for me, what, what I've noticed is that like rather than attempting to solve for like the creative ideation workflow, which is. Infinity, different variations, all of which like I candidly am not that interested in because I find them to be not the most interesting part of this in terms of what works the best and also where we're not the best Now.

Our create creator content team has a process. Our AI. Generation process has an ideation process that is important. But every client has infinity too. And one of the, one of the things I noticed is that I, I think that every creative supply chain system should plan for multiple manufacturers, like multiple sourcing partners, is that right now the best mechanism for d diversification is actually at the, at the manufacturer level, not at the ideation level.

Like that's really important, is that if you really want diversity, diversify production sources. Not try to have one person ideate a thousand different ideas we're it just still will be too narrow. And so I think that's what we wanted to build our system for. We see ourselves as the centralized planning system that a profit engineer can execute and sort of orchestrate conduct.

Alright, you manufacture, gimme 25, you manufacture, gimme 74, you manufacture, gimme 32. I need these on this product this date so I can go live. Then you just allow for them to sort of compete against each other for their capacity to do a few things. One is deliver on time and on quality. So that's like the first test.

Can you actually give me the number of ads that you said you would at a time you would, that actually gets through the approval process for the customer, and then three is at the best price because I think here the key is. Actually about driving down production cost versus focusing on the value creation.

And this is where I think people screw up the most in their assessment of creative is that everybody wants to assess the quality. But like I just don't believe that someone creating a singular ad that was successful is actually predictive of their ability to do it again. In fact, I find it to be almost, and I've said this a lot, random number generating.

So the best bet is who can deliver on time at the best price at the right quality? And to optimize for that in your supply chain on the production side, and to work within our system and make sure all those things is like where you get to a really effective workflow here. Versus like trying to figure out whose ad had the best CTR this week, you know, and then trying to recreate that somehow.

[00:21:26] Richard Gaffin: Yeah, you've definitely phrased it before. Or a phrase creative production as essentially gambling, right? So it used to be like, this was the conversation we used to have when we, when we did those big budget shoots, it was just, if we are thinking about the Meta Ads ads platform is money in, money out, and you're spending, you know, $10,000 on producing this huge shoot and the expectation of what you're gonna get back from that is very, very slim, then it's a terrible, terrible bet. So essentially, it sounds like what you're saying is, so again, if we're gonna have to make 276 bets, we need to have the, the cost of those be as low as possible because the likelihood that any one of them succeeds is so slim. Does

that sound? Yeah, 

[00:22:08] Taylor Holiday: right. And, and then we need visibility to what's happening fast. So the, the next step here, right, so you have your creative, we have the ad log that shows me every campaign I plan to build and what data will go live, right? That turns into what we call the Facebook tracker tab, which shows me then every campaign, how much we expect it to spend every day.

What the expected I oas is every day, and then tracks that performance to expectation. So as I start the month. Right. And now I'm showing a screenshot of this, the Facebook medi or campaign tracker. I have an expected spend on day one across every campaign, including the future ones that are in the ad log that are gonna go live.

They have an expected spend as well, right? And then what happens is on day one, we're right or wrong to some degree, right? And so if we're actually way ahead, we might be able to move that production out. In other words, we might be able to save money by not necessitating excess production because we're getting more volume than anticipated on some ad.

Or alternatively, within the first few days, we see that that campaign, that was our horse that we were riding when we came into the month, started to degrade faster than anticipated. Now we need to add additional production elements towards the back of the month to make up for it. And this is really the key.

This is just like the, the, the financial planning on a daily basis or email send schedules is that you have an idea of what's going to occur. That's the model. But the key to success is visibility to where you're wrong so you can course correct. And the same is true in production and this is where like having multiple manufacturing sources is so, because just like you want flexibility in your supply chain and manufacturing, we would all dream that rather than trying to guess how much inventory we need to make.

We would be able to make inventory so fast that you could do just in time or on demand manufacturing. This is why like put on demand became such a big thing is 'cause it doesn't necessitate the guessing at the inventory and you can sort of scale infinitely, but that's not reality for most people. The same is true in the creative supply chain.

There's some limited flex, but what you want is flexibility in that supply chain as much as possible. And then visibility to the how your expectations are right or wrong. And that is the key here. People get really hung up on trying to be like, well, is the model right? Is the starting number actually true?

And the answer is no, and it's not the point. The point is it gives you a set of initial expectations that you can track performance against. And day one, I know, Ooh, I'm ahead. Ooh, I'm behind. Ooh, I could get more here. Ooh, this is working better than I thought. Ooh, this is behind. Now, in light of that, me, the profit engineer sitting in the middle of this system can begin to make decisions about whether to, whoa, hold on, that we're gonna move that production in next month because I don't need it anymore and I'm gonna save the money on the cost and I'm gonna move it out.

Ooh, that email. Don't need it anymore. That sale I was gonna run. Ooh, don't need it anymore, or vice versa. Give me all of it. I'm behind that thing. I thought that sale didn't hit, that email missed. I now need to initiate the backup action. That's the key. That's the magic of the system, is how quickly can you see it and adjust.

[00:24:56] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. And, and that brings us then to the, the conversation about the collapsing of strategists, media buyer and growth strategists into the, kinda this one thing which you'd mentioned as the profit engineer. So, ta talk a little bit about, about that

[00:25:09] Taylor Holiday: so, so if I'm sitting in the middle of this, right, meaning in our world we call this the profit engineer, I built the financial forecast. I have intimate working knowledge of everything that's supposed to happen every day, every. Dollar that I'm trying to earn. Every email that I'm gonna send, every channel I'm gonna spend money in what the expectation of efficiency is, and I show up and I get to sit, like I keep mapping it.

It's like minority report here, right? Like I'm looking across my universe going, okay. That email didn't work. Alright, I'm behind on returning customer revenue. Okay. Do I have returning media spend that I could update? Oh, nope. Okay. Plan campaign push to build request creative from a supply chain partner.

Plug into the account, one click build. I launched it. So the idea is that I. The person at the center know the expectation of what's supposed to occur. And so the old world is like, try and translate information down multiple tiers of people to make requests to help them understand what I might need and why.

And then they go, oh, I don't like, that was not in the plan. But if I'm just building. The ad log all the time, and my production partners are sourcing into it. They're, it doesn't, they don't even need to know why I'm asking for what I'm asking for, right? I have the cap ability to draw forth the need relative to what I see on the field, and so.

This is where like this idea that the creative strategist workflow would be an ad get launched in the meta account. Then the media buyer like pulls some metrics, sends it to the creative strategy team. They look at it, they make some additions about some new briefs, and then they like send it back trying to improve on those metrics.

It's like utter, it's like insanity versus me going, no, no, no. I know what my spend goals are. I know which campaigns are working. I know where degradation is occurring. I then can request outta my supply chain more action, more units of growth we call them, to get back to where I'm going. 'cause my job is to drive the ship towards the goal that I created and agreed to is just very different than like this.

Like we spend money for a week. Tuesday, I pull the report, I show you these creative metrics. You go, Hmm, then you go back and restart the supply chain in a cycle that's sort of completely disconnected from whether you're a header behind on spend. Like, it just, it, it doesn't make any sense to work outside of the rhythm of the needs of the business in the given moment.

[00:27:22] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. Well, it's definitely a situation where the, the volume demand in this particular format is so grueling that having any sort of gatekeeper whatsoever is an issue, and I

think this is sort of what we're solving 

[00:27:35] Taylor Holiday: And it's even gonna go further down the line, right? Like as AI becomes more, I won't even need these creative production partners, right? I'll just like call forth from wherever or allow meta to. To, to just create it and spin it and launch it myself. And so you're gonna get further concentration into this one person being able to connect the dots between strategy and execution themselves.

As we move further down the line, that's just gonna become the reality. Now, what happens is, is that there's a counter rhythm to this, and this is really important to acknowledge where I think that the, the, the great creative brains and the future planning. Actually become really important, which is that the profit engineer is gonna sit in the day-to-day, the system of the 30 day cycle.

Now there's a separate cycle that is the marketing calendar moments further out, the big things coming. So what I think is really important, this is what I think an internal team should be focused on, is that you should give a partner like us who's built a system for these 30 day cycles and executing operationally the day-to-day obligation, and then your team should go, okay.

In March, what amazing thing can we do? What April moment can we beginning building creative production and partnership and influencer and big shoots and ideas around today so that when April comes, it's in the marketing calendar. I've got your campaigns ready, but it's rooted in something awesome that takes longer to develop.

I recognize that if you wanna do like the skull, candy, Bose licensing partnership launch, and you're gonna build an incredible universe around that, that's not a two week thing. That's like a. Year long process, and that to me is the internal rhythm of what an internal team should be focused on is next months and the following months and the following quarters big moments.

Go build peaks. Go do things that take deep thought and time to create the awesome underlying inputs of celebrity partnership and licensing and product collaboration and product innovation. Big shoots and cool places to accomplish, to create the assets that support the rhythm, but the system to execute once we're there.

That's what I think that we are uniquely equipped to help you, uh uh, to handle.

[00:29:39] Richard Gaffin: Yeah, that's right. The, the irony of what we're talking about here is that in fact, it, it frees you up to do creative strategy in a much

[00:29:45] Taylor Holiday: That's right. That's right. Go do brand building. Go build your universe of your business around amazing conceptual, we call them, model breaking moments in a way that changes the course of the business. Do not spend your internal energy focused on this like iterative hamster wheel of the CTR of the thing and trying to like.

No, no, no. Get out of that. Let us work to handle a lot of that sequence and go build the the awesome stuff that's never gonna happen inside of a service provider like us.

[00:30:15] Richard Gaffin: Yeah, that's right. So well maybe we can cap it with this. This part of the thread that you, you posted here last week, I have found that many people are good at coming up with ideas, but very few people are good at building a system to consistently deliver them on time and at the necessary volume. And that's kind of what we're talking about here.

So if this is something you're interested in working with us on. You know where to find us. Come for code.com, hit that high risk button. And I think too, like I, I, I'd be also interested, we've had Adrianne on before to talk a little bit more about the executional part of the actual developing the briefs and actually sourcing from creators as well.

So I think we're gonna have her on again soon and we'll talk about that a little bit more. But Taylor, is there anything else that you wanna hit on this?

[00:30:55] Taylor Holiday: No, I think, we've spent a lot of time, 12 years of building a system and tooling to work through this. And this is like, if I think about the advantage that I have is like reps around an effort, like you get one, you get one brand to plan on once a month. It's like a rhythm and you can improve that process over time.

But we do it 200 times every month to try and make it better for 10 years. Right? It's just a lot of reps at thinking about how to execute a system like this. And I think that, that's where you can create leverage and partnership is to take somebody who's an expert in a thing, just like you would a manufacturer, and go to them and say like, we're not gonna try and rebuild a Chinese manufacturing plant because you guys have been doing that for 10 years and building the tooling and systems.

And if you look at what's that list is, it's that it's tools that help us forecast and demand plan and manage and execute and deliver. And so it's no different. And so you create leverage in your business by taking expertise that can't exist within the confines of your own people. Don't go build your own spreadsheets.

Like I, I I can save you the labor of the supermetrics connections to broken sheets and everything that you've done, because I've, I've lived it. I've walked the road already for you. So, I think that what we're trying to do is say, Hey. If there's things that you're uniquely good at, which is your business, your product, your story, your customer, go spend more of your energy there.

Give us the day-to-day obligation and execution to build a system to make sure that you're going on course, and that when you're not, that you can see it really fast to fix it.

[00:32:18] Richard Gaffin: That's right, folks. All right. Well thanks for listening everyone. We will see you next time. Take care.