The Nuances of Creative Diversity And How We're Actually Thinking About It

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I will spare you a Black Friday Cyber Monday recap.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let's Just Look at an Ad

One ad unit can consist of 4 components.

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

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

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

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

These varying aspects of what makes an ad unit.

The Problem We're Seeing

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

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

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

Just changing one component is not diversity to Meta.

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

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

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

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

Because Here's the Thing

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

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

The principle has always been the same.

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

What About All the Footage You've Already Created?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What This Actually Looks Like

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

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

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

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

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

So Those Are the Changes

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

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

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

Thank you for reading. I really appreciate it.

Until then, keep creating!

Matthew Gattozzi

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