Hope you enjoyed Presidents’ Day!

National Holiday Mondays are the best. If you’re like me, you may have taken a few hours to get some deep work done undisturbed. There is quite literally no better day than a Monday where the vast majority of the country is not working to get some things on your TDL checked off. I came in to the office in the morning and was met with an empty building, empty email inbox, empty Slack notifications and it simply doesn’t get better than that.

Some may call this “hustle culture,” but I call it reality. Over the years, I’ve learned the importance taking time off, spending more time with family and friends, and being more present. So by no means do I advocate for working around the clock on your days off.

But, if you need to focus and get things done, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better window of time than a Monday morning on a federal holiday. Here’s my video take on it.

1. OpenAI Launches Sora, a text-to-video AI tool

This past week, OpenAI came out and announced the official launch of Sora, its text-to-video generative AI tool. It’s essentially their video version of Dall-E. It’s not fully available yet to the public, but they’ve started making its capabilities publicly visible.

I’ve long been a skeptic on text-to-video AI and how soon it would be “usable” in marketing and creative. I always thought it would be incredibly difficult to recreate human expression and physiologic movements in AI motion creative. After seeing some Sora examples, I can safely say I’m totally wrong. It seems that Sora will be available, usable, and of high enough quality to be leveraged in 2024 🤯.

Here are a couple of video examples that Sora generated:

Pretty incredible, right?

The MAIN weakness right now with Sora is that it produces video without audio. This is a major limitation for it’s immediate versatility as creative, especially for social media ads. However, you can think of it being effective in instances where you would normally use a GIF. Potential use cases: landing page, website, email, or newsletter.

Text-to-video is probably the biggest development for AI in marketing that we’ve seen. Video with audio is the next hurdle. Once we get there, look out. We’ll then have a very real possibility for text-to-UGC and text-to-major studio production. Replicating human voice with proper inflection still hasn’t been perfected, but it’s getting close. Text-to-video with audio would revolutionize creative and creative ops as we know it.

It’s not unfathomable that we will see a fully produced AI video as a Super Bowl commercial next year.

2. TikTok Creative: The Highest Leverage Asset on the Internet

Ever since TikTok burst onto the scene years ago and left Snapchat in the dust, I’ve been calling TikTok creative the “highest leverage creative asset on the internet.” But in present day, it’s even more valuable. If a brand had finite creative resources, I would advise that they focus on building TikTok-style creative over any other Day 1.

Why?

The versatility and value of TikTok creative in owned and paid channels is unparalleled.

TikTok creatives can be utilized and perform phenomenally well on:

• TikTok Organic

• TikTok Paid

• Instagram and Facebook Organic (as Reels and Stories)

• Meta Paid

• YouTube Shorts

• Website (specifically on PDP’s and paid traffic LP’s)

Simply put, there really isn’t a place that a TikTok creative can’t be used. The same can’t be said for other creatives made natively for Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, or YouTube.

Outside of traditional TikTok creative, two formats of native TikTok creative (Live Shopping and Influencer) can also be leveraged for your non-TikTok campaigns. Live Shopping and TikTok influencer creative have proven to work well in Meta paid media campaigns.

With the rise of TikTok Shop, the first social commerce platform to truly scale, TikTok creative is even more valuable and brings efficiency to a whole new level for ecommerce brands.

If I’m a brand, here’s the exact flywheel of growth I’d run today:

1. 30 TikTok Organic Posts per month (bare minimum), all tagged w/ products in TikTok Shop

2. 15 new TikTok affiliate influencers per month (bare minimum, sourced & posted), all tagged w/ products in TikTok Shop

3. Syndicate each creative & iterative versions to your other organic channels (FB, IG, YT, etc)

4. Assuming a conservative 10% success rate on Steps 1 and 2 (success = drove significant revenue or engagement), this gives you 4-5 winners to scale. Amplify each with paid media dollars (via Spark code) on TikTok and launch each on Meta ads. I’d even launch the “average” or “poor” performing organic assets on Meta organic and paid if I had conviction that they would perform.

5. Negotiate to retain each successful influencer as an evergreen affiliate. I recommend retainer + sales commission. Or (dare I say) vested equity. If they don’t want to “spam” their own page with your content, have them create a duplicate page of your brand or in the persona you’re going after.

6. Run it back each month.

Need help with any part of this growth flywheel? Get in touch with us here.

By following this simple framework, you increase your chances of success on paid media by establishing organic TikTok as a little-to-no cost creative testing ground. This will serve as a new creative pipeline for your paid media team.

By utilizing this process, you’ll grow your presence and revenue on TikTok Shop and increase your “creative testing” success rate on paid media.

I can’t think of a better way to leverage creative resources other than going all in on TikTok-first style of creative. The same goes for influencer.

I would ONLY source influencers that are TikTok Shop affiliates moving forward (if the brand is eligible for TikTok Shop of course).

3. Sell Experiences, NOT Product

Pay close attention to this recent trend: consumers are favoring EXPERIENCES over products.

Despite overall consumer spend growth being generally flat over the past couple years, consumer spend on experiences has shown substantial growth.

Consumers want to feel something. Whether it’s adrenaline, confidence boost, euphoria, relaxation, well-being, etc. this trend is not slowing down.

Use this to your advantage.

Blur the line between products and experiences.

This past week, I posted about a brand that’s doing this better than any other I’ve seen: BRĒZ. Let’s take a closer look at what they’re doing:

Notice how their website is all about how the product makes you FEEL.

Hell, even the CTA in the hero image straight up says "Experience it."

Rather than sell products, BRĒZ sells the experience, how it makes people FEEL.

Note all the words BRĒZ uses above the fold:

Live free, euphoric, calmness, socialness, happiness, joy…

You get the point.

Go back to your creatives and copy. Reimagine them by selling "the experience" and the quality of life upgrade your products will bring them.

This is why tracking broad consumer trends is important.

You'll know where the puck is and where you should be going.

Who Owns the Biz Forecast: Marketing or Finance?

There was some DTC Twitter heat this past week. What’s new?

Despite decent arguments on both sides, I’m firmly on the side of Finance as the owner of the Forecast. In fact, I’d put Operations in line after Finance (before Marketing).

It’s actually hard to even comprehend a world in which Finance didn’t own the forecast. If they didn’t, what would be the purpose of a finance division in any organization?

Finance should of course seek input and collaboration from Marketing to project customer acquisition and retention goals, but it pretty much stops and ends there. Marketing and Finance should be aligned on the goals at all times. If something is off forecast, marketing must alert finance to ensure full transparency and adequate time for course correction.

Regardless of who “owns” it, there are actually a ton of inherent weaknesses building any DTC forecast due to the coexistence of so many confounding variables.

There are 2 highly common scenarios in forecasting that, if present, render the forecasting effort entirely useless:

1. Faulty forecast that leads to poor decision-making and planning

2. Unconfident forecast that leads to reluctance in using it to inform decision-making

Forecasting done by humans is fairly arbitrary and often not rooted in proper math/statistics. Improper forecasting can actually cause far more harm than good if not done by someone with significant experience and confidence.

To me, the hardest part of any DTC forecast is forecasting acquisition MER (aMER) at different spend levels. Democratizing mathematically-sound, reliable forecasts to ecommerce businesses is a huge opportunity.

We all can agree that a forecast is a critical component of any business or else it’s impossible to plan and you’ll be in a perpetual reactionary state. But, if you generate an inaccurate forecast that impacts decision-making negatively, you’re in trouble. Additionally, if you create a forecast that you lack confidence in, what was the point of forecasting to begin with?

Well, how can a business have confidence in its forecast? The simple answer: machines. AI is developing that will give you a forecast rooted in math and eliminate any subjectivity that may go into the present-day forecast. It will eventually analyze all of your paid media channels, audience saturation curves, customer cohorts, and more - to give you an informed forecast that can actually be relied upon.

What I’m Listening to 🎧

Beats of the Week: Hot Since 82 (Live from a Pirate Ship in Ibiza)

This set is 5 years old and has racked up 16M views - and for good reason. Perfect boat set. Sun is shining, beats are flowing, vibes are immaculate. From what I’ve been hearing, everyone’s been dealing with crappy weather this winter across the country. Put this set on and transport yourself to a boat in Ibiza and live vicariously through this video. Until next week!

I welcome all feedback. Good, bad, everything in between.

Hit reply, and let’s hear it! 👂

📧 Share your thoughts or what you want me to cover next.