Method
The creative process
Structured so that results can be attributed to something. The order matters more than the taste, and the first step is the one usually skipped.
Creative is the largest lever in paid media and the hardest to reason about, because it is easy to produce work that is good and impossible to say why it worked. The process below exists to make the second part tractable.
Step 1 — Write down what the advertisement has to say
One sentence, before any production: what does a viewer have to understand or believe for the outcome to become likely?
This is routinely skipped, and skipping it is why creative rounds turn into taste arguments. With the sentence written down, a review has a criterion. Without it, the loudest opinion in the room wins.
Step 2 — Identify the variable
Creative testing only produces knowledge if variations differ in one identifiable dimension: the claim, the opening, the format, the proof, the call to action.
Four assets that differ in every respect produce a winner and no explanation, which means nothing carries into the next campaign. Four that differ along one axis produce a finding you can reuse for a year.
Step 3 — Produce for the placement
Format is not packaging. Vertical video with sound off and captions is a different piece of work from a horizontal film, not a crop of one. A native unit that reads as editorial performs differently from a display banner in the same slot.
Producing one asset and resizing it is the most common efficiency in media creative and the most expensive.
Step 4 — The first three seconds carry the load
In feed environments the overwhelming majority of viewers who leave do so almost immediately. Effort spent on an opening is worth more than effort spent on the back half, simply because more people encounter it.
That is a statement about attention, not a licence to mislead: an opening that wins attention and then fails to deliver on it buys traffic that leaves, which shows up as cost without outcome.
Step 5 — Run long enough to distinguish from noise
Creative performance varies enormously day to day. Acting on two days of data is the single most common way an account is mismanaged — the winner and loser frequently swap in week two.
The discipline that saves the most money: decide the test duration before launching, and do not act early even when the numbers look decisive. They look decisive constantly. Early action on noise produces a portfolio of assets selected for having had a good first Tuesday.
Step 6 — Write down what was learned
One line per test: the variable, the result, the confidence. This is the compounding asset of a long engagement and the thing that almost never survives an agency change.
Without it, every campaign restarts from opinion, and the same variations get tested again eighteen months later by someone who was not there the first time.
On compliance in creative
Claims have to be substantiated before production, not after a rejection. Reworking a campaign because a claim cannot be evidenced is expensive; discovering it at review costs a launch date. The substantiation file is part of the creative brief here, not a downstream check.
Last reviewed: 11 September 2026