The role of a Creative Strategist is someone who combines creativity, strategic thinking, and a deep understanding of consumer behavior to develop and execute innovative marketing and branding initiatives.

Their responsibilities encompass a multifaceted approach to marketing, which includes:

• Understanding the brand's goals Identifying the target audience

  • Exploring ways to reach new audiences.

• Conducting competitive, consumer, and industry research to help identify trends amongst behavior, messaging, etc.

• Craft a roadmap for creative campaigns, defining key messages and angles to effectively convey the brand's story or product’s unique selling props (USPs).

Collaboration is key with the Creative Strategist Role. They work closely with copywriters, designers, and media buyers to continuously analyze, strategize and iterate to fine-tune creatives for maximum performance.

Ultimately, creative strategists are the driving force behind campaigns that resonate with audiences, drive engagement and conversions and boost brand success.

A creative sprint, or innovation sprint, in definition, is a collaborative approach used by teams to rapidly generate creative ideas and solutions for a specific challenge or problem. It is typically a fast process and the goal of it is to quickly ideate, and test potential creatives, allowing the brand/teams to make informed decisions about the best way to proceed.

During a creative sprint, several teams (media buyer, creative strategists, content creators, etc) come together to brainstorm, sketch, and create briefs/scripts for various concepts. These concepts can derive from past learnings, or completely net new concepts from research.

These concepts are then created and tested to gather feedback and insights. Essentially finding what works in the ad account and then iterating and ideating from there.

Creative sprints are a great way to test, learn, iterate and continue getting more and more efficient. The way I approach it, is to allocate 70% of your time taking BIG swings in your creative sprints and 30% to iterations/variations of existing sprints.

Creative strategists are your ideas person. They need to be good at researching and not being afraid to step out of the box. They should be learning to dig into insights and data to inform future creatives and determine winners.

Create strategists keep an eye on industry trends and borrow ideas from unrelated fields further fueling their creativity.

Above all, collaboration with team members from diverse backgrounds encourages the fusion of ideas and the exploration of novel approaches.

Creative strategists embrace challenges/what is not working and uses them as catalysts for creating campaigns that do improve performance. The result is a massive amount of innovative ideas that bring value to the creative process.

• Research

  • Competitor Research Ad libraries

    • Ex: Facebook ads library & TikTok Ads library

    • Closely examine competitor’s offers, their messaging, creatives, audiences, etc. Understand their offer and messaging throughout the funnel.

    • Where are competitors directing their cold traffic to? What information is each step of the journey providing a customer?

    • What are their customers saying? Look at both 1 star and 5 star reviews

  • Customer Research

    • Set up a post purchase survey and ask questions that may help with creative angles.

      • Who are they buying for?

      • What sold them on the product?

    • What was the most important value prop to them?

  • Consumer psychology

    • How does your customer feel before/ after purchasing

    • How would specific messaging make the consumer feel?

    • What visuals would resonate most with this consumer and why?

    • Why do they choose Brand A over Brand B?

  • Demo breakdowns in Google Analytics

    • Which gender is purchasing most often? Is one spending more than the other? Are they purchasing different products?

    • Where do the majority of your customers live?

  • Ask your customers for their input!

  • Analyze your reviews

    • What do 5 star reviews say?

    • What do 1 star reviews say?

After conducting extensive research, try to identify a few brand/product specific questions:

• • Based on your research, what are the top 2 most important benefits your product offers?

  • Do your customers have similarities that you can begin crafting your messaging around?

  • How do my customers talk about my product?

  • Before your product, what were customers using to solve their problems?

Ideation

• • The research steps above should help identify key aspects to apply in your ideation phase. The main questions I try to answer are:

    • What creative formats would help best solve my initial problem I am trying to solve?

      • What framework of this ad format would work best? (If it is a static ad, is it a comparison ad, a before and after, or value prop call out? If it is a video ad, is it a problem/solution, before and afters, comparison, or a short story.)

    • What angles would work best to begin testing?

    • What is the messaging you would use to speak to your specific audience? What visuals would resonate with your target demo?

The key is to apply what you learned from the research to help direct your create approach which will help you create briefs and scripts.

New Accounts & Creative Strategist Roles

When engaging with a new account entering the digital marketing world, as a creative strategist, it's crucial to start by getting a comprehensive overview of the brand.

Begin by delving into their background, aspirations, and current challenges. This is a great way to dive into open conversations. Listen to what the brand's vision, objectives, and concerns are. If the account is new to creative strategies, your role may extend to educating them on the influence of creative work in their marketing efforts.

Set clear, measurable goals and KPIs collaboratively, ensuring everyone's expectations are aligned. Tailor a creative strategy that meticulously aligns with their goals, target audience, and competitive landscape, offering solutions.

Your expertise and creativity can shine as you propose innovative concepts designed to meet their specific needs. The journey continues with continuous collaboration, lots of communication, testing, and optimization, ensuring that creative strategies evolve and adapt to deliver optimal results.

This holistic approach also includes a commitment to education and training for the account's in-house teams, empowering them with creative proficiency.

Throughout the partnership, documentation and reporting creates a huge impact so be sure to document what works/doesn’t work and why! This documentation not only helps with one brand but can be referenced to help you with future brands as well.

Writing up a good brief

Crafting a comprehensive and effective brief is the foundation of any successful collaboration with content creators. A good brief should not only state technical details, like how to shoot the video and where to deliver the final assets, but also dive into the features of the brand/product. It should outline the tone of voice to be adopted, specify any essential clips that must be included, and provide clear do's and don'ts. It should also offer compelling examples for hooks and call-to-actions, guiding the creator in engaging the audience from the start and encouraging them to take action at the end. The brief is also where you can put the personas that we discussed on pages 19-20. Importantly, the brief should highlight the product's unique selling points — the 5-7 things that set it apart from competitors. This information serves as a resource for the creator, ensuring that the creator knows precisely what to emphasize while filming, resulting in content that effectively communicates the brand's values and resonates with the target audience.

Writing up a good script

When it comes to writing up scripts, the golden rule is to create content that feels like a friendly conversation with a friend or family member. Every script should be a unique reflection of the brand's identity, goals, and values. I like to say “the script should feel like and sound like you are facetiming with your mom, sister, etc.”

However, these scripts must also talk about the essence of the brand, align with its objectives, and, most importantly, connect with the audience on a personal level. When a consumer sees UGC, they shouldn’t feel like they are watching an ad but rather they are watching just any ordinary person review this brand's product and showcases how the consumer can use this product in their everyday life.