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Get a Demo“The digital deliverables have outpaced production company knowledge.” How do you build a repeatable content creation process without hiring a full agency? Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge), Cody Plofker (CEO, Jones Road Beauty), and Connor Rolain (Head of Growth, HexClad) break down how they approach content production across every budget level; ranging from $50k brand shoot days to $100 iPhone clips that outperform everything else in the ad account. The episode covers the full content production stack: multi-team shoot briefing, on-set creative strategy, and the in-house studio advantage. The trio also gets into clipping, AI-generated UGC, and whether dead internet theory is already shaping how products go viral. Powered By Motion Creative Benchmarks 2026 https://motionapp.com/thumbstop-pulse/creative-benchmarks-2026?utm_campaign=marketing-operators&utm_medium=sponsor&utm_content=creative-benchmarks-2026&utm_source=marketing-operators-podcast Haus https://www.haus.io/operators Richpanel https://9ops.co/richpanel Aftersell https://9ops.co/aftersell-mops Operators Newsletter https://9operators.com/ Chapters 00:00:00 Clipping Is Peak 00:04:30 Cart Before the Horse 00:07:08 AI Slop Distribution 00:09:24 Dead Internet Theory 00:12:28 Who Can Actually Clip 00:18:56 How We Produce Content 00:24:13 Shot List Planning 00:31:50 Own the Shoot 00:38:34 Founder Ads Done Right 00:43:10 The Agency Gap 00:50:50 Strategist on Set
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I want to talk Creative Productions. I kind of want to go deep on that, but I had a couple, a couple of random things from, um, the last couple of weeks on the timeline that I, that I wanted to get your guys' read on. You know, do you guys have a perspective on clipping right now? And actually what I'll tee you up with, and Connor, I'll kick it to you because you and I talked about this before your guys' Super Bowl campaign. So it had to have been February of last year. Um, so it was like 18 months ago. And it felt like those were the very early innings of like people were beginning to explore WAP. I was beginning to see, see some really creative campaigns of, um, brands engaging with like Discords full of clippers to like fully further promote their content. And it feels like we're almost at peak clipping. I think it was in the New York Times recently. Um, do you guys, have you guys thought any further about exploring it for Ridge or do you have a perspective on like its role in a, in a more traditional D2C business?
We, we, I mean, we still do it. We're still leveraging now. It's, we're not doing it all the time. It's not an evergreen tactic of ours, but we are still leveraging basically meme, you know, we're talking about clipping, which is taking your content and trying to enhance the distribution of it through other pages that have great reach. And like, we still engage in that marketing activity. We're about to deploy part of that for our summer sale through these meme pages. So I still think it's an amazing way to get impression arbitrage, but you just have to Obviously, like the clipping only works if you have access to the distribution. So you have to have access to these pages, whether on Instagram or TikTok or YouTube or wherever they are. I think Instagram and TikTok are probably the most likely places to get that distribution. So we're still engaging with an agency that helps, that, you know, has access to that inventory. And I know Cody, obviously you guys have been activating a lot with creators, which I think is the same approach. It's just like an impression arb and I still think that's a very valid strategy as much, maybe even more so today as it was, you know, in February when we were talking about this last year in the context of our Super Bowl campaign where we, you know, we got, I don't remember exactly how much, but probably 50 million impressions purely through that like clipping meme page play.
Was it clipping? Because I saw the meme page stuff, like not to be like, you know, a stickler about like that. Yeah, stickler about it. But like, like that's obviously trying to get organic distribution and same thing with our socialists, but I wouldn't call it clipping. Like, were they actually clipping content?
So I would say, I mean, I'm curious how you would define clipping. Basically, they were taking a bunch of raw content we had produced, video format, static ad, static image format. They took all that content and repurposed it into a bunch of memes. So, and then, and then posted it on, on a bunch of their, their pages, basically. I don't know if you would consider that clipping or not.
If they're taking, I mean, yeah, for me, clipping, or I think the definition is taking content, longer form, any content, and then just posting it across different accounts, channels. So I'd say it's like kind of is, I think the meme stuff is more of like, it's like taking the, the idea of the campaign, but you're not actually like clipping like from the content. My, and I did see people say this when a few weeks ago this, this discourse was happening and everyone's like, oh, like you got to hire a chief content officer or whatever it is. Like, I don't think—
Chief clipping officer.
Chief clip. Yeah. But there was another title people are using, but I saw some people say this, like I think Alex Garcia said it and I agree with like, most brands are not creating clippable content in the first place. I think that's where it works so well for, uh, uh, you know, a Neon or a Clavicular or somebody like that, or, or, or even a Spencer Pratt, right? It's like, there's, it's very engaging things that, that people are doing that just like is worthy of getting attention. And there's all these moments in it. And I think that's also with, with, you know, streaming. I would love to benefit. I think that's clearly how organic social works and the distribution, and it doesn't matter if you have followers as long as you get the right, you know, engagement on your content. So I think it makes a ton of sense. And it's, that's why it's similar principle in terms of what we're trying to do on organic social. But I just don't know that most brands are creating the style of content they need versus like Ramp, right? Ramp did an amazing job with the, um, the, you know, the stunt they did with Kevin in the office and stuff like that. And like, That was just like top of funnel, just like engaging content that just made like, had just like great moments in it. So I think every brand should be thinking that way. I would love to be thinking that way and doing things like that purely just to get attention. I just don't think most brands have that skillset. What do you think?
I totally agree. Could not agree more that I think a lot of people are jumping to the clipping when you're putting the cart before the horse. And what the horse is in this case is creating clippable content, which like very few people are actually good at doing. Um, it, it all comes down to this idea of like, you know, creating content once and then being able to post it multiple times, right? Like, and, and across all these different accounts. And that's how you get distribution for it. What I actually want us to talk about, I don't know if you guys saw this, why are a bunch of people on Instagram posting extremely similar walls of text about Mandalorian and Grogu as if it's the greatest movie of all time? And then looking at these, it's just like, you see a woman sitting in a car, you see a, a guy sitting in a movie theater, you see another woman at Disneyland, and then they just have these big blocks of like the native, uh, Instagram Reel text in this case. Um, some of these might be from TikTok too. Um, but just the big blocks of native text and have you guys followed? Well, okay. So the conversation I had recently was with an agency founder who was offering this as a service. And it feels like the, the, like, just an extrapolation of the clipping trend. Whereas instead of me needing to create clippable content and going to a bunch of different social accounts to repost that content and generate millions of views that way, uh, What this agency owner was able to provide was a ton of AI-generated UGC, essentially, with like very similar formats like this. It's almost like a meme format. It's like B-roll-ish in the back, some person in some setting, and then big block text over the top. And then they were, what they were offering was the ability to post 10,000 times per month. So you've completely, uh, like inverted the need for clipping. You don't, you no longer need to create clippable content. You need some sort of like postable idea. In this case, it's about how good The Mandalorian and Grogu is. That's all you need. You just need a postable idea and then you, and then you're mass producing that across thousands of profiles. And I feel like this is like the new form of clipping. And I think we're probably 6 months out, 12 months out from people realizing, oh yeah, this is how people are launching movies. This is how people are running like presidential campaigns. This is how, um, I'm trying to think of other, Oh, you know who I see do this well? And it's not AI generated, but it's, um, Based Body Works has like a very natural sort of just like postable sort of idea. And then they're creating these like tips en masse about, um, about, you know, best, uh, hair care for men or whatever. So I wanted your guys' thoughts on, we've talked about clipping, we agree that this is where it's, things are going, this is how people are consuming content online. This feels like the next evolution of it.
In this situation though, are they reliant on, this seems more, more like what I was talking about where they have a bunch of pages they're posting this on, or is it all coming from the brand page?
No, it's all coming from, from the individual's pages. So it's almost like it's clipping in the way that it's, it's, um, the, the views are being mass produced. It's like some sort of hybrid of like clipping and product seeding almost. Cause you don't need to be seeding product in this case. It's just someone posting with this block of text. In the case of the agency that I spoke to, you could create thousands of these posts like overnight with AI-generated content and then just spraying it out across a bunch of TikTok accounts that they owned. So it's like some sort of hybrid between clipping and product seeding.
It's like, oh, it's also like, so like Tech calls it UGC, which is like where you have creators that are ambassadors. They're not influencers or they're creators and they either do the short form videos, it's, you know, the Cluey strategy, but like short form videos or slideshows like, like this. I just think this is like mass, but yeah, so it's not, it's all on just these, you know, stood up accounts that will sometimes look like they're real people. Sometimes they'll look like they're brands.
Totally.
It's all like organic distribution and it's like, it's a little sad. It's like the most slop version of content ever. It can perform really, really well. But it's so slop.
[Sponsor Content] Motion just dropped their 2026 Creative Benchmarks report, and it's been getting shared everywhere. Slack channels, LinkedIn, Twitter, sharing it in our private group chats. And it's great because everybody's been asking the same 4 questions forever. What is normal? How many ads should we actually be shipping? What is a healthy hit rate? And which formats really win? The report analyzes over 575,000 creatives from 6,000 advertisers and over $1 billion in ad spend to answer these exact questions. And the report has some really interesting findings, like the fact that only 4 to 8% of ads actually become winners and over half of ads actually lose. And for Motion customers, this report is especially helpful. You can upload it into your Motion dashboard with their Runneth AI chat and compare it directly against your vertical benchmarks. Hit the link in the show notes. I promise you won't regret it. And as always, go to motionapp.com and tell the Marketing Operator sent you. This is like the dead internet theory at work, at work where like we're gonna realize that everything online, everything that we're assuming it's just sort of like artificially manufactured. And I just feel like, I don't know, I felt like I started noticing it a couple months ago and I think it's picking up now. And with people's understanding of clipping and like clipping's role in like starting social trends, I think, I think this is sort of next in line to sort of play that role. It's like slightly more at the forefront in my opinion.
Yeah, I wonder if the effectiveness will go down. Like I still do think it's a good strategy. Like I, I think if you can be a based or if you can be a tabs or like you know who does this really well is like Barstool. Like, you know, obviously they're, they're mostly a media company, but they have some commerce too. Like if you can have characters and have like really entertaining content that you can then clip and it's like very on brand for you, like I think it's great. Like a lot of, a lot of teams talk about like episodic content now and you know, where it's like, that's more on like one main thing, but it's just like having like social movies, right? That would be like more of like a highbrow version of this, but it's more of like a, a less distributed thing, but I just think if you can create content and I'm, and, and have it just not be about like just the brand, have it be really engaging and like create characters, then you have the world for clipping. I just don't think most brands have the world for that. Um, but that stuff that you're sharing, like you don't really need that. You just need, that's a little bit more like product features.
It seems like I would say more product features. And like I said, there's, there's a difference between something being like, if, if something is. Successful in clipping, it's repost worthy. Whereas in this case, it's just like, you don't even have to be reposting anything. It's just like idea worthy. It's like some thought, oh my God, the new Star Wars movie is incredible. It's like, I never had to create content that was worthy of being clipped to promote that idea. I just needed 10,000 people to go out and say that on TikTok. And like, if I do that with enough accounts in like an outlandish of enough way, I can generate millions of views. And you're right. It is like, it is the sloppiest stuff. It is the future of, of, uh, or it is like Dead Internet Theory at work. Um, but rising marketing tactic trend, they wanted to talk about it.
Yeah, we, I will say for our organic social stuff where we have creators like posting, like we have had some videos that have millions of views, like 6, 7 million views and like did absolutely nothing for us because it didn't have the product integration or the brand integration. And then obviously if you go to product, you have nothing. So like, I think, I think, yeah, it, it kind of depends how it's done, but it, I, I've seen like, I'll get some of the slideshows on TikTok and like some of them will even get me and it's like, oh, like I thought that was just one at first, but it's like, you know, it'll just be like a big problem, super dramatic problem, like, you know, with the native text. And then the third slide will be like, check out this app, you know, if you're struggling with this. Um, so it can totally work and crush. I think for some reason tech is way more forward on it of all of these strategies. And I think. They're, it's just getting a little into DTC, but I, I haven't, I, besides like BASED and stuff, have you guys seen any DTC brands like actually leverage these like UGC programs or clipping like successfully?
I don't have any off the top of my head, but what I will say is like, I love your point that you guys have seen views that because the product's not integrated enough, it can drive, or you've seen posts and because the product's not integrated enough, it can, it can drive 6, 7 million views and do nothing for the brand. That makes total sense. And then you go on the other side where if it's someone just like unboxing it, nobody cares at all. And like, like you might be generating intent, but you're only getting a couple hundred views on an organic video. The sweet spot is like Tabs Chocolate, you know, Mini Katana Swords, the brands that have products and have an angle where the content is engaging enough while being product-oriented enough are like an example of, of that. It's just being a lot more harmonious in terms of like getting organic distribution while generating intent.
For sure. For sure. I agree. I think one, yeah, I think one way to do that, and again, it depends on your else, is like characters. Like I think you can like, but then you have to do like more of like recurring storylines. I think like character development is actually a really good one, but it's, it's a little bit less of like a, well, I guess it can be, right? If you think about these characters in streaming or Clavicular, like, and then you have all the different accounts that reach people. So I think that's what I would try to do if I were a brand, like trying to do this.
Well, so I wanted to ask you about that, Cody. So you're basically saying like if a brand, a brand's going to create like some sort of fictitious episodic series, let's call it, and it's, it's fictitious, but probably ties into the brand and the product in some way. And then you're saying, all right, now you're launching these like 10-minute YouTube episodes maybe every week, the same way that like HBO will launch a new episode every week. And then you're saying that becomes the super clippable. Now you can take those 10-minute episodes and now you're cutting probably hundreds of like 6-second cuts, 10-second cuts from that, posting that in all of the short-form vertical video spaces across all the different channels, creator pages, other pages you're making. Like that's what you think is the, could be a good playbook here?
I think if the brand has the right DNA, which is like knows how to create content that people want to consume, you know, like, right, if it's like a, right, it might have to be like a content commerce play, but like a Barstool or something like that, where if you can, if you can get like a 10-minute video that like is going to get a lot of views on YouTube or like something that's not just like, oh, here's buy my product. I think that's where it would have to be. And I think that's such an art is trying to weave in is content and actually making it still relevant to like what you're trying. It's such an art and there's like so few people that are good at doing that.
I'm always like, when I see those carousels that you talked about, 'cause those are the ones that I'm the most familiar about where these people post these carousels and then on like slide 4, it's like, and check out this product. There's no way that can work. I mean, you're burying the product in the 4th carousel and the entire piece of content isn't leading into that product. I just don't, I find it really hard to believe that that actually moves the needle on, on sales.
I haven't seen that. I don't know that, but I have seen tech companies' apps. I've seen some of their numbers and videos. I can show you some of the videos where it's like, you know, it'll be kind of like clickbaity, like just very like TikTok forward video. It's like, I can't, like, somebody's getting fired. They leaked this app or something like that, you know? And I've seen some of the numbers and like, They, when some of these videos, if they're done right and have the right integration, they can drive a ton of downloads.
Okay. Interesting.
I have seen some of them. They're, yeah. I have. Yeah. So some of them can, I think if they're done correctly, I think it's first, it's like, how do you get views with these strategies? How do you like get engagement distribution? How do you get views? And then how do you kind of make sure you're doing it in a way where there's product integration and you're getting the right bottom funnel? You know? Action that you want. Okay.
The last thing I wanted to hit on this one, because I thought it was really interesting and I've, because I've seen it twice now, um, there's some sort of AI software company called Polsia, polsia.com. And I think, I don't know if they named the company purposefully this way, but a lot of their distribution strategy seems to be like when they make announcements, Polsia, maybe they raised a round or something. I forget exactly why it was in the news. Polsia raises $10 million. Then they just have a bunch of people quote tweet it. This all feels artificial to me. There's totally the scenario where these are like organic comments, but the quote tweets are all, oh my God, they named their company AI Slot backwards. Because that's, that's what it is. And I feel like that is a, that's sort of like a memetic growth strategy where they're like, there's something inherently memeable about everything that we do if our name is AI Slot backwards. And it's just like, it's just an always-on hack. That allows them to generate like millions of impressions for anything they want to talk about. I've seen it go viral like 2 or 3 times at this point.
[Sponsor Content] I was just seeing, I, this is very meta. I was seeing a Gary Vee clip. He was on some guy's pod, but they were talking about, you know, chief, chief attention officer, right? And Gary's like, that really should just be the CMO. It's like what CMOs used to do. I think that I'm not good at this. I don't think Jones Road is good at this. So it's not coming from that, but like, I think more brands should think about just how they get attention. And I think the The great brand, like that David is great at that. We opened the podcast where I was like, hey, did you see this thing they did? Like, I don't really know outside of product. Like, I don't have that much to be able to say, hey, did you see this thing Jones Road did? You know, besides here's this new product launch. And I think every brand should be having something where it's, did you see this thing that they did? You know, and there's something to just talk about that's, it's hopefully it's related to the brand. It's, it's something where it's, there's still some like value prop in, but it's obviously not like a bottom funnel thing. We talk about incrementality a lot, but how do you actually operationalize it to make your business better? That is one thing that I've been really leaning in with my team recently, and Houzz has played a tremendous role. We use it for all of our experiments, all of our geo lift testing, but we now use it for our MMM as well. I've been a design partner. I've been one of the early design partners on Houzz's CMMM. C stands for causal, so it's one of the only MMMs, if not the only MMM that I've seen that's actually using your causal experiments to build the model. And so that allows me to just trust the data so much more. So it's not a black box, but actually informs our roadmap and has been so crucial for allowing us to operationalize around incrementality. The Houzz team is world-class. I can't speak highly enough about them. They've also built a really amazing community with some of the best D2C growth operators out there. They have a few exciting events coming up soon that they call the Houzz Growth Lab. One is in LA on May 19th and the other is in New York on May 21st. I highly recommend checking it out. If you're in the area. If you want to check it out, learn a little bit more about CMM, go to house.io/operators to start making better data-driven decisions today.
All right, sweet. Do you guys want to pivot into talking about creative productions?
Let's do it. All right.
So, uh, I'll tee us up here. Um, and then Cody, you would send some notes on like the different types of creative productions that you guys do. Um, at Ridge, we're like all across the board right now where we're producing like UGC all the time. We're doing like these, uh, you know, let's call them like $10 grand lifestyle shoots for like new launches. And then we just did last week our first, it'll be all in like almost a half a million dollar production with the celebrity talent fees and things like that. So we're, I'm thinking about, oh, we did a founder video shoot like a couple weeks before that. So we've been all across the spectrum. I was hoping we just like jam through like, what are the other ways that each of us are producing content? And if we have any like learnings or ideas or tactics, we're going to be repurposing in the future. So, um, Cody, I think from what I got from your text, you guys do it a bit differently than Ridge. So maybe you could just walk through how you guys are producing content at JRB.
So we do, I would say like the primary thing we do, we'll call it our photo shoots, brand shoots. So this is, you know, we have product launches pretty much every month, every, you know, other month, big one. So we shoot probably every other month, sometimes once a quarter, usually for 2 days. So these are our biggest ones. Fortunately, like we, we, we have a studio, we own our own studio. We have a lot of the equipment. It's, I would say mostly us. We have a freelance photographer who we use. Um, so they started just as photo, like beginning of the brand is photo. And then now it's like, all right, let's just have a camera rolling at all times. Right? Like I think the part of the principle of this is just like, it's just leverage. It's just like, how do you get as much content as possible out of all of these things? You know? Um, so the primary use of this is just our general. Brand assets, which means e-com, print, you know, um, you know, retail, press, like really anything that you, you know, potentially need. Um, but there's also tons of B-roll for ads. So now we get a before-after of every person, you know, we have multiple. So we have, you know, multiple cameras that's just running on this one main set where people are doing their before-afters. We get, you know, there's, there's definitely a lot of skill in trying to be as efficient as possible with how many people you can get through that, you know, how many— like, for us, is how many looks you can get on them. But then also, if you got 4 models there for the day, what are, you know, what are you doing with the other people in the meantime? So we'll have a second set that's set up. That's another seamless, but it's more of like, you know, we'll have them apply on themselves kind of so we can use it for B-roll, for ads, social, whatever you need it to be., we'll, we'll often take them around in a car ride or just on a walk and get some like more like iPhone UGC, you know, so somebody will like, hopefully there's like always productivity that's happening. Um, I think you should always have people shooting iPhone, 1 to 2 people, like more of a social style and like do more of like a behind the scenes narrative if you can kind of, you know, do that. So those are like our primary ones and, um, and like tons of content that's a little bit more of your brand forward, but that's anything you'll see on website and stuff like that.
When you guys are preparing for the, like, you said bi, biweekly shoots, you get the studio.
I love this point. So like every other month, probably.
Oh, every other month. Yeah. Okay. Two days every other month. Um, I love the point around you always have a camera rolling. Are you like, what is the planning going into that? Are you working with your organic team and your retention team and your paid team to be like, oh, hey, we would like these clips or like, what is the prep work that goes into making the most of that two-day period?
So a lot of these are product launch related. And so for every launch, and we're trying to do a much better job, and I think we are doing a much better job of this, we have like our main, we have, we call it an initial brief, but we have like, all right, here's our, here's our big idea for this campaign, right? This, this, this concealer campaign is focused on comfort, right? Here's how we need to show it. So we, we're trying to be much more strategic with like, here's the insights from you know, what's on the market, stuff like that. Here's how we're gonna position this product. And then our creative director and copywriter will pitch that to, to us, to, you know, leadership and, and about like, this is where I think we should take this campaign. And then obviously that'll feed into the creative direction, the, the props we need, the styling, like we're trying to, to go bigger and do a bigger job of that. Um, and then some of it is, you know, it'll, it'll depend on what we need to do and if we have multiple shoots, because yes, we always need our e-com stuff on a white seamless and stuff like that, but also like We're launching a product in the summer that's talking about a vacation glow. Like, you can't shoot that in a, you know, inside. Like, we then went and we did an accessory shoot, right? These first shoots are $50K plus per day, right? And that's like doing it pretty efficiently. But then we did a, you know, $10K shoot out in the Hamptons, you know, where, where we, you know, did it at the beach and, and, you know, a little bit more of like a lifestyle shoot that's a little more on the go. But yeah, so, so once our creative director has the vision and does all the prop stuff like that, it'll go to all the channel leads. So e-com, paid social, retention, whatever, will weigh in and be like, this is what I think I need for this. In the past, we didn't really do a great job of that. And then they would just try to use whatever assets we had. But now we're trying to do a better job of it being like, all right, cool. This product, I know we're going to need a quiz for. So I need every model shot before or after or something like that. It's a hard thing to do. And it's a ton of, it's a ton of process to get right, and it's never quite perfect, but we're always trying to get it better.
So our equivalent of that type of, like, that level of shoot, there's a lot of prep work. It's happening once a month, every other month, etc. Um, trying to maximize the value there. One of the things that we started doing, which is like, I should have done long ago, but basically we've set this rule, like, we do a lot of these like lifestyle shoots, right? So we're just about to launch this one called Jungle Ops, these two camo patterns., we were out in Utah and we filmed with like this motocross, um, rider. So like we got this awesome sort of lifestyle video out of it, a bunch of photos, a bunch of B-roll of the products like in this environment. Um, but one of the things that we've like rolled into essentially the shot list for these, these types of shoots is to just always get, if there's any sort of talent, we want him speaking to camera about the product. Because that was always something where it's like, you get this awesome lifestyle video back that can become like, a lot of very cool little touchpoints across the website or across certain parts of the ad, but like, there's no, hey, this is Jungle Ops, it's brand new from Ridge, it's RFID blocking, like you can buy it at ridge.com. So we've just like layered in, like, if we have a camera rolling with any sort of talent, we need a very simple ad read from this person. And we've rolled that in and just that takes 10 minutes, 15 minutes to like set up the shot. Audio doesn't have to be perfect. It's not even rolled into like the main lifestyle video deliverable. So like, The quality of it isn't, we don't have the same expectations. It's mostly going to be 4x5s and 9x16 cuts. Um, like just that piece alone, we've like layered into all these shoots now. And pretty frequently we find that leading to winning ads. So I like this idea of just like finding additional small deliverables that you can, you know, bolt on to, uh, you know, productions you're already running.
Yeah. And the more you can think about that ahead of time, like it's, that's so key., or otherwise going into it and being like, oh, what, what do we have? Let me try to make this asset work. Like the more you could do that and then like produce it. Like we, we just did a, an additional shoot. It was one of our big shoot days. It was actually an open casting. So we had 30 people from the public come in and we brought in a video agency and we just did as much as we could that day. It would have been like $75K more to have them shoot on 2 days. So I was like, let's just make it work on 1 day. Um, and part of it is they did such a great job because they, they knew exactly what all of the deliverables were planned to be. We had obviously like the scope with them and so they could kind of like reverse engineer and be like, this is how we need to break up the day. This is how like the interviews we need to get. This is a B-roll we need to get. So they were able to like see the vision and do it. And I think if you can do that, you can, you can then just be so much more effective on that day.
I think, I think you're right though, Cody. Like it is, it is hard to get right. I think we've all probably been in the situation where you have this like big 8-hour shoot day and then you get to the end of it and you're like, ah, crap. Like, We got all these things, but there's these, these two other things that, that we didn't get and we wish we would've got that and that would've been really valuable. And I think you just, it's very much like an, like a never-ending iterative process. Like I think about where we were three years ago to where we were today and like we are, we're way more templated in like how we do our, our new product shoots, for example. But we're always peppering in more stuff. And I, I fully agree, like the further, like, like we just signed this new culinary council member, which is what our like upper echelon tier of brand ambassadors are that, you know, it's our Michelin star chefs and You know, in, in the past we've done a good job of shooting content with these people, but now that we have this playbook, we're like, all right, here, the, the date is September 1st and we're already starting that pre-planning. So like we already have, and we know we get a full day. We know we wanna shoot e-com images. We know we wanna shoot ads with him, hi-fi ads and socially native ads. Uh, we know we wanna shoot like recipe content with him. We know all the placements. So our ability to plan for this new person shoot sitting here on, you know, May 27th is so much better than it was, you know, shooting for this like Nancy Silverton shoot that we shot, um, you know, last year that we, you know, took 2 months to plan for and we got a lot of good, great content, but it's, it's just so iterative and like you get better and better over time.
Connor, on your team, who owns the planning of that production? And then like, I'd be curious, how do they interface with the rest of the teams to like gather all the stuff that, that, that you guys ultimately want delivered?
The way that we've set up our content production team, so like our, our marketing team is basically split between content and growth. So, you know, basically our content production team services the entire organization. It's almost like an internal agency. And if you're a creative IC, even if you're serving retention, you interface a lot with the retention team, of course, but you actually report into the creative team and that's worked really well for us. So we have a production manager who owns all things planning. So, you know, she, her name's Crystal. She's amazing. She's doing all things pre-production and then also the person on set during, during the day of that's like making sure we hit all the things. And then we just have a biweekly production sync that's always on. We rarely skip it. And she's owning that meeting and just talking about everything that's upcoming. So it's like, hey, if we have a shoot in 2 weeks, we've done a ton of planning for that and, and we're reviewing what that shot list is and making sure we're not missing anything. So, You know, the classic one is new product. Like we're always shooting e-com shots. We're always shooting lifestyle shots. We're always shooting like a product hype reel to be used on in paid and organic. We're shooting a bunch of recipe content. Those are like the four pillars of any new product. She'll review that and make sure nothing's getting missed. And then we're also reviewing stuff in that meeting that's way out, right? Like, hey, here's the, the new Culinary Council member shoot. Here's what we currently have on the list. Like, what else do we want? Oh, we need, we want three different ads for these three products. Okay, great. Now we're setting deadlines around when the creative team needs to have those briefs ready so that way Crystal can go and say, all right, we have an 8-hour shoot. We have, you know, 4 hours worth of stuff already planned. I know the paid team wants 3 YouTube ads that then they'll cut into a bunch of paid social ads for Meta and TikTok and Instagram. Okay, that's another 2 hours. And like, that's our process. And then over time we've kind of created this, like, you know, back what I was just saying, we have these things that we always do for like a new product shoot or a, you know, we do a lot of campaign shoots now where like our team was just out in the desert somewhere shooting our like summer campaign stuff. So we kind of have that template that we're just like adding to over and over again. But she is the point person driving all that forward and making sure that she's getting all the requirements from every team. And I think that has been maybe the biggest unlock is like you have to have someone owning that. Like you have to have a true owner of the shoot. Because if you don't have anyone that's, if it's just kind of by committee where like your paid team and your organic social team and your e-com team are all contributing, but no single person is driving it, like things get lost. And I think having, having someone like Crystal is such an unlock because when we go and say, hey, we want to shoot 3 ads with this person on this shoot day, we know it's going to happen as long as we get her all the, all the briefs and the scripts and all the, all the things.
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I've, I've been so impressed. Like this, I think the unlock is you gotta look outside of e-com and like direct-to-consumer product brands to find this talent. Like this person I'm referencing on our team who's our creative producer, she comes from a traditional media background. And when you look at the documents, the pre-planning documents, they are so specific in terms of scheduling. And then when you're actually on set in one of these more, more involved shoots, there is so much going on. Like there's 15 people there, there's different things being worked on. Like it's very organized and it is a very different skillset than, you know, performance marketing or like even producing like just ads with like an editor or just like production is just such a different world than like, oh, we now have the content and we need to brief in the content and get utilization and get e-com shots edited and ads edited. It's just, And I think that's been our unlock is marrying traditional media backgrounds to really own this part with our marketing team. And we've created, and there's still tons of like, we're talking about how to, you know, we had a big meeting on Friday on like, where are the holes in our new product go-to-market process? Because we still feel like there's a lot of areas to improve, but I'm always blown away when I am in LA and they're shooting. Like I always try to get out there and see those because they're really fun to watch. It's just such an orchestration of people and deliverables and a tight schedule. It's just really cool to see.
Yeah. And it's just like, it's such an extremely high leverage position that like, like I said, like I don't think Ridge has historically done it very well and they're spending way more time on it, but you can be getting like multiples more. It's not even, you can be getting 20% more out of a shoot. Like you can be getting 300, 400% more out of a shoot with just like better pre-planning, better understanding deliverables, understanding how to execute that in a certain day. Um, so Cody, we talked a bit about The larger production shoots and like sort of maximizing the value from those. Um, are there any other types of productions you guys are consistently doing at, at, at Jones Road?
Yeah, so I'd say we haven't been doing them as often, but I would say we'd have more of like a, just like a video ad shoot. And so this would be, we probably have various ones. And so this would be the biggest one would be like TV shoot that like, I don't know how often you guys shoot TV, but like it's probably not more than annual unless we have like a. A net new product. Um, but again, trying to have it be not just a TV, but, and then it's more of a, uh, you know, paid social ad shoot founder, right? This would be like a founder one with Bobby. We don't do it as often anymore, but in the past it was, you know, every other month and we just batched a ton. Um, and these would be like a 6-hour, you know, whatever combo of, we, we've, we've gone back and forth in terms of what we've done internally, what we've done agencies. Um, you know, it kind of just depends on the needs. I would say we primarily have it internal. We'll just bring in like one person, like a freelance producer sometimes or something like that to do it. But, but now we're at the point where we don't necessarily, you know, need to do that. Um, so that would be another one, right? We don't really do like internal shoots with like, like audio add-ons. I'd love to be able to do that, but it's really all just gone like creator-led now at the point. But I still think for the, for creative diversity, it would be great to be able to like, you know, shoot with, with talent and, and, and actors and creators internally. Um, so we have those ad shoots and then there's, you know, uh, B-roll shoots. So we have one person on our team, she's like a producer photographer as well. And so she does a lot of, you know, uh, of our photography. We have a more of like a high-end photographer that we work with, like, you know, that will send it, like, that'll be like our real e-com stuff, but it's more the accessory stuff, email, social, combo of nice camera and iPhone. Um, she, she can kind of get briefed in from the team. So she's probably shooting 2 to 3 days a week just in the, in the studio. Like every time I walk over, she's doing that. Um, and then social. So we just have like a new social manager, but like really there's, there's content every day that's, that's happening. She's, you know, going, going on herself. She's bringing other people into it. Um, kind of like wanted a, a social manager who's also a creator, you know? And we're just going live and, and we're using a lot of that stuff for, for, you know, paid social as well. So those are like, I would say all of the different components we have. And then I mentioned like the lifestyle shoot. So like we needed to supplement this, this brand shoot with some outdoor stuff. So, you know, we, we took a model or two that's, you know, more of like a friend of the brand. We took one employee and, and did like just a small, you know, one, one day thing outside at the beach for, for a lot of our campaign imagery.
So going back quickly to the video shoot, when you're shooting with Bobby, these happen pretty frequently. They become things like TV commercials. Who's doing the scripting?
In the past, it was me. Uh, it depends. We, we, again, we go back and forth. Like the last shoot we did, we brought in, you know, an agency. And so they, they did it. We don't have anybody internally that, you know, we don't have like a video director of video. We, we did in the past and it just, to your point about not understanding the speed and the velocity. Like, it's very, very hard to get somebody who understands all the worlds and gets the production standards, things like that, but also gets like the social needs, gets paid social. Um, so we, we don't currently have anybody. And so we'll just, we'll bring in, but, um, I'll usually get a little bit more involved just because those don't happen that often. And obviously with being Bobby's son, I know her very well and what she's comfortable saying and things like that.
I'd almost love, uh, I, we did the, we did a founder shoot. So Ridge is founded by a, a father-son team, Daniel and Paul Kane. We got them together and it ended up being a good shoot. And I, we structured it more like an interview, which I thought was interesting. Um, it was also really important for me to be there. I've been at Ridge for almost 10 years. I'm like, I know all the little soundbites that I want to get from these guys, you know? Um, and I wish, I mean, obviously you're never going to replace that, like the people who have known the founders for, you know, their entire lives in the way that you have Cody. Um, like you guys will have like very unique insight into what can get done. But I almost wish there was like, I wish there was a production agency that specified specifically in founder ads and like did like a pre-shoot interview and figured out what are like the emotional, what's the backstory here? What are the emotional ties? What heartstrings do I want to be pulling at in this production? Um, cause I just feel like it feels like everybody's running founder ads at this point. I mean, Danny's in ads, right, Connor? So is Gordon, who like, I think a lot of people see as like the founder of Hexclad. Um, and I just feel like we've still got to tighten the bolts on like how we even produce around that idea.
I think at least at Hexclad, our, our, what we, at least with Gordon, I mean, if it's the, if it's Danny and it's founder ads, I mean, our creative strategy team is writing in those briefs. We also have a separate organic social series going on right now with Danny where he's just like very, Yappy style reviewing new products in our organic social team brief set in. But where we found success for our higher production stuff is we are actually, like Cody said, we're hiring outside people to help creative concept that, like the one that we did with Yuki and Gordon. We hired someone that we had worked with in the past that had some involvement with the Super Bowl campaign. So we had some familiarity with the brand and Gordon and just our TV commercials in general because of that. And then he helped create the concept. But our, I think the, the balance is that our head of content is so good at this as well. You know, he's not the one coming up with all of it, but he's super involved. Like they're working together the entire time. He's beating it up. He's giving feedback along the way versus we're not just saying, hey, you know, we're doing a commercial with Yuki and Gordon and go, go write something. And like, we're showing up in 2 weeks and it's, it's done. It's very collaborative. And I think that's been. Been the right balance for us. 'Cause yeah, I don't, I don't think it makes sense to have that, that talent in-house when, you know, we're probably producing, we're probably doing like 2 full-on, like linear TV level productions per year. So you're not gonna, and like those have to hit, so you're not gonna have that person in-house, but you also probably have to go and, and, you know, outsource to someone that's really good at that.
This has been, I think, the most challenging thing, like there's so many creative agencies. For me, there's, you get your, your video, your traditional video production agencies, right? And there's some really good ones. And then you have your, your, you know, direct response UGC agencies. There are so few people who I believe, at least that I have found, who get production, can shoot on real cameras and get like real world paid social hooks, things like that. So if there was like total white space, I think like huge value for it. Um, but I just haven't personally found that many people or agencies who really get that and do a great, a great job of that.
And that's what I'm getting at. And that's where I'm like, oh yeah, does that sort of guidance need to be coming from the brand side where we're showing up to with the, like, you know, best-in-class production companies and like, we have a better set of structured deliverables and we've scripted it in a way that's gonna be modular so that we can do the, like, 12 cuts, the 15 cuts that we need to after the fact. Um, because yeah, I am absolutely with you, Cody, that there's like, it feels like there's this big in-between, this big like chasm that's yet to be crossed between digital deliverables and like the ability to produce them.
I agree. And I'm, I'm pro freelancer for this area instead of, um, hey, I want them to get social a bit more. Like I want like the younger people and it's like, we can kind of fit them in. We could be like, hey, we have these aspects. We don't have this, like, we're gonna drive the show a little bit more from the scripting and production. Like, we need you to produce that. That, that is different than if you work with some of these bigger agencies, they're gonna be like, no, we're handling this end to end. Or, you know, like you can approve stuff. So I, that's where I, I'm, I'm pro freelancer is where you don't need somebody full-time on payroll. But I think getting, I, what I've been trying to do actually lately is just build that Rolodex even when we don't need. It's just so that when we do have a need, you could just go to this person and be like, hey, Hey, let's do this project together.
You know, I thought, um, one of the production companies we shot with over the last few weeks does all of the productions for, um, Maximum Effort, Ryan Reynolds. Um, like, I don't know what they're considered, a creative agency? But like, it's a good example of, it's different than what we're describing, but I think it's a good parallel because they are decoupled from the production itself. When you're going to Maximum Effort and you're working with Ryan Reynolds, you're really paying for like, the idea and the scripting. Then they are like, um, subcontracting out the actual production of that. The people bringing in the cameras and renting the studio and like editing the video is like, that is subcontracted out. And I think that's a, that's a really strategic decoupling. Now you're paying a ton of money to Maximum Effort for, for them producing spots for you. Um, but what we're asking for here is almost like another layer in between the production company. That rather than being great scripting and great concepting is more like, hey, we are going to maximize this day's shoot and make sure that you're getting the like 25 deliverables that you really want. And you're going to get 400% more from this day than you otherwise would. And that is something like, I think, I don't think there's anybody who's doing that right now. And I think it's something that we are spending a lot of time getting better at at Ridge.
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Or my point is like, they don't even need to shoot the content at the end of the day. I'd be more than happy to just bring someone in and help me interface now with this production company who's gonna do all the big, like maybe I don't want to compromise on the quality of the video. So I need the, like, I need people who have shot Hollywood movies before, but I need the, like, strategic lens of somebody who's very familiar with digital. That's who, that's what I'm looking for.
I think, I think over time too, because when, when, like, we, like, we have this production team that doesn't come from that, like, DR selling products online background, but over the last, you know, we more or less have the same team for the last 3 years and, and they've just gotten, you know, the paid media creative strategists have just spent so much time with that production team that now when we go and brief a shoot with any creator or influencer, they know how to execute that in a, in a very like paid social way. They know that they know how to shoot it. I mean, they have like all the safe zones, grids right up on their camera. So they've gotten just, it's just this iterative process. And now I think that's become one of our moats is we work with a lot of chefs that have a lot of respect. So when we produce ads with them, people trust them, but they're not creators. So I'm not, we're not going to send them a brief and say, hey, shoot this on your own time. But now that's become a moat for us because we can bring them into our studio, brief out really good ad scripts, and our production team knows how to execute it in a very paid social friendly way. And now we're shooting amazing ads with these people that like otherwise wouldn't have been able to shoot it on their own time. And we're getting just incredible ads from people that have a ton of trust in the space. But that's been, you know, a 3-year overnight story, right? You know, if you were to go back to when these teams just started together, we messed up all the time and we just, we wouldn't have been able to execute the way that I think we'll be able to execute on this new brand ambassador 3 years ago.
Keeping the team internal, getting the reps in, you're ultimately going to develop the best practices over time. Um, and it just feels like someone should bucket up all those best practices and, and offer it as a service. Uh, the, you know, one other point I had here, just like, just on some more like ideating on how to get the most out of shoots. This was, uh, our sweepstakes shoot last year. We were out also in Utah, like rural Utah. We rented this big like dirt racing track and the cars were just like filthy. And I spent like not long, like 20 minutes where I'd, I'd like wrote into the dirt on the car, you know, get 4x entries now, sweepstakes ending soon, just like a couple of random, like little phrases. And then like iPhone footage of like zooming into it. It's, and what it ended up being was like the equivalent of like a sticky note ad, but like native to this where like someone's just got to like sit there and read what's written. And we ended up getting, you know, 100K, 100K of spend behind that ad. So it's like, Even I think there's a lot of examples. So we're going into it this year and it's like, we took that as a learning of like, hey, let's get some of our key messaging written in unique ways throughout this video shoot so that we can use this as B-roll and as like very just short, short videos and like almost GIF-like format. Um, and that's just like, that's another thing that like, it's a whole different type of content that we'd never even considered creating had we not like just roughly experimented with it last year and seen some success.
It is funny though, because the easiest way to underwrite any program that's related to content is to put ad spend behind it. Right? If we're talking about like TikTok Shop, or talking about like organic social, or even like influencer, it's like, it's all just like almost a loss leader for ad content.
1000%. Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, that's like, that is how it's, I think the feedback goes both ways a little bit where it's like, okay, well, what got ad spend? Let's take those learnings and let's try to produce more of that content moving forward. And then I also think, you know, when we're talking about TV commercials and things like big splashier campaigns, we do some like lifestyle video stuff. And I, I spoke about this earlier this year. We did a big Hawaii shoot last year that was like not DR in any way. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, this is gonna be a mixed message here, but like then we measured the incremental impact of having that within our, our campaign ads and we saw that it was driving lift. So it was like, this was a this is a piece of content that I would have never expected to really justify ad spend on like any sort of attributable, um, or like BAU basis. But we produced it nonetheless. We thought it was great content. And then we found a path to like getting it distribution that was incremental to the business. So I think it's like, it's an ebb and flow between the like brand and performance stuff.
Yeah, for sure. No, it's just funny because like we've talked about it with TikTok Shop stuff and like that's really the value of getting a creative. And then, you know, you're talking about like doing the shoot and how much you're able to spend behind it. It's like, it's just such an easy way to justify some of the cost of some of this, some of this creative, if you can do it.
You hit on something though, Connor, that I think it's like a simple thing that can make you get way more paid media value out of these shoots. Like we've intentionally tried to hire our creative strategist in LA because every shoot we have a creative strategist there on set because they're going to see stuff that other folks don't see. They're going to have ideas randomly pop up and Some of those things turned into the, to your point, like you just were on set and had the idea of writing that in the dirt. Like just have a creative strategist there. If you have one of your creative strategists who lives and breathes paid media and they know what's working in the account and what's not working in the account, they're gonna have those ideas on set. They're gonna have those like both from like a visuals and just a voiceover, like text or yeah, like a VO hook. And I would be shocked if you don't get way more footage that you're gonna put paid spend behind just by having that person on set paying attention and, and being able to chime in and say, oh, well, what about, could you just get this, this line too? And can you just get this visual as well? And like a lot of those things, I don't care how well you plan, you're never gonna, you're always gonna have ideas on set. Like it's just always gonna be the case. Like some of our best hooks have been that way where it's like, oh, what if she like sliced through the watermelon with the knife? And like that didn't show up in the pre-production planning, but then all of a sudden you're like, wow, that's the, the ad that we put the most spend behind. So you just gotta have, you gotta be nimble and don't expect to have everything planned and just have the people on set that can come up with those good in real time ideas.
Any other creative production learnings or tactics you guys think we should touch on?
What, what's your, I'm curious, like we, we added a studio 5 minutes from our office and now we shoot in there. I mean, sometimes every day depending on what's going on, you know, 3, 4 times a week. What's your, how do I wanna say it? Not resourcing, but like what are, what are the spaces that you guys have at your disposal to shoot? Because now we're 5 minutes away. So if we have an idea on a, on a Friday, we can meet with our product, our creative producer on Monday and say, hey, when could we shoot this idea? She can go look at the schedule and say, we can shoot this in next week, Wednesday. And like we're able, you know, Cody, we talked about like how quickly can you go from idea to launched an ad account. So it's like how I, how quick can you go from idea to production to edited to ad account? So just more of an extended timeline, but having that, that office or that, that studio rather, 5 minutes from our office is such an unlock in the content we're able to produce. So what are, what are your guys—
what's your turnaround? What's, what's, what's your turnaround for if you need something?
I mean, we can usually shoot it within 2 weeks. I mean, again, it depends on the calendar. If we have like a bunch of products and campaigns coming up and an influencer shoot, yeah, maybe it's a little busier schedule, but often these ideas aren't full shoot days. It's like, hey, we need like these clips and that's it. So it's like, can we— a lot of, a lot of times it turns into, hey, can we grab an hour from the shoot day where you're doing something else? And we can usually turn those things around pretty darn quickly. And that's also why we have the biweekly meeting, because we can then prioritize based on importance. So it's like, hey, idea Monday, we shot it the following Monday, but we would never be able to do that if we didn't have a studio. And for the longest time we didn't have a studio and these ideas did not come to life as quickly. So what, what's your availability as far as like studios and being able to go and shoot somewhere? I know Connor, you're remote, Cody, you're in person, so that I'm sure there's some nuance there.
So we have, we have a studio literally right across the street and we're, we're building it out right now. So it still is taking longer than I want it to. Um, but theoretically we have it. Part of it is getting set up right with like, with like, you know, one-click setup. And so you don't have to move lights and stuff like that. So we're trying to build like a few different sets that we think would work for, for all of our needs, whether it's, you know, creator content, TikTok shop content, things like that. Um, produce content, you know, B-roll. So part of it is just getting it set up., but it should, I, I would like it, you know, I think for creator content should be that day, next day for more produced content that needs, you know, I don't know if you're needing color grading and stuff like that. Yeah, you should be able to shoot it within a few weeks. So that's the goal is just like, how can you shorten that down and make it as easy as possible? But yeah, huge, huge alpha, huge, huge plus. If you can have your own studio that you can shoot it and not have to go and hire, you know, an agency and find a space every single time. But one of the other things like we'll do is like, we'll, we'll do like a house, right?
We're trying to do like stuff less in studio.
You can get a house for a full day on, on Peerspace for like $3K or something like that. So that's also something that's nice to do, but then you gotta lug all your equipment over.
We probably have the leanest, like, access to space, I guess. We just moved to a bigger studio in Salt Lake City, so we can, we have like very simple, we can have 2 setups now. We had a very small one before where we could only have 1 setup. We've like basically doubled our, our, uh, our bandwidth there. Um, but that's mostly like, that's mostly, um, image oriented. We do all of our own e-com photography in-house. We're doing, we call it, um, uh, lay flats where we're like shooting it alongside other props and things. That's what gets done in that studio there. We have the network of creators. So any UGC stuff, we have a fantastic turnaround time on, but it is done through like contractors at like $100 a video, a couple hundred bucks a video. Um, so it's not nearly as cost effective as if we had those people in person shooting. Um, but we at least have the turnaround and then for any sort of higher budget production. We've just got a different, we're not always going through agencies. We've got a number of like contractors that we'll engage with. So we get some of our lifestyle video shoots done really affordably and really flexibly. Um, and that's kind of the, the stack.
I think one of the, one of the new things we've done this year too, that Cody reminded me of is just having that, that freelancer with the creator network that we can go to and anytime we have an idea or even if it's just a clip. That we think is best served through iPhone footage, not in our studio, through a creator, we can go right to her and say, hey, here's what we're looking for. And then she can go and kind of select the right person for that. That's also been amazing for turning around creator footage quicker versus going right to the creator or you have an in— I mean, I still think the in-house creator is a great option for brands and you get the same speed, but you just don't get as much diversity. I think that's the right— like what we've done with this freelancer is like a nice balance between diversity. And, and quickness to getting that content turned back around.