CMO @ Heatmap.com

Building the future of creative operations @ CreativeOS. Using this machine to make the world a more creative place through less busy work and more time to create!

Chase Mohseni

I've seen brands spend $30K on a video shoot and get beaten by a product shot with three arrows on it.

That's basically what happened here.

Hiya's kids sunscreen ad is two hands holding a tin and three callouts. Headline says "Fits Any Routine." 

There's nothing impressive about it creatively.

But it's doing exactly one job at exactly the right moment - answering the three questions a parent has right before they buy:

Is it messy? No. 
Can I carry it? Yes. 
Does it work for real life? Beach, park, school days - yes.

No desire creation. No lifestyle fantasy. Just objections killed cleanly.

This is what I think about every time a brand asks me why their retargeting isn't converting. 

Nine times out of ten they're running inspiration ads to people who already want the product. 

Those people don't need a mood board. They need one last question answered.

Know what job your ad is doing. 

Everything else follows from that.

Founder/CEO @ CreativeOS - streamlining your creative process.

Tomorrow I am jamming with Sarah Levinger and Matthew Gattozzi
 about all things ads and creative strategy on Creative Playbook from CreativeOS

If you want to get better at turning those impressions into conversions - come join us. (Sign up in the comments)

I keep seeing the same ad creative mistake everywhere.

Broad creative → collection page → zero conversions.

No focus = no conversion.

Here are 3 insights that came up during Creative Playbook this week with Sarah Levinger & Matthew Gattozzi:

1. The fatal mismatch

Everyone is making broad ads with no angle and sending them to the broadest page possible (collections, best-sellers).

Then wondering why nothing converts.

No focus = no conversion.

The fix: Match your creative to your page type. Static ads need deep landing pages. Video ads can work with simpler pages. And collection pages only work when people already know your brand.

2. Sell to the buyer, not the user

This came up on the STEM kit breakdown and it's the mistake most kids product brands make.

Parents don't buy STEM kits because their kids need physics lessons. They buy them to feel like good parents investing in their child's confidence.

Show the kid's face when they crack the code. Show "my kids are asleep—look at what they built tonight."

The parent is the buyer. The kid is the experience. Sell emotional ROI.

3. Category psychology matters more than you think

Jewelry ≠ kids products ≠ supplements. Different products need completely different approaches.

Example: Jewelry is one of the only categories where consumers want it to be expensive. Don't sell attainability—sell exclusivity and craftsmanship. And for the love of god, use harsh lighting to make stones sparkle. Soft lighting kills jewelry ads.

If you’ve made it this far and want to do deeper - get your full breakdown here.

I've been thinking about how all marketing strategy looks the same now.

Same playbooks. Same hooks. Same templates. Same "proven frameworks."

Then I read about Hermes - they've been in business for 186 years.
Worth $220 billion.

No marketing department. No ads. No discounts. Ever.

One sentence from a former CEO explains why:

"We don't have a policy of image. We have a policy of product."

Here's what that means for you today...

In 1837, Thierry Hermès opened a harness workshop in Paris.

He wasn't building a fashion brand.

He was solving a problem: horses' movements were hampered by poorly-sized equipment.

His solution was the saddle stitch — two needles, two waxed threads, tensile opposition. Only done by hand.

One stitch became the foundation of a $220B company.

Not a logo. Not a slogan. A stitch.

By 1919, the automobile was killing the horse industry.

Most equestrian businesses panicked. Pivoted. Chased trends.

Hermès asked one question:

"What can we make with our hands here that will interest our clients today?"

Not: what's trending? Not: what are competitors doing? Not: what does market research say?

What can we make with our hands?

The most iconic bags in luxury fashion history were never designed as fashion.

The Haut à Courroies (1892) — designed to carry saddles.

The Bolide (1923) — first bag with a zipper. Designed so things wouldn't fall out during travel.

The Kelly — designed in 1935 as a "ladies' bag with straps."

No campaign brief. No focus group. No influencer strategy.

They made functional things beautifully. Fashion came later.

Here's what kills me:

Hermès made the Kelly bag for 20+ years before it became famous.

It wasn't even called the Kelly until 1956.

They didn't need the world to validate the product.

They trusted the craft.

While everyone optimizes for speed, Hermès built the opposite model.

One craftsman makes each bag. Start to finish.

A Kelly takes 18-20 hours of handwork.

New artisans don't touch a product for sale until they've apprenticed for 18 months to 4 years.

Slowness wasn't a bug.

It was the brand.

By 1935, Hermès had survived an entire industry dying.

They did it without:

→ A marketing department 
→ A single advertisement 
→ A discount, ever 
→ A product designed by committee

They only asked one question: "How do we make this better?"

The selling took care of itself.

Here's what this means for you today:

Everyone's asking "how do I market this?"

The better question: "Is this good enough that marketing becomes irrelevant?"

In a world of AI-generated everything, craft is the last moat.

Speed is the default. Slowness is the differentiator.

Make things no one asked for — but everyone needs.

Trust the work before the market validates it.

Hermès spent 20 years making bags nobody cared about.

Then they became the most valuable brand on earth.

Patience isn't a weakness. It's the whole strategy.

I recently looked at a funnel from Caraway Home (love them) for their airtight food storage containers.

At first glance, everything feels polished. The brand aesthetic is strong, the product photography is beautiful, and the experience feels premium.

But when you look at the ad → landing page transition, there’s a subtle breakdown that many eCommerce brands make.

The Ad

The creative leads with authority:
“Trusted by the Experts” + Good Housekeeping Award Winner.

It’s a powerful trust signal. The image reinforces the message too - the containers are shown in a real pantry environment, communicating organization, freshness, and everyday usefulness.

So the click motivation is clear:

This is a trusted, expert-approved storage solution.

The Landing Page:

After clicking, the user lands on a standard “Shop Food Storage” category page.

Instead of reinforcing the authority message, the experience immediately shifts to:
• filters
• product grids
• quick shop buttons

The funnel goes from persuasion → browsing.

That’s where the coherence drops.

What Works Well

• The product visuals match the ad perfectly
• The brand aesthetic is consistent (clean, premium, minimal)
• Users can quickly see product options, pricing, and ratings

So visually, the experience is cohesive.

Where the Opportunity Is: The landing page doesn’t continue the story that drove the click.

A few small changes could dramatically strengthen the funnel:

- Carry the authority message forward
- A hero section like “Award-Winning Airtight Storage” with the Good - Housekeeping badge would reinforce the click motivation.
- Introduce the category before the product grid
- A short benefit section explaining freshness, non-toxic materials, and pantry organization would turn the page into persuasion - so it's not not just browsing.
- Highlight a starter set or best-seller first

This reduces decision scroll fatigue and gives users a clear starting point.
The takeaway

This is a common pattern in DTC:

Great ad → solid product page → missing persuasion layer.

The funnel looks coherent, but the message continuity breaks after the click.
Often, the fastest conversion wins come from fixing that moment.

Curious how others handle this:

Do you usually send paid traffic to product pages, bundles, or category pages?

Money printing websites is the goal.

How you do that: Come to Creative Playbook with me, Shaun Brandt, and Taylor Davies from Oddit & CreativeOS.

Learn what makes website great or not so great. There will be plenty of both. 

See you there tomorrow at 11am PST.

Link to sign up in comments.

I used to work in manufacturing during college. Traveled to China. And at the time, the pace of innovation felt genuinely wild.

You could video call a factory in Shenzhen, hold up a camera to show them what you were looking at, share files back and forth in real time, and they’d be prototyping on the floor within hours. 

That felt like magic in 2007, 2008.

Today at CreativeOS , we have our version of that. A customer drops async video feedback. It hits our team channel. 

We jump into a voice room, talk it through, get aligned. 

Someone pulls the specs together, APIs get connected, a design gets rendered, code gets pulled. All of it lands in staging for testing.


Start to finish: a few hours.

What blew my mind two decades ago now feels like table stakes. And I think that’s actually a beautiful thing.

Innovation isn’t a threat when you’re in service of people trying to build something real. (Pls read this again)

It’s just the game moving forward.

Happy Friday.

The brands overthinking creative are losing.

But so are the ones pumping out AI slop.

And somehow nobody's talking about the middle.

Here's what I see running CreativeOS - there are two types of brands getting absolutely crushed right now:

Brand A spends 3 weeks on a single ad. Endless revisions. Pixel-perfect. They launch 1 concept, pray it works, and wonder why CAC keeps climbing.

Brand B discovered AI and now they're shipping 50 ads a week that all look like they were made by a microwave. Same generic hooks. Same stock-looking visuals. Zero brand. Zero soul.

Both are losing to Brand C.

Brand C gets it. They move fast AND they give a damn. They start with proven structures - not a blank canvas, not a ChatGPT fever dream. 

They put their brand into it. Real voice. Real angles. Real creative decisions made by a human who understands their customer.

Then they test at volume.

The difference is massive:

1) speed without slop
2) volume without looking like everyone else
3) templates as a starting point, not a final product
4) AI as a tool, not a replacement for taste

(Hot take: the brands that use AI to SKIP the thinking are going to get wrecked by the brands that use AI to do MORE thinking, faster.)

The bar for creative is about to split in two. The slop merchants will race to the bottom. The brands with real taste and real speed will pull away from everyone.

One more thing.

If your AI slop ads are "working" right now - don't get comfortable. That's arbitrage. You found a window where the bar is low. That window always closes.

The brands building real creative muscle right now are going to eat you alive when it does.

Where are you seeing the most AI slop right now? I have thoughts 👇

Fanatical in working out and reading a book with chamomile tea and a scented candle.

My day usually starts with a run or a high-intensity workout, a cold shower and a 10-minute meditation session. After that, I dive into working at my agency D-DOUBLEU MEDIA.

We help 7-9 figure Ecommerce businesses scale through performance creatives and paid media.

Dennis W.

You're not a "performance marketer."

You're someone who learned a platform and stopped there.

Performance marketing is:
- Understanding unit economics well enough to make real decisions
- Knowing when to cut spend vs when the data isn't significant yet
- Building creative systems that produce winners, not hoping for them

If your entire value is "I know how to use Meta Ads Manager" — that's not a skill.

That's a tutorial anyone can watch in an afternoon.

The platforms want you to think the buttons are complicated.

They're not. The thinking is.

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Slashing acquisition costs via performance creatives and paid media for 7-9 figure Ecommerce brands.

Unpopular opinion:

Your best-performing ad will never be the one you "love."

It'll be the one that feels too simple. Too ugly. Too direct. Too uncomfortable.

Because good ads don't make the brand feel good.

Good ads make the customer feel seen.

Those are almost never the same thing.

The founder who picks ads based on what they'd personally click on is the founder who can't scale.

You are not your customer.

Your taste is irrelevant.

The data decides. Not your ego.

I get asked constantly:

"What's the ONE thing that moves the needle most?"

Honest answer: It's not one thing. It's a system.

Research → Brief → Create → Test → Learn → Iterate

Each step has a framework. Each framework has been refined across $50M+ in spend.

I packaged all of it into one toolkit.

6 interactive tools. 100+ frameworks. Used daily by our team.

Like & comment "SYSTEM" and I'll send details.

Dennis Willeboordse

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HIRING: Performance Creative Strategist

Not looking for someone who can follow a template.

Looking for someone who can break down why a template works — then build a better one.

Requirements:

→ You've personally concepted ads that drove $500K+ in revenue
→ You understand awareness levels deeply (not just "heard of them")
→ You can write a brief in 30 minutes that a team can execute without questions
→ You've worked in DTC — supplements, skincare, or consumer products
→ You spend time in the ad library weekly because you're genuinely curious

This isn't remote-and-disappear.

You'll be in the creative engine of an agency scaling 10+ brands simultaneously.

DM me "STRATEGIST" with a brief you're proud of.

The 60-second creative audit:

Pull up your last 5 ads. For each one, answer:

1. Does the first sentence call out a specific person? (Not "Hey guys")
2. Is there a curiosity gap in the first 3 seconds?
3. Does it address ONE awareness level clearly?
4. Is there proof from a real customer?
5. Is there a reason to act NOW?

If any ad scores less than 3 out of 5, that's your problem.

Not the algorithm. Not the CPMs. Not the audience.

The ad itself.

RT if you're going to actually do this audit today.

A brand came to us with "the algorithm hates us."

Their data told a different story:

- 3.2% CTR (solid)
- 0.8% landing page conversion (disaster)

The ad was working. The page wasn't.

We didn't touch the ads.

Changed the hero image from lifestyle to product-in-use. Added a specific result to the headline. Put reviews above the fold instead of buried at the bottom.

Same traffic. 2.4% conversion.

Their "algorithm problem" was a landing page problem they refused to see.

Most ad problems aren't ad problems.

The best creative I shipped this month took 3 hours to research and 20 minutes to write.

The worst one I shipped took 20 minutes to research and 3 hours to write.

The ratio matters more than the hours.

How we turned a "dead" product into a $300K/month seller:

Brand had a collagen supplement. "Tried everything." Ready to discontinue.

We didn't change the product. We changed who we talked to.

Old targeting: "Women 30-50 who want better skin."

New angle from review research: "Women who just went through menopause and feel like they're losing themselves."

That shift — from a demographic to an identity in crisis — changed everything.

The ad: A 45-second video. One woman. Talking about how she didn't recognize herself anymore. And how one change started to bring her back.

No fancy editing. No trending audio. No product shots until second 30.

$300K/month. Same product. Same price. Different story for a different stage of life.

Products don't die. Angles do.

I was wrong about UGC.

Used to think the format itself was magic. Find creator, ship product, get "authentic" content, profit.

Turns out UGC without strategy is just expensive mediocrity with a ring light.

What actually matters:

1. The brief — not the creator
2. The hook — not the aesthetic
3. The research — not the trending sound

The best UGC I've seen this quarter came from a founder talking into an iPhone with terrible lighting.

But the words were perfect because they came from real customer language.

Format is neutral. Strategy is everything.

The best ads don't sell products.
The best books don't sell information.
The best coaches don't sell advice.

They all sell transformation.

Before state → After state.

That's the only story that matters.

A brand came to us doing $200K/month at 1.8x ROAS.

Bleeding money. Panicking.

Their diagnosis: "We need better media buying."

Our diagnosis: Every ad talked about the product. Zero ads talked about the customer.

We pulled 100 reviews. Found one phrase that appeared 23 times:

"I was tired of feeling like the tired mom at pickup."

First ad with that exact hook: 4.1x ROAS at the same spend.

They didn't need better media buying.

They needed one sentence their customer had already written for them.

Unpopular opinion:

Your product photos are killing your conversion rate more than your ads.

The ad got them to click. That part worked.

Then they land on a page with:
- Hero image that looks like every competitor
- Lifestyle shot that doesn't show the product clearly
- Zero context for what they're actually buying

The click was expensive. The photo was lazy.

Fix the landing page before you blame the ad.

Every struggling brand has a story about why things aren't working.

Every scaling brand has a system for finding what does.

Stories explain. Systems solve.

Pick one.

Copying competitors is the fastest way to become invisible.

If your ad looks like everyone else's, it IS everyone else's.

Differentiation isn't optional. It's survival.

You're not "building in public."

You're posting screenshots of small wins hoping someone will think you're further along than you are.

Building in public is sharing:
- The failures that taught you something
- The decisions that could go either way
- The problems you haven't solved yet

Posting your Shopify dashboard when you hit $10K isn't building in public.

It's bragging with a hashtag.

Share the journey or don't. But don't pretend vanity metrics are vulnerability.

The lie about "testing creative":

Everyone says test more.

Nobody talks about what testing actually means.

Testing isn't:
- Launching 10 random ads and seeing what sticks
- Changing everything at once and hoping
- Running ads for 48 hours and drawing conclusions

Testing is:
- One variable isolated
- Clear hypothesis documented
- Learning extracted regardless of result

If you can't articulate what you learned from your last 5 tests, you weren't testing.

You were gambling with a content calendar.

This hook got 3.4% CTR:

"For people who hit snooze 4 times and still feel exhausted at 2pm."

Why it works:

→ "4 times" — specific number, not "multiple"
→ "people who" — identity-first framing
→ "still feel exhausted" — the frustration they live with
→ "2pm" — specific moment they recognize

Every word earns its place.

Generic version: "For tired people who want more energy."

Same message. Half the conversion.

The brands that scale aren't selling products.

They're selling the person the customer wants to become.

That's not marketing fluff.

That's the entire game.

Unpopular opinion:

You don't need more traffic.

You need to convert the traffic you already have.

Most brands are pouring water into a leaky bucket and wondering why it won't fill.

Fix the bucket first:
- Offer that actually compels action
- Landing page that doesn't confuse
- Objection handling before they bounce

Then turn on the traffic.

Scaling a 1% conversion rate just means paying more for the same leaky bucket.

The best creative strategists I've met have one thing in common.

They spend more time listening to customers than talking to their team.

The answers aren't in your Slack channel.

They're in your customer's words.

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