Using Personas and Organic Signals to Guide Ads

JMo describes creating niche creative personas, testing organically, and using organic hits as signals before scaling paid and conversion-focused variants.

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Episode notes

This week, we’re joined by Jon “JMo” Morgenstern, Head of Investment at VaynerMedia, who manages over $1.5B in annual media spend across brands like Oreo/Mondelez, JP Morgan Chase, PepsiCo, and Yeti. JMo breaks down how enterprise advertisers think about channel mix, retail media, and allocating capital across Meta, TikTok, CTV, Amazon, and Walmart and what DTC operators can learn from teams working at that scale.

From there, we dive deep into measurement. JMo breaks down how enterprise teams are approaching incrementality, causal MMM, brand lift, and retail media halo effects and why fast-moving brands need to start thinking beyond last-click and short-window ROAS if they want to graduate into real growth mode.

Then we move into creative. We talk about why “just make more ads” isn’t the strategy and how Vayner thinks about creative volume × creative diversity, niche persona testing, and using organic performance as a signal before scaling into paid.

We wrap with TikTok Shop, retail partnerships, and why even the biggest brands in the world are still navigating the same innovator’s dilemma as fast-growth DTC brands - just with more zeros and way more stakeholders. If you're trying to spend smarter, measure smarter, and make creative that actually moves the needle, you’re gonna love this one.

If you have a question for the MOperators Hotline, click the link to be in with a chance of it being discussed on the show: https://forms.gle/1W7nKoNK5Zakm1Xv6

Chapters:

00:00:00 - Introduction

00:04:59 - Fortune 500 vs DTC Strategies

00:17:59 - Measuring Awareness, Incrementality & MMM

00:38:49 - Vayner Volume Model: Diversity over Iteration

00:52:49 - Turning Organic Wins into TV Commercials

01:04:11 - TikTok Shop Strategy & Cross-Channel Halo

Motion.

⁠⁠⁠https://motionapp.com/pricing?utm_source=marketing-operators-podcast&utm_medium=paidsponsor&utm_campaign=march-2024-ad-reads⁠⁠⁠https://motionapp.com/creative-trends

Prescient AI.⁠⁠⁠

https://www.prescientai.com/operators

Richpanel.⁠⁠⁠