Episode 11 – Turning duds into Ws– Ed Lee– Product & Growth Specialist, Adobe
On the latest episode of Growth@Scale, product and growth expert Ed Lee returns to talk about turning creative failures into learning opportunities and how to use cross-functional collaboration to unlock growth.
Some of the main topics discussed include:
Focused Growth Strategies: Instead of trying to be everything to everyone, successful User Acquisition strategies involve targeting your core audience where they are and speaking to them in a way that resonates.
Experimentation and Learning: The foundation of growth, especially for early-stage companies, is experimentation; success often means poring over creative failures to glean new learnings to leverage into future success.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: From creative and design, to data analytics, product, and sales, collaboration among different teams is a valuable way to share knowledge and innovate new strategies based on different experiences with the customer journey.
Integration of Product and Marketing: Both product-driven and marketing-driven approaches are essential and should be integrated, with successful companies leveraging strategies that unite both elements.
Budgeting for Growth: Decisions about spending on growth channels are based on data-driven test plans, with phased approaches and checkpoints to ensure money is spent wisely.
Building a Strong Creative Team: Building an effective creative team is a complex process that doesn’t stop at just hiring the best talent. You also need to establish effective test structures so you can get adequate learnings from every creative.
Creative Optimization: Dissect what works, understand the components of successful creatives, and iterate based on those insights. Sometimes you’ll see significant impact from something as simple as adjusting copy.
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Turning Duds into Ws: The Art of Learning from Creative Failures
Failures or 'duds' are inevitable in the creative process. But they don’t have to be true losses. Instead, they can serve as significant learning experiences. By analyzing and understanding our mistakes, we gain insights that can inform our next moves and shape better outcomes.
Dissect what works
Instead of constantly inventing from scratch, it’s valuable to take a closer look at successful projects. Break down the elements of your creative and examine them on their own. Examine the hook, the middle part, the ending. Try changing the copy, or the color coding. Experiment with the formatting. You can even try to mix and match elements from different creatives. Every part of your creative has its own strengths and weaknesses that can be optimized. When you pull things apart, you can create a modular format that makes experimentation easy and efficient. Build on what works and keep optimizing while leaving behind the ineffective pieces.
Get your hands dirty
A structured approach to creativity has its own merits, but there’s something to be said for pushing all that aside and trying something completely different. Give your creative team a new sandbox in which to play and let them explore “random” ideas. A change of scenery or approach is an effective way to push your own creative limitations and drive innovation. As long as you’re executing the ideas thoughtfully and within the confines of your budget and brand, don’t be afraid to get dirty.
Refine and iterate
Once you’ve found the successful components of an otherwise dud of a campaign, now it’s time to have some fun with them. Make minor changes. Make major changes. It might be something as simple as a copy change that’s the difference between failure and success. Experiment with new color combinations or find a new hook. Take the intro of one unsuccessful piece of creative and see how it works with the ending of something more effective. This process of iteration and refinement, even if it results in more duds, ensures continual learning and growth.
After running an unsuccessful campaign, it’s an easy trap to fall in to think that you need some sweeping complex solution. To wipe the slate clean and start from scratch. But the reality is that simple changes can often have a big impact. Making a few tweaks here and there can be the difference between success and failure. And even if the next round isn’t a success, that is another opportunity to keep learning and iterating. In the race to innovate and optimize, keeping things simple is often the way to go.