If you’re looking for creative genius, look no further than Structured’s own Elizabeth Thomas. As a Senior Creative Strategist, Elizabeth owns and guides creative direction to strategically scale accounts.

Elizabeth has over nine years of experience working with diverse brands, ranging in size and industry. Her experience is inclusive of working as a digital marketer, photographer, graphic designer, and creative strategist. Her experience has allowed her to turn her creative flair into a combination of paid media buying and optimization through data. This combination has allowed Elizabeth to set a track record that helps businesses grow with branding, positioning, and creative ways to turn heads in the marketplace.

Elizabeth’s superpower is to turn creative prowess into measurable impact. She understands how to help brands find their voice, stretch their creative muscles, and scale what works, giving her a strategic edge to creativity that simply works.

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‍Hot take: If your creative strategy starts with random ideas, you’ve already lost.

We love inspiration. We chase it, welcome it, occasionally scribble it on napkins, but inspiration without structure? That’s just noise and does not work in the competitive paid media world today. And with creative not just being ‘king’, but expanding into targeting, campaign structures, initiatives, etc., a creative strategy and structure is what makes the difference between a fun concept and actual performance.

At Structured, we don’t throw creative spaghetti at the algorithm and hope something sticks. We follow a process. Something that’s repeatable, collaborative, and data-informed. 

Let’s dive into what that looks like… 

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It All Starts with What You Already Know

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Creative strategy doesn’t begin with, ‘what should we make?’ It starts with ‘what have we already learned?’

So before we start dreaming up new ideas, we dig deep into:

• What’s performed well (and what hasn’t). We look at top level metrics and KPIs to understand what is driving the health of the channel. 
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• Creative signals through storytelling metrics such as hook rates, hold times, CTRs. These metrics give insights into what works and what doesn’t work so we have indicative signals of what resonates. 
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• Audience chatter such as organic social comments, Reddit threads, even Amazon reviews. These are all gold mines for pain points and real human language around your product
  
  

We also pull insights from beyond your brand… What’s trending in your category? What are your competitors saying about themselves and  you/’others’? Who’s getting it right on-platform and why?
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This phase is less about ‘what feels like a good idea”’and more about what’s actually working.

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From Brain Dump to Blueprint

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Once we’ve got the insights, we get organized and strategize. Creative strategy doesn’t live in your Notes app (even if my to do list does), it lives in a roadmap. A place where ideas are scored, sorted, and prioritized based on:

• Platforms & initiatives: where are our efforts being served & seen and where are we trying to convert
• Format: should we be pushing more into UGC? Messaging testing? Testing animations? Leaning into organic formats?
• Messaging: what is resonating and converting? Are we leaning into problem-solving, emotional resonance, 3 reasons why, etc.?
• Sound & visual cues: ASMR? Pop? Custom brand voiceover? Silence? (Yes, sometimes silence wins.)
• Audience, personas, & problems: Who are we addressing and what pain point are they trying to solve? 

The roadmap is the playbook and gives us our compass. It gives everyone, from strategist to editor to client, a shared language, goals,  and direction. This way, it gives everyone (from strategist to editor to client) a shared language, making it easier to identify goals, priorities, and strategic direction.

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Creative Briefs That Actually Work

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Ever get a creative brief that’s so vague it feels like an accident? We don’t do that. At Structured, our briefs are designed to eliminate guesswork. Our briefs are sharp, actionable, and built for performance. We’re not just writing down what we want, but we’re mapping out why we think it’ll work to give the designers context and a glimpse behind the curtain.

Our briefs  include items such as.. 

• Objectives: what are we trying to drive (awareness, conversions, retention, etc) to help guide the creative to address & solve the right problems. 
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• Platform and format: a hook on TikTok won’t land the same way as a feed video on Meta. Every platform has its own language and scroll behavior. Our briefs make sure we’re building for those nuances, not ignoring them. 
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• Hook direction and message angle: is this a problem/solution styled ad? Are we trying to resonate with an emotional appeal? Are we crafting an ad with customer testimonials or social proof? We give context here up front so our creators know the story they’re telling from the first click. 
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• Visual and audio cues: These can be so crucial and important. Videos for reels and TikTok now don’t have to be just thumbstopping visually anymore (even those this is vital and can still make or break an ad), but grab your attention through sound and earstopping creative strategies. Or things like ‘apply sound of fizzing can to suggest refreshment or ‘crop in for a view over the shoulder so the consumer feels further connection to the scene and product’, these kind of sensory details can stop that scroll and help connect faster and further. 
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• Success criteria and inspo: what ‘good’ and effective actually looks like with real examples. Whether it’s previous top performers, competitor inspo, or concepts proven on other accounts, this can help give the creators an infinite amount of knowledge for them to design better and create creatives more effectively.  
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• Strategic iterations: whether it’s your 2nd or 3rd round of testing and outlining what’s changing and why, or you’re helping  a new concept start strong with varied top-performing messaging, smart iterations is what separates wasted effort from meaningful momentum.
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• Clear deliverable expectations: Formats, length, cuts, orientation, imagery, creators, it’s all there. At structured we’re all about clear, candid, and kind communication and that’s not just something we strive for with our clients, but in our efforts internally as well right down to the creative brief. 

Think of this as the map quest for everyone involved. When the brief’s right, the production moves faster, creators deliver better, and creatives are more strategic & effective. 

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Production with a Pulse

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Let’s be real, slow creative cycles and empty creative backlogs kill momentum and performance. We work on a weekly cadence, shipping iterations and new assets per account to build a strong creative backlog, fuel smarter pivots & push top ads further. We make sure there’s enough volume to test smart, iterate strategically, and scale fast.

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And Then...We Learn

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Creative strategy doesn’t end when the ad goes live. That’s just the start of the learning loop.We track what performs, notice clear learnings, and revisit the roadmap. That includes questions like:

• What needs a tweak to make stronger or what needs a second version to help lean harder  into what’s working  well?
• What deserves a budget boost or even its own campaign?
• What falling flat and what should we move away from that’s not as effective with NC?

We know what’s worth changing by watching performance signals in context. If hook rate is strong, but no one clicks, we’re grabbing attention, but not guiding action. That’s a cute to revisit the messaging, CTA, or offer. If hold rate drops before the UVP lands, pacing or structure might need a rethink.If CTR is lower that expected, it’s often a sign of a  messaging or visual disconnect. These directional signals guide where to pivot, pause, or push further.

Documenting and reporting on wins and flops for your team and clients helps your creative strategy improve over time. No guesswork, leaving learnings behind, or needs to reinvent the wheel, just moving forward strategically and finding more and more wins!

And Here's the Secret Sauce

Here’s what makes this work: collaboration. This isn't a one man operation, the best creative strategy comes from open slack threads, cross-team brainstorms, editors leaning into their expertise, and media buyers flagging performance swings. 

Everyone contributes. Everyone learns. And the creative (and performance!) is better for it.

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Conclusion

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If your creative team feels like it’s throwing ideas into the void and hoping something sticks, there’s a better way... Build a creative strategy process that’s:

• Rooted in data & performance
• Backed by research & insights 
• Designed to learn fast, iterate smarter, and drive consistent wins
• Built to scale and support client goals
• And integrate & encourage collaboration by everyone on the team

Creative strategy isn’t just a spark, it’s a system. And when that system works, the output doesn’t just look better, it performs better. It GROWS your business and your clients. 

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