Want to know the dirty secret about macro influencers? They’re a nightmare to work with. Sure, they’ve got reach. But most of the time, it’s all show and no substance. They’re hard to schedule, impossible to direct, and the engagement numbers rarely justify the cost.

When you’ve got the insight and the empathy to look at every touch point, it creates unstoppable brands. Great branding isn’t about chasing attention. It’s about spotting the friction—big and small—and turning it into empowerment.

How do you actually get a creative team to integrate data into their thinking? Most creatives didn’t get into advertising because they love data. But what if data made the ideas better? What if it didn’t overwhelm—just guided? Here’s the move:

The biggest recommendation that Jordan Berg and I have for the travel space is that you have to be “always on”. Let’s break this down: While you’re on vacation, you’re dreaming about the next vacation. That’s why the idea of seasonal campaigns in travel is outdated.

The DTC brands aren’t beating legacy companies because their model is better. They’re winning because they were born in the Always On era. Their teams know how to move fast. They launch content frequently. They don’t rely on one big expensive campaign.

Repetition kills performance. Once a piece of content is shown 4 times, engagement drops 45% almost instantly. If you take the TV playbook of repeating the same ad 10,000 times and try to apply it to social, your performance literally drops in half.

Here’s a smarter way to use AI avatars: Film an actor once, bake in the rights, and later update the messaging without a full reshoot. If your product’s RTBs change, you can now swap out their lines and test different versions at scale (in days, not months).

AI’s ability to learn from creative data can 10x your ad performance. Optimizing creative has traditionally been a tedious and tough job. Not anymore. Platforms like Motion and Allison.ai are finally changing that.