We already tried that. How to stop remaking videos that died last year.

The problem

A new creator joins the roster. Week two, they pitch a “3 things I wish I knew” video for the collagen.

You have seen that video. Forty creators made it last spring. Nearly all of them leaked at the click. None of them sold. But you are not sure that is what happened. You think that is what happened. The strategist before you would know. She left in June.

Winners get copied. Everyone watches the winners. Nobody watches the losers, and the losers are where the money went.

A roster of fifty creators posting thirty videos a month each runs fifteen hundred videos a month. Over a thousand of them lose. Those thousand say which hooks, angles and formats do not work on this product. That list is worth more than the winners, because the winners are already public.

The example

A sleep gummy. One quarter of videos, by angle.

A new strategist without this table briefs all four angles. A strategist with it briefs one, tests one, and skips two. That is dozens of creator slots saved before anyone shoots anything.

And when you do say no, do not say “we tried that.” That sounds like no. Say what the forty videos did, so the creator can do something different.

Do this in Verdict

1. 1
   Every verdict goes into Learnings with the date and the reason. Open it, filter to the product, and the table above is already there.
2. 2
   When a new script comes in, check it against the record. If the angle, hook or format has failed on this product before, you see it before the brief goes out.
3. 3
   The record belongs to the brand, not the strategist. It stays when people go.