Zachary Murray

Foreplay.co

Improve your creative workflow with foreplay. Save ads, build briefs and produce high converting ads at scale without compromising quality.

Founder

Triple Whale 🐳

Creative Director / Growth Design

Leading design of both product and marketing for the future of eCommerce.

Head Of Design

Nomadic Fabrics

Niche D2C home decor brand selling canvas wall art and bohemian-inspired decor pieces.

Co-Founder - Acquired

Vanquished Media

Animated Explainer Videos and Web Development Studio.

Bootstrapping the fuck out of foreplay.co

Jake Abrams

I help 7-9 figure DTC brands with revenue & CAC | I write The Process, a newsletter about modern growth marketing | Sold 100K+ personal cooling devices

Consumer Marketing & Growth Leader.  

Brands I've worked with:

Caraway
Jones Road Beauty
Skylight
Canopy
Insurify
Naked Wines
Rugiet
Sundays For Dogs
Momofuku
Sunday Lawn Care

100+ others

Book a discovery call in the featured section below 👇

The lean DTC growth marketing partner that I wish existed when I was an in-house marketing lead. 

At Odyssey, we help 7 & 8-figure DTC brands increase revenue & ROAS by finding the right combination of:

- Messaging
- Audience targeting
- Media channel allocation
- Creative

https://www.growodyssey.com/

We're hiring for multiple creative strategist roles (junior through senior). 

Honestly it’s because our strategists keep landing incredible roles at amazing brands that they can’t turn down (I’m proud of them).

Our people have been hired by Athletic Greens, Gruns, and other best-in-class DTC brands. 

You're a good fit for this if:
- You have a feel for making TikTok's that get lots of views
- You can work across data, taste, and creation
- You believe the next winning ad is 1 deep insight away
- You're AI native & use it as a strategic / operational partner

What we offer: 
- 100% remote work
- Make ads for best-in-class brands & build an elite portfolio
- Cutting edge creative strategy: AI, elevated shoots, native content
- In-person team event in January in Miami
- Insane growth potential, we promote fast

Links in comments 👇

Creative-led growth for 8-9 figure consumer brands | Writing about AI & advertising | Sold 100k+ personal cooling devices

My 81 favorite BFCM/holiday ads from the past few years. 

This is not another "inspiration board" with random creatives.

It's a curated Foreplay.co collection of ads that actually work during peak shopping season.

Here's what makes these different: 

→ Written for people actively shopping right now 
→ Designed for bottom-funnel audiences hunting for deals 
→ Built for comparison shoppers evaluating your product vs. competitors 
→ Crafted for buyers comparing your solution vs. failed alternatives

PROBLEM THIS SOLVES: 
Most brands don't realize that BFCM / holiday creative is a completely different category of advertising.

Your audience isn't browsing. They're hunting. They're comparing. They're ready to buy but need the right specific reason to choose you.

Meanwhile, many brands are running the same top-funnel creative they use year-round, wondering why it fails. 

WHY THIS IS CRITICAL: 
The next 35 days aren't really about awareness or consideration. Your audience is in active shopping mode.

They're not asking "Do I need this?" They're asking "Should I buy this one or the other one?" and "Is this actually a great deal?"

So I built a Foreplay board with 81 of my favorite ads. Including a bunch of formats you could make with footage you're already sitting on.

Want the Foreplay board link?

1. Comment "BLACKFRIDAY" below
2. Like this post
3. Make sure we're connected so I can send the link

P.S. I'm sending the link to anyone who comments by Friday

I've been quietly working on a brand in my spare time.

My primary motivation is that I will forever feel like a fraud unless I personally create my own successful brand. 

It'll be ready to launch by 2026. 

The coolest thing I've learned from this process is that being AI-native is an absolute superpower. And not even just for marketing. 

I'm talking about literally everything:

Product creation: 
Asked Claude about ingredients, formulations, modifications. Tried the product, it wasn't right, went back for more feedback. Repeat 10x until launch ready.

Branding: 
Went through 50+ rounds with Nano Banana and other design / image generation tools. Every iteration got me closer to the vision in my head.

Website: 
Built on Shopify with AI helping me write the content. VEO 3 for animations.

The positioning, the research, the copy, the visuals - all of it accelerated by using AI as my business partner. 

None of this would have been possible 2 years ago without:

$25k+ in agency fees
6+ months of back and forth
A team of specialists
Massive upfront investment

Everyone's panicking about "losing their job to AI."

I have the complete opposite view.

I feel like I have this brand new superpower.

li_at

JSESSIONID

Talks about #dtc, #careeradvice, #growthmarketing, and #digitalmarketing

Matthew McConaughey's 'private LLM' idea is actually what every creative strategist needs in 2026. 

The people who are making fun of him for it are totally missing the point.  

My agency ships 2000+ video ads / month across 40+ brands.

Broad AI creative strategy tools are a waste of time. All they do is make it faster to generate a higher volume of mediocre content. Nobody needs that. 

What CS's actually need are narrower context kits:

- AI trained on ads they actually won, and why they won
- AI with vision into their ad account data
- AI that analyzes that data like an expert performance marketer
- Agent that knows exactly how to analyze customer reviews
- Micropersonas specific to the brand they are writing for
- Voice, and messaging guidelines specific to brand they are writing for

So that when a CS asks "how do I improve this skincare ad," the answer is actually valuable and based on a competitive advantage specific to them / the company they work for. 

McConaughey gets it. He wants an AI that thinks like him, not like everyone.

That's what we need as creative strategists.

I've been playing with Octo the last few weeks, and they are seriously onto something within this category of AI tech.

Dropped the link to the tool in the comments.

Need to hire a freelance TikTok Shop / Affiliate strategist. 

You're a good fit for this if:

- You've grown multiple TikTok shops to over $100k a month
- You're an operational psychopath who enjoys wrangling hundreds of affiliates
- You have an innate feel for making viral TikTok content
- You can build an incentive structure that drives creator participation 
- You're AI native & use it as a strategic / operational partner

I don't care about resumes. Just send me a well-written DM with the names of 2-3 specific brands you've grown on TTS and the exact role you played in making the growth happen. I'll double check your work on Kalodata.

so we're all just ignoring the fact that...

1. you can have AI analyze the top 1% of content in your niche and extract the exact frameworks, hooks, and structures that actually get engagement.

2. you can voice-record your thoughts with Wispr Flow and have Claude turn them into polished LinkedIn posts, Twitter threads, and newsletter drafts.

3. you can upload a single piece of winning content to Claude and prompt it to take that same idea and put it into 8 different formats. 

4. you can have AI watch viral videos in your space and give you detailed breakdowns of why they worked, then help generate similar concepts for your own story and area of expertise.

5. you can feed AI your best-performing posts and have it generate 100 variations in your voice and style.

6. you can turn any industry report, podcast transcript, or article into 20 pieces of original content with your unique take.

7. you can create custom GPTs trained on your writing style.

8. you can generate post-ready thumbnails, graphics, and visual assets without touching Photoshop.

9. you can take one 60-minute conversation and have AI turn it into 2 week's worth of content: posts, threads, newsletters, video scripts.

10. you can have AI analyze your audience's comments and engagement to identify exactly what topics and formats resonate most.

11. you can rip the structures of high-performing creators (in your niche or not) and plug in your own ideas and perspectives

12. you can literally just pick up your phone, record a TikTok with your raw thoughts, and TikTok will basically just handle the editing and captions.

13. you can have AI scrape viral content in any category and automatically organize it into your Airtable database with full analysis of what made it work.

14. you can set up N8N workflows that automatically find trending topics in your space and generate content briefs before anyone else catches on.

15. you can have AI agents specialized for different content types: one for LinkedIn thought leadership, another for TikTok scripts, another for newsletter storytelling.

16. you can take any boring industry insight and have AI help you find the contrarian angle that gets people talking.

Now is the single greatest time in history to join the 5% of humans who actually create content, instead of mindlessly consuming it. 

What are you waiting for?

21 ways to find your next $100K spend ad:

1. Build an Airtable database that organizes all of your existing winners, making it easier to turn 1 win into 10 wins.

2. Use N8N + Apify to capture TikTok creators who are consistently hitting 100K+ views in your category, then scrape their email addresses to do outreach.

3. Set up Claude Desktop and use that as your primary writing zone, with all of your data flowing into projects that are specific to each part of the creative process. 

4. Mine Amazon reviews with AI agents to find the exact trigger events customers use before buying, then turn those into hook concepts.

5. Use Wispr Flow to voice-note analyze every ad that made you stop scrolling this week b/c your subconscious knows what works.

6. Make it a habit of writing down the specific creators that you see amazing partnership ads from, and have a $10/hour offshore person do systemic outreach.

7. Use Motion (Creative Analytics)'s Social Listening Agent to process 500+ customer reviews in 3 minutes and extract the psychological frameworks that drove purchase

8. Start your ads mid-moment. 

9. Analyze your top-performing ads with the Audience/Angle/Offer framework.

10. Put your best 4-5 creators on $1K-$5K monthly retainers instead of chasing new talent. Make it easier on yourself.

11. Use Octo to analyze groups of ads together, and automatically build storyboards for new ads to make based off of the undeniable proof in the ads that worked. 

12. Just launch your ads as partnership ads, stop playing Meta on hard mode. 

13. Use Adology.AI's "god view" to watch every signal related to your brand on the internet.

14. Use Arcads to make a comedic podcast related to your product, using Nano Banana to place your product onto one of the podcasters.

15. Actually allow a good thought to pop into your head, write it down, then talk through it with Wispr Flow into Claude.

16. Take something that's already a winner and do format multiplication: normal UGC becomes a staged moment, podcast version, street interview version.

17. Give open-ended briefs to strong up-and-coming TikTok creators via TikTok Shop affiliate program - let them run wild with commission-only structure and cash bonuses. 

18. Use Sora 2 Pro to generate beautiful cinematic b-roll that allows you to create brand new concepts with existing footage. 

19. Build an agent that analyzes your customer support tickets for recurring pain points, then creates creative concepts that address those specific objections.

20. Create a systematic workflow where you feed viral TikTok transcripts to Claude and have it help you do script re-writes that don't suck.

21. Start posting TikToks yourself. You'll learn the importance of writing incredibly specific caption hooks that break through.

TLDR:
- AI workflow = a competitive advantage 
- Human taste = your strategic filter 
- Outrageous operating speed = market domination

My $1.2M BFCM disaster nearly got me fired from an 8-figure brand. 

So I created a 103-item checklist to make sure it never happened again. Drop a comment on this post and I'll send you the entire checklist. 

Now back to the story....

I was so obsessed with our Black Friday email campaigns.

But I ignored the 3 flows that drive the bulk of BFCM revenue:
→ Welcome flow 
→ Cart abandonment 
→ Browse abandonment

Be honest with yourself: When's the last time you locked yourself in a room and made every single email within those 3 flows as strong as possible?

Omnisend data shows that:
- Email automations account for just 2% of email volume but drive 37% of email sales.
- 87% of automated orders come from just these 3 flows

Most brands haven't touched them in months.

Looking back, I was leaving a massive pile of on the table because I wasn't making optimizations likes these for BFCM:

- Making our Black Friday offer crystal clear ATF in every email
- Ensuring cart abandoners saw their exact products + our discount
- Adding urgency with clear deadlines to every flow
- Personalizing welcome sequences based on how people signed up

Inbox competition during BFCM is brutal.

The time you spend making every single email within these 3 flows perfect is so much more important than forcing your team to take another design pass at your campaigns.

Omnisend is great for DTC operators & agency owners b/c it makes it simple to nail these 3 flows:

- Email + SMS + push all working together
- Dynamic product recommendations that actually work
- $68 ROI for every $1 spent

Your BFCM campaigns will get opened once. Your automations work 24/7.

Focus aggressively on the 2% of volume that drives the bulk of your sales. 

---

👉 If you want to try Omnisend for 30% off for your first 3 months, check the link in the comments. 

---

And to grab my 103-Item BFCM Preparation Guide:

1. Comment "BFCM" below
2. Like this post
3. Make sure we're connected so I can send the link

P.S. I'm sending the link to anyone who comments by Monday

#Omnisendpartner

2026 will be the best time in history to be a Creative Generalist. 

Because AI makes it possible to get your vision to 85% done, and as long as you have the network to take it the remaining 15%, you are unstoppable.

Don't let anyone tell you that you need to "pick a lane."

The future belongs to the people who can see the big picture and make it become a reality insanely fast.

99% of creative strategists confuse looking busy with real insights:

→ They group ads from different channels together
→ They compare testing campaigns against proven winners
→ They set identical CPA targets across Meta / TikTok / YouTube

Because of this, the "analysis" ends up being meaningless.

They're comparing apples to oranges to bananas.

→ Conversion campaigns mixed with awareness campaigns
→ New channel performance held to mature channel standards
→ Creative tests evaluated against scaled winners

The result is bad decisions based on weird data.

"This ad failed" - no, it was a test in a testing campaign.
"TikTok doesn't work" - no, you expected Meta-level ROAS on day one.
"This format underperforms" - no, you compared video views to conversions.

To actually generate insights, evaluate creative within its own context:

1. Group by objective first. Conversion campaigns together. Video views together. Awareness together. Never mix them.

2. Separate testing from scaling. Your testing campaigns should have 10-25 ads where you're taking big swings. Don't compare those against your proven winners running at scale. Different purpose, different benchmarks.

3. Adjust expectations by channel. A new TikTok test won't hit your Meta ROAS targets immediately.

This is why a media buying foundation is so critical for creative strategy.

And why I'm willing to pay for tools like Motion, because it makes it simple for junior / mid-level CS's to build these segments with filters and actually evaluate the creative properly.

The strategists who understand this will always out-analyze the ones just making pretty decks.

P.S. Motion is hosting a 2026 Ad Creative Trends event in a few weeks. If you want to stay ahead of what's coming, link to register is in the comments.

(58) High Scale: People | LinkedIn

This is the best time in history to be a creative generalist.

Designing a brand used to require $20k+ and 3 months. 
Now you've got Figma Make, Midjourney, and Nano Banana. 

Video used to require film crews and budgets. 
Now you've got your phone and TikTok's editing tools. 

Starting a business used to require lawyers and accountants. 
Now you just ask Claude what to do & set up Stripe.

Hiring freelance talent used to be impossible. 
Now you can access the world's best for 60% less.

Building an audience used to require gatekeepers. 
Now you just start creating, and if you do it right, millions will notice.

The creative generalist with vision can accomplish anything in 2026. 

AI makes it possible to get your vision to 85% done, and as long as you have the network to take it the remaining 15%, you are unstoppable. 

Don't let anyone tell you that you need to "pick a lane."

The future belongs to the people who can see the big picture and make it happen fast.

How to survive and thrive as a DTC brand in the age of AI:

First off, ruthlessly copying what works is a strategy. I'm not going to pretend it doesn't work. AI makes it way, way easier. 

If a competitor's hook is crushing, study it. Rip it. See what happens. "Lift & Shift" can be a percentage of your creative output. 

But if 100% of your strategy is copying, you're screwed.

The brands I see actually breaking through right now aren't the ones who copy best. They're the ones who push past the baseline from a point of originality.

TikTok is the cultural tastemaker for the internet right now. The brands I constantly see in my TikTok feed aren't playing it safe.

Hismile. Underbrush. Hiyo. Pete's Pasta. Stan Store.

These companies aren't ignoring what works. They're paying attention to proven ad structures and formats, but injecting something unmistakably theirs. 

People can sense the difference. They can sense the difference between a brand with a genuine point of view and one that's trend hopping.

The AI age makes copying easier than ever. Which means it's easier for anyone to make content that is "competent."

But that means the gap between "competent" and "extraordinary" is widening every single day. 

Brands that win in 2026 will have a portfolio approach.

Don't make copying 100% of your strategy.

DTC is finally waking up to what we've been practicing for 12 months.

I call it the The Barbell Production Strategy. 

→ Go high-end with cinematic, elevated production 
→ Or go ultra-raw with native, TikTok-y content

Avoid the middle ground at all cost, because it fails at trust & authenticity. 

Nobody is shooting the volume & quality of DR-focused elevated content like we are. Because it's extremely hard. There are barriers to entry. 

We produced our first elevated content back in 2023 when everyone was still obsessing over scripted iPhone UGC, and we've been aggressively iterating on the model since then. We've made mistakes, solved them, and rebuilt the model time and time again. 

The secret isn't just a better camera. 

It's working backwards from a repeatable model:

→ 12x 9-hour shoot days every single month with in-house production team
→ Work with a shooter who innately understands performance
→ Small group of trusted actors across different personas
→ Bulk shoot many concepts in single sessions 
→ Keep concepts as simple as possible, focus on what matters
→ Supplement in-house with tight group of cinematic creators who self-shoot

This Xsuit ad is a perfect example ↓

While everyone else scrambles to figure out "elevated content," we were the first to use that term and have been doing this at scale for 12 months.

The teams that can execute both ends of the barbell:
- Truly elevated production 
- AND raw authenticity

Will dominate the rest of 2025 and 2026

Everyone else will be stuck in the decaying middle.

Built an AI owl podcaster in ~20 minutes with Arcads & Nano Banana Pro.

Used Nano Banana Pro to generate the owl + podcast setup:

“A wise owl sitting at a podcast table in a cozy moonlit library, warm ambient lighting, vintage microphone in front of the owl, owl wearing this exact black sleep mask, leather-bound books in background, intimate podcast studio setting, cinematic lighting with soft golden shadows, professional yet cozy atmosphere.”

Then I used the Sora 2 in Arcads to make the 8-second demo video. Provided the script and some subtle motion notes.

Is it ridiculous and unserious? Yeah, and that’s the point. 

This is the category of AI-produced content I’m actually excited about. You can think of a wild idea, and then make a demo in like 20 minutes. AI tools like Arcads remove so much of the friction.

Comment "PROCESS" and I'll send you the exact tool stack and step-by-step process I used to make this demo. 

---

P.S. Arcads is running a BFCM promo where you get 50% OFF all annual plans, so now’s a good time to sign up and try this workflow for yourself. Link in first comment. 

#ArcadsPartner

1,358 people commented on a STOLEN viral post about AI Kobe Bryant.

I jumped in to offer my perspective, as someone who writes about AI every day but also worked in real sports marketing with pro athletes. 

I don't love dunking on people, but here's the problem I had with that viral post:

First off, the guy stole the content word-for-word from someone on Twitter. It's not his video. It's not his workflow. It's not even his hook.

Now onto the content itself (which wasn't even his):

Even if Kobe Bryant were still alive, there is a 0% chance Nike would ever make a consumer-facing ad like the one this guy posted (that he didn't even make himself). 

The video was useful as a prototype video, but if they were actually launching something like that it would probably tank their stock price.

The writing was AI slop, it made no sense.
The voice tried to sound like Kobe, but didn't.
AI Kobe was dribbling and dunking all weird. Super glitchy.
People hate the AI-ification of everything.

In reality, here's what would actually happen if Kobe was still alive:

Nike would organize a shoot with the real Kobe Bryant. 
It would cost a lot of money. 
The writing would have soul. 
He would dribble and dunk like Kobe, because it would actually be Kobe. 
He would sound like Kobe, too, b/c it would be his actual voice.

The AI process that the poster described is actually a massive unlock for the pre-production process. They could use the prototype video to pitch a campaign to Kobe. Way more powerful than a storyboard + 3rd party references.

But the real Kobe Bryant would HATE the video that he posted. The team responsible for it would be fired immediately.

So to me: when someone writes a post about text-to-video replacing consumer-facing Nike ads with real NBA stars is disingenuous.

I'm laughing tat my desk right now b/c there are so many layers to this latest LinkedIn grift:

AI Overhype + Stolen Content + "Fire Everyone" Hook

- Marketer & massive NBA fan

13 reasons you'll fail as a DTC operator or agency owner this BFCM ↓

COMMUNICATION & RETENTION:

1. You're not automating the compounding revenue channels

Omnisend data shows that automations account for just 2% of email volume but drive 37% of all email sales. 

87% of those sales come from 3 flows: Welcome, cart abandonment, browse abandonment. Focus there. 

2. You didn't build your email list beforehand

If you didn't do enough of it this year, make it a priority moving forward to be building your email list year-round.

3. You're not segmenting your audience 

1 in 3 people who click an automated email go on to buy. Make sure your automated emails are perfect. 

SYSTEMS & OPERATIONS:

4. You're juggling too many tools 

Every disconnected app adds more work, errors, and headaches.

5. You're not focusing on what's already working

BFCM isn't the time to experiment. It's time to scale what converts.

6. You think you need custom everything. You don't. 

I can't tell you how many times overcomplicated email setups or website themes have killed me with either speed or speed of action during BFCM. 

Most tools work fine out of the box.

CREATIVE & MEDIA STRATEGY:

7. You're not studying last year's spend patterns 

Analyze your performance during: 
Pre-promo → Black Friday weekend → Post-BF period → Holiday season

8. You're not responding to Andromeda

Meta's algorithm now treats visually similar ads as the same creative. Your micro-variations are dead.

9. Your ads aren't written for specific micro-personas 

Write each ad for a specific person with specific desires who is at a specific stage of awareness. Overindex on BOF for BFCM.

10. Your bottom-of-funnel creative hierarchy is wrong 

Offer > Product > Social Proof. In that order.

CONVERSION & SALES:

11. You're forgetting strikethrough pricing

People need to see the discount visually. Needs to be insanely obvious. 

12. You're not communicating when your best offer is live 

If it's your best offer, write "best offer of the year." Otherwise, people will wait around for another offer.

13. You're not preparing for post-purchase 

The sale isn't the end. It's the beginning of LTV. Start turning those new customers into loyal promoters right away.

That's why for many DTC operators and agencies, Omnisend is clutch right now.

→ Email, SMS, and push notifications in one platform 
→ $68 ROI for every $1 spent 
→ Powerful without wasting your time learning complex systems 
→ Experts trust it, but it works even if you're not technical

Remember: 2% of your work (automations) can drive 37% of your sales.

Don't overcomplicate BFCM, especially with email / SMS.

👉 If you want to try Omnisend for 30% off for your first 3 months, go here: https://lnkd.in/epGWWrJP

#omnisendpartner

Omnisend

388k people have watched my TikTok about why a brand backed by the Paul Brothers, Mr. Beast, and other massive influencers is totally failing.

Here are the spark notes for why I believe the sales are so underwhelming:

1. If your positioning is wrong, nothing else matters. It's a shaky foundation. Better ads, more spend, bigger influencers...none of it will fix a broken core message.

2. Celebrity without trust doesn't worked like it used to work. People are smarter now, and they value authenticity over pure celebrity influence.

3. You can't do problem-based marketing when the problem is an insecurity nobody thinks they actually have.

Follow me on TikTok for more breakdowns like this. Link in comments.

taplio

The Battle

Zachary Murray

Jake Abrams

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreJake Abrams's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Zachary Murray

Jake Abrams

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Jake Abrams's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreJake Abrams's LinkedIn Performance