From Targeting to Relevance: Building Creative for the Right Audience Before a Single Asset Is Made
We’ve entered a landscape where content isn’t just the message, it’s the targeting mechanism itself. Platforms are no longer asking who you want to reach; they’re asking something far more consequential: Is your creative engineered with enough audience intelligence to find the right buyers on its own? This shift forces enterprise brands to move beyond the social graph (who follows whom) and commit to the Interest Graph (what people actually care about).
That understanding doesn’t come from volume or variation. It comes before creative exists. Before you brief a single asset, you need to know how your audience actually talks about the problem you solve, what motivates different segments to care, and where they are in the decision process.
In this environment, creative only works as targeting when it’s grounded in data-driven influencer marketing protocols: social listening that captures real language, personas built on motivations rather than just demographics, and funnel-stage insight that shapes what to say and when. Platform shifts like Meta’s Andromeda didn’t just change the dynamic, they exposed the fragility of relying on third-party data.
Built for This Shift Before It Was Required
Long before platforms reduced targeting controls, The Shelf was building for a world where creative had to carry audience relevance on its own.
While much of the industry optimized for demographic targeting and media tactics, we focused on building creative systems that embed audience understanding into the work from the start.
We weren’t chasing short term performance. We were designing a model where every campaign clarified audience understanding, so the next campaign started smarter than the last.
That approach came from teams who had run large-scale programs across fashion, finance, B2B, and beyond, and had seen firsthand where the traditional playbook breaks when platforms change.
The result is a tech-enabled, insight-led approach that treats creative not as an output, but as a source of audience intelligence.
Content Engineering: Intelligence Before Execution
You can’t scale what you don’t understand. That’s why enterprise influencer marketing now depends on knowing why creative works before deciding what to make.
Before a single creator is contracted, we dissect what’s working across the category, including hooks, pacing, formats, edits, narrative arcs, through the lens of audience response. This isn’t guesswork. It’s powered by a structured tagging system that breaks down 52 creative variables across 2,700+ combinations to reveal which creative patterns connect with which audiences.
Those insights are translated directly into creator briefs, ensuring creative direction is grounded in audience relevance rather than speculation. Instead of guessing which stories might resonate, teams begin with evidence, designing content to test, validate, and extend patterns that platforms have already shown specific audiences respond to.
Across retail and food categories, this approach has consistently translated into outsized performance.
In one global gifting and specialty retail program, creative engineered through SpliceLab™ produced over 50 optimized asset variants, driving a 13× lift in overall ROAS once paid amplification was applied.
In parallel, a global apparel brand saw engagement rates average 2–7× above platform benchmarks, validating that when creative is built from real audience patterns, platforms don’t need instruction to find the right people.
The results?
- Faster campaign stabilization
- Clearer early indicators of audience fit
- More efficient creator partnerships
In 2025, this system helped deliver a 90% reduction in cost per signup among Gen Z for a national retail brand.
Interest-Based Creator Matching: Relevance Before Reach
When targeting shrinks, you can’t layer in relevance. You have to build it in.
We don’t start with a creator list. We start with proprietary market intelligence to map the Interest Graph, identifying the specific interests, language, and communities that actually shape how people think and buy. That insight determines both who we partner with and how we brief them.
The impact shows up first in organic signal.
Across food and CPG programs, interest-aligned creator strategies generated tens of millions of organic impressions, with some activations surpassing 50M views before paid amplification. Once scaled, those same programs delivered 20×+ ROAS, proving that early relevance compounds when platforms are allowed to interpret, not be constrained.
Across fashion, finance, and retail, this strategy unlocked:
- Breakout organic reach
- Stronger early engagement signals
- More reliable downstream performance once paid was applied
SpliceLab™: Iteration at Scale
SpliceLab™ is our internal engine for rapid, signal-driven iteration. One creator video becomes 20+ optimized assets, testing hooks, pacing, formats, and lengths in ways platforms are built to interpret.
This isn’t volume for vanity. It’s structured experimentation designed to surface winning narratives early and scale what works.
In seasonal CPG launches, just three initial creator posts sparked viral momentum—driving 8M+ organic impressions and 250K+ combined shares and saves. Optimized variants delivered 2.5× higher video-through rates than benchmark, outperforming static creative with minimal starting inputs.
In 2025, SpliceLab helped programs:
- Exceed TikTok’s watch-time benchmarks by 500×
- Identify top-performing narratives earlier in-flight
- Scale optimized variants that consistently outperformed the originals
The Optimization Flywheel: Turning Signal into Momentum
All of these components feed into The Shelf’s Optimization Flywheel, a real-time learning loop where creative performance informs media decisions, and media outcomes shape the next wave of creative.
Early indicators like watch time, saves, and shares are treated as leading indicators, not vanity metrics. These signals reliably predicted downstream efficiency, enabling teams to act before performance declined. One of the clearest examples came from B2B and retail programs where entertainment-led storytelling, particularly humor, consistently outperformed product-forward messaging, driving higher influencer marketing ROI and stronger audience retention.
Real Results, Repeatable Wins
In 2025, The Shelf’s signal-first system consistently delivered:
- Double- and triple-digit ROAS outcomes across retail and food categories
- 2–7× engagement lifts versus platform benchmarks for global apparel brands
- 20×+ ROAS driven by interest-aligned creator ecosystems
- Organic reach in the tens of millions, with viral velocity achieved from as few as three initial posts
- Video performance exceeding benchmarks by 2–5×, including watch time, VTR, and completion rates
Key Wins That Defined the Year
Driving Gen Z Efficiency at National Retail Scale
As targeting controls tightened, The Shelf helped a national retail brand reframe creative as primary driver of audience relevance, not just an output to be scaled. By prioritizing entertainment-led storytelling and rapid iteration informed by early engagement signals, the program achieved a 90% reduction in cost per signup among Gen Z audiences, demonstrating how signal clarity can unlock efficiency at national retail scale.
Self Financial: Platinum MarCom Award for Performance-Driven Storytelling
In a highly regulated financial category where trust is hard-won, the Self team and The Shelf built a creator-led system designed to learn, adapt, and scale relevance over time. Across a year-long program spanning 40+ creators and more than 150 pieces of content, the team aligned talent around interest-based narratives and continuously optimized creative based on real audience response. The award-winning Q2 activation delivered 3.3M+ impressions (5× goal) and 183.5K+ engagements (4× benchmark), earning a Platinum MarCom Award and validating the team’s belief that performance today comes from creative systems built for customization and authenticity.
Gregory Mountain: Drum Awards Finalist for Micro-Influencer Campaigns
By prioritizing creators embedded in specific lifestyle and cultural communities, The Shelf helped Gregory Mountain Products drive relevance without chasing scale. The program delivered 10.3M+ impressions, 30K+ engagements, and 172K clicks (3× forecast), with Meta achieving a 77% hold rate (vs. 35% benchmark) and YouTube delivering a 72% completion rate (vs. 40% benchmark). The work earned a Gold MarCom Award for Online Advertising & Marketing and was named a Drum Awards finalist in Micro-Influencer Campaigns, recognizing the power of community-aligned creator strategies to drive performance.
Weekday: Drum Awards Finalist in Retail & Consumer Products
By testing personality-led storytelling across creators and formats, The Shelf helped Weekday scale culturally relevant creative that outperformed traditional product-centric messaging. The campaign drove strong performance across paid and organic channels, with TikTok delivering standout efficiency and engagement. Ongoing mid-flight optimization further strengthened creative effectiveness, earning the work recognition as a Drum Awards finalist in Retail & Consumer Products.
Natura: Adweek Experiential Award for Sustainability Activation
For Natura, The Shelf sent three content creators to the Amazon to document sustainability through lived, first-hand experience. The resulting activation delivered original, culturally resonant storytelling that created emotional connection between audiences and a sustainability-driven brand. Recognized for its creative originality, experiential impact, and authentic purpose, the campaign earned Best Activation in Support of Sustainability at the Adweek Experiential Awards
What This Signals About What Comes Next
As platforms continue to shift from instruction to interpretation, advantage will belong to the teams that build audience understanding into creative from the start–not after performance dips. When targeting controls fade, relevance has to be engineered, now optimized in retrospect.
This isn’t about chasing platform updates. It’s about building systems that consistently produce creative aligned to the right audience, learn from real response, and apply those insights forward. That structure compounds over time, regardless of how platforms evolve.
In this environment, the brands that win won’t be the loudest or the most prolific. They’ll be the ones with the clearest understanding of who they’re speaking to and the discipline to build for them.
Curious whether your content, creator, and paid media strategies are actually working together?
We offer strategy sessions designed to help teams evaluate how audience insight shows up across content, influencer programs, and paid media and where misalignment may be limiting performance.
