Emily Hickey
~30-year marketer; co-founded Chief Detective, a full-service social ads agency (media + creative) in Meta’s creative innovators group, working with Jenni Kayne, Doen, Goop, Frank & Eileen, Ursa Major, Buck Mason, Rag & Bone and others. Board member/advisor to several brands; hosts The Pursuit Series podcast with Goop. Learned marketing via dropshipping/arbitrage businesses and old copywriting books (recommends Caples’ Tested Advertising Methods).
Strong on: product-level “hero” focus, value-prop resonance testing, the Motivator Map (why buy / why believe), brand thinking borrowed from P&G.
Bias to keep in mind: premium apparel/beauty client base; agency sales context; frameworks are presented without hard numbers.
Sources: sources/youtube/motion-creative-analytics/ (Motion summit talk).
Notes citing Emily Hickey
- Creative diversity after Meta Andromeda — the five levelsDara Denney's ladder for creative diversity on Meta post-Andromeda — level 0 statics vs video, 1 format expansion, 2 awareness-level expansion, 3 desire/motivation expansion, 4 persona and use-case expansion, 5 "true" diversity — and how it changes test setup (all statics in one ad set, maximum visual range per video test).
- Customer research for ad creative — generations, micro-moments, emotionsSarah Levinger's customer-reality research (the "customer cake") — generational context (information, money, life stage, trust), micro-moments when the problem surfaces, and emotional mapping (valence/intensity, private vs social, acute vs chronic) — with where to find each, plus review-mining shortcuts from Dara Denney and Emily Hickey.
- The Motivator Map — hero product, value-prop testing, why buy vs why believeEmily Hickey's (Chief Detective) Hero Sequence — pick the hero product, research and resonance-test value props on Meta, document a Motivator Map (killer hooks, emotional why, supporting points, visual patterns), then brainstorm "why believe" content against fixed "why buys" — with Tide, Pampers and Home Depot examples.
- What creative strategy is and where a new creative strategist startsThe job of a creative strategist (find the highest-leverage thing, not "make more ads"), Evan Lee's three altitudes (org → team → individual), Emily Hickey's first principles (algorithm ads are a creative game, winners win, small tests) and the "what decision will this research make?" rule.