Janae Lavander
~11 years across brand growth and performance marketing (Sonos, agencies), ~2 years at Caraway, where she owns briefing, concepting and creative QA for a UGC program of 1,000+ live UGC ads (100–200 launches/month, blended ROAS 2.2x+ in 2026).
Bias to keep in mind: one high-AOV home brand with a large influencer team; says measurement is outside her scope. (Name spelling from the transcript.)
Sources: sources/youtube/motion-creative-analytics/ (Motion UGC engine session).
Notes citing Janae Lavander
- Black Friday / holiday sale creative from your existing UGC libraryCaraway's BFCM playbook — evergreen vs persona briefs, offer unmistakable in the first 3 seconds, reactivating last year's winners unchanged, renegotiating creator usage rights, organic-style UGC, partnership-ad Q&As with the offer, persona mashups — plus the planning timeline (plan Aug, produce Sept, QA Oct, launch ~Nov 1), tiered offers and a pre-built backup offer.
- Briefing UGC creators — how much script, what to include, modular deliverablesWhat goes into a UGC creator brief (brand/product onboarding, guardrails, tips for winning, visual examples, hooks, filming and delivery specs), the script-vs-freedom spectrum (Caraway 90% exact scripts, Savannah Sanchez's ad-lib for trusted creators, Dara Denney's "let creators lead"), matching a creator's native style, and commissioning modular parts (hooks, CTAs, stills, raw VO).
- Building a UGC engine — emotional personas, sourcing, creator deals, relationshipsTushy's four pillars for a scalable UGC program (personas by emotional trigger incl. "white space" personas, sourcing from founders/employees/customers/TikTok Shop, percent vs flat-fee vs retainer deals — 10–15% not 5%, relationship management), plus Caraway's 1,000-live-ads team structure.
- Founder ads — why they win and how to make themWhy founder content is S-tier on Meta (often a brand's first top performer), the founder hooks that test best (why I built this; "I'm X, founder of Y" with name in text overlay), going high-fi via 10–20 interview questions instead of a script, and whitelisting from founders' personal accounts.
- Partnership (whitelisted) ads and choosing creators who convertWhy partnership/whitelisted ads are S-tier on Meta post-Andromeda (persona reach, net-new audiences, 30–50% of spend), how to pick creators (aspirational over look-alike, big vs micro by category — Jones Road vs Caraway), the lo-fi-statics add-on, and Caraway's native partnership-ad formats.
- Reading creative metrics — spend, thumbstop/hook rate, hold rate, CTR, conversionThe hook analytics funnel (spend → thumbstop → hold → CTR → conversion), exact thumbstop formula, primary vs "storytelling" metrics, diagnostic patterns (high hook + low CTR = wrong audience), spend thresholds, new-visitor % as an incrementality proxy, and Dara Denney's four-step UGC analysis (metrics, content, comparison, feedback).