--- title: Running several creative partners and keeping a creative culture that avoids sameness slug: multiple-creative-partners-and-creative-culture summary: Lessons from Barry Hott's founders' roundtable (The Perfect Jean, HelloTushy, Flakes, Dara Denney) — keep at least one internal and one external creative source (The Perfect Jean runs four agencies, Laura Geller five), share the ad account openly instead of making agencies compete, avoid the "iteration loop" and brand-book homogeneity that flattened The Perfect Jean's results, treat every truth as valid for ~6 months, and give partners freedom plus a clear lens ("laughing or learning"). domain: marketing tags: [ad-creative, agencies, creative-team, creative-diversity, brand-guidelines, culture] related: [creative-hit-rate-and-spend-tiers, creative-diversity-levels, iterating-on-winning-ads, brand-reality-capacity-and-alignment, meta-creative-budget-and-team, ad-storytelling-and-the-so-what-test, ugc-creator-briefs] sources: [yt:qoOBIPWH_qw] updated: 2026-10-24 --- # Multiple creative partners and creative culture ## TL;DR - Barry Hott's rule: have **at least one internal and at least one external creative resource**. Add more sources only once spend and conversion data can absorb them.[^1] - The Perfect Jean runs **four agencies** for four perspectives and styles, and "doesn't really say no". Dara Denney's client Laura Geller runs **five** and wants more.[^2][^1] - **Open book, no contest.** Every partner sees the whole ad account and is paid the same to produce the same volume. The founder deliberately doesn't rank them.[^3][^4] - Watch for the **iteration loop**. The Perfect Jean had a slow six months because "all of our ads started looking identical". The cure is ~**90% net new, 10% iterations**.[^5] - A new **brand book** made every agency's ads look alike. Prescriptive guidelines kill the diversity you're paying for.[^6] ## Details **Why multiple sources.** Each agency or internal team brings different experience and a different "creative brain". Ovadia Lebaton uses several agencies partly to outsource recruiting for the curious, fun-loving, always-improving people he can't hire himself.[^7] Barry stresses this only works at scale. Most brands can't feed five partners.[^1] **Iteration paralysis.** Dara's name for new strategists who only iterate on what worked "to be data-driven". Messaging converges and audiences fatigue.[^8] **Brand identity vs ad freedom.** The Perfect Jean launched with intentionally little visual identity: sharp copy and fun product and models, so no ad ever looks "disjointed" from the site. When newcomers insisted on a brand book and shoot guidelines, the ads "came back looking the same", so Ovadia went back to letting creators tell the story their way.[^6][^9] Barry notes most brands move the other way, starting rigid and loosening over time.[^10] **Keeping it fun.** One founder (most likely Ovadia, whose brand had the slow six months) said results suffered in a hard year when the brand got nitpicky with agencies and added unrealistic requirements. The fix is to be the client agencies love: give freedom, pay on time, brainstorm together.[^11] HelloTushy's Justin Allen frames the brand through a yearly lens such as "are we **laughing or learning**?" The hard part is enforcing it week after week while keeping ~90% new creative.[^12] **Truth decays.** Justin's view is that platform truths last about **six months**, so retest everything. Ovadia is "allergic" to the word *working*, because the same ad relaunched can fail. Hypotheses must still be sharp and testable.[^13][^3] **Disagreement as a method.** Justin Allen's best work came from "iron sharpening iron": arguing ideas without ego, with continuous improvement as the shared goal.[^14] Recruiting for that mindset beats training budgets. Founders who offered staff $1K–$10K a year for learning saw it go unspent.[^15] **Real-customer UGC.** The Perfect Jean collected 300–400 customer videos, and only 3–4 "really had it". It's a valid source, but with a very low hit rate.[^9] ## Disagreements / caveats - Ovadia judges partners partly on taste, not spend. Barry and CTC say to judge sources by the spend their ads carry ([[creative-hit-rate-and-spend-tiers]]). - Dara and others describe internal-only teams struggling with bias. Smaller brands may do better with one external partner plus a founder who shoots ads ([[founder-ads]]). - Speakers overlap in this roundtable transcript, so some lines (e.g. "favourite client") are hard to attribute with certainty. ## See also - [[creative-diversity-levels]] · [[iterating-on-winning-ads]] · [[meta-creative-budget-and-team]] - [[people/ovadia-lebaton]] · [[people/justin-allen]] · [[people/barry-hott]] [^1]: yt:qoOBIPWH_qw @ 20:28 — Barry Hott, Dara Denney [^2]: yt:qoOBIPWH_qw @ 18:06 — Ovadia Lebaton [^3]: yt:qoOBIPWH_qw @ 21:16 — Ovadia Lebaton [^4]: yt:qoOBIPWH_qw @ 22:56 — Ovadia Lebaton [^5]: yt:qoOBIPWH_qw @ 18:06 — Ovadia Lebaton [^6]: yt:qoOBIPWH_qw @ 52:07 — Ovadia Lebaton [^7]: yt:qoOBIPWH_qw @ 48:51 — Ovadia Lebaton [^8]: yt:qoOBIPWH_qw @ 18:52 — Dara Denney [^9]: yt:qoOBIPWH_qw @ 52:52 — Ovadia Lebaton [^10]: yt:qoOBIPWH_qw @ 50:28 — Barry Hott [^11]: yt:qoOBIPWH_qw @ 49:42 — roundtable founder, likely Ovadia Lebaton (speaker unclear) [^12]: yt:qoOBIPWH_qw @ 31:57 — Justin Allen [^13]: yt:qoOBIPWH_qw @ 19:40 — Justin Allen [^14]: yt:qoOBIPWH_qw @ 46:26 — Justin Allen [^15]: yt:qoOBIPWH_qw @ 48:04 — Barry Hott