E116: The DTC Content Creation Process That Wins on Paid Social

“The digital deliverables have outpaced production company knowledge.”

How do you build a repeatable content creation process without hiring a full agency?

Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge), Cody Plofker (CEO, Jones Road Beauty), and Connor Rolain (Head of Growth, HexClad) break down how they approach content production across every budget level; ranging from $50k brand shoot days to $100 iPhone clips that outperform everything else in the ad account.

The episode covers the full content production stack: multi-team shoot briefing, on-set creative strategy, and the in-house studio advantage. The trio also gets into clipping, AI-generated UGC, and whether dead internet theory is already shaping how products go viral.

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Motion Creative Benchmarks 2026
https://motionapp.com/thumbstop-pulse...

Haus
https://www.haus.io/operators

Richpanel
https://9ops.co/richpanel

Aftersell
https://9ops.co/aftersell-mops ‍

Chapters
00:00:00 Clipping Is Peak
00:04:30 Cart Before the Horse
00:07:08 AI Slop Distribution
00:09:24 Dead Internet Theory
00:12:28 Who Can Actually Clip
00:18:56 How We Produce Content
00:24:13 Shot List Planning
00:31:50 Own the Shoot
00:38:34 Founder Ads Done Right
00:43:10 The Agency Gap
00:50:50 Strategist on Set