Most brands pour everything into optimizing ad spend, but our guest today (Kevin Guest of Highcamp Flasks) thinks there's a rule that matters more: give 80% of your creative output to what works, and force the other 20% to be uncomfortable. That tension, he argues, is where all real growth lives.
You'll hear how Kevin built an ad classification system (Unicorns, Scouts, and Harvesters) using demographic impression data, why collab posts and organic creator partnerships have flipped from secondary to primary spend, and how a single feed-native video tripled click-through rate and dropped CPC by 200%. Nate also introduces his RPM (Revenue Per Thousand Impressions) metric and why it might be the cleanest signal in the room.
00:00 Welcome back, Kevin — grinding in the trenches of Meta
01:30 The Father's Day 2025 disaster and 12 months of rebuilding
03:00 Expanding beyond Meta and what it confirmed
04:30 Short-form video as the language of the internet
06:30 Using reach (not ROAS) as the first signal of good creative
07:10 The demographic data wake-up call: why Father's Day bombed
08:45 Organic creator partnerships: minimal briefs, maximum whitelisting
10:00 Nate's question: what if you pulled your ad budget for creators instead?
11:30 Collab posts, whitelisting rights, and cohort-building by demo
13:30 The fly-on-the-wall creative that tripled CTR and cut CPC 200%
16:30 All marketing spend as a % of revenue — a new metric for the era
17:00 The Unicorn, Scout & Harvester framework explained
21:30 How AI is mapping customer journeys through ad cohorts
22:00 RPM: Revenue Per Thousand Impressions and why it simplifies everything
27:00 The 80/20 rule for creative testing — where real growth lives
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Guest: Kevin Guest
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-luby-70b62445/
Twitter: https://x.com/luby_k
CoHost: Nate Lagos
Twitter: https://x.com/natelagos
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natelagos/
Tactical and Practical Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tactical-practical/id1752915534
CoHost: Sarah Levinger
Learn more at: https://www.tetherinsights.io/
Twitter: https://x.com/SarahLevinger
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahlevinger/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarah.levinger/
Watch me on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKwfjt_7PU5N_2fTfHemXXg
