Focus
£950
One channel or one ad account.
- 3 formats or ad angles
- 6 concepts or creator briefs
- Recorded 60-minute walkthrough
- 7 days of questions
Creative Direction Sprint · for brands
You already pay for content. Make it point somewhere.
For brands with someone already making content — in-house, agency or freelance. In about a week, I work out what that content should be, then hand your team the formats, concepts and plan to make it. For organic social, or for paid creative.
Focus £950 · Full £1,500
- About a week
- Fixed scope
- Remote, from Belfast
01 The problem
The problem usually isn't effort. It's that nobody has decided.
- 01
Every post starts from a blank page.
Someone makes content every week, but there's no idea it all hangs from — so each post is a fresh guess, and none of them add up.
- 02
The ads are tired.
The same few angles have run for months. Results soften, costs creep up, and nobody is sure what to test next.
- 03
It looks right. It doesn't land.
Polished, on-brand and scrolled past — because it was made for the brand's approval, not for the person holding the phone.
Your team doesn't need to work harder. It needs someone to make the calls — which is the part that's hardest to do from inside.
The mathsIf content costs you more than £1,500 a month — salary, freelancers, an agency, ad spend — the Full Sprint costs less than one month of it. More output from the same unclear direction just gets you more of the same.
02 Two versions
Organic content, or the ads you pay for.
Same Sprint, same judgement — pointed at whichever is costing you more. We choose on the fit call.
ForBrands posting without a clear direction.
I look atYour last ~30 posts and three competitors: what's working, what to stop, where the opening is.
- Formats
- 3–5 repeatable formatsRecognisable series with a purpose, a structure, example hooks and a cadence your team can sustain.
- Concepts
- 10 production-ready conceptsEach with the idea, hook, message, who's on camera and how to shoot it.
- Plan
- A 30-day planThe first month sequenced around your priorities and the time your team actually has.
- 60-minute walkthrough. Recorded, with whoever makes your content — so the reasoning travels, not just the document.
- Brand context sheet & prompts. So your team, and the AI tools they already use, generate from the strategy — with a short rubric to judge what comes back.
- 7 days of questions. Async, after handover, on how to use what you've got.
Format 02 of 04Example: an independent NI coffee roaster selling subscriptions online
Bad coffee, fixed.
Prove the expertise by fixing a problem the viewer has at home this morning. The product is the answer, never the subject.
Structure
- 0–2sThe mistake, on screen: “You're grinding it wrong.”
- 3–15sThe fix — shown, not explained.
- 15–25sThe difference, tasted on camera.
- EndOne line. No hard sell.
Hooks to start with
- “Your coffee tastes bitter for one reason.”
- “Stop buying pre-ground. Here's what it's costing you.”
- “The £3 fix for your cafetière.”
- Cadence
- Weekly · 30–40s
- On camera
- The roaster, not a presenter
- Kit
- One phone, the shop counter
03 Two sizes
One fixed price. No hours to count.
Focus is for one channel or one ad account. Full is the whole job. Both are the same standard of thinking — Full just covers more ground.
Full
£1,500
Your main channels, or the full ad account and test plan.
- 3–5 formats, or a 5 × 3 angle and hook matrix
- 10 concepts or scripted creator briefs
- 30-day plan, or 2-week test plan
- Brand context sheet & prompts
- Recorded 60-minute walkthrough
- 7 days of questions
50% to book, 50% at handover. Fixed price — no hourly add-ons. · Prices exclude VAT where applicable.
04 How it runs
About a week, start to handover.
- Before
Fit call
20 minutes, free. Is the Sprint right for you, which version and which size? If it isn't, I'll say so.
- Day 0
Book & kickoff
A 30-minute call on your priorities and who makes what. You send links — or ad account access, if you'd rather.
- Days 1–4
Diagnosis & build
I review, decide and write. You'll get one check-in on direction before the detail is built.
- Day 5
Walkthrough
A recorded hour with the people who'll make it. Then seven days for questions.
05 Why me
I've made it, and I've directed it from inside a brand.
The Sprint is the judgement I've had to use on real budgets and real launches. Two examples, matched to the two versions.
DJK International · Paid client — launch strategy and content
A new label, inside a known shop.
DJK International's Instagram had around 100K followers — built on the designer brands it stocked, with low engagement. When DJK launched a label of its own, almost nobody knew the logo.
The call
Don't push a new label through an audience that followed other people's brands. Start a new TikTok, make it about Belfast, and get the logo seen before asking anyone to buy it.
- TikTok first, Belfast first
- Guerrilla, not glossy
- Store vlogs and festival moments
- The look carried by people and places
≈1Mviews in the first 30 days
≈5,000followers on a brand-new TikTok
Owner-reported, account-level, first 30 days. Attention for a new label — not a sales figure.
Plutus · Head of Social Media
Ad creative, from inside a fintech brand.
As Head of Social Media at Plutus, I directed the in-house UGC-style ad creative for acquisition campaigns on Instagram, TikTok and X — working with the person buying the media.
The call
Ads built on the craft of my own channels: a person, a reason to keep watching, and one clear angle each — so the team could see which reason to buy actually moved people.
- UGC-style, not polished
- One angle per ad
- Partnership with Sweatcoin
- Instagram, TikTok, X
≈30,000app sign-ups from the acquisition campaigns
Campaign-level and owner-reported — the result of a team, a media budget and a product, not of me or any single ad.
62M+views across 646 videos on my own channels
Before any of this, I learned it on my own channels — by making things people chose to watch, and noticing what they didn’t. See the work
06 Questions
The practical questions.
Why not just hire someone to make more content?
More output from the same unclear direction gets you more of the same. The Sprint is the decision about what to make. Whoever makes your content makes better work afterwards — including a freelancer, if that's your plan.
Organic or paid creative — which do we need?
We decide on the fit call. If you're spending on Meta or TikTok ads, paid creative is usually where money is leaking, and it's where results are easiest to measure.
Do you run our ads?
No. Your team or media buyer keeps budgets, targeting and the ads manager. I give them the angles, hooks, briefs and a test plan to run.
What do you need from us?
Links to your channels (or ad account access, or we use the Meta Ad Library), about an hour across the kickoff and walkthrough, and the person who makes your content at the walkthrough.
Is this an AI service?
No. The context sheet and prompts are there so the AI tools your team already uses work from the strategy instead of guessing — with a short rubric for judging what they produce.
Do you guarantee results?
No. You get a clear direction and production-ready work. Results depend on execution, your offer, spend and the market. The examples on this page are past work, not promised outcomes.
Can you make the content too?
Sometimes, as a separate production quote. Most Sprints are better served by your own team making it — that's the point of the handover.
Not includedFilming, editing, posting, community management and media buying stay with your team — I give them the direction, the briefs and the plan.
After a SprintSome teams want a second pair of eyes each month after a Sprint, or direction for a launch. That's scoped by conversation once we've worked together — it's never a reason to start bigger.
→ Next step
Book a 20-minute fit call.
Free, and genuinely useful either way. We'll work out whether the Sprint fits, which version and which size. If it doesn't fit, I'll tell you what would.
- 01I reply within two working days.
- 02A 20-minute call, at a time that suits you.
- 03A short written proposal: version, size, start date.
Or email me directly: ged@the916.com