The World Trade Association of Utah recently met with Jay Davis, founder and CEO of Creatably & PillowCube for a virtual company visit. Davis is responsible for the PillowCube product development, marketing, and vision of the company, as well as creating experiential campaigns to increase brand awareness and sales with Creatably. 

As a company, Creatably has created tens of millions of dollars in conversion revenue. “The whole goal of Creatably is to give clients a different experience for working with an agency.” said Davis. “Rather than focusing on brand impressions we tend to focus on revenue growth and profitably. We regularly take new clients from a revenue of two, five, or 10 million to 25, 50, 100 million plus. We do that over a course of years rather than a course of a decade.”

Davis has worked with brands such as The Color Run, which grew to $45 million revenue with the help of viral marketing techniques in the first 23 months. Another company, Manly Bands, went from earning around $12 million a year to $50 million a year with the help of Creatably techniques in approximately 15 months. 

One of Creatably’s greatest success stories, PillowCube, was a product idea that started when Davis was just 10 years old. “I was at a sleepover at a friend’s house, and I asked my friends mom for a couple extra pillows. I’m a side sleeper, so it drove me crazy that I never seemed to have enough pillows. My best friends’ mom, who is Japanese, told me about how her family in Japan would make her a box of wood and wrap it in a towel and that’s what she slept with. As I got older, I kept thinking about this idea.”

Davis used this idea to create a pillow using foam samples from another client to create the pillow he had always dreamed of. 

“As we dove into it, we realized there’s a huge side sleeping problem. Anywhere between 60%-70% of people identify as side sleepers in America. We found studies for how beneficial side sleeping is for people. It’s better for digestion, it’s better for your heart, but you have to have it in proper alignment. We realized a pillow that works for everyone isn’t great for anyone.”  

After adding PillowCube to Kickstarter, it went on to raise $130,000 to start building the product. Today, the PillowCube website receives roughly 65,000 new website visitors each day.

According to Davis, there are 5 factors of a product that can help set up a company to experience rapid growth. These are what he calls, “the five D’s”. The product should be:

• Deliverable, easily accessible, and quick to get.
• Differentiated or a product that stands out and shows a new way of doing something.
• Democratic, meaning a product everyone can use or knows someone who can use it.
• Demonstrable, or a product that can be visually displayed or viewed by the consumer.
• Distributive: the company must have the resources for effective distribution and marketing.

The success of these methods created by Davis speaks volumes. Creatably itself began as an idea and in just 18 months it began generating revenue of about $75 million a year. 

“One of the things we talk a lot about at Creatably is ‘go fast, grow fast’.” said Davis. “This is our mantra that we work with. Clients in most places are limited by their own barriers that they themselves put in their way. We help them push through them quickly.”

With this model, Davis is redefining effective ways to do viral online advertising. “There’s a key difference in social media.” said Davis. “The cost that you pay to show someone your commercial is different depending on how good that commercial is, how much they enjoy watching it, and how much of the commercial they watch. It’s a key difference between TV and social media. When you have content on social media that people like watching, social media platforms charge less because it’s less disruptive to their true customers, which is the user.”

The key is to create a likable ad that the user feels compelled to interact with, whether it is through sharing the ad or tagging other users to view it with them. An important factor when analyzing ads is to find where users are “dropping off” and leaving the content. This can be used to find ways to create an ad that is fully immersive from start to finish.

In the early days of online advertising, it was easier to create a successful business just by posting a product and having it shared by other users with large followings. “The days where you can just have an Instagram following and have some influencers post your product, are just over.” said Davis. “You have to spend money; you have to do paid media to really get your product in front of people and acquire customers.”

In today’s digital world, explosive company growth is more attainable than ever. By using viral online marketing techniques, Davis is helping companies achieve dramatic results in very short time frames. To view more success stories and how Creatably is revolutionizing the world of online advertising, visit www.creatably.com.