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Valid.co x Creatives By Julianna: 8 Months as Contracted Creative Strategist Across an AI-First Roster

TL;DR — What I owned at Valid

  • Contracted Creative Strategist for 8 months at near-full-time capacity across an AI-first roster spanning consumer, productivity, faith, gaming, and entertainment apps. (Offered full-time; declined to stay independent.)

  • Creative strategy across 10+ brands — including Tolan, QUITTR, Zumichat, Bang! Vertical Comics, Bible BFF, Vampirella, Willow, and Replit.

  • Multiple Top 5% Meta CPI / CPD winners 

  • Scope grew well past creative strategy — into Valid's internal brand growth, team development, including strategy for parts of the agency's own performance marketing.

How it started

I was referred into Valid by another creative strategist who knew they were hiring. The work fit, the team fit, and the engagement that started as a trial month on one client kept extending — across more clients, deeper into the agency, and eventually into Valid's own brand.


I worked with the team contractually for 8 months at near-full-time capacity. They even offered full-time at one point; I wasn't looking, but the offer was the signal that the work was landing.


The roster

Creative strategy across the Valid client roster, including projects on:

  • Tolan — AI companion app ("AI bestie for softer days")

  • QUITTR — p*rn habit / quit support app

  • Zumichat — AI pet companion (continuity from my Tapestry case study — happy networking loop where I referred them to Valid for paid, so was kept on the client through Valid for the strategy)

  • Bang — vertical comics & manga reading app

  • Bible BFF — fun faith / community app

  • Willow — voice dictation for professionals + developers

  • Replit — AI-powered developer tools

  • (Plus a handful of additional clients I cycled through across the engagement including a few apps for AI journaling - several products for scanning to reveal ingredients - an AI powered software for 3D materials - and more! )


The receipts!

The work I led at Valid produced multiple Meta winners several benchmarked Top 5% on Cost-Per-Install or Cost-Per-Download account-wide.


A look at some of my achievements across the accounts my strategy touched :


A few of the named winners:


⭐️ Zumichat — Top 5% CPI across multiple winners

PSAToTamagotchiKids ( · static · Winner)

"PSA to my former Tamagotchi kids: here's an app that's basically a pet that checks in on you too. Yes, it's amazing. Yes, it's free to use! Yes you will feel 167% happier!!"

  • $1.39 CPI → Top 5% account-wide

  • 56.6% Hold Rate → Top 5%

  • $2.2K spend

TextingCrushAdvice_SplitScreen (UGC video · Winner ·)

  • $1.17 CPI → Top 5% account-wide

  • 17.7% Hook Rate - AI generated media

  • 1.7M video plays · 309.1K views · 2,000 installs

  • 104 days runtime, $2.3K spend


CalmAndStressFree_LightBlueGradient / "I Was Lonely And My Brain Wouldn't Shut Up" ( static · Winner)

"So I found an app with a tiny AI bestie who actually listens, remembers, and talks me down when I'm spiraling at 1AM."

  • $2.03 CPI → Top 5%

  • 3,900 installs over 112 days

  • $8.0K spend


🔁 CBJ x Zumichat x Valid — happy networking loop

I'd already been running social for Zumi as part of my Tapestry partnership. When the team needed paid, I referred them to Valid — and Valid happily placed me on the account for creative strategy. So Zumi got continuous strategic ownership across organic and paid, even as the agency boundaries changed. The two Top 5% CPI Zumi winners above (PSAToTamagotchiKids and CalmAndStressFree) are what that continuity produced.


⭐️Willow — Top 5% CPD across multiple winners

FillerWordRemoval / OfficiallyDoneWithTypingForever (· UGC video · Winner)

3xFasterSlackAndEmailThroughput / WomanInCarWhiteTankTop (UGC video · Winner)

  • $5.60 CPD → Top 5%

  • 23.6% Hold Rate → Top 10% (AI generated media)

  • 133.4K plays, 19.2K views, 523 downloads, $2.9K spend



⭐️ Tolan — ad concept library spanning Notes-aesthetic statics, character-driven illustrations, and feature demos

For Tolan , the creative library and concept development I led spanned a range of static and several AIUGC ads:

⭐️ A few more fun projects and assets during my time with Valid.co


What the strategy actually looked like

The work was never just "write me three hook variations." It was a testable - provable - buildable stack:

performance diagnosis → creative thesis → AI UGC briefs → ad output → monthly review → next month's brief. 

Each client got the full loop, briefed against their actual previous month's / current paid-media data.




Beyond creative strategy

The role grew beyond per-client briefs into Valid's own operations:

  • Internal brand growth and development. Valid is an agency, but it's also a brand — and brands need a voice, a positioning narrative, and a visible point of view. I contributed to that surface as it scaled, including work on Valid's own product marketing and copy development.


  • Team development. Onboarding norms, brief templates, review pipelines, creator-facing documentation - SOP creation - recording looms etc. The kind of work that makes the next person's job 30% easier without anyone noticing.


  • Strategy for Valid's own performance marketing. The agency runs its own paid funnel — and the same hook frameworks, performance-feedback loops, and brief structures that worked for the client roster also got applied to Valid itself. Strategy isn't separate from execution; the same playbook scales both. Some of the ads I drafted x executed for Valid:


What I'd take into your team as a contracted creative strategist:

  • Creative strategy without performance reads is just opinion. 

    • Every brief I wrote at Valid was built on real account data — hook rates, CPAs, hold rates, creator-level performance. The data tells you what to brief next, and the named Top 5% winners above are what happens when the loop closes properly.

  • Generating for the hook. 

    • Using AI tools to manipulate the first 3 seconds of the creative - to optimize the visual hook and feeling - to really portray the needed concept or even test out different audience demographics - feelings - or similar concepts :

      • Ex: view these generations of highly specific contexts that were created specifically for these client concepts needed

  • Ad name taxonomy is leverage. 

    • Once a creative system has a clean taxonomy (Pain Point vs. Pattern Interrupt vs. Personal Story), every monthly review gets sharper and every brief is faster to write.

Want to work together?

If you're an agency or brand looking for a fractional or contracted creative strategist who can run the full loop — performance diagnosis → AI UGC briefs → creator direction → winners on the ad account — and grow into the parts of your team that need it, please reach out!

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