Strive Creative

10/20/2026

For years, automotive advertising has followed a familiar formula: Lead with the lowest possible price or monthly payment. Add an asterisk. Put every qualification in the disclaimer.

But the FTC is making it clear that the fine print cannot continue doing all the heavy lifting. Following warning letters sent to 97 automobile dealership groups, dealers are being encouraged to take a much closer look at whether the prices they advertise reflect what consumers can actually receive.

That creates a real challenge for dealership marketers.

When employee pricing, loyalty incentives, conquest cash, and other conditional offers can no longer be treated as if they are available to everyone, the advertised number may become less attention-grabbing.

That does not mean the advertising has to become less effective.

It means the strategy, audience targeting, message, and creative need to work harder. In our latest blog, we look at what the FTC’s actions mean for automotive advertising, the challenges dealerships may face, and how marketers can build campaigns that are clearer, more credible, and still capable of generating results.

Because the lowest payment may earn the click. The most credible experience is more likely to earn the customer. Read more here: https://bit.ly/47dQnWt

The FTC is cracking down on automotive advertising that buries conditions in the fine print. Here's what dealerships need to know.

10/06/2026

A&W's third-pound burger beat the Quarter Pounder on every number that mattered... but still flopped. The reason says more about marketing than math. New on the blog: the third-pound burger problem, and what it teaches about making your value obvious. Read it here: https://bit.ly/4AbPf32

Why A&W's third-pound burger flopped against the Quarter Pounder, and what it teaches marketers about framing, naming, and cognitive bias.

09/22/2026

22 years ago, Strive was a video production company. Today we handle strategy, media, web, and analytics. Not because we wanted a longer service list, but because our clients were being served pieces and the pieces weren't adding up.

Same instinct every time. See the gap, go close it.
Metro Detroit Chevy Dealers. Jet's Pizza. Twenty-two years of clients who trusted us with something bigger than what they hired us for. Full story here: https://bit.ly/4rnOUGp

From video production to full-service marketing agency -- here's how Strive Creative grew by closing the gaps clients couldn't see for themselves.

09/18/2026

Last week Apple announced the iPhone Duo, its first foldable iPhone, and most of the coverage focused on the hinge and the $1,999 price. For anyone working in creative or advertising, the more interesting detail is the new shape of the screen.

Picture your best-performing vertical ad running on this thing. Open, the Duo is a 7.6-inch screen; closed, a 5.4-inch cover screen; and both sit at nearly the same proportions, far closer to a passport than to the long, narrow rectangle a phone has been for more than a decade. Your vertical no longer fills it once the phone folds shut, and widescreen leaves black bars across the open display.

The harder problem is that the Duo doesn’t have one shape; it has two, and the viewer decides which. Someone can start watching on the cover screen, open the phone halfway through, and watch the frame reshape around them. Every format conversation until now assumed the screen would hold still.

There’s also a fold running vertically through the center of the open display, exactly where a landscape composition tends to place its hero subject and logo. And Apple is positioning the open screen for two apps at once, which can drop full-screen creative into a half-width column.

So the early read that foldables bring horizontal back is probably wrong. The likelier outcome is that no single aspect ratio stays safe.

It’s fair to be skeptical that one phone changes anything. Samsung has sold foldables since 2019 without moving creative much. Hardware, though, has never been what changes a brief. Ad specs are.

The industry has been here before. Vertical existed for years before anyone built for it, and brands that waited for the platforms to mandate 9:16 spent years cropping widescreen into a shape it was never framed for. The ones that moved early didn’t spend more; they stopped assuming the frame was fixed.

None of this is expensive to really get ahead of. It means more room around the subject, text and logos off the outer edges and the center fold, and assets briefed to be reframed rather than rebuilt.

Formats change, platforms rewrite their specs, and now screens fold in half. Creative built to adapt survives all of it.

09/15/2026

For many users, the first interaction with a brand doesn’t happen on a website. It happens in the feed.

This makes social design more than a visual exercise. It shapes how quickly people understand a message, how credible a brand feels, and whether the experience encourages them to keep engaging.

In our latest blog, we explore how intentional social design can support the broader user journey.
Because strong social content should do more than capture attention, it should also make the experience easier to understand and more connected from the first impression forward.

Read the full blog: https://bit.ly/4wTXr53

Good social design does more than stop the scroll. Intentional design builds trust, guides a user journey, and shapes perception over time.

09/08/2026

Ad performance dropping even though nothing else changed? That's creative fatigue. We just published a quick read on how to spot it early and what to test next instead of scrapping the whole campaign. Check it out: https://bit.ly/45M2YzG

Ad performance dropping? Learn how A/B testing helps marketers spot creative fatigue early and pivot to fresh, high-performing ad variations.

08/31/2026

22 years of big ideas, tight deadlines, and campaigns we're still proud of. Through every rebrand, every pitch, and every campaign launch, thank you to the clients who’ve trusted us with their toughest challenges and to the team that made them look easy. Here's to many more years of creativity. 🎉

08/21/2026

AI didn't kill creativity. It just made taste the whole game. Our new blog breaks down what AI really changed for creatives and what it can't touch: https://bit.ly/4gDvg5o

📌 Part of our ongoing Marketing Misconceptions series.

Here's how AI changes creative work -- and what it doesn't. Three misconceptions creatives and marketers need to stop believing in 2026.

08/18/2026

And that's a wrap on the Woodward Dream Cruise 2026! There's no weekend quite like Dream Cruise weekend, and the Strive team was happy to be part of it again this year! Thanks to our client, the Chevy Detroit Dealers, and to everyone who came out to celebrate with us! 🏁🏎️🚦

07/24/2026

A perfectly normal interview with the Strive team...