Is media buying dead or just evolving?

Cody Plofker, Connor MacDonald, and Connor Rolain unpack Meta’s integration of Manus AI into Ads Manager and explore what it signals for the future of paid growth. The hosts discuss whether AI-driven automation is making traditional media buying obsolete and what this shift could mean for ecommerce teams navigating an increasingly agent-led landscape.

The squad also covers how they’re already applying AI inside their brands, from campaign execution to CRO workflows + internal tooling — evolving growth roles, cross-channel decision-making, and how teams are rethinking structure in response to more capable AI systems.

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Mina Zandbar (VP of Global eCommerce & Digital Growth at Mattel) and Avi Moskowitz (Co-Founder & CEO) of PrettyDamnQuick, join hosts Connor MacDonald + Cody Plofker to explore ecommerce growth from two very different vantage points — one inside an 80-year-old, multi-billion dollar toy company; the other, building the infrastructure that helps brands stop leaking revenue at checkout.

Together, they reveal how your business can better use first-party data, AI, and smarter checkout experiences to improve customer trust and sell more.

Avi explains how optimizing logistics and personalization inside checkout unlocks profit revenue, while Mina shares how Mattel builds agile, data-driven teams and connects directly with its global community of customers and collectors.

The end result? A top-to-bottom analysis of your entire customer journey … to scale faster.

PrettyDamnQuick

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Haus

https://www.haus.io/operators

Prescient AI

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Richpanel

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Aftersell

https://9ops.co/4i3bb5

Operators Newsletter

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Are your new product launches driving incremental revenue or just shifting money around?

Connor Rolain, Head of Growth at HexClad, and Connor MacDonald, CMO at Ridge, dig into one of the most under-discussed challenges in DTC: how and when to introduce new products into your paid acquisition channels. From HexClad’s cocktail shaker launch to Ridge’s tattoo-inspired wallet designs, they break down real decisions they’re making right now.

Geo lift tests, channel holdouts, MER vs. ad-level performance, blended business unit analysis, and cross-category buying. The conversation centers on operationalizing category expansion in paid — building frameworks for when to scale, when to hold, and how to make smarter allocation decisions across categories.

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Prescient AI

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Richpanel

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Aftersell

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Haus

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Operators Newsletter

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How do you build a marketing machine that scales without breaking? In celebration of episode 100, Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge), Cody Plofker (CMO, Jones Road Beauty), and Connor Rolain (VP of Growth, HexClad) reveal the strategic priorities driving their brands’ growth in 2026 — straight out of their internal planning docs. From creating a bulletproof marketing operating system to cracking TikTok Shop, the trio goes deep on what’s moving the needle. They unpack why Ridge is betting big on retention as a product, why Jones Road is obsessed with creator-led social, and why all three brands believe that testing volume — not just testing smarter — is one of the highest-leverage inputs you can control. The conversation wraps with a candid breakdown of organic YouTube strategy and whether product seeding can replicate the success they’ve had on Instagram and TikTok.

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Rivo

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Richpanel

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Aftersell

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Operators Newsletter

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This week, the team breaks down how they’re testing creative and scaling systems. Volume still matters, but only when it’s paired with clearer concepts, stronger hypotheses, and better signal quality.

Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge), Cody Plofker (CEO, Jones Road Beauty), and Connor Rolain (Global Head of Growth, HexClad) revisit the playbooks they built over the years and walk through what’s working right now.

The conversation gets tactical fast. They dig into what actually defines a concept (message × format), how they’re structuring Meta campaigns to balance throughput and learning, and why hybrid CBO setups that blur the line between testing and spending are becoming the new standard. From ABO vs. CBO tradeoffs to pixel consolidation and signal engineering, they unpack how promising ideas get enough budget to generate real data.

Then the focus shifts to creator pipelines, coaching feedback loops, and organic-to-paid workflows — including why Jones Road is building a creator-in-residence program to ship content daily, why HexClad is hiring a dedicated freelancer to source assets faster, and why Ridge treats its network of briefed creators as an internal function.

A clear theme runs through it all … performance shouldn’t pit quality against quantity. It should focus on infrastructure to produce high output while learning faster and growing with intention.

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Prescient AI

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Richpanel

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Haus

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Is your brand still creating content for a social media era that no longer exists?

Hosts Connor Rolain (HexClad), Cody Plofker (Jones Road Beauty), and Connor MacDonald (Ridge) dig into how they’re rethinking organic and paid social content strategy for 2026 — and why the old influencer playbook is officially broken.

Cody reveals the million-dollar organic social investment he pitched to his board and the creator-in-residence model he’s building from scratch. Connor MacDonald explains why Ridge is going all-in on high-volume, product-oriented creator content over signature-series brand plays. And Connor Rolain shares how HexClad is bridging its organic social team with paid media creative strategy through a simple Slack channel workflow.

The conversation covers TikTok Shop affiliate flywheels, the death of follower-based reach, running creator-hiring competitions, and when it actually makes sense to invest in episodic brand content.

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Aftersell

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Performance creative consultant Dara Denney joins the show to break down how modern brands are approaching creative strategy in 2026. The conversation opens with the shifting role of content creators versus strategists, and why creative velocity, operations, and in-house production are increasingly shaping how brands scale.

From there, they dig into how AI is actually being used inside creative workflows - where it speeds up research and briefing, and where human judgment still matters, especially around roadmapping and idea selection. The group also explores the growing convergence of organic and paid, including how organic performance signals influence paid creative, why upper-funnel content belongs in performance accounts, and when “organic-first” ideas can still drive results.

The episode wraps with a candid discussion on performance measurement beyond short-term ROAS, touching on creative diversity, upper-funnel impact, and how operators think about long-term growth when building scalable content systems.

If you have a question for the MOperators Hotline, click the link to be in with a chance of it being discussed on the show: https://forms.gle/1W7nKoNK5Zakm1Xv6

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Motion Creative Strategy Bootcamp.

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Prescient AI.

https://www.prescientai.com/operators

Richpanel.

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Aftersell

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Haus

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This episode breaks down a key 2026 initiative: when and how to diversify your media mix, grounded in real operator decision-making rather than theory. The conversation uses HexClad’s approach as a case study, exploring the data signals that indicate it’s time to expand channels, how teams test incrementality, and how operators manage rising measurement complexity - especially when scaling internationally.

Along the way, the team explains how the “Rocks” system supports this kind of decision-making, from setting clear priorities and aligning teams to establishing cadence and ownership. They also unpack how KPIs are chosen at different stages, how retention-focused Rocks anchor growth efforts, and how insights from Japanese market data inform smarter media mix expansion.

If you have a question for the MOperators Hotline, click the link to be in with a chance of it being discussed on the show: https://forms.gle/1W7nKoNK5Zakm1Xv6

Chapters:

00:00:00 - Introduction

00:03:27 - Hexclad's 2026 Rocks

00:23:08 - Signals for Channel Expansion

00:32:23 - Expansion Playbook & Strategy

00:43:17 - New US Channels

00:55:59 - Sequencing & Complexity

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Rivo.

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Prescient AI.⁠⁠⁠

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Richpanel.⁠⁠⁠

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