From Design To Delivery: A Guided Walk Through The Process That Turns One Creative Into Countless Meaningful Stories.
- Origin
- Apr 11
- 5 min read
It may sound daunting, but turning one CTV asset into a potentially limitless number of different 'stories' is the easiest thing in the world for a brand to do.
Critically for planning teams, delivering a tailored creative into each living room is no different to sending an untouched creative - but it is significantly more powerful.
To illustrate what we mean by this, we're going to take you on a journey through the process, using 'Travel' as the guinea pig.
Feel free to swap Travel for any word you want - Retail, CPG, Auto, Pharma etc.
Step 1: The Brief Isn’t the Story
Ok, so let's start at the top:
Travel client assigns a campaign to Origin.
Travel client has a beautiful and aspirational creative.
Travel client knows its target audiences.
Travel client knows where they want their campaign to run.
Travel client tells Origin they want to drive more active consideration.
For our client, the hard work is done. For Origin, the work is only just beginning - and it begins with a 30-45 minute Creative Kick-Off.
In the kickoff call, the inputs are familiar:
Objectives (awareness, consideration, bookings etc).
Flight dates, markets, measurement plans.
1st and 3rd Party data segments.
Target audiences:
Single young women.
High-income families.
Outdoor enthusiasts.
Culture lovers.
In most cases, by this point the data and audience targeting segments have done their job. However, as any of our partners will attest - an Origin CTV campaign is not most cases.
Those segments aren’t just operational essentials - they’re clues.
Clues to a deeper story.
Step 2: Finding the “Story Within the Story”
A single travel creative - no matter how captivatingly gorgeous - can’t resonate with everyone. It can inspire, but it can’t ‘connect’.
And today, connecting is everything.
The best way to earn someone’s attention is by offering value in exchange for their time.
That value comes from relevance. From recognition. From making someone feel like the message was meant for them.
So the question becomes: What is the deeper story that matters to each audience - and how should it be presented?
For a solo traveler: independence, discovery, self-direction.
For a family: ease, bonding, shared moments.
For an outdoor enthusiast: movement, challenge, scale.
For a culture lover: immersion, texture, depth.
This is the “story within the story.” Not added for the sake of personalization - but surfaced because it’s something the creative would say if it could, but didn’t have the tools to do so. In other words, there’s a reason for it to be there.
Step 3: Where Studio Steps In
This is where the process becomes both technical and creative.
Origin’s Studio ingests the audience data being used for the ‘plumbing’ - geographies, demographics, interests etc…and of course, the client’s own first party data (if it’s relevant).
Then, while humans are finalizing the ‘nature’ of the deeper story, AI is translating and tagging these signals into a creative logic tree that will then be fed into the custom-designed dynamic overlay (Aperture) or ad extension (Slingshot) - possibly even both.
And as for that custom design, it must follow a number of ‘golden rules’:
MUST NOT: Fragment the ad.
MUST: Protect the core brand story - while allowing it to flex, adapt, and speak differently depending on who’s watching.
For example, in this award-winning Visit Maine campaign, we first studied the brand's core creative, built a logic which took into account viewers' distance (driving vs flying) and then layered in messaging specific to each audience - with weather forecasts and foliage reports which changed daily.
Step 4: Building the Dynamic Layer
Once that logic and underlying design has been defined, the work shifts into production, with audience-specific copy and visuals being chosen for their intent:
Reflect mindset, not just demographic.
Mirror the environment, not steamroll over it.
Present inward-leaning aspiration, not merely barking instructions.
CTAs that make sense for each audience, not assuming one size fits all.
The list could go on forever, but this is not about creating “more versions” for more versions’ sake. It’s about creating the right versions.
What ultimately forms is a dynamic ‘skin’ - a thin layer that sits in or around the core ad, not simply on top of it. And not simply across half the screen (at the cost of the ad being shrunk down to oblivion).
The result:
Same brand.
Same brand campaign.
Same brand campaign goals.
A completely different feeling, depending on the living room it lands in.
A complementary - not competing - story.
Step 5: Studio + Ops, Working as One System
As assets are produced, they’re not just exported - they’re mapped to a destination. Each variation is tied to:
A specific region.
A certain audience segment.
A defined piece of creative logic.
A clear intention within the broader campaign
Critically, Studio and Ops move in perfect sync - as if married to a single, unified workflow - thereby enabling execution at scale. Fun fact, for one of Origin’s retail clients last holiday season, over 20,000 creative variations were delivered through the same core asset (read the case study here).
Complexity has become…strangely elegant.
Step 6: Launch - One Campaign, Many Conversations
By the time the campaign goes live, something subtle - but vital - has changed.
It’s no longer one ad being shown to many people. It’s the original story being expressed in many ways, to many individuals - each of whom are now seeing something:
More relevant.
More relatable.
More recognizable.
What they are seeing has value to them, and what’s being exchanged for that value - is interest and attention. The client stories you can read here prove it.
Before We Conclude - Why Now?
For a long time, the industry has focused on targeting, measurement and optimization as being 'the' things that drive better results on Connected TV.
It’s certainly true that they drive better results, but they aren't the full story - they're the essential plumbing.
What’s taken a little longer to work out is the value of emotional resonance - and that, no matter how stunning, funny or elaborate it is, a single creative with a single story cannot resonate with everyone.
In Closing
Origin isn’t in the business of adding dynamic elements for the sake of it. Nor are we interested in obfuscating a brand’s core narrative. What we are in the business of, is:
Understanding your objectives.
Respecting your core message.
Finding the deeper story that resonates.
Architecting a way for that deeper story to stand up and be heard.
To put it more simply: We take one ad, and we help it speak many truths.
If you find this topic interesting and would like to know more, you can schedule a consultation with one of Origin's CTV specialists by clicking here.
Origin is a multi-award winning provider of creative solutions and services for media buyers, creative teams and brands who want to transform conventional CTV ad creatives into powerful, personal and provocative advertising experiences.
With unparalleled creative capabilities and proprietary ad serving technology, Origin’s unique suite of dynamic ad overlays and native CTV ad extensions allows advertisers to engage distracted audiences and achieve the results they need.
Founded by media veterans Stephen Strong and Fred Godfrey, Origin is driven by the belief that winning viewers today requires breaking free from how it was done yesterday.
Learn more at: originmedia.tv
