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PlayP05 Growth · Demand and conversion · Editorial rank 7 of 12

Learn which proposition and creative concept works

The team produces variants without learning which customer benefit, proof or concept changes valuable response.

Decision
Which proposition or concept should inform the next approved brief?
Primary commercial metric
Incremental contribution net of production and distribution costs, or accepted-asset cost for a production-only comparison.
Readiness
Basic with test capacity
Agent role
None by default; draft generation and tagging are bounded tasks.
01

Fit

When to use this Play

A material proposition uncertainty exists and available reach can support a useful concept comparison.

When not to use it

The product promise is unsupported, legal/brand review is unavailable, or variant volume exceeds learning capacity.

Why it should work

A distinct proposition or proof can remove a customer barrier; structured testing separates the idea from production volume.

Basic version

Two approved concepts and one test/readout; manual taxonomy suffices.
02

Prepare

Required maturity
Basic with approved claims and a method owner. Ready with one meaningful contrast and enough evidence capacity. Not ready for automated feature-based causal rules.
Check readiness for P05 (D02)

Inputs

Customer need, objection, substantiation, brand assets, asset rights, audience, exposure context, baseline and downstream economics.

Audience or customer

The intended eligible market or customer cohort, with consistent treatment definitions.

Human role

Creative owns concept and quality; Brand approves claims and distinctiveness; measurement owns comparison; commercial owner funds the next brief.

Systems required

Existing asset store, production tools, channel delivery and an experiment/evidence record.

Guardrails

Rights, accessibility, truthful substantiation, trust, brand coherence and variant maintenance burden.

How to configure a Play

Copy the Play you need and complete only the relevant parts of T1–T5. Name the people responsible, define the customer group, agree economic and customer limits, and set a review date before starting. An empty decision threshold is not permission to act. Basic, Connected and Advanced describe how the work is configured; Experimental describes its evidence. AI is optional: compare each AI step with a simpler way of doing the same work.

03

Do the work

Intervention

One substantive proposition/concept contrast; isolate execution variations where practical.

Workflow

  1. Identify need and barrier.

  2. Form a mechanism-based hypothesis.

  3. Approve concept and proof.

  4. Produce a small test set.

  5. Check rights/claims.

  6. Test with an appropriate design.

  7. Review valuable response and cost.

  8. Update the brief.

AI role

Optional assist Optional grounded variant drafting, tagging and synthesis. Pilot annotation only after a manual/native baseline; no automatic publication.

Automation role

Asset IDs, versions, format/expiry checks, delivery records and test logging.

Agent role

None by default; draft generation and tagging are bounded tasks.

Failure modes

  • CTR treated as profit
  • platform selection confounded with creative effect
  • micro-variants replacing a real proposition test.
04

Measure and decide

Measurement

Compare valuable downstream response under a valid delivery design; account for audience allocation, production cost and delayed contribution.

Primary commercial metric

Incremental contribution net of production and distribution costs, or accepted-asset cost for a production-only comparison.

Leading indicators

Approved asset yield, factual/brand defects, exposure balance and verified qualified response.

Experiment

Randomised concept allocation where feasible; observational feature associations generate hypotheses only.

Guardrails

Rights, accessibility, truthful substantiation, trust, brand coherence and variant maintenance burden.
Scale when
Use the concept in a comparable context when evidence supports value; replicate material claims before broad generalisation.
Stop / reassess when
Stop unsupported claims immediately; stop variant proliferation or investment when evidence remains unusable or economics fail.
05

Learn and progress

Learning

Retain concept, customer mechanism, audience, delivery context, result and negative findings; update the next brief.

Practical tool

Next action
choose one customer objection whose resolution could change valuable behaviour.
Open T3 Decision experiment and evidence record
06

Optional depth

Advanced versionPrerequisites: see Required maturity above.

Multimodal annotation or larger test programmes only when accepted-work savings and valid learning exceed additional cost.

Evidence for this Play3claims reviewed, with confidence ratings, limits and sources.

Claim classifications

Accepted means a principle or mechanism survived critical review, not that it guarantees a return. Accepted with conditions means prerequisites apply. Qualified means the original claim has been narrowed. Advanced needs substantial readiness. Experimental needs a capped comparison. Unresolved means the evidence cannot settle the claim. Rejected means the recommendation is excluded.

High, Medium and Low describe confidence in the stated target, not the chance of a positive ROI. For a Qualified or Rejected historical claim, confidence applies to the decision to narrow or reject it and to the supported limit—not to the original headline. Read the headline and classification together. An accounting identity or design principle is not empirical evidence of a commercial outcome. Follow the linked chapters, Plays and tools to see where each claim applies.