074: The 2025 State of Creative

Hello, you lovely Creatives!

Welcome to Volume 7️⃣4️⃣ of Creative Cuts 🔪 - your weekly dose of creative strategy from your friends at Creative OS.

And today on the cutting board…

I present to you 👇

The 2025 State of Creative.

For context…

If you’ve felt like the DTC creative game is moving faster than ever...you’re right.

Brands aren’t just making "content" anymore.

They’re building full-blown creative engines.

Over the past 12 months, we tracked down the data from THOUSANDS of creatives insiude of CreativeOS.

Ads, emails, AND landing pages.

The best brands.
The sharpest agencies.
The ones that are actually scaling, not just shouting.

And after combing through the data?

We found the patterns.

The formats.

And the structures that are moving the needle right now in 2025.

So today, we're breaking it all down for you.

This is not fluff.
This is not theory.

This entire newsletter is based on REAL data that we dug deep into our archives to find.

And once you understand how top brands are building their creative engines — you’ll be able to plug the same structures into your own workflow, test faster, and scale what converts.

So, with that out of the way…

Let’s roll. 

The Top 5 Brands Dominating CreativeOS

If you want to know what’s hitting in creative right now...

Look at who’s being copied the most.

Here are the 5 most popular brands inside CreativeOS right now:

🏅 AG1 by Athletic Greens
 🏅 Huel
 🏅 Hims
 🏅 Your Heights
 🏅 Spacegoods

Brands dominating in wellness, personal care, and functional products.

No surprise there — these categories live and die by creative differentiation.

Key Creative Trends We’re Seeing in 2025

We spotted five core trends across winning ads, emails, and landing pages:

1. “Before & After” and “Us vs. Them” is still king.

Comparison framing isn’t new.

But brands are getting way better at it.

No long copy. No subtlety.

Just straight visual contrast:

Before = painful. After = life upgrade.

CreativeOS Data:

70% of the most shared static ads use this split format.

2. Bundles + Free Gifts + Scarcity = Conversion Fuel

Top brands aren’t just selling products.

They’re selling wins.

Bundles + bonuses + timers create instant perceived value.

CreativeOS Data:

• Best-selling PDPs use free gifts plus urgency.
  

• Highest performing ad creative from Arma included a free travel pouch.
  

3. Icons-As-Benefits Are Now Mandatory

Long-form copy is dead.

Short-form skimmable benefit stacks are winning.

Think:

• Vegan

• Zero Sugar

• Free Bottle

No heavy reading. Just instant value absorption.

CreativeOS Data:

• AG1, Huel, and Heights hammer this across ads, emails, and landing pages.
  

4. Real Humans Beat Brands Every Time

“Trusted by people like you” isn’t optional anymore.

It’s table stakes.

Founders, vets, doctors, real customers — whoever your buyer identifies with — sell your product better than any branded voice can.

CreativeOS Data:

• Top LPs place expert proof above CTAs to build early trust.

5. Humor, Memes, and Tweets Are the New Trojan Horse

More brands are embedding the pitch inside humor.

Not screaming features.
Not dry case studies.

Just relatable, scroll-native jokes that reposition the product fast.

Why?

Humor lowers defenses.

If you laugh, you’re already halfway bought in.

What The Funnel Actually Looks Like in 2025

After digging through usage and saving data inside CreativeOS, here's how real brands are operating:

Top of Funnel: 

Ads are experimental playgrounds. Brands are obsessed with testing new angles, hooks, and visuals.

Mid-Funnel: 

Emails are execution engines. Not flashy, but absolutely critical. Top templates inside CreativeOS were used over 150 times.

Bottom Funnel: 

Landing pages are massively underleveraged. Brands invest heavily in ads and emails, but many still treat LPs like an afterthought. The opportunity gap here is massive.

Summary:

• Ads test new ideas.
  

• Emails scale existing wins.
  

• Landing pages quietly double your return if you optimize them.

How To Actually Apply This

If you want to build a system that scales creative, here’s your playbook:

1. Pick 2–3 Ad Templates and Use Them Religiously
Templates like Kin’s side-by-side ad are proven to work across any vertical.
Rinse and remix.

2. Use Emails to Launch Campaigns, Not Just Products
Campaign-style emails build urgency, stack value, and launch bundles better than basic SKU drops.

3. Treat Landing Pages Like Ads
Iterate hooks. Rotate modules. Embed trust signals earlier.
Landing pages shouldn’t be static. They should evolve like your ads.

4. Simplify Everything
Faster communication beats fancier design.
3 bullet benefits. 2-column comparisons. Clearer stories.

Final Thoughts

The best brands are winning by creating better systems.

They:

• Pick a few high-performing templates.
  

• Rely on them 90% of the time.
  

• Refresh hooks, not structures.

That’s how you scale creative and compound results without chaos.

Hope you enjoyed that :)

And until next time,

Chase

That’s all! If you’re looking to find inspiration or get the best ad templates out there, come hang out with us at Creative OS and tell your friends!