Strive Creative

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

Twenty-Two Years In: The Strive Creative Story - Strive Creative From video production to full-service marketing agency -- here's how Strive Creative grew by closing the gaps clients couldn't see for themselves.

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.

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

How Social Design Shapes the Entire Brand Experience - Strive Creative Good social design does more than stop the scroll. Intentional design builds trust, guides a user journey, and shapes perception over time.

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

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

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. 🎉

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.

Strategy Over Slop: How AI Changes Creative Work - Strive Creative Here's how AI changes creative work -- and what it doesn't. Three misconceptions creatives and marketers need to stop believing in 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! 🏁🏎️🚦

Good marketing should look effortless.
The message lands. The design makes sense. The audience knows what to do next. Everything feels connected.
But behind the scenes, effective marketing takes research, questions, collaboration, testing, and plenty of “almost, but not quite.”
That is where our DIVE process comes in.
Discover. Ideate. Validate. Evolve.
It is the framework we use to turn insight into thoughtful strategy, stronger creative, and marketing that actually works.
Take a deeper look at how we DIVE in: https://bit.ly/44rABWK

Strive's Marketing Strategy Process: The DIVE Framework - Strive Creative Strive's marketing strategy process is built on four steps: Discover, Ideate, Validate, and Evolve. DIVE turns insight into performing work.