visual-formats
Visual Formats
Visual formats are the production structure of an ad — what it looks like, how it's built, and what medium it lives in.
They are not hooks (what you say), not mechanics (how the viewer arrives at the truth), and not messaging angles (what the core truth is). Format is the vessel. creative-mechanics defines what moves inside it.
Where Formats Sit in the Creative Stack
Messaging Angle (creative-strategy-engine)
↓
Creative Mechanic (creative-mechanics)
↓
Hook (hook-writing + hook-tactics)
↓
Visual Format ← YOU ARE HERE
More from motion-team/creative-strategy-skills
hook-writing
Writes high-converting, psychologically-driven hooks for paid ads, TikTok, Instagram Reels, and organic content. Use this whenever a user wants to write hooks, opening lines, scroll-stoppers, or attention-grabbing openers for ads or social content. Trigger for any request involving "write me hooks," "give me hooks for," "I need hooks for my ad," "TikTok hooks," "hook ideas," or any variation of wanting compelling opening lines for advertising or social content. Also use when a user provides a product, persona, messaging angle, or awareness stage and wants tactical hook execution — especially when used downstream from the Creative Strategy Engine.
253creative-strategy-engine
Strategic framework for mapping pain/persona intersections and messaging angles. Defines the structure for organizing creative strategy, not the tactics for execution. Use this when planning an organizational or systematic approach to creative strategy, or when a user provides a product and wants to define messaging angles, write strategic hooks, or execute ads in visual formats defined by awareness and decision stages.
193creative-mechanics
A library of creative mechanics — the structural patterns that define how an ad constructs meaning between its hook, visuals, and narrative. Use this whenever designing ad concepts, briefing creative, or trying to explain why a specific ad works beyond just its hook or format. Trigger when a user describes an ad they saw and wants to understand or replicate what made it work, when building a creative concept from a messaging angle, or when execution needs more than a hook and a format — it needs a structural idea. Creative mechanics sit between hooks and visual formats in the Creative Strategy Engine: hooks say what, formats show how, mechanics define the cognitive or emotional mechanism that makes the concept land. Always pair with Hook Writing for opening line execution and Hook Tactics for tactic classification.
190hook-tactics
Reference library of 35+ hook and headline tactic types. Use this when a user asks for hooks organized by tactic, wants to know which tactic to use for a given situation, or requests hooks "by tactic type." This defines what each tactic is and when to deploy it. Always pair with hook-writing for execution — tactics define the frame, psychological triggers are the mechanism inside the frame.
180brand-intake
Runs a structured brand intake interview and then conducts web research to build a comprehensive brand context document. Use this whenever the user says they're working on a new client, wants to build brand context, or says "run brand intake", "conduct brand research" or "build brand context for [brand]". Also trigger when the user starts a creative strategy workflow for a brand that doesn't yet have a context document in the project. This must run BEFORE any Creative Strategy Engine, Hook Writing, or other execution work — it is the prerequisite context layer for all downstream creative strategy.
178review-audit
Analyzes positive customer reviews to surface deep customer insights for ad copy. Use this whenever a user provides customer reviews and wants to understand their customers better, extract VOC (voice of customer), find ad-ready language, or build messaging strategy from real customer language. Trigger for any request involving "analyze these reviews," "what are customers saying," "find insights in these reviews," "VOC analysis," or any variation of wanting to mine customer reviews for creative strategy inputs. Output is always organized by product (if multiple), and surfaces five buckets of insight: pain points, trigger moments, objections, transformations, and standout language.
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