Behind every million-dollar ad campaign lies a fundamental truth about human behavior. Hannah Houg has built her career uncovering these connections.

As the founder of Houg Creatives, she sits at the intersection of psychology, data analysis, and content creation—a combination that has established her as a unique figure in the creator economy. 

A creative consultant and content creator based in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Hannah has developed high-impact ads for over 300 brands, contributing to more than $16 million in ad spend on her on-camera creatives alone.

Since establishing her company in 2021, Hannah has served DTC and e-commerce brands, spending between $50,000 and $500,000 monthly on advertising. 

Her distinct approach centers on applying psychological principles to content strategy, enabling her to develop creative that converts rather than merely engages.

The Psychology-Data-Creative Methodology

Hannah got into psychological content creation while working for a personal brand figure focused on human psychology. 

“I got my start into content creation working for a personal brand figure, Brendon Burchard, who was big into human psychology and sharing how to persuade people through personal branding,” Hannah explains.

This foundation in psychology became increasingly valuable as Hannah directed the operations for a growth agency and e-commerce brands in 2018, then experienced the 2020 e-commerce boom. 

During this period, she identified a critical gap: “We found that through our campaigns, we could not find enough creative to pump into our ad accounts to reach the right people.” Her solution was to create ads herself, unknowingly pioneering what would later be called user-generated content (UGC).

Hannah’s methodology differs from typical content creation approaches in several key ways, revealing her systematic approach to psychological marketing.

Psychological Foundations

At the core of Hannah’s approach is an insight about human nature. “People forget all the time that all humans are 99.9% the same. It’s just that 1% makes us so different,” she explains. 

This perspective shifts the creative focus from superficial differentiation to universal psychological triggers. Rather than reinventing marketing for each demographic segment, Hannah identifies the shared emotional responses that drive behavior across audiences. 

“If you can understand what that 99.9% is in terms of psychological triggers and emotions and the ways we connect with people, then it’s just that 1% that you need to start focusing on in your marketing endeavors.”

Message Testing Before Production

Hannah employs a disciplined testing methodology that minimizes risk while maximizing creative effectiveness. 

Rather than immediately investing in expensive video production, she begins with static images paired with different messaging concepts. “My personal strategy is to always test messaging first for the right audiences,” she explains. 

This practical approach allows her to validate psychological insights before committing significant resources. 

“That looks like using static images paired with the right messaging paired to the right audience to test concepts and angles rapidly. And then, if I see some initial success with this format, I will double down on it in a video format.” 

This testing stage bridges psychological theory and practical application, ensuring creative decisions are grounded in data.

The ‘So What’ Test

To ensure every piece of content connects meaningfully with audiences, Hannah applies what she calls the “so what” test—a simple but effective standard for evaluating creative work originally inspired by Barry Hott. 

“No one cares about you. No one cares about your brand. That’s the truth of the matter. You have to earn attention,” she explains. 

This filter helps eliminate content that might be aesthetically pleasing but lacks psychological resonance. 

“If you’re creating a piece of content and putting it out into the world, but you have to ask yourself ‘so what?’ and you can’t answer that question, then you can pretty much bank on that ad not working.” 

From Customer Research to Conversion

At the core of Hannah’s business is a commitment to understanding customers at a level far deeper than traditional demographics. When brands approach her with performance issues, she often discovers they’re targeting the wrong psychological triggers.

“Ten times out of ten, the clients that come to me have all these little symptom issues. But the true issue is they have no idea who they are talking to,” she reveals.

Hannah’s customer research process is hands-on: “I will even go as far as calling the customers, getting them on the phone, and just talking to them about the brand.”

She explicitly rejects the surface-level approach to customer personas: “What keeps them up at night? What are their triggers? We’re trying to unpack as far as we can and then meet them through our storylines, through the product.”

This depth of understanding translates directly into content strategy. One pattern Hannah has identified is the power of gifting moments: “I would say having those creators in-house and creating pods of creators dedicated to your brand is going to be the next big wave. Showcasing human reactions to gifting moments has been pretty key in my growth strategy. I’m usually able to make some really strong ads for clients when they have a highly giftable product.”

The Big Idea: Psychology in Action

Hannah’s success, she shares, stems from her ability to translate psychological insights into concrete creative concepts—what she calls “the big idea,” borrowing from advertising pioneer David Ogilvy.

“First and foremost, know the customer. Without a big idea, what are you doing?” she explains. “If it’s just another piece of content to flood the feed, you can guarantee cheap results. So, what is the big idea behind this ad? Center the ad around that big idea.”

Hannah points to Tecovas, a Western boot company, as an exemplar of psychology-driven marketing:

“Their slogan is ‘Forever West,’ they showcase these campaigns that showcase a city man working his day-to-day in the city. But sitting at his desk, he’s lonesome, and his mind goes elsewhere. Suddenly, he is on a horse, wrangling the buffalo. That is knowing your customer without saying a word.”

The campaign resonated with Hannah personally: “I was won over because I’m from the West. I saw myself through that ad and said, as a city girl, ‘I can still wear these boots.’ So now I own thousands of dollars worth of Tecovas boots.”

Measurable Results Through Psychological Marketing

Hannah’s focus on measurable outcomes differentiates her from those who emphasize views or engagement metrics.

“If a creator came to me and said, ‘Yeah, this is my engagement rate, and these are my likes,’ that’s cool, that’s great. But if I have a creator that says, ‘My ads drove over 5 million in ad spend,’ then that means that you are automatically respected because you know your numbers,” she explains.

One notable success came with UnHide, a blanket company that was struggling despite having a quality product. 

“They came to me very under-leveraged, had no really strong creative output, great product, just needed it to be presented in a way to the audience that they could really see themselves in it,” Hannah shares.

One particular ad for UnHide has driven over $1 million in ad spend during a single Black Friday/Cyber Monday period.

Sometimes, the most effective content emerges from seemingly simple concepts, according to Hannah. 

She recounts creating a static image for licorice.com: “I was sitting down with a sticky note and a pen and paper, and I was like, ‘What could I write on this sticky note for a static image?’ And it felt stupid when I was writing it. I just wrote, ‘Now this is REAL licorice.’ That’s all I wrote. And stuck it on the tube of licorice. And that static went on to be a top performer.”

Humanizing Brands in an AI Era

While acknowledging that AI tools can make content production faster and cheaper, Hannah believes this creates a countertrend toward authentic human connection.

“With the rise of AI, consumers are kind of holding that at an arm’s distance and more so wanting that human connection that has always reigned king,” she observes. “I think it’s going to have this opposite effect where we’re going to want and see that humanistic content even more.”

Her response has been to focus on creating content that’s difficult for AI to replicate—authentic human moments in real-world contexts. 

“I focus on content that is hard to replicate through AI. It’s by capturing human moments in places, scenarios, and things that I cannot replicate in the consumer’s mind.”

This strategic pivot also manifests in a return to nostalgia: “What is happening is people want to hold on to the other side. And what is the other side to them? It’s nostalgia. So I see a lot of nostalgia, nostalgic messaging, nostalgic formats, trends, and feelings around those things popping back up.”

Humor represents another psychological territory that AI struggles to replicate genuinely: “Humor is not necessarily a trend, but I do think we got, from a creative standpoint, a little too on the bland, direct response formula for a couple of years where things were very cookie cutter, and now we want personality from creators. And humor is such an easy way to connect with your audience.”

The Future of Psychological Content Creation

Hannah envisions scaling her psychological approach while maintaining the human connection that makes her work effective. 

Her primary goal is to open an accessible creative studio that will serve as both a physical space for content creation and a hub for teaching her methodologies.

“My goal this year and next is to open up my own accessible creative studio to the public where I live and to expand my online endeavors to be a localized community-based platform,” she shares.

Simultaneously, Hannah is exploring how AI might augment rather than replace psychological marketing: “I believe that the future of content strategy is actually 90% of it can be done using AI agents. And then that 10-15% can really be put on someone like me.”

She stresses the importance of dedication and delivering value: “Everyone’s got to put in sweat equity. Everyone’s got to put in their time. It’s just part of the process,” she advises. “If you focus on doing good work with results to show for it, then word of mouth is the most powerful form of marketing.”

This philosophy has allowed Hannah to maintain a fully booked client roster without actively pursuing business: “I don’t really market myself, and I’m always fully booked. There’s a reason for that. It’s because I have the numbers behind my creative that show that it works.”