Your Pretty Ads Suck. Why Ugly Ads Always Win, With Barry Hott | DTCx Media Buyer Summit

0:04all right so next up very hot uh you're pretty ads suck why ugly ads win every time so I think Barry you're you're famous for uh creating ugly uh ads that scale a lot so I'm excited to learn more about that how are you doing today oh you've been I'm doing great you even have the gear make ugly ads uh cap like wow that's uh I I didn't realize it was a trademark of course yeah yeah I sell this hat for four thousand dollars on my website uh there's of course a 99 off discount code uh if you know where to find it so yeah you're gonna drop it in the chat today I

0:41hope and you might make some sales but we'll see we'll see no no worries about that the floor is yours thanks a lot for joining us yeah awesome thanks for having me I'm excited to be here uh I've been enjoying listening to a lot of other uh my peers here uh love just listening to to Zach and listening to Dara earlier and switching over between Dara and Alex at the same time and Savannah this morning it's been really awesome so uh there's actually going to be some common uh Trends here and themes if you've been paying attention all day some of what you might have heard from

1:11Dara you might have heard from Savannah but you might have heard from Zach they're going to Echo here which is uh kind of exciting to hear this from a lot of this this media buying Summit perspective I'm pumped so hey yes I am Barry hot some of you might know me from Twitter at Bing hot if you don't go follow me on there or on LinkedIn or on Tick Tock or YouTube I'm I'm all over the place I'm a growth marketing advisor and consultant I've been doing uh this kind of advertising stuff for a while back since they were just uh uh ads were only on the right right column only on

1:45Facebook back in 2008 so uh been doing it for a while and I've been spending nearly a billion dollars of clients money uh over that time and some of my own as well and I make ugly ads uh one other note I also advise in a performance creative agency called ad crate that's ad crate dot Co so if you're looking for some performance ads uh that's where where to go we can help you help you out there so here's what we're going to be talking about today what are ugly ads why do we typically make pretty uh ads pretty ugly ads versus bad ads uh your

2:21objections to ugly ads or maybe your creative director or brand director's objections uh to ugly ads and then uh targeting with your creative we're going to talk a little bit about that so what is an ugly ad it's about performance over Aesthetics it's realizing that nobody cares about you nobody cares about your brand or what you have to say people only care about themselves so the better the quicker that you can realize that the better that you can make ads you have to make people pay attention first and then get them to care this ad on the right here I can't show the whole thing because it's three minutes long

2:55but this look at that chicken is one of my favorite ads I've ever made that I'm and I'm in uh where I I literally eat an entire bag of these chicken chips for flock for three uh over three minutes uncut unedited and this ad has been running for this brand for two years since I since I shot this it is still live for this brand today I don't even work with them anymore and they still run this app so this is to me is a classic ugly ad where it's it's shot if you look at this I'm going to mute it so you don't have to listen to me go on to your

3:30phone I apologize if it's lunch time for everyone um but you'll see like I intentionally shot this with this camera angle with this light in the background with the the overhead light um and just went on and literally ate this entire bag of chips so that's talking about you know making something ugly right there but it was authentic that's the thing that works about that ad really well is all of our brains have subconscious ad blockers nobody wants to see ads that's basically the theme of this entire presentation is nobody wants to see ads um so authentic content that doesn't look like an ad immediately can get

4:08around those ad blockers um authenticity I was on a spectrum so there's different ways that things can be authentic and you there's a trade-off sometimes you want to make things that are more authentic which can get more attention that way but other times you might want to be more salesy and a little bit more brand focused it's it's a bit of a trade-off a give and take here um and then how believable things are compared to uh like reality so this this ad I can show a clip of right here I apologize for your ears in advance this one is intentionally quite loud uh oh it's muted fire shrines

4:45if you're sick of time literally I hope this brand this is EXO Forma these guys are nuts making great ads here literally help them to make a hook that was more relevant to their target audience and would get their attention while not being super polished and being super relatable and using this kind of Post-It note and if you're sick of Tire shrines that sling all over this enough uh so one of the things about make ugly ads is that it's really about testing against your own biases your own beliefs you should be asking yourself why do I want to make the ad this way why do I want to shoot

5:23it in this way why why do I want to use this camera and this lighting and why do I want to put this color or this text overlay what is it about my background about my personal experience as a marketer that's led me here what are my biases that led me to want to say this and want to put this out there you kind of have to shut off your marketing brain you have to think what does the actual viewer want to see because most of us marketers forget like we think we're so we're so inside our own brand and so excited about our brand and our product that we for that most

6:00people on the planet have no idea who we are and what this is even if you are a popular product most people on the planet most people in the country still don't know what you are and what this is so think about that think about how do you overcome that problem and then think also what would a real Creator do what would someone who is not an Advertiser what would an actual like in not influencer but like a real good Creator like a yeah Mr B sure but like that's a bit much but like a good Creator on Tick Tock who gets you know hundreds of

6:34thousands or millions of views what how would they shoot this what are the things that they would do and we can take a look at this uh quick uh clip here from my buddy Sean it's time for a snack break we got butter toffee makes nuts we got bourbon one of my favorite things about this ad is literally we have the brand side of the packaging facing away you have it facing away from the camera like yeah you can still see nuts.com on the bottom there but we're not trying to smash you in the face with the brand we're trying to like give you an authentic feeling and experience and

7:09this is like a guide to what this guy likes about these products and and why it would be valuable to you because these products are delicious shout out to nuts.com delicious products ads are expensive to make ugly ads save money you can make more ads more rapidly which means you can test more Concepts more Concepts equals more opportunities to succeed this is a lot of this is like gambling you want to be able to place more bets the more bets that you can place uh and and take the better you have a chance of winning it's not about just like throwing everything at the wall I don't

7:45necessarily believe in test everything but I do I do generally believe that you want to be testing more than if you were super limited by what your creative director or brand director or whatever just wants about just one aesthetic and then production costs are rarely included in CPA cat calculations and your brand or your agency profit really depends on these production costs being low I think uh going back to like what Conor this morning was saying big shout out to Connor a lot of us are media buyers I'm a media buyer talking about creative Savannah Sanchez is a media buyer who talks about media buying he

8:24talks about creative Dora Denny is a media buyer talking about create we all have this kind of com combined media buying creative Vibe because we understand that you got to get the media buying right but you got to get the creative right and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on Creative production doesn't mean you're gonna get better performing ads in fact it often leads to the opposite um so you don't want to be in that situation where you have High budget ads or just failed it's you want to avoid that especially because then people get really upset when you're not spending uh ad dollars on on the ads

8:58that cost a lot of money to make and that's the worst possible situation so you want to avoid that at all costs um so why do marketers why do we tend to make ads pretty traditional Legacy Media is pretty print media out of home like these are things in places where it makes sense for things to be polished TV shows and magazines are shot on fancy expensive cameras they're polished they're premium so having ads that also are Polished in premium alongside of those make sense and that's what you should be doing for it to make sense and that's what the entire industry has been built on for a long time so TV print

9:38media you know those are like pretty things and that's where all of the historical marketing Minds have come from and like I studied Marketing in college your boss if you have a boss they probably studied marketing or things that were passed down from these previous generations of marketing are all coming from this where we had to make pretty things we had to be super polished because it had to look and feel proper for the those platforms but it's no longer the case ads like this that I'm about to show you from Ralph Ralph Lauren like this doesn't look or feel good on Instagram when you see it

10:15[Music] nobody cares instead could be you remove words Ralph Lauren from this there's no there's no emotional connection there's no there's no reason for anyone to pay attention to this yes Ralph Lauren consumers and fans are going to enjoy this but other people I don't know um and that's my point is try to make ads that get new people in and get them to care social media compared to you know TV and magazines and all that stuff social media is fundamentally not pretty most social content is made by amateurs viral videos are usually low resolution they're often screenshots of other content or screen grabs of videos from

10:55Twitter or something like that they have obnoxious text overlays in Native font Styles I've posted this on on the internet before this is a memes are which is a like content aggregator that reposts memes and you know viral content this at the time I took the screenshot I don't know it's eight months ago or whatever it was had over a million likes over 1.5 million likes like it had probably tens of millions of views on this piece of content and that's just the the viral aggregator not even the raw piece of content alone so think about this is what people are watching on social this is what people want to be

11:31seeing I'm going to play this and cause it's because it's fun [Music]

11:45I'm gonna let this because it's really fun [Music] and then it cuts to show another video another low resolution video with other people doing this dance and then and then swipe again and it shows another group of people doing this dance my point is you don't have to make viral content like this but if you're making content that's super polished and it comes up after this it's not what people want to see people and expect to see this grainier lower quality stuff when they're on Instagram when they're on Tick Tock when they're on Facebook they want to see that stuff ugly ads don't necessarily mean they're going to

12:33be good there are ugly ads that are bad ads they're not you know one and the same so ugly ads are can be you know intentionally made to feel and look less polished or unpolished more raw more believable but ugly ads can be bad ads too I'm sure everyone watching this has had bad ugc or seen bad ugc and it sucks so just making something ugly doesn't mean it's going to be good that maybe used to be the case two years ago but now not as much bad ads or bad ads or bad ads okay you still have to make a good angle make a good story and make

13:07people feel and connect to your content you need to do it in a way that like gets attention and is relevant and feels authentic now because we're not even in a world where we going back I'm going to go back a few slides sorry we're no it's not even that people like just see content from their friends um and their uh family it's that people are seeing content from viral aggregators and from the most like viral videos in the world they're just being spoon fed to us constantly so we have to be able to keep up with that rather than make stuff that just looks like your

13:46friends content or random people's friends content so I want to show like The Hook from an ugly ad on the left here this ad crushes wait the perfect if you're anything like me you can never find the gym this guy's pulling a giant jug out of his pants there's an innuendo a bit of innuendo here it's crazy this hook does amazing uh and it's super relevant it's not just hook bait it's related to stretchy jeans this side on the right is the worst ad I think I've ever seen are you got the munchies get a cash advance up to 250 hey you got the munchies get a

14:19cash advance this is the worst connection I've ever seen of like relevant hook to unrelated sorry unreal irrelevant hook to unrelated product I've ever seen I hate this so much and it's polished there is no reason for anyone to watch this click this or buy from this ad this is awful I am sorry this is terrible do not make this ad don't do anything like this should I only make ugly ads no you can make uh some pretty ads too the variety is important so make sure like don't just think like oh Barry said oh you know only make up guys no but ugly ads can

14:53help a company uh everything else you're doing and ugly ads work really well with a pretty product a pretty brand uh because you go and experience that on the site you go and experience that uh when you receive the product the product doesn't have to be ugly so how to make ugly ads that perform identify what matters to your audience and understand their values focus on their problems their insecurities and their interests I love this top text headline here I'll never put body wash on my balls again this is from Dr Squatch I think if you're still washing your butt so classic That's a classic ugly ads hook

15:29that's related and it gets guys thinking like whoa wait a second like why would I I'm putting body wash on my balls oh oh what am I doing wrong and it makes me immediately feel insecure what if what are you uh saying before like what do users expect or want to see it's their friends personalities they follow viral content and they don't want to see ads they're ready to skip them you have to fight for their attention and make them give you your attention and then you still have to fight to keep that attention I would recommend anyone who's in this ad to go listen to Mr Beast talk

15:58and listen to him talk about keeping people's attention he talks about retention a lot and there's a lot of lessons that ad creatives can learn from him I took my legs from this to this not a single poor in sight and no girl it's not laser we know a good scrub does wonders on strawberry I mean there was about in what we watched six seconds of that I feel like there was like 10 cuts maybe maybe it cut a second maybe a little bit more um so it's like giving people a little taste and then keep going keep the story moving keep it going so that people

16:25don't lose interest so that's just another technique you can keep in mind we want to make content you know like just get out there and make some ads get off your butt go do Post-it notes go like just put a Post-It note on an on the product and like shoot something like that if you if you don't even have something you want to say like just literally take a blank Post-It note and put it on a product and then like later you can do Photoshop it in you can just Photoshop it in or like iPad or scribble it in later with when you have a good

16:57idea go to chat EBT and ask for it and you can literally do that by the way shout out to Bone River Ranch Water I for I forgot to mention earlier that I helped launch this hard Seltzer back in 2020 and we got acquired by Diageo 21 I meant to mention that the intro but I forgot so keep it going here you know you want to find the balance between authenticity and engaging content and uh shoot stuff yourself if you're watching this if you're a media buyer you're a brand owner whatever you are haven't actually shot something yourself go shoot something yourself just to get those creative juices flowing even if

17:30you never make it live as an ad it'll help you understand what you need to say and how you need to say it and what you can do with a camera and how that feels it'll make you better at your job and a big part of this is like targeting with your creative getting the right attention from the Right audience for the right reason and that relevance is a spectrum if you want to dodge subconscious ad blockers make people feel something you can educate you can inform you can make them feel insecure make them laugh anything you can do to make an emotion a feeling happen in the

17:59first second that's the best thing you can do you can shift over gradually into a more branded aesthetic later on in the ad that's okay I'm out against that I'm not crazy so when you're being you know just a make stuff ugly here's a quick list of like stuff to consider Talent lighting camera type camera angle script story setting uh you want to make things aspirational and relatable I call that aspa relatable uh these are just things that you can use to make things more ugly just take one of these things and adjust it to make it uglier maybe don't hire the prettiest Talent maybe make the

18:31lighting a little imperfect think about those things and just change at least one of those variables here's a here's an another ad from uh there's a truly Beauty three-step routine has been a game just another thing you can do is like emulate viral news even though this isn't like native you know like your friends probably aren't gonna post stuff like that this is stuff that people are looking at and on Tick Tock and everywhere and uh stealing this and copying this aesthetic can actually help you find performance even though this is a little kind of almost spammy kind of Polished in a way it's authentic and

19:04Native in that it looks like those viral new aggregators you can also try meme Styles right I do not recommend using copyrighted images or assets but this is a way you can do that by showing a gunked up old razor here on the left and a brand new Harry's razor on the right and you want to make your ads broadly relatable the more people I can relate to your ad the larger the potential audience can be I think Zach on the previous chat was uh talking about that um so you can you know create additional scale potential the auction is going to reward that and you want to try and find

19:35the lowest common denominators to be able to scale find wins that you're that your previous content hasn't already found so yeah lean in stuff that's worked but also lean into stuff that you haven't found working yet if you can get if your products typically your ads typically work to older audiences try and find a way to resonate with younger audiences you can do that and don't focus on hyper-targeted ads it's not worth it that's me talking about cookies but my brand is luxury Barry we don't do ugly ads well I hear this all the time this objection and what is the goal and the purpose of your ad is it are you

20:10making ads for your ego or for performance do you want to be rich or do you want to I don't know satisfy your ego or your brand director or creative strategist or creative director's ego if your audience is on these platforms that which they are they're on Tick Tock they're on Instagram they're on Facebook then they too want to uh expect and to see social content they're not there to see your pretty polished images and videos find the most expensive component of your production flow and try making an ad without that whether that's the in you know if you're typically using a red camera maybe try and use an iPhone

20:45instead if you're typically shooting in a studio maybe try shooting in in the real setting instead like your bathroom or your kitchen this does not fundamentally hurt your brand and yes your brand can make ugly ads this is one of my favorite things I'm probably gonna make like a video talking about this more this tide ad here is this is a TV commercial and they took like viral videos and made uh a TV commercial with it and it's incredible tri-tied power pods with 85 percent more tide in every pod who needs that much more time he does [Music] no what does that mean it means you're gonna need more time

21:26see they literally look if you look at the shot they literally they literally use like low quality footage intentionally they use this stuff in an authentic way which even when it's shown on TV Believe It or Not makes it lends itself to authenticity and all of these are some of the most viral videos on the planet that they got they got a license they agreed to use and because of that they're able to get and keep attention throughout the ad this is an incredible ad that gets people to pay attention and understand and think about tide which who would have thought and then this is a uh a tick tock for Bentley here's a

22:06tick tock for Bentley release yourself from the excesses and indulgences of this world just wanted to share that um but yeah like these are examples of big Brands bigger Brands than probably yours that are doing ugly ads and doing them at a large scale so lastly why ugly ads win you save money make more relevant ads you can test more rapidly they're focused on the user and they can get past the users and the viewers subconscious ad blockers that is it how did I do on time am I good yeah Ryan on time and we'll even take something to answer a few questions but you have a

22:44lot of friends in the chat that's for sure I love people who are familiar with your work and if they weren't now they definitely are raving got a couple questions I think the first one you know a lot of people are going to relate to how do you tell your designers video editing theme that they are making ads to pretty and any tips for you know fighting the fight it's it's you got to show examples that's the that's that's the key and like it's it's a big fight um some of it's about hiring as well and finding the right people that have experience um making more native more viral rather

23:18than traditional graphic designers but you know traditional graphic designers and video editors should be able to make this stuff but you just gotta kind of hold their hands and show them actually no I really don't want you to take this polished version I don't want you to edit this photo to remove the crease or remove like the damaged box I want that to Stay Native and real and believable as it is that's important uh to me is just like holding their hand giving sharing that Vision with them and also trying to bring them into the performance perspective of it and like why it helps performance that's awesome

23:50uh on the static side so I mean we've seen a lot of video examples here so how are you approaching like Statics a little similar or and what's the like the percentage of your output that's static versus right um I don't know if I have a percentage of static video but I like both I love the Post-it note stuff like if you follow me on Twitter that was a big thing we talked about from Ash from Avi um like when tons of other people like joined in on that and like made Post-It note ads where you just like try and make a relatable note on the thing one

24:21other thing like I did for a client was like here's a prop like I made fake parking tickets for dirty cars for a brand for carcovers.com so like I can like go and take a picture of put this on a car and take a picture of it on the street of on a dirty car and like shoot that and make that an ad video or static or just use this as a just use this as an you know a piece of content on its own static um so it's just about how do I convey that that insecurity quickly um and get people to click the trick is

24:56don't make click bait make people click with intent to buy and learn more that's awesome uh from David do you need to get usage rights if it's not your own content for sure do not steal um you you know it's like speeding I always say uh you'll eventually get pulled over and pay a hefty ticket and lose a lot of time so yeah it's not worth it you you know create your own stuff that's what I said before making memes like use images that you have you have the rights to where you can buy the rights to or you can create yourself and last question we'll

25:29tackle there are two questions in one uh from two different users here uh does this type of AD work better for certain audiences like what have you noticed like what's worked like in terms of like maybe age demos or yeah it's not as black or white as that it's all a spectrum like this this works for old users younger users this works for you know uh rich people poor people all different demographics it's a great question but it's um you know you just need to be trying to think through what are those people consuming content-wise like that's it that's the goal is make stuff that those people are broadly

26:06assuming and even if you're selling I don't care what the most premium thing in the world is you don't have to sell a Rolex or whatever by shooting with a fancy camera you can still put that Rolex shoot it on an iPhone in a premium setting that is relatable to that audience and is relatable to those people so I I think every ad and every brand can be making stuff uh regardless of Their audience because this is what people consume on the internet that's awesome yeah I mean your grandma is now on Tick Tock so uh that says it all I mean my dad is you know over 70

26:40and he spends more time on Tick Tock than I do yeah that's uh that's the answer that we needed Barry thank you so much for joining us that was awesome and like notice like if this deck is terrible people loved it don't have to drop it in the chat so that they can get access to all of the great work you're doing and I'm sure they'll there's a couple of people that need to create ugly ads that are gonna contact you after today awesome thank you so much for having me this is an incredible if you liked any of this please uh find me on Twitter

27:07LinkedIn wherever on my website there it is thanks so much Phil thanks Barry have a great day speak soon buddy you too take care