# Meta Ads Creative Hack: Make Ugly Ads With Barry Hott

Channel: Dara Denney
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMAxIOL8dtE
Duration: 1 hr 37 min
Language: English
Words: 20097
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/pMAxIOL8dtE

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[0:00] what are ugly ads yeah just take the pretty Vibes that you're used to making as a marketer and just make it less pretty like that's it do not look at your competitors just don't don't do that like please for the love of God ignore your competitors because all your competitors are doing are looking at other competitors and those competitors looking at them it becomes an echo chamber with inside certain industries you have iterated yourself to Oblivion that you're not even creating like new things I get caught up in this it is the customer a little bit but if you over focus on just your existing customers M

[0:30] then you are failing to find ways to grow to other customers and other potential audiences it's all about authenticity it's so easy to shoot content everyone is constantly shooting content and everyone is constantly consuming that kind of content that seeing stuff that is more polished is actually less common and seeing stuff that is like marketing advertising style branded blah blah blah that's not what anyone wants to see your brain is like no skip would you say that when creating ugly ads you want to dive a little bit more into the customer like yeah it's it's what's up marketers I'm here for an incredibly special episode with the

[1:09] Creator or founder of ugly ads Barry hot now I have worked with Barry hot four years he was actually my former boss at thesis and he hired me so I'm super excited to dive in today to talk about ugly ads and what's next for him after you know what really just like I don't know after this podcast after we record this probably going to go home yeah just really what you know what you're up to and what you're going to do next yeah that's a good question yeah that's the big question right so do you want to give a little intro for yourself for people who maybe haven't heard of

[1:45] you yet sure you want the little intro or the big intro let's do the big intro okay so uh hi uh I'm Barry hot I've uh been a longtime Facebook Advertiser doing Facebook ads since 2008 so that's uh way too long uh I started doing it for like summer camp hiring and then worked at like for like a local sushi restaurant and hair salon and eventually worked my way up to working at a startup where we were running the ads for massive Brands like AT&T Toyota craft Microsoft don't you don't act like you know you know this you could recite this yourself I think you did recite this to

[2:19] me the other night um yeah so I spent hundreds of millions of dollars for those big Brands and then I uh left that space to be more focused on direct to Consumer aggressive growth stuff um so been more focused on like Brands like Lum and skin uh which we worked on together yes we did uh keeps Urban stems nuts.com and then more recently uh stuff like Harry's razors and then a bunch of like really small stuff uh and like kind of some weird stuff that makes good money like carcovers.com like is I love working on carcovers.com yeah we're going to dive into that yeah so to give

[2:54] you a sense of how long Barry has actually been working on Facebook ads he's been working with on the platform since the only placement option was the right column yeah and there was no optimization for anything by the way it was just clicks it was just CPC so you couldn't even see if people were buying or oh there was no tracking no there was no tracking there was no there was just you could just get clicks and then that's all you could bid for so you just would make like clickbait stuff to get the lowest possible cost per click uh so now I consult I do Consulting advising

[3:26] uh for agencies uh Brands marketers anyone who wants to like improve what they do that's kind of what I do now um and then I work on a few Brands uh myself and I own a piece of a creative agency ad crate uh that you're familiar with and uh now I just also started working on a brand called rotten eat roten.com uh where I'm like I'm doing their head of growth so I am doing their paid social uh and creative and all that stuff so I'll be running the ads and you brought some in here today BR some uh shout out to rotten go get go order some

[3:58] eat roten.com uh they're really delicious they're like more like I think they're more like fruit snacks than traditional gummy worms but they are rad uh and we're going to take over like the whole candy world like very quickly I also helped launch lone of ranch waterer in 2020 uh which is a hard Seltzer kind of the Texas Tennessee Southern Vibe um and that got acquired in 2021 they did that as on the side while I was working with you I think for yeah that was when we were at thesis when you were working on Ranch Water um so yeah that where was on the side and then uh that got Acquired

[4:31] and you know I've kind of just been wanting to find another product I can like sink my teeth into and have a bunch of ownership of and now I have that again with rotten and I'm super fired up to get to work on that and uh I think I'm going to start making content hopefully and hopefully you can hold me accountable Ian you've been wanting to create content for a while now so hold me accountable on that and like get me to like make content about I'm just going to run out this podcast Studio once a month and force you to come in and make all your content for the month

[4:59] a good idea but like I just really need to just record in my office just like me like sending up ads running you know making optimizations talking about the creative edit that I did you know yeah I think honestly people would really be interested in following your journey of growing rotten especially since you're at the pre-launch phase and you guys are going to be launching next week and really what that journey is about for someone working on the ground level with a brown with a brand and its Founders yeah it is it is really unique um especially with my experience kind of having been through this before

[5:30] um like knowing I kind of just know what I need to do and I'm just doing it so it's funny to me like thinking like oh someone would want to watch this I'm like no this is so easy this is so basic but like in reality there's a lot of people that have no idea what to do and I'm just like oh no set up I'll set up a lead campaign just to do a pre-launch lead thing and instead of a link click campaign because we didn't we're not optimizing for purchase yet and then like although the link people would be really fascinated that they would I

[5:54] think anyone who just heard me say link click campaign that knows me well would be like what well you said gen campaign and I'm like yeah yeah yeah yeah and like a link campaign is even more foreign if you really think about it but like just to like get stuff flowing because we're not selling really on the site yet just to like get that going and see how a couple ads do against each other in terms of you know getting people to go to the site or even just comment on the ads and see like what the initial reaction is and just just to get the shake the cobwebs off of the I mean

[6:27] they're not really cobwebs it's like really get the the wrapping off of the ad account just like really tear that thing open and get some spend flowing through it trying to sus out any issues that happen like I shouldn't even say this now I'll just keep that for my content I don't I tell you this now um but yeah so like that's that's the stuff that I'm working on right now and I'm super fired up about it just getting to be by the way getting to be creative again about one product that I have ownership of and I don't have to like go to a client and be like hey what if we

[6:56] do this and they're like oh no we don't have time no cuz you can just do it you don't have to like bid for like what you want to do or try to convince someone the value I have to a little bit like I still like work with the CEO and like the creative director but they're both like yeah like that's a great yeah oh you want to do this crazy thing where we buy a used a crappy used creepy van to to give away to our to our to a fan look out for that ad by the way gez we might use that or we might use that to like

[7:23] distribute candy like free candy from a white van oh my gosh like we even if we don't do that like just that we have the creativity flow

[7:35] ofies creepy like and that alone is put post it note on the van more on that in a bit nice so on that I want to dive in a little bit more into this idea of ugly ads which is something that you're really pioneering right now in the industry so if someone doesn't know what ugly ads are how can you break that down what what are ugly ads yeah I actually got asked this at I I get asked this all the time uh someone asked me at the at a bar an event last night they're like what the heck does that mean and I I describe it as like just take the the

[8:07] pretty Vibes that you're you're used to making as a marketer and just make it less pretty like that's it we're we're all goodbye brand marketing so that's actually so that's that's I met someone last night they introduced themselves and they were like I I am a brand marketer oh you're not going to like me like it was so good and but it was just like we're all trained as marketers you know either if you like I went school for marketing um but even if I didn't like every job I've had you know was reporting to someone who had a background in marketing and those people uh went through either school or you

[8:39] know other people that were older than them going through that had been marketing forever and it's always like oh make this really polished thing make this really you know clever messaging this really whatever stuff and it's just like so far from what consumers on social media want to hear and see it makes sense in like print Publications it makes sense in in TV where there is that polished TV is polished like it should you're the the ads you put alongside that should be polished it would have been weird to have like a VHS quality like 20 years ago have a VHS quality video TV commercial yeah in

[9:12] between you know a f fancy TV show like that wouldn't maybe it would be good and be jarring and maybe that did work for is that why the Blair Witch Project was like semis successful yes is there is there's totally like I should use that as an example more like that's a great Point like it's all about authenticity back then it would have been weird to do that but now because it's so easy to shoot content it's so everyone is constantly shooting content and everyone is constantly consuming that kind of content that seeing stuff that is more polished is actually less common and seeing stuff that is like marketing

[9:47] advertising e styled branded blah blah blah that's not what anyone wants to see and we have subconscious ad blockers that kind of just prevent us from even engaging with or wanting to or or even taking the time to see that stuff on Facebook your brain is like no skip yeah it immediately knows not to even bother paying attention from it as soon as the first few pixels scroll into the frame in Instagram or or Facebook or whatever which is why I think like user generated content or more like iPhone um produced content is so popular because like now people are using Tik Tok more akin to

[10:22] the way they're using Netflix and it's for entertainment and they are entertained by creators who have their own production capability ESS is just an iPhone these days M usually yeah we're not shooting on iones no we are not this is a whole this is a whole different thing for a Facebook ad right this is for YouTube or for wherever like this is for a place where people are going to sit down they're already choosing to watch this content right we don't need to get their attention we've already gotten your your attention you're watching this right now like we've we've succeeded there so um but with Facebook

[10:55] ads you don't have people's attention you are used to be fighting with um you know just like your friends right or as an Advertiser used to be fighting with uh making content that like your friends were putting up or like the celebrities that you follow right but now Instagram Facebook has all been Tik Tock ified in that the content that you're seeing is not stuff you're even following like it's not stuff you've opted into it's all for you paged yeah it's all you know you might see your friend stuff and some like whatever that you follow but like then you just get spoonfed the most viral content on the

[11:32] planet not even the most viral content on the planet the most relevant content to you and your interests on the planet right to you and now we're having to as advertisers compete with that yeah so it is harder than ever to make good relevant content and there's a lot of people say it might say like ugc is dead we've heard that but I made a video about that a number of months ago yeah I remember that it was a great one and you know my my whole take on that is like it is in that you can't just film ugc and expect it to work yeah there was a while

[12:08] where like the idea of make ugly ads was just like literally just go make anything and it'll work better than your pretty thing but now it's like you still have to make it look authentic and you have to build story and you have to build content that is worth consuming and that content that's worth consuming has to be relevant and then it has to sell literally that's it right there if if someone's watching this and they just take what I just said and extract that and can execute that then you're gonna be rich but it's not but that that is a that's a really hard ask of brand and I

[12:39] think that for Brands who you know have have heard you talk and are interested in you know especially interested in scaling on Facebook ads or Tik Tok ads and they realize hey our the way that we used to create ad content isn't working anymore how would you advise a brand who has never worked uh or has never created ugly ads how would you advise them to get started yeah a few things um one just go shoot ads go just go shoot ads right now yourself um that's the easiest thing it's like so do you think they should just take their phone walk out the door and shoot an ad yeah and like

[13:14] one shot one take I don't care if it's one shot one take go shoot 20 takes go shoot you know just turn the camera on Let It Roll for 20 minutes I don't care do it selfie walking around just go and shoot it and you'll get the creative juices flowing you'll start to have new ideas about it you'll start to see the challenges that you face even if you're not comfortable on camera even if you're not comfortable uh speaking even if English is in your nav language just go shoot something if you can have yourself on camera cool if you can't shoot the product while you talk about it shoot

[13:43] something else while you talk about it but just shoot b-roll do some voice over after just get it going right like just get that flowing and then watch it back even if that's really uncomfortable for you and try and think through like is any of this useful or relevant to my audience yeah the way that I like to think about it too sometimes when I'm working with Brands and they're getting started on this ugly ad style or this more authentic style is like think about how you would potentially as not as a Creator but just as a person um number one if you're FaceTiming with a friend

[14:17] and you're showing them a product like what does that look like what are you talking to them about about what you like or if you are doing some content for Instagram stories like sometimes like even just like POV taking a shot of the product or talking about a service and thinking about how you would talk through that on camera or while on FaceTime with someone yeah that's such an important key to all this is talk right speak like you're talking to a friend don't talk like you're trying to like sell something you're trying to talk to like the Instagram audience like just really try and talk to casually

[14:50] like a friend that's the you know it's hard to do for a lot of people but it's still worth trying that U maybe even have a friend there with you have someone else you know like that you can talk to and just go and I say that I the big reason why I say to do this is it is so rare maybe this is self- selecting maybe this is self- selecting that people that come to me that to talk to me about this already just have this ability but it's it's so rare that I talk to a founder or CEO or someone like that who isn't passionate about what

[15:21] they're doing yeah in a way that they can speak about it passionately yeah it's I don't I can't recall a time where I've really met someone uh like that like they can almost always have some set of shs it might not be exactly what needs to be in an ad and it might not be perfectly Polished or like not polished but like the exact messaging that needs to be used but there'll be bits and pieces and chunks and sometimes a little bit of that like Founders why can be helpful I don't love that that much from a performance perspective you I know you recom I I I think Founders ads are

[15:56] amazing well we can talk about that more I think they are but I really get fired up when it's a Founder talking about it not as the founder but just as the person who has the problem yeah and I think that actually Founders are often most uniquely suited to talk that because they were so passionate about always not like if there Dr shpp not always no the drop shippers love you drop shippers but I do think that if they were someone who experienced that problem before or someone that they loved experienced that problem they are so uniquely suited to communicate that problem and those pain points and like

[16:27] really twist that kn ugc St studio studio Founders have I seen success with them yes but I've Al but I've also seen success with them you know just like one shot one take yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly I mean I think that's you know the some of the best ones I've seen are just like either like oh they put their camera like leaning up on their uh in their kitchen like on a on a wall and they just shoot or or they're doing it in their bathroom or they do it in their car and or they just do it on a walk I love a walk I

[17:04] actually think the hack for a lot of this is like doing it on the street or doing it in the car I agree I I I think having someone doing it on the walk um is great actually my favorite possible thing you can do is like try and figure out the relevant setting to be in for it yeah um on the subway yeah you know like where what where your product would maybe be used or where your problem would happen if you could be like in that place or have it somehow relate to that um that can add an extra layer of of relevance because you're always cre

[17:33] you're always targeting with your creative so in that first moment whatever people see or hear whatever their first feeling is that's going to get them to pay attention or not it's not just about are they going to pay attention or not it's like where in this you know three-dimensional spectrum of relevance uh why are they going to pay attention right so you want to be not just getting people to pay attention but the right people and for the right reasons yeah so so if you can Target with that with your words or your like setting that helps what are a few brands that you think do ugly ads the right way

[18:08] um well I've I've beside all the ones that you work D um you know I hate always plugging this and I I someone from Dr Squatch needs to reach out to me and like say say thank you because I plug them all the time uh not that they need to thank me but like I want to to talk to them um and I think that's one of the performance creative agencies that does a lot of their stuff I'm not sure we know yeah I think we know um but they I mean they're just doing such wacky stuff and trying stuff and it's not that they're doing wacky stuff it's that

[18:40] they're clearly doing stuff that is ugly but it's it's being done in a way that is more relevant or more based on organic Styles and things that they're seeing out in the wild it's super it's super like tick toif IED in a way but I also think that it really a lot of their mess messaging AE a lot of times they're not even talking soap at first oh no and and you know great point because like they so many of their ads they're I mean I think some of their great ads that seem to be stuff that're they're iterating on and they're playing with and working on just

[19:15] based on looking at their ad Library maybe they're doing that to sub subterfuge and and you know make trick me into thinking they work but um some of my favorite ads of theirs take 15 16 17 seconds whatever it is to to get see the soap yeah to show the brand or the product they just live in that problem for a while and I love to say that like live in the live in the problem yeah um because I think it's a big common misconception when I'm talking with Brands they say something like oh you have to show your product on like second one or even zero or you have to

[19:46] introduce it within the first like three to five seconds and for every time that that could be true or circumstantially true there's always a ton of different examples where you're just actually twisting that knife a lot more and you're also calling out your target demo a lot more and letting them know hey you're in the right place whatever I'm about to sell you yeah we're one in the same by I'm just so fired up that we're doing this right this is so um totally like it's yeah it's really neat to just like have the have your creative just be be thinking about like not what do you

[20:21] want to get out of it from your brand perspective but like what does what do you want a consumer to get out of it right like that's really what we're focusing on and when I again when I going back like I say like live in the problem like live in multiple problems give me if you can give me five problems in 15 seconds gez like now I'm like oh my God what is this I need I need this whatever this is um because I have maybe one or two or three of those problems maybe not all five maybe I do have all five maybe I didn't realize I had those

[20:49] problems and now I'm like shoot I do have those problems I love making ads that make someone realize like give them a give just like I literally just created this problem just handed to the viewer and now they have this problem they they like have to solve I love getting at like really Niche problems like those are the ones that I'm like oh yeah like this person did their research do you do like research when you're beginning to work with Brands and when you're beginning to like create ugly ads and like what does your research process look like uh I study reviews I think you say this in in your content too like I

[21:21] love to study uh reviews for our product and competitors and anything else in the space because it just helps me understand you you'll often you'll find so many like reviews that are completely useless but you know one in five one in 10 you'll find was like I was this I was having this blank problem yep and I'm like yep that's it yeah like that is what I've been looking for that is what I need because that is relatable and not Niche I'm looking for a big problem that that is hyper relatable to the biggest amount of people that I can and so that's what I'm looking for in those

[21:57] problem and I also when I'm looking in reviewss I'm looking for like really easy to understand really relatable statements very simple like third grade fifth grade level language like I had this problem yeah um and you don't even have to like close that Loop by the way and if you're using that for copy like just even using that in an ad I had this problem people start to close that Loop themselves of that whatever they're watching is the solution um so research wise reviews big time I mean now chat BT like o this is one that a lot of people have been wanting me to talk about on

[22:30] the channel and I haven't done it yet it's great dude like you can just like manually throw whatever in there m um but you can now get smarter with it like there's link a link analyzer so you can like put a you you know URL in there and have it analyze the page and get like analyze like if you had like a link where all of your reviews lived or if you just had a PDP I mean just have review the PDP and like summarize it and you'll get a bunch of stuff back and then you can say like all right make me whatever for from this yeah I also like

[22:58] like for rotten I did that for like our you know product information whatever and then I also uh transcribed the our like long form launch video that we haven't launched yet and like fed that into chat TBT too so it now has the landing page info and the like script for this ad which you know gives it gives like a bit of the vibe of the brand but also gives like the story more because it's like 90c or whatever it is spot so there's a lot in there that explains like what the product is and now it has it's like you're creating an ecosystem at first

[23:35] before you start because I I find like what a lot of advertisers do and where they have problems with chat gbt is they jump in and they're like oh create this ad copy for this brand and you're not creating the ecosystem great point oh my God great Point yeah like you could do that there are sometimes I'll just go like okay I'm I'm an Advertiser sometimes you do want that yeah yeah yeah yeah I'm I'm an Advertiser uh I'm making I'm making ads for this brand and I'll just see what it does and I'll and sometimes it'll be okay and I'll or I'll correct it from

[24:05] there because it's so easy to just give it like Corrections right like that's great but um I was literally coaching a client the other day about this and I was like and I watched him we were he was sharing his screen and he showed me like he started to do exactly what he just said and I was like well wait wait wait just like just let's get let's extract some things first let's say okay here's the product what are the pain points for this product that's where I always like to start by the way aside from the reviews uh like chat gbt what are the 10 pain

[24:37] points uh of a consumer of this product yeah and I want to and I want to know how it's going to like sort those by like priority or by like popularity um because like that's I mean like think about that like 10 years ago or 5 years ago or two years ago or whatever it was to get that information reliably you'd have to do market research it would be completely manual or you'd have to pay like a marketing research firm for that data or like and now I'm like all right whatever if chbt like suggests this it's good enough like it's good enough for me to

[25:10] like prioritize these pain points in this order and I'm like okay that's fine um I might you know I'm still going to put my you know I'm going to double check it like think through does this make sense can I you know use this but like that that is so valuable to me because again I was helping him this guy with this brand the other day and like they were trying to do they were going after this one problem and I was like this doesn't seem like the biggest problem of your audience were were the most easy to visualize or story tell behind so it's was like what well let's

[25:44] go see what Chad gbd says yeah and then let's find a different problem and focus on that paino right and we did and we found like a much better pain Point um so it it was like um they were focusing on like uh it was a like a beard product and it was like um like kissing your significant other like and it's being prickly for them and I was like okay like that's a small well also like you're getting a kiss so how bad is it really know they don't like the K if they don't like the kid it's bad but like that was like the pain point they

[26:10] were going after it's like that's how believable relatable is that a little and then we found this other one it was like patchiness like beard patchiness which is like something that this product soled and that's something that like way more guys like way more guys relatably have that problem and want to solve that problem and this product solves that problem or fixes that helps that problem so I was like let's dig into that because we can show that we can talk about that there are a lot of emotions about that there's a lot of um anxiety there's a lot of just uh negative feelings around that so many

[26:44] guys I know like I talk to them I'm like oh why don't you grow a beard like this and they're like I can't I'm like you can but yeah then they want to um so I think like just finding that insecurity that I can tug on you know I sound terrible doing that like I really hate that but like that is a really easy way to get in and make someone feel something really quickly yeah and I I actually had this conversation with two Founders yesterday because I told them I was like you know you need to highlight your problems more and you need to twist

[27:13] that knife more and further and they got immediately anxious when I said twist the knife because they feel like it's it's icky to sell or it's you know it's exploiting people's pain points but if you were creating a product that depends on what it is by the way there some things I'm like we really shouldn't yeah there are there is absolutely a line but I also think that if you see this problem popping up again and again and again in your reviews and it's something that people your customers are echoing to you and you're using their words you're actually doing someone a disservice by not highlighting this more

[27:45] and not diving into it more just because of some arbitrary like point of view of oh I you know I want I want to sell but I don't want to sell that hard like I think the the thing you said there that's really helpful for selling that is if it's from a real person if you can do that and find that another thing you can do with chat gbt is like extract the a a huge list of uh reviews and then ask for it to find I asked it to find golden nuggets and it it is scarily accurate so when I'm doing my process I do like customer review

[28:19] mining I still do it quite manually I'm using chat gbt a lot more but what I'll do is I'll put all of the reviews into chat gbt asket to find the pain points they'll list it out I'll ask it to find all the Transformations and it'll list it out I'll also ask it to find failed attempts because that's like another way to sort of twist that knife more and then the golden nuggets one even just using that phrase it finds the good ones that's funny I never thought to do that I like that I'm G to steal that for sure and not give you credit yeah it's in the

[28:50] course maybe I did um but yeah no that makes I mean that makes so much sense like there's so so much in there that you can just do I I when I the thing I do I think you were saying this but like I ask it to find past tense eye statements ah okay I was I had like and that's what I want um because I want to be able to just find that and extract that both for me like emotionally to understand the problem and empathize more um but also to literally just copy and paste that as c yeah yeah by the way this is the first

[29:22] time I think I mentioned the word empathy and like that's all of make ugly ads is based on is empathy for deep deep empathy for the viewer the consumer um rather than focusing on the brand so so would you say like digging into that a little more would you say that when creating ugly ads you want to dive a little bit more into the customer like yeah it's it's um that's a that's a actually uh like should you create a post at no ad that like explains the problem essentially like you you actually just you just triggered me for a second cuz it's not the customer it's a really dangerous

[29:58] I get I get caught up in this like and we can move on from it but like it is the customer a little bit Yeah but if you over focus on just your existing customers then you are failing to find ways to grow to other customers and other potential audiences so there's like a chicken and egg there where I see this sometimes where people like do post-p purchase survey whatever and they'll be like oh you know our um all of our customers like love golf or something like that and I mean this is like AT&T right like AT&T their small business division has a high propensity

[30:31] for golf I mean you could argue it's because you know their business owners and they a lot of them play golf or you could argue it's that they've been promoting golf tournaments for 40 years or something like that like it's hard to know which is which but you have the data that says it's this so it perpetuates doing this more I try and look at the data and think like what's missing um I try and think of like what do my customers want okay great but now like how do I get more customers who don't look like my existing customers and that's that's a much bigger

[31:02] challenge like how to be more scalable essentially yeah and it's a really it's a scary Challenge from a data perspective because it's stuff you literally are trying to do without data it's stuff that when you try it your costs are going to be worse because the system and this getting to the technical media buying the system is used to your existing customers type right if your product is typically great for like women 35 and up starting to run ads that work for men 18 to 34 like there's going to be some friction there the system's going to not be able know to to allocate budget to those users um and it's going

[31:40] to take a while for it to like start to click and I think we even just see this in general when Brands start using ugc after doing nothing but static graphic ads for years and years and years or anything any new creative style really um and sometimes they do suck but sometimes it just needs to like it needs to just reshape and reform and figure itself out yeah it needs to learn essentially yes definitely so that sorry to to Sidetrack that the question about like looking at what my empathizing with my customer I'm trying to empathize with people that could be my customers yeah um because like with ranchat and I would

[32:17] say the same thing for rotten it's like okay there's there's obviously people that just like know what Ranch waterer is and like it but a lot of people don't know that that's a beverage one they don't know that now it's a canned beverage and like it's a hard Selter so there's a lot of people who just like wouldn't even drink that so like if you think about just like all of the the the circles of like okay ranchat lovers hard Seltzer lovers you know uh just people that drink in general and people that don't drink like it keeps getting further and further away so you have to

[32:48] make messaging to apply to those different groups like are we gonna make messaging that applies to people that don't drink no like that's bad right but if I can make messaging that can work for someone who is a Craft Beer Drinker right which you wouldn't think oh someone who drinks craft beer like I'm a big craft beer nerd um you wouldn't think you could sell a hard Seltzer to a Craft Beer Drinker or to or to a light you know a Coors Light drink or whatever it is but if you think that you can't do that then you'll never do it right you'll never have make ads for it so instead I like

[33:21] that challenge and I'm like if I can make an ad that can change those people's minds that ad will also fundamentally work and make sense for those people for the white CL drinkers exactly and then also for the ranchat drinkers as well it's going to make sense for all of them so that's what we're trying to do also with with rotten is like okay obviously there's people that are right away yeah gummy worm lovers like that's easy we can check that off like no problem there's also people that are even smaller than that like gummy worm lovers who love this branding aesthetic like no nostalgic like they're fired up people are just

[33:51] fired up for it great that's easy that's a slam D I don't care about that I want to go after people that like like want like aren't you know buying trolley every day or aren't you know going to buy a candy I want them to try this because if I can give people more reason to try that and buy that then anything I can make for that should also work very well for those people who are closer yeah so that's that's how I look at these things but it's I don't know why I have that perspective but it it certainly is because I've well you've worked on brands that have scaled and

[34:24] you've seen how you have to adapt the m

[34:34] we realized that teachers were buying so now we want to expand to daycare people or whatever parents Etc but if you can actually start getting that more scalable messaging from the beginning it's going to be your your costs are going to be lower and you're going to be able to scale up a lot quicker and easier well cost beinging lower is the hard part just because it's it is like you're being less relevant to your immediate product so it's actually cost might get worse in some ways but you're yeah you should be making it more scalable it's really hard to like it's Nu yeah yeah so I I've been asked this

[35:07] several times and I think it's really interesting for you working on Rotten right now but a common question that I get when working with cpg brands or even like food and beverage is okay what problems do my consumers have when thinking about a product like rotten or like you're talking about tapping into empathy as well like how would you guide like a creative strategist to think about pain points problems and transformation when thinking about gummy worms yeah yeah I mean like with ranch water there isn't a problem really right like and with rotten there isn't really like a problem solving it's kind of like the problem is like you're not we're

[35:43] making the problem like you're not cool if you don't if you don't have these gummies like available and give them to your friends like you're just not cool uh you're not Punk enough you're not like you know you're not you don't know what's cool if you don't have this like so um you know with ranchat we started to like we read a lot of comments yeah um by the once you have a brand going and you get a lot of comments read them uh especially the negative ones hide them but read them um because we found a lot of men were commenting on these ads like like really like homophobic [ __ ]

[36:16] like it was bad yeah like yeah really insecure men who were like who were upset about Seltzer like hard Seltzer that's a wild yeah yeah yeah people were triggered by it yeah um for for whatever reason so I was like what like what are we doing here um so I went after those people I said I I set that as my goal both from a personal Vendetta but also because I because I was like those people should be buying and drinking this beverage yeah proudly um but like they were like oh you know I'm a COR you know corite till I die or whatever it is

[36:48] so so what I started doing was making content that was about like manliness and about about how like real men don't care what other people think about what they drink or something like that and real men don't make nasty comments on the internet just you know for what it's worth I know like it was yeah it was so like I was trying to like Uno reverse card those people a little bit and just like kind of almost set a trap for them an insecurity trap where they're like wait a second hold on hold on I think that I I would I would be girly if I

[37:23] drink a hard Selter but wait a second this ad is telling me that if I don't drink this product then I'm insecure about my manhood so now what do I do so we I I don't know if that actually worked like there's no way to know but um that's the kind of thing I'm trying to just like create that story create that that thing and reduce the friction reduce the the the conflict the no any reason why someone's trying to say no I don't want to buy that that's what I'm going after yeah um because consumers and users on social media it's always a no at first no one gets

[37:59] online and at least most people don't yeah with the with the idea that they're oh hey we're going to buy some actually hilariously the thing that like is so easy is when it is just there's a bunch of people that are just like oh yes I've been wanting this my whole life like literally Ranch waterer was like for a lot of people just like oh my god I've wanted this like thank God this exists rotten is going to be the same thing there are absolutely people who are like oh my God where's this been my whole life I want this you disrupted the gummy the gummy War but that's the easy that's

[38:24] the easy stuff and like that's effectively just retargeting and super low cost and not it when you see those costs and that efficiency it's not real Yeah it's you're not you're you're you're capturing existing demand existing intent and that's easy that's not really like that's not worth if you really want to grow a business and scale it and whatever like you need to capture and create more intent you have to capture people who are have no idea what you're selling or why and make them want it more um so a lot of people just actually actually use retargeting messaging and what is essentially prospecting too oh my God are they're

[39:03] just going are they're like go going for the awareness level where they're either already aware of their problem or their solution and they're just trying to convince them of what's best that's essentially what an Us Versus Them ad is right it's someone who's already kind of sold on the solution but they're in between potentially one versus the other that's a great Point yeah it comes down to like are you are people problem aware they solution aware they brand to wear product to wear right um but some of those it it really can vary um and oh man there's so much to that like those those can work really well for capturing

[39:37] something new like we could be doing like yeah we could do trolley versus rotten right and we probably will do those you could do trolly versus rotten but you could also do trolley versus like other like just like the other unknown snack rotten versus the other yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah we can we can do that we can do like rotten we can also because of the branding we'll probably do like rotten versus like you know eating boogers or something stupid like that cuz we're just going to do wacky stuff but like you know it's it it is about it's targeting with your creative so if people if you're only making a

[40:09] thing that's like trolly versus this then you're only the only people that are going to be interested are people that are familiar with trolley already which is for us probably good and relevant especially for a new brand I see a lot of Brands when they get their first creative success on a new ad account it's often an Us Versus Them ad yeah and it's an easy again it's an easy way in because you're already tapping the people that are already have the intent already have the understanding of the problem um but that can be a trap because you you're making something that like you're again going back to what we

[40:38] were saying a second ago like it's only something that some people who have this awareness of this problem will will go after so you're not really growing the category yeah and because one of the most common things that I get asked and I know you get asked this too is oh I was able to scale to 1,000 2,000 6,000 a day and there's always a point where they feel like if they move beyond that they can't tap out from that anymore and potentially it could be the reason why could be what you're saying because they are only had used messaging that was communicating to people that knew their

[41:10] problem/solution and they haven't really looked at their messaging and gone beyond thinking about how they can convert people that need a little bit more convincing you're totally right and like this is what we're about to face with rotten surely is like we'll launch It Whatever spend level and it's immediately I'm assuming probably going to be pretty efficient like right off the bat because we're just going to be scooping off the demand that is already there the that's already there and then what would happen normally is like we'll see that cost per acquisition and be like all right we're going to make some money here yeah but in

[41:46] reality the more you push that like anytime you increase spend you're increase your costs are going to go up always but like especially when you have that that that like shell you have to break out of to get out of the highest intent users it's going your costs are going to go up so don't look at it as that your costs are actually like going to go up just look at it as your costs are artificially low when you're that's a great way to look at it because you're not actually you're not scaling and you're not convincing people yeah you're not convincing people is right you're

[42:17] just right just getting it in front of them which is sometimes just enough for a lot of these things uh you're just you're just capitalizing on the existing demand which by the way like we could probably make plenty of money for rotten just doing that there's probably enough just existing demand gummy worms were my favorite growing up yeah they absolutely were they were not mine uh I'm a fruit snack guy which is why uh hilariously like these to me taste like the fruit snacks that I loved um so I'm super into it but yeah like I'm eager to see how it works out and what we're going to have

[42:51] to do we have so much to do in terms of like ad creative uh offer and like you know first purchase whatever I'm so eager to see what our repeat purchase rate is um because the product is good yeah but like also I don't know how how much people are consuming candy well especially adults like I feel like too at the point of where I'm at in my life I'm like I have enough problems and I'm trying to avoid sugar so like something like this sugar but something like this I'm like uh maybe for a special event maybe for a birthday maybe as like a funny gift like those kind of things

[43:25] would make sense to make a great gift well uh what's funny is in the launch video by the way uh one of one of the lines in it is uh 60% less sugar so uh your guts don't turn into goo and I like just love I just love that and like I saw someone internally use that in a DM to someone someone who was like no I like I'm scared of free candy and they were like but the person who responded from our was like but it won't turn your guts to goo oh gosh that's so fun that's great I'm really excited to see how like

[43:53] that brand voice develops and like answering people in the comments and stuff we worked with some Brands who were great at that like the perfect Gene so I'm really excited to perfect gen yeah right now so what I'd like to do now is I'd actually like you to show some of the ugly ads or show some show some formats that you think some people here could replicate or take inspiration from sure like if you were going to give someone like okay these are five ugly ads that you should test what would be like your five like format examples well I mean it's it wouldn't be on this but

[44:27] you know obviously like I want to just do Post-it notes yes you are the OG Post-It note maker although some although some people think it was me because I talked I did my first video about it like 202 because you didn't give me credit for it in that video to this day like I want the record to show that I inspired that wait and I will say too I got inspiration from The Cove ad that they made like in 2020 did you make that uh I don't know I don't no I don't think so but we we were working with Cove you were working with Cove because

[44:58] they also had they were the brand that own keeps as well they were right yeah so I don't know I mean it's it's not like that big of a secret so it's not like that big of a deal but uh I mean we were I was definitely barking at you to do it more and every and then I went and made a video about it yeah at thesis and like respect you know good good on you um so let the record show now that it was for me but like again it's not like I developed that like maybe I you and I both popularize it and Ash from Obby

[45:24] like helped popularize it so and like that's something we're going to do for rotten is just like it's just a cheap I mean it's completely free okay excuse me it's not free you have to buy Sharpie preferably a Sharpie it doesn't have to be a Sharpie use some other brand use a jelly pen if you want I don't know I don't care but probably a Sharpie uh and just write relevant things that like your audience would be interested to see and like I like I'm going to do one that says like you know parents hate this or parents love this both why not do both like do those are two different ads and

[45:55] see which one does better I'm going to do like won't turn your guts into goo yeah like who cares and I'm going to be try and be a little thoughtful about the setting for it like try and put it in a right not going to over the top go for it but like I might put it like on a yellow or green surface but I don't know I'm trying to figure out like what would be or an organic believable thing actually I want I want to do it in front of a white van like I said before do it in front of the white van also do it at

[46:21] like a picnic setting or someone like you know you know it's the kind of gummy worms you'd take out on a date I see like I think we're trying to at first I think they we all want to do more aggressive stylized vies so I think we're going to go harder first um let me find actually here's a Post-It I have a Post-It note board o gold I have a handwriting one so I've even veered from you know just calling it posted note ads and just gone to wait did you make that stop using tire shine one um I didn't because I have that I have that as an ad

[46:58] for you to review that's my client oh I okay that's funny I bet some of them are going to be your clients that's really funny so those are my those are my boys at exoforma I huge shout out to them actually we can just talk about them as a case City I could do a whole hour talking about them uh they brought me into to consult for a few months and like literally as soon as we started working with them these guys are unbelievable um I I wonder if they're okay with me talking about their story but I'm only going to say nice things like these guys would meet with me and

[47:28] then literally go out to the the parking lot and shoot like right away a plus client I mean they literally took my notes and did that and like that ad yeah slaps dude like I probably shouldn't tell you that but like that ad slaps and like they basically just made a great Hook from it and we'll talk about that hook because that hook is killer for a lot of reasons we'll get into that later but um yeah like just they tried a bunch of different posted notes tried in different settings on the car and it's not a product that has anything to do with revving the engine but but it's

[47:59] they put it on the on the dashboard there and the on the tack and and which is a good like it's a good placement and it's also just like a little bit unusual it's in the car like but it's in the car it's a car product they're shelling and you quickly get that connection and like it's a simple phrase stop using tire shine so like if you are using tire shine you're like whoa whoa what am I doing wrong but if you're not you're still be like wait a second why not yeah like whoa so but it's still it only is relevant to you if you have a car it

[48:26] only is relevant to you if you have a car you probably care about so like and then you know a lot of this hinges on what comes after that anyway but it was really good um to see them do this and just like that was one of the first ideas I think we came up with that's really cool yeah High hook rates on that cuz that's like massive massive yeah really really good excellent and again it's not necessarily like that they need massive hook rates it's just it's about the relevance like and getting the right right people stop like if I would see something like that in my regular

[48:59] like my regular scrolling I don't even have a driver's license I'm not yeah what is this I have a car that I definitely don't care about my tire sh yeah uh maybe a little bit but um so yeah there's that one this one is one of mine that's that is my handwriting on the nuts.com your nuts are in this box um a little bit of taboo advertising potentially actually yeah a little bit a little bit um and I like what what actually after my time there they they um they iterated on they edited they just Photoshopped it and like it's by the way you can totally get that the

[49:29] vibe is different and that it's and that it's like not handwritten in this one but it still works but it says your nuts have dropped I think your nuts are in this box is still way better I don't know why they even did that um but like yeah there's so many of these so again that's where I'd start if you're trying to get into ugly ads like this isn't the only way to make ugly ads um this is by the way really bad these are really bad this is like uh poting notes on a computer screen on a photo on a computer screen oh dear wow that's really ugly

[49:57] yeah I thank you yes it is I did those and like that was just it didn't work that well but I would try it again you know I don't know if it's if it's because of the copy that's on it which isn't that great I also think if they zoomed out a little more and maybe showed the computer that could I have a few a great point I have a few examples that that showed that because when I see this I I'm a little disoriented around like oh is this did they want you to think it was actually on the that would be cool but it's like

[50:28] disorienting in the wrong way yeah yeah I agree with you and there's just you know look kind of like that primer example right like that you can see it's on the computer Yes actually a great point and I do love that um but like you know like this was a you know about me trying and like I'm super open to to failure um what's great is you can fail on these over and over and over and there's no cost um you know except for the cost of running the ads but like there you don't have to spend that much to to know if this is in the ballpark or

[50:57] not these noteworthy ads are wild though that's a lot of text and actually I I have a few examples that show this check mark bullet point style of ads and I want your take on that like to me that almost seems like people trying to turn the Post-it note style ad into something it's really not quite yeah because it's not it's not hooking people or or maybe it is potentially for the Right audience but when I see that I'm like okay you're trying to make a bullet point style of AD using a Post-It note and it's a little bit for me it's too much to ask

[51:29] for me to read all of that in that format it's it doesn't matter like it doesn't matter what I think it does you're no no no it's it's like you can you can do a five words six word posted note right or line of Copy in any other format or you can have a long story on there and I don't I don't have a problem with with it I think it just it's maybe harder to do and harder to get right but if you write something that is that gives people the right Vibes and the right story and the right if you can make people emotionally connect you

[51:59] could do a whole you could do a whole freaking 10 paragraphs of post notes I will say something that I had done with several Brands too when using the Post-it notes strategy is actually just taking our best performing ugc ad and then taking that entire script putting it on different Post-it notes and then having someone do a voiceover for it that's a a format using this strategy that I've used again and again or some people say posted notes aren't a strategy it's not fa enough it's not a it's just it's an aesthetic it's a VI it's a storytelling device and the reason why like I want to do it with

[52:30] rotten is just a Kickstart it's just to like get ideas literally handr write them out there see what messaging can work low cost low effort literally just like it's it's to me it's even easier than like doing it in a in like a photo editing software because I can just handr write it slap it take a picture of it and then move on try something else and like run a bunch of those see which messaging works well and then take that messaging and then I can double click into that from a copy perspective double click into that from a messaging perspective on other styles right um and

[53:02] that's what we want to be able to do so that's one right posted notes um and then going back to the other like the other stuff um I I mean I hate again blowing up this style more but whatever the the the pub puberty brand uh uh uh publication uh style which uh P bi I Ty y where oh do I I don't know if I have one in here I thought I saw one just a little bit down oh there these these where it's um it's like the answer to the Press screenshot ad which often gets um get disapproved or you get a cease and assist from the publication

[53:41] it's like a way of showing potentially more social proof or press social proof without it actually being you you can say that I don't that's not why I like this uh and you're you're not like that is a thing right that is one thing you could make a publication thing and that that is in here as well these work to me really well because these are some of the biggest most viral pages on the on the planet on or on Instagram and that's the exact style they use yeah so like why not first of all examine why does that style work well what have they done

[54:15] because they they're monetized so they're trying to make stuff that is viral that is or easy easy to for people to want to consume so why not recreate that yourself and then also like look at how they tell the story look at how they do it visually end with text and try to like lean into that so you know it's just literally that white bar and the photo like Fades from the full color photo down Fades to Black on the bottom with the white text over it super simple very easy to understand and it a lot of them have this main photo with a like highlight photo in a circle above it

[54:49] whether that's like a zoom in or it's a detail photo or it's like showing the problem in one and the solution in the other or vice versa um and there's just a lot of ways you can use this to test copy and to test talking about problems um in that way as if it's news yeah right it's just and in this news aesthetic and you're not like recreating like TV news because that's something people aren't really watching on social you're not watching your like Nightly News Clips on Instagram like you're just not if if were a lot and sometimes there are ways like there are weird news

[55:28] things like Florida man news things that do get shared on on Instagram so you that is a style that can also work and the News aesthetic does often I found work for like 55 65 plus so a different demographic we would actually recreate new segments at thesis to use for certain brands because they worked so well for that demographic totally by the way like you can make you can make your own fake news like you can literally hire real fake news you can you can literally hire people on Fiverr or whatever to like go and make like in a news style green screen background like like reporter is setup and film

[56:07] something for you yeah or podcast yeah right right we can definitely do that we did that two weeks ago um but like definitely don't go and make fake news and make it seem like it's actually like legit real do not be do not do anything illegal or there's a line to cross please don't do that but like you can make things that Vibe um you know legally and safely and I would I would definitely consider that um this is another one I like um here this this is like the Twitter the Twitter style SC Twitter screenshot meme style you'll see this a lot of like [ __ ] Jerry Instagram

[56:42] like again go look for some of the biggest Instagram accounts uh that are relevant to your audience and they're all like Twitter screenshots like yeah yeah yeah huge um that that's going back way back to before you ask like what I do for research the other thing I do for research I forgot to shout out was like create a Instagram or Tik Tok account about that interest ah I do the same thing now for YouTube actually really yeah I had thought about doing that for YouTube that makes sense obviously yeah actually so I'm doing Patty yow's accelerator as you know and he has an entire method for like getting a new um

[57:19] getting like a new YouTube account and like going through and like figuring out like w so he's stealing me now Patty he is I mean yeah you know great artist no no no I'm sure I'm sure like yeah we both probably got that from the same whatever and probably it was probably Mr Beast anyway like exactly yeah but yeah no that's that's that's really smart and it's the same premise right it's just like to pursue that con that specific content as if you are in that so like I am not a a a Nostalgia Punk like candy nerd right but like I'm going to create an Instagram account to pursue that and

[57:56] see what stuff comes up and fed to me and like pay attention to that try and understand the vibe understand the the language that's being used understand the Aesthetics that are being used in like by like skateboarders by candy Lovers by whatever it is so I can better communicate to them yeah and also just see what pops up on your own feed to see like what like what story lines and formats seem to be like getting the most engagement from this type of people it's huge and like cuttingly down the amount of formats and messaging and storyline types that you feel like you need to test yeah and that's where that's where

[58:31] I like to you know I recommend people go focus more on organic content for inspiration for ads rather than go look at other ads from other brands that's kind of a hot take it's really it's my hottest my best hot take is like definitely go look at organic stuff rather than do not look at your competitors just don't don't don't [ __ ] do that like please for the love of God like ignore your competitors like maybe look at them when you're getting started just for like some whatever just to get a baseline try I don't care but like do anything else because all your competitors are doing are looking at

[59:06] other competitors and those competitors are looking at them it becomes an echo chamber with inside certain industries and it's really funny to see Brands copying other formats after other brands and other messaging tactics and at a certain point when Brands often come to you and me is oh maybe they're spending a certain amount they want to scale I feel like that's like always the point where Brands want to talk to me personally is oh we want to scale Beyond this amount and what I always end up telling them at some point is oh you are in a point of iteration paralysis you have iterated yourself to Oblivion that

[59:40] you're not even creating like new things yeah and this is actually a question that we had someone ask us on on Twitter which was how do you draw the line between doing iterations on your ad creative but also doing net new big swing tests yeah um I remember that question I was excited to to talk to you about it um I you know I parallel path both like it really depends on what I'm seeing and what I'm feeling but like um lately I've been more in the iteration Zone and that that might be because of the stuff that I'm working on and I might be more dialed in on some of that

[1:00:13] stuff but the big thing I tell a lot of people now and maybe one of the most valuable things I can say in this whole talk is if you have something that hits don't take it for granted like yeah if you have a unicorn ad or something that really slaps just whatever you can do to like don't like you don't have to just iterate it to death but you can re-shoot it you can re-shoot it you can borrow that messaging or that messaging in the hook and adapt it to another format you can if it's a ugc ad have another Creator do the exact same script take

[1:00:48] take the same thing and just record a different voiceover or a method that you've done recently which I've really liked is is have another Creator green screen that actual ad yeah yeah Green Screen over it yeah that's fun yeah yeah that is that is advertisers stealing from advertis so I don't know if that one works but yes yeah but like you can even like literally go in the in cap cut there's now a voice changer you have you done that ah yes yes you can so it's not just like it's it's not just like it reads the text it'll literally take your voice and change your voice to something

[1:01:17] else you can just do that and it's a to it creates a totally different vibe um you can take that same video and run it through a different editing style take that same video and like do edit in like stock video clips make it more like uh exaggerated um make it more over the top make it more subtle play different music behind it like take away the music like anything like that that can work and some of that is iterating to death and for nothing right you're not really going to squeeze more much more out of it by doing some of those things but to be fair when I say like iteration like

[1:01:50] to death I also like really just think of people who end up just changing out 3 seconds of the hook keeping the like keeping the same thing just swapping out the messaging just doing like headline tests and like those things are important to some extent but I do think that those like at a certain point those there's only so much they stop being as effective as they could be yeah there's there's a limit to how much you can like get out of that yeah um the question I want I want to ask you know anyone in that situation is like okay how do we make this more broadly relatable how do

[1:02:21] we make this or how do we make this relatable to a different audience same messaging same thing like let's assume this messaging works or this this this pacing works or this uh M like the overall angle works right how do we make this relevant to other people um so do we get a different just a different looking talent to say the same thing do we get someone to come in and do it faster do we get someone to come in and do it slower do we get someone to like there's just tons of different ways that we can we can make that work for more audiences and different audiences and

[1:02:56] bigger audiences um and that's what I try and think about and some of that's scary and some of that's difficult because again you're not always have going to have the immediate ad data to support that yeah your ad data might not immediately be like oh yeah that's a winner it might take a while for it to adjust and shift so that's what I see so many people so scared of and especially to answer one of the other questions that we got about cost caps using cost caps is going to keep you in that really narrow area of just the people that already have the most intent and it's

[1:03:28] going to prevent you from scaling over time as efficiently as maybe you could otherwise I understand anyone's going to like say well yeah but it's also going to keep you from losing money if you're really that like tight on money uh that you're like I just don't think you're really bound to scale and I think you're just holding yourself back I've talked about this too with a number of people I think that at a certain point you have to choose between absolute efficiency and getting learnings oh my gosh yes yeah uh which is ultimately why we have a really similar K uh we have a really

[1:04:03] similar way of doing creative testing because we do want to prioritize getting learnings because what I've seen a lot of brands do that go the dynamic creative testing CBO route is and and I hear this all the time D the new ad tests aren't getting enough spend and you end up not learning because you have one or two hero ads that dominate the spend and you know over the last few weeks of you making this new creative you don't actually have a data read on any of the other tests that you have so but but they'll tell you that's the that's the point is like oh the ads

[1:04:35] didn't do well so they didn't get spend so we save money when those when those ads die are you just [ __ ] out of luck or could you have gotten some learnings right or even possibly tapped into a new market that maybe would have been a little less efficient in the beginning but could have proved to be more efficient over time totally yeah I I I that's my whole problem with this and I try not to like really engage even engage with the the like costat people anymore I'll still engage with people that like test in CBO because like that's not that dumb like it's there are

[1:05:05] some brands that I like I when I I work with them on that and they do that and that's fine it's totally fine especially if you're setting minimum so you're for you are forcing some budget um which again like someone who I'm usually the guy that's like yeah trust the system but like also like we have to be humans and learn and understand creative and figure stuff out so we have to force do some correction some forcing so that we can get that learning of why why is the system saying this sucks why is the system not wanting to spend on this oh because people aren't paying attention

[1:05:39] oh because it's not getting people to click oh because like whatever it is and like maybe none of my analysis is right maybe that's fine I might have a totally wrong analysis about it but at least I can have some analysis on it the a lot of these people think it's just random all the c cap people yeah they're like oh it's just what the creative that works it's just random and there is some Randomness if you are going to throw a thousand ads at the wall like yeah if you were going to stick because you're bound to have just gotten some creators who know how to make good ads because

[1:06:10] they do have experience or some that are just lucky or some that are just really [ __ ] attractive yeah cuz there sometimes it's just it's an unknown variable right and we can boil it all down but at the end of the day a human does have to make the subjective decision on what it is which is what I find a lot of people struggle with with creative strategy and analyzing their creatives because they want some complicated formula that's like oh it's the headline that worked it's the messaging that worked is it but at the end of the day that's why I always prioritize everything I do with

[1:06:41] research because I'm in a lot better situation to look at the creative and be like okay based on what I know about that consumer what is it that is attracting them it could be the Creator could it could be the Creator it could be the messaging it could be the editing Style the storyline the pacing but if you don't know your customer in the first place or if you don't know the ecosystem in which your customer yeah is has problems what their lifestyle is like you're not going to be able to determine and by the way you just said you said so many things there that are

[1:07:09] really important one of them was pacing and like it's so hard to isolate any of these items in a test because like especially with video right it's like okay you can talk about what's in the the what's the like text overlay in the first seconds that's a component you can talk about what's the visual in the first few seconds that's a component you can talk about like what is being said and then if you go re-shoot that you say the same things you say the same have the same text overlay but someone says it more rapidly maybe that'll do better if someone says it more rapidly but it's

[1:07:41] less relatable or they say it in a way that is really boring or if they say it staring directly into the camera or they say it you know while like looking all over the place like yeah there's all these infinite variables that we we can't possibly control exactly four um that can can get in there and mess stuff up and so many people are like oh yeah that failed let's never do that again and it'll be like let's never say that line again but maybe that line was great but it was said poorly or said too quickly or said too slowly and I see that a lot with like formats in general

[1:08:16] I feel like when people are just getting started off a lot of times they'll be like oh features point out ads don't work for me right or US versus them don't work for me or ugc doesn't work for me and I'll look at their ugc and I'll be like you did one test that had four ads with a not a very talented because you thought it was going to be bad in the first place you didn't you was it's a self-fulfilling prophecy like you didn't want you didn't want to make ugc's you didn't make good ugc's so it's gonna fail so what I'd like to do next

[1:08:42] is I gathered some ugly ads I bet you were a creator of some of these or helped advise on some of these so I want to show you some and I want you to roast them wow with my son going off to college I'm already anticipating the questions what does this light mean is the sound okay my son knows nothing about cars he could barely the win away I truly don't how I expect him to survive in the world but at least now his car maintenance is covered this is fixed an OBD2 port scanner that connects to an app on his phone wow now every time the check

[1:09:19] engine light goes on and that product intro didn't come to like second 20 what's English just like

[1:09:31] DS of the so he knows to change fantastic is provide Comfort to me and my wife while away Che out F okay fantastic ad can you just play the first like three seconds again just real quick yeah so just I don't like that it's showing grass but it said check engine so it's targeting well but it shows okay talking about setting look at where he's shooting that selfie go back back for a second look at just where he's shooting that selfie look where he is right in the garage in the garage um I mean that's brilliant with two cars in the background yeah so like you know when

[1:10:04] you talk about targeting with your creative like it's targeting with your creative I didn't like again I was saying I didn't like the grass I would have rather that been somewhere else or displayed some other way I don't know what it was spraying yeah but it still didn't matter cuz check engine is still relatable enough um I wish there was some other way to display that but so all this is great um the one thing I don't like about this is um it's like too specific of a story like with my sun going off to college it's like such a narrow that's such a small slice of the

[1:10:36] entire adverti addressable market so I think there might be a lot of people that might be like oh that's not me goodbye yeah on the other hand um it is an easy to understand story so if people are going to keep paying attention through it it doesn't really matter that the sun's going to college it doesn't really matter about that it's just about a it's just about a dad caring about the their someone in their life like I would encourage them actually to like take a step back and like forget about the son going to college and just talk about I worry about my son or my daughter yep

[1:11:09] yeah yeah ex exactly that that's that's how you just make that a little broader and literally that's just a question of like re-shooting this this second hook right like um and finding other ways to to get in there like because it could be it could be about me it could be about like I you know I I have this car you know yeah just could be for anyone like so there's a lot of ways to do it but again I think it is a it is a believable relatable thing but you could make it more broadly relatable more broadly relevant to more users I think ugly ads

[1:11:42] approved oh it's fantastic wow wow he came out with a good one that's lovely I look at the caption style too by the way um super organic yeah it's just the organic caption style um so it's not branded it doesn't really matter um in this ad because nobody's ready for the brand yet like nobody cares about this brand so why even bother yeah they start to see the product in it and that's what really matters the the product is branded they can click the ad they'll see the brand there more uh they'll learn about the brand more but at this point nobody cares about The Branding so

[1:12:12] why bother with it so it's really good excellent first I want to know who made that right shake their hand for sure ad number two NW also not mine but uh friends I'm a I'm aan I'm a fan of andw friends of friends of friends yeah um now this is something I've seen a number of brands do now they'll try doing this Post-It note style ad right but they're using three to convey this story yeah I mean I just I'm not I mean is that showing a different are those showing competitors's products or no those are their products right those are their products yeah then I I don't know it

[1:12:47] seems like almost like you're pairing the Post-it notes with those products so I don't think that's good I actually I hate that it's just confusing to me um I I kind of almost wish it was like the competitor's products blurred out to show like that that has the Jitters that has the sleepest nights and this is free honey so I don't I don't like this at all I like it from an aesthetic standpoint I kind of wish it was uglier um I I don't been running for 77 days those can be wrong could be yeah it also could be retargeting but also it has a great value prep right it's like free

[1:13:19] honey which like actually was sort of my problem with this ad initially is paino paino fre fre honey yeah great call out and save $26 yeah yeah like it just feels like to me this is super retargeting and like that's fine I just you know nothing we've T talked about today like is about retargeting I don't care about like it's not that I don't care about retargeting I get so little Joy or value working on retargeting ads as a concept and I don't really do a lot of manual retargeting or any really anymore anyway yeah I just try and make great messaging that makes sense for

[1:13:52] Prospect and then thusly also still works for yeah I agree I don't create I don't make ad creative tests specific to retargeting oh gosh there are sometimes that I will identify a test that's one out and I'll be like you know what in retrospect it didn't hit on like the broad cold prospecting audience let's drip it into retargeting yeah but that is actually super few and far between yeah and also that's the dangerous thing and I want to going way back to earlier in our conversation like that's a thing that a lot of a trap a lot of marketers fall into is they're making ads that actually work

[1:14:25] really well and perform really well for their warm audiences and when you're using these hybrid audiences now pretty much everyone is like we talk to is like doing broad audiences with no exclusions or minimal exclusions and like depending on how or what you're excluding the ads that you make that are most relevant to your warm users are going to look great but that doesn't mean that they're scalable and it doesn't mean that they are fundamentally what works to bring people into your brand they're just the things that are taking credit for the conversions and that can also be a weird attribution problem you might just have a really clickable ad uh

[1:15:05] rather than an ad that actually people even care about oh goodness so there's a whole huge layer Stitch this video I just this clip I just said into earlier when we were talking about this earlier because that's a huge thing that people are getting wrong and like they don't I can say that and I can't prove that but like people think I'm crazy when I'm telling them like he is crazy thank you I am crazy but regardless of that like people think that I'm wrong uh which I'm not about this um that there are ads that people are running that look in like they're performing well because the

[1:15:38] costs are low or whatever it is but in reality they're just scooping up the easiest conversions easiest purchasers from the people already most likely to buy they're the least incremental uh ads and they're the most just at scooping up nothing so it doesn't it's not helping you except it's helping you look better yeah yeah okay let's look at this next one so this is a lead generation client I believe so some of the people that are in the course and also on Instagram stories ask that I did more B2B or service based businesses so let's take a look at this one BB should be making ugly ads too for sure

[1:16:17] yes terrible hook sorry go back awful awful absolutely terrible did you know that this is an awful hug I mean it goes quick but I don't think it's the best way to look it creates curiosity sure I I guess but like what are we I mean this isn't targeting anyone unless like we don't know the Target demographic yet we did we okay so now it's like okay make money simple again and it's free okay yeah I mean go back like perfectly fine from start it here just start it from not from there start the ad right there start the ad right there 22,000 right downloaded this book that's interesting

[1:17:03] yeah I don't know what that little uh chicky icon is on the top there I think that's really a waste uh of space and and this is the the property Council I believe so you know put a house there or something I don't know yeah maybe yeah yeah good point yeah yeah but like this book about what like it's about like investing in property as a way to make like passive I me just give me that more give me in the first post it or in the second post it or whatever it is like give me more about that yeah did you know I mean like it's just no one cares

[1:17:33] about this no one cares about the this and so yeah you'll maybe get some curiosity and maybe you'll get like a better hook rate because people are going to stick around but they're they're going to fall off and not give a [ __ ] yeah so this one ran technically for 329 days but yeah yeah but look that maybe it's the best ad ever I don't I don't know and I can be wrong about these things but also uh it's all depends on scale like that might have run and been amazing for that period that might have just run in the background like as a retargeting ad

[1:18:05] getting a nickel a day that might have who knows um you don't know how anyone else is running their accounts that might just be the one ad they made and they just like walked away there's like a deodorant brand i' I I like admire and I was like they haven't put a new ad live in six months like I don't even know what they're doing I don't even I don't even know if they're alive like yeah yeah okay cool but like you just don't know if what it is or why or how you don't know you don't you never know okay next up array uh adid Toy darling

[1:18:33] is it I don't know this brand yeah pretty big brand actually what I don't okay don't even say it take me okay Works in under an hour feels good after eating glut I hate this this tells me nothing I am angry I as soon as you put this on the screen I was I was I didn't like it um because it's I don't know what the product is I don't care I have no reason to to like I don't care about the setting I don't care I actually like that the setting is kind of crap it's kind of ugly but like so ugly setting but messaging is is not aligned because

[1:19:07] take me oh God like take me what like why what it's like there's no reason there's just no I don't have any reason it should be like ask a question take like do you have this or like I don't know if you know if they could do that or even if it's like works and because for me I don't know what it works for yeah Works in under an hour is irrelevant yeah so for me here it'd be like reduces bloating in under one hour okay and that would have been they're probably not even allowed to say that they're probably not probably not um I hate supplement ads anyway or I

[1:19:44] don't know if know if this supplement seems like it is it is a supplement hate it um you can do that all you want I just I don't I think they're a lot of baloney but um yeah do better like give me something more than that ask a question then say take me take me terrible so here it already love it already love this I mean so this is from oo skincare I mean it's clearly can you start over what was it I used to be very I didn't even get to read it I read too slow uh used to be very self-conscious of my bik that's a

[1:20:19] 10 out of 10 I mean they took the of course did they really yeah yeah yeah [ __ ] you used to be very self-conscious of my bikini line at the beach line at the beach wow so relatable not to me but I get it also oh but then she repeats it I don't like that but shave it always end upsit isting every time I go to the I am paranoid my this is like truly

[1:21:03] I mean it's like the natural truly this is a this is a straight ripoff of truly Beauty which like no no shame good on them for doing it but like you're just showing revealing skin you're showing like sexy like attractive like like my only concern would be if you're running this uh in an ASC it would a lot of men would pay attention to it yeah that would be my concern it's also almost I don't know if it's too um aspirational this view but it's it's not I think it's fine I think all of this is is really well done you know what's funny when I first saw this ad I thought

[1:21:44] it was actually this Hook was all that it was at first I would just just use that photo right I would use I would use that as a still I would use that or even just like the first like 3 seconds have that un Loop a little bit of movement like I like I've seen things like that work yeah why not just let that let people click and find out the rest because it's it's enough to get people to click with intent right you don't want to get get people just to click you want to get people to click with intent and that as a still or is it just a

[1:22:10] looping video or whatever is is enough because it's I used to be right I I past tense I used to be very self-conscious best sense problem um like they probably got that from a customer and people are you'd hope so and then and then people reading that assume whatever this is for is going to solve that yeah brilliant love it I think the rest of the ad I didn't even evaluate that much because uh and it might might need to be improved but the rest seemed okay I didn't like that the hook repeated but yeah that was I didn't like that hook that the hook repeated either all right

[1:22:43] yeah this is this one's a bit one for me because I almost worked with them uh the pod company I didn't so I love seeing this uh shout out to them they've been do seem like they're crushing hope they're making a ton of money um uh I I love this I really wonder how well these are doing um we saw it we see that like Crocs I think was the original Pryor of this like just to be clear style we know all we know about this is that marketers loved it marketers loved it and in theory it's been running for months is it still I know yeah I I

[1:23:15] actually checked it right before this again we don't know what that really means we don't know what that really means but we do know marketers love it yeah um and that's my conc concern with a lot of these is like me liking it you liking it is should be like a red alert like uhoh yeah this probably isn't a good ad this is probably just something that like we like and also the Crocs ad like when I initially saw that I thought oh okay you're like trying to go after jenz when I think of jenzy I'm like are they really in a position or want to buy

[1:23:43] an ice bath like to me this seems a little bit more towards like marketed towards Millennials and sure this could have like a Nostalgia bent to it but I'm like uh I think all of it makes sense I think it is thumb stopping it is weird it is unusual it it doesn't look like an ad also I mean now it does maybe because like other people are doing it but fundamentally when this Scrolls into frame there's no almost no one's ad subconscious ad blocker is going to be like oh this is an ad turn this away moft whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa what is this so it does that's it it it is

[1:24:19] thumb stopping in that way um but it's not clearly an ad so it's one of those rare ones where it's not a native style that people are used to seeing but it also doesn't immediately trigger as an ad yes so that one might be working really well uh this one free course menopause secrets so this is another one that's for more of our info product people yeah if they haven't already tried doing that I would just switch the two okay menopause Secrets free course M um it's interesting I I I hope this is okay for me to say I think she looks too young for this to be

[1:24:56] potentially no and I mean I think it's really important to call out when there seems to be a misalignment yeah between the Creator and the messaging yeah because that's definitely something that other people are going to notice and especially if the Creator is also misaligned with who you're actually delivering to on face on Facebook and Instagram it's like one of the number one things I look at is breakdown data and looking at how the spend distribution is actually going to the different age ranges of course so you know we could see something like this can you repeat that because like that's like so like I love that you do that and

[1:25:28] I know that you do that and I do that I study the breakdowns like I feel like that's what everyone else isn't doing like maybe not everyone but like so few people when I like talk to them when they hire me to like show them and I'm like I say oh let's go to the the breakdowns they like okay where is that I'm like here I'm like you should be looking at this all the time yeah I mean at at a base level I'm always looking at the breakdown data so organizing all the data into where the spend and purchases are pooling for ages gender depending on

[1:25:58] the product sometimes it doesn't matter I don't look at the I don't really care as much about the purchases or the whatever I just look at the the spend the spend is the most important because ultimately that's where Facebook is like sending your cash and if this is delivering to someone who is 30 35 and not someone who you know would actually be interested in a free course about menopause then you're in trouble and there's already misalignment with your creative with your messaging and I want to just double click into that for a sec what's happening there is like it's Facebook's both looking at the relevance

[1:26:31] the the creative relevance so like who's paying attention to that ad more than others even if it's an static image it Facebook understands that we don't have data on that but it'll be looking at I assume you know this I can't prove this but I assume it knows which ads people spend more time lingering on than others and it uses that as a data point uh to know who it's more relevant to and that doesn't necessarily mean those are the right people that click and buy so that it still has to figure that out so what you see sometimes is it'll start you know focusing on this age range and then

[1:27:02] it'll shift over time as it's figuring those things out but it's trying to predict how to best get you the most conversions and again a point against cost caps is like if you use two low cost caps it won't even try to to expand and to essentially scale exactly yeah okay so we have 10 more minutes I am going to actually get out some of the questions that we had okay I love this question shoot sorry should credible big unicorn Brands make ugly ads yes what everyone should everyone should doesn't mean you only have to make ugly ads make pretty ads too I'm not against that I'm

[1:27:37] not saying don't make pretty ads but yes everyone should be making stuff that makes sense and is relatable and fits into the feed for your audience even the most luxurious of Brands can and should do that and I want to tap into that cuz that was actually the number one question that I got got today was question I get all the time how does it make sense for luxury Brands how can luxury brands do this without damaging the yeah the game is authenticity okay so what's the biggest problem uh if you're a luxury brand like go shoot the product on a phone on a private jet on a

[1:28:11] yacht okay and if you turn to me and say well Barry I don't have access to those my question to you is are you really [ __ ] luxury if you don't have access to those things no you're [ __ ] not also luxury Brands it's like it's exclusive you don't want everyone to buy so like sometimes like I I see luxury Brands like oh we want to scale using Facebook I'm like that's kind of like your your luxury like there's sort of like um a toss and turn I like there's some weird give and take I think with luxury Brands who want to use Facebook

[1:28:41] as their main scaling method without it's hard putting in you know that that clout effort essentially I think that yeah the clout effort is important but like really comes down to how how you shoot it and making the aesthetic right cuz look if you're a luxury brand all you're thinking of is like okay we get the the best models we get the best lighting we get the best cameras right because we are this brand so obviously everything has to be the best but like in reality it's just find ways to to skip some of those yeah and invest instead in the setting and the vibe and

[1:29:13] the environment and the whatever and shoot on and shoot it on iPhone shoot it rela and you there are Brands doing this there are fundamentally brands that have been doing this and making it interesting content um was it Bentley uh I think did that like they had a an Indian comedian uh doing doing a thing like doing Tik toks with the car oh I saw that and I saw I've seen Gucci do the style of AD where they're shooting some of their like it's essentially BTS content like behind the scenes like I encourage Brands to also consider behind the scenes content I don't know if it's

[1:29:43] well if it if they're doing especially apparel this is something I see anani Bing do which is like a like a New York City brand that's more luxury in nature and they've been shooting all their campaigns recently for um like for Facebook and Instagram on an iPhone but they also have a heavy assist from Dynamic product ads sure so yeah there's just so much that like yeah we could go on forever yes you can shoot luxury in that way find a way to shoot it uglier shoot it more authentic and that makes it way more like again if you can shoot it in those really high beautiful places

[1:30:18] invest in that yeah right don't shoot it in a trailer park like that would be bad don't do that part ugly but pair it with other high value luxury productss that's how i' do it if Rolls-Royce would ever like to make a Post-It note ad with me I accept they can and should they probably shouldn't but if they did like they could think of like how to make you know use a fancier use a fancier pen you know use use a use a $400 P I actually said that to someone I was like okay write the write the note with a Tiffany pen and that kind of

[1:30:49] signaling in your ad is something that I love bring breing down so for a brand like Cuts like when comparing a brand like Cuts versus true classic it's actually so interesting to look at how Cuts differentiates themselves because they're using a remot like suitcase in their ads and they're using they're clearly flying private they're clearly like you know that if you look inside of their ad account and like their campaigns that's how they that might be unnecessary they might be going that might be they might need to make them uglier like maybe that is aspirational and maybe that's good but that might be over overdoing it

[1:31:23] maybe not I don't know I'd have to go take a closer look take a closer look I like what they do um another question that I got from Shelby who we actually spent with time in um Shelby was wearing this hat on Instagram yesterday I was like and I saw she's making ads for you for rotten oh is she I thought she was yeah she said she was she tagged you yesterday said she was making ads for you oh my God maybe I missed that oh gosh I'm so excited okay okay great so a question that she has for you is if you could partner with and make ads for any

[1:31:51] single brand out there who would you want to partner with and why rotten creative freedom um no like I do mean that like I really by the I get offered tons of opportunities to work with lots of Brands and like people want to start things up and ask me all the time which is I'm very honored and flattered by but like this is one where it's just like oh my gosh like yeah we're it's alternative it's weird it's fun we're going to do some crazy stuff smart people are involved uh like we have an amazing animator designer guy creative director he's awesome and like but I I I don't know if there's any

[1:32:24] other brands like I really want I have worked with my like ideal dream Brands before like I've worked on a lot of these like I don't know what they're Dr Squatch I haven't worked with Dr Squatch and I I don't need to I don't care to like I have nothing else like to prove to myself in that way yeah yeah so I I don't care like I'm I'm secure in that way I maybe I'll come back to that I I've people have asked me this question before and I just I've worked on so many big Brands anymore I just don't care any a good way if they're watching H to get

[1:32:53] yeah honestly genuinely uh I've worked with some Brands like I've really liked before and it's only ruined it for me like like relatable content yeah right like I'm sure like if I worked on liquid death right that'd be cool but like I I bet it would make it not as fun I wouldn't not that that's a brand I care that much about but yeah yeah um another question I always really like to ask people too and you've talked about this a lot but what are the creators that you really admire and follow Mr that's it doesn't matter no Mr Beast Samir um I watch a lot of Colin and Samir because

[1:33:25] they are just they're talking about the business of creative and you know it's not Facebook ads um they're talking about content and making content for people and uh story and like it's really cool to see them break some of that stuff down and hear you know their interviews with creators and then the creators are talking about building stuff for audiences and building stuff so all of that's incredible anything where you can go listen to Mr Beast talk about content 99% of it is his Colin and Samir episodes are actually where you should start yes yeah yeah um like yeah I think it was one of those where he

[1:33:58] said like don't uh don't worry about like the algorithm it's not the algorithm it's the audience right just replace the word algorithm with the word audience and that's what's not working for you right it's not the algorithm it's the audience yeah so um there's so much there because he just is unrelenting in terms of like making content that gets people's attention and keeps people retained and it keep them watch the person that goes the furthest and digs the deepest I think he is obsessed with it like he is obsessed with it and he he gets everyone around him to give him negative critical feedback and like no one else does that

[1:34:33] like do everyone should be doing that more I try to do that as much as I can like I don't want validation I want people to tell me like how can I make this better yeah and I and I think that's something that I actually find a lot of advertisers and internal teams have a hard time with is giving that critical feedback and that's something I I struggled with as a leader initially too everyone resp wants validation yeah because a lot of people told me creatives are really sensitive you to like really pad your feedback with creative teams and one of the last big impactful lessons I learned at thesis

[1:35:01] was actually being the [ __ ] in the room was a gift I for me it is for sure and my like that was something that when I was leaving my team told me oh I actually appreciated how how harsh you were and it was during the times when I wasn't giving that like harsh feedback that actually there were more there was more friction and people creatives want to be challenged yeah they yeah we do better I think I mean I consider myself like a creative sh like I do better with pressure um I don't always want the pressure or need like real I know that I

[1:35:34] get more out of it when I have more pressure on me yeah well Barry it was super awesome having you in the studio today writing this out doing this thing it's really new for the both of us where can people find out more about you and reach out to you if they want to work with you uh the easiest way is B hot.com that's like my link page it'll take you to figure out whatever you want to do with me or uh hotg growth.com hot.com or find me on Twitter LinkedIn wherever I'm about to pass 20,000 Twitter followers by the time this goes live I'll probably have passed it yeah

[1:36:04] it'll it'll be so that'll be like literally hours away from now um but yeah so follow me on there I say some fun stuff uh check subscribe to my newsletter uh if I write it more uh it's some fun stuff there so yeah please find me wherever and then click on something and then and there'll be something there for you go buy a hat I don't know the hats are pretty expensive though aren't they there's a discount code yeah if you subscribe to the newsletter sure awesome well everyone thank you so much for joining I'll catch you in next week's episode

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