The vital ingredient to great ad creative
You've either got it, or you don't.
Yesterday, I was talking to a friend about this idea of “ugly ads”. That the best performance ad creative you’ll find on Facebook/Instagram are ads that don’t look like ads. And this notion of “ugly” is that they’re low-production, user-generated style content that has this air of authenticity because of the signals these qualities send to a viewer.
And sure it works and it’s a neat philosophy to work with. But I think it’s really only a surface-level tactic that won’t “save” you if you’re struggling to make ads work.
And this got me thinking… what makes great ads? We run lots of ads and we’ve tried lots of different styles. We’ve seen high-production videos perform just as well (and if not better) as low-production ones. So “make ugly ads” is not a hard and fast absolute rule.
But let me cut to the chase here, what is the vital ingredient then?
In short, if you don’t mind me also boosting my own ego here - is that great ads tend to stand on the shoulders of a great product.
One of our best performing ads is simply holding up the product and gently turning it so the reflective parts catch the light. And on the front of the box is the promise it makes to the customer.
My belief is that if you have a great product that promises to solve a real problem - and you can deliver on that - then simply showing someone your product and how it solves that problem will always be enough to make them see the value and buy.
This isn’t anything new. For decades, the philosophy of any great salesperson is to partner with a company that sells a great product. Something that literally sells itself. You don’t want to have to try and convince someone. That takes a lot of effort and doesn’t scale. You want a product that you demo once, and the customer is sold.
“Selling ice to an eskimo” is not the point. Really you want to sell them heaters!
In summary, a harsh truth: your ads are only as good as your product.
Maybe that was useful. Maybe not. Let me know by replying to this or commenting.
Cheerio!
Charles.