Why Do His Ads Perform So Much Better Than Mine? transcript

Jess Bachman from fire team Second Time guest on my show here is why you are here today we are working together on an account right now your creative team is in it I am in it preview it has gone well enough to where I then reached out to you about working together on another one of my accounts and so we're just getting that going but here's the fascinating thing about the account that we are working on as I'm sure you have noticed as well there are actually Four creative agencies working on this account this account is trying to scale the creative production and so we've reached out to a few different people um those creative agencies are yours h fire team or I just said your Twitter profile uh fire team it's your name uh fire team that's it's like 90 90% of my interactions with you are on are on X even if uh even if I have a direct slack line to you now um okay and then uh and then mine AJF growth we are both in there and then there's two more who I won't name and overwhelmingly the top two Spenders in the account are mine and yours and the other ones have not done as well now it's not a shot at those guys I'm sure they do a lot of good work some places certainly there's been some stuff that has worked at least especially for one of them um for sure right not trying to dog anyone but it is a fascinating outcome because you and I think about creative extremely differently um and and do really really different things with with what we do this is actually part of why I suggested to this brand they hire you is because I said I am AJF growth is never going to make the kind kind of creative that Jess and fire team make we're just not going to uh it's just it's just really different in a lot of different ways it's uh and we can talk about that some if you want unfortunately this client also likes to stay pretty under the radar so we probably can't share too much uh too much detail on what those are but I can just say and you can confirm that we are both doing doing well in terms of the spend and that account um and uh and it's fascinating to me the other fascinating thing about this is that you like I said do things extremely differently than I do at the level of volume so I think I don't know if you know the answer to this but how many assets do you think you've put into that account like 20 um yeah probably yeah I think we started with like 10 and then through iterations it's probably 20 yeah yeah and we've put in hundreds thousands something like that so of your 10 or 20 or whatever that is your hit rate in terms of spending some money in the ad account all launched like you know all launched no creative testing campaigns manual bids like that um you are getting your your ads are getting probably 70% plus of them are getting some spent which is crazy to me like I I have like beli a bad average yeah it is it is yeah and and and this is why I try to point people towards you and have you on the show a couple times it's like I know what you say is pretty different than me but I'm watching it work I'm I'm like watching it work and I I it's just it just is the case that you do some things that I don't do that I think are really good so um okay so that's fascinating to me that you're seeing account ads spend uh at those levels you know my hit rate is drastically lower but what we're really good at is producing a really high volume and some of ours hit you know a decent amount of ours hit we'll just put anything they account again launched with manual bids the other last little bit of context here is that you is that every other client or every other creative Str uh creative strategy in the account has also launched the same way that we do right which is manual bid so there's no you didn't get any kind of like a bidding advantage to like tilt the scales towards fire team or or for that matter I don't either even though it's like I actually like run the media buying on this account too like I didn't tilt it towards me you know it's just like just try to serve the client so um so it's fascinating so here's the question that I want to spend the rest of this episode talking about after that long intro why do your ads work why do you how come how is it possible that you and your team are generating you know whatever that hit rate is 70% plus and by hit rate some of them are spending a ton some of them are spending a little bit but they're all they're definitely outspending per ad like spend per ad is like I mean gigantically higher than anybody else in the account why do your ads work Jess well I wish I could say I was surprised at that result but I I'm not um but I I think it's two parts um the the easy answer is that when it comes to cre creative quality is Paramount and it feels like that is it almost feels like that's heresay based off what everyone else is talking about where volume is parab bound but um creative like you can put a hundred million ads into the market like someone has served one impression and that impression needs to matter and that impression needs to do its sort of work um and so to get to that level of quality is like really complicated and really difficult and we have a process for that but uh I just want to say that quality matters it always has and it always will so why do my ads work then I mean I I mean I do actually think we care about quality a lot right I think some of them are good some some of them are extremely simple but I do emphasize volume quite a bit and yep no I I don't know I put out a lot of stuff about creative process and I really believe especially the kind of ad that we're good at I think we're very good at um but but uh I I don't know I mean you could be honest with me too if you think it's like they won't work after a little while if you think fire team ads are going to crush all find that's fine but yeah I think there's no hard and fast rules the ads of RS that do not work I would not say they are not quality therefore they do not work um and I think you can absolutely achieve uh quality I think a lot of it when you run an account the way that you do you give a lot of preference to algor the luck in that happens with the algorithm ter of generating social feedback and those things feeding on themselves as well and comments and and that sort of thing and I think also there are accounts where well so the first thing you need to do is when we look at an account is look at where things are look at the account in terms of stages of awareness and look at the audience in terms of stages of awareness and look at what the account is is hitting what the where spend is flowing and a lot of times at the lower stages where you it's like product aware or you know a solution aware it doesn't you actually don't need a lot of quality to be like uh you have a headache take this I'll make your headache go away there's some people who are just begging for that and um if you can run a volume play to get at that in a different a lot of different ways um that's ideal that that's for sure but the the the hard the more you spend the more you do have to reach at the apples that are higher up on the tree and you have to extend your arm and it's just it's harder to convince those people to to give your money to pay attention you need to do it in very different ways and that that hardness um is a place where the quality shines through and the skill that shines through in going after those people so when we work with Brands like um we actually don't like to get involved too early because you can you can have a good offer and get yourself to 30k a month and spend or something or ear early product Market fit or whatever but I we like brands that are spending a decent amount but also plateau and need something to break through and usually that breakthrough is like I need to reach someone else that the algo doesn't like for whatever reason because the creative is not going there so I need to reorient the algo with creative that does different things speaks a different way and is fundamentally more persuasive for that type of person there's a there's one problem with that explanation for this um which is that uh other creative agencies are not spending in that same account uh and so so what what I mean is fascinating about that is like that the hit rate is so much lower on those Brands and even just like dollar spent per ad however you want to frame it right it's just so much lower like uh there's something going on where your ads are outperforming those other ones and so um yeah so there was a party explanation I was earlier on your comments where I was thinking like I don't think that that works in that case because yeah there's something that you're you're doing differently than what I see other people do um I I don't know I mean I think I think your last comment though is really interesting which is like sort of reaching people you weren't reaching before stages of awareness Etc um I mean this this this account is spending meaningful money on on meta right they're spending they've got seven figure month spends at points and and all that so like so there's there's real dollars being spent this is a relatively mature out account I would say um and we've seen a bunch of growth there and all that stuff but um you talked about the idea of um sort of reaching Beyond what's currently happening and sort of reaching beyond the bottom funnel type customer now I reject a little bit of that notion in the sense that I I can look at the impressions in reach on that account and on every other one that I run and just like running conversion optimized let the machine learning handle it reaches new people like it just does this idea that like you that exactly exactly right and so um and you can sort of validate that a million different ways this is why I really yeah there's sometimes when I sort of reject that explanation of things but still I do think you're right that there's a way in which your ads are are probably like if creative variation is the way you reach new people um you seem to be doing that so maybe maybe start there a little bit more go ahead go wherever you want to go uh well the the account the account has to reach new people is this are you reaching those new people efficiently because the message is aimed for those new people and then those new people have a similar CPA than the bottom fun of people or maybe a little bit higher something like that yeah okay um maybe it just really fast we should tell people a little bit more about who you are and what you do so that people can kind of understand a little bit more because if they've paid attention to my content they know about sort of how I think about creative process again I actually I I don't think quality is opposed to quantity um necessarily uh I think it's possible to do quality at some serious quantity but not probably the way you do it so tell people a little bit about what fire team is is who you are I said your name already but just give a little background and then maybe what we can do from there is break down um sort of places where Brands get stagnate in their creative and how you think you help Brands break through that and we can use that as a jumping off point yep um so I'm Jess I'm the creative strategy director at fire team um we're about 10 people um last last year we were five people so certainly growing um and um we and we've been around for five years we started working with smaller Brands that's a lot of agencies do kind of primarily work with eight and nine figure Brands now because those are the the challenges that we sort of like to tackle um but and there and they have the money and they and that's a point where strategy and like not creative strategy like the thumb stop but like holistic account strategy holistic brand strategy those things really become levers for for brands at that point and it it feels like there's a little bit of a hole in the market for Creative like we used to we used to come from a a primarily a creative agency working with like freaking Nike and Gatorade and stuff not performance-based and then we I left there and now we're in the performance world and like there's this gap between when Brands get to a certain size where you know performance is your freaking brand and how that's positioned to to people and so uh those are fun challenges that that we're tackling at the moment you just heard Jess and I talk about it I build my creative team in the Philippines I was just with them in person with the good people at behindthescenes Studio that's BTS studio.

BTS studio. the link is in the show notes for that um I use BTS Studio to scale up my creative output to make a high volume of high quality edits that can do great work at the design and Video Edit level if you like the way I talk about creative if you're building the kind of creative that I'm building uh then you should be using BTS Studio to do it BTS studio is a design and edit agency based in the Philippines so they're affordable really highquality workers like I said I was just in person with them and they're seeing continued uh new client growth because the quality is there and really really good retention with those clients as well um so if you are looking to scale up your design and edit team to create more ads at a high level of quality faster and at a price that is actually affordable go to BTS studio.co.uk not friends cuz we are we argue all the time um but I can I have definitive proof that we're friends which is this beautiful sty de be there fire team blanket that was sent to me as a gift this holiday it is one of the great it it this set of gifts is maybe the greatest set of like industry gifts I've ever gotten and that's only part of it I've also got fire team against marketing it's having my camera's being fun with it but fire team against marketing game like it's the uh what what's the game called uh Cards Against Humanity it's the Cards Against Humanity marketing specific yeah here's one can you read this oh man that's so funny flooding the ad account with thousands of creative assets and letting algo Jesus Take the Wheel that feels like that that feels like a shot of me honestly you know you've even got you've even got a reference to my faith in there you know inspir insir yeah great great great happy to be some help um yeah so um okay so um so anyway thank you it's the greatest gifts ever that this blanket is like the softest thing I've ever I've ever put on ever so it's great um anyway so we are definitive proof that we're friends you sent me a gift and everything um so yeah um okay so let's talk about where Brands get stagnant on Creative um maybe I'll pose the question to you where when brands are are are stagnating on their creative when they're plateauing why what is happening I think they've have saturated the creative that does the easy lifting um I will I will like the long form explainer which is not it's not easy to make but it's you can you can make it and so I feel like and that and that's why I wouldn't even say we're we're frames or anything because we work very well in an account and like I would not want to work in an account that did not have some long form explainer in it it's just nothing that we're going to make you know yeah um but fundamentally we believe that people make um um emotional decisions uh emotions Drive behavior um when you're when you're lower stage in down funnel and you need to check the box of you need to like be convinced that's where the long form explainer works but higher stage it is really about the emotions that that drive the behavior and what we are very good at is um not using like uh scripts or templates or whatever but like finding what is the emotional core of that audience that's going to get them to take action and I I'll use an example of the count we're in without mentioning them but we have an ad that positions the person positions the difference between a tourist and a traveler and this is the product does not doesn't solve anything really but it very much speaks to the identity of someone who wants to be a traveler and the the pejorative sense that a quote unquote tourist is and so if the ad is like if you want to like you what a tourist is but you want to be a traveler and this will help you do that so like technically that's problem solution but the solution is is their identity identity yeah yeah and doing something like that so that's generally if if we can't find an emotional like we do do some there are some ads that we' made for the account which just like there's a lot of you know this helped a simple problem but generally what sort of rides to the top is is more the identity Focus stuff let me ask you about that this is something I've thought about a lot in my own creative process and something I really believe in which is like you want to resonate the the whole game is emotional resonance right every product in some way like you said like that's how people make decisions um and so but so one of the things I've struggled with at times I've had Sarah ler on a couple times to try to help me through this um kind of stuff thinking through this but like what um what do you do to get at that emotional core for people how do you guys discern that um so it's it's very well it's very much a deep dive into the Persona and nowadays we're doing a lot of um AI Persona work to take as much data that the brand has on reviews and other stuff and build a Persona which is exactly what AI is for you know that that level of research and trying to internalize internalize that can you break that down a little what what do you do you send the reviews through yeah we look at reviews and other scrapes of the website and stuff like that um run it through a bunch of various complex prompts and it generates um both like the technical aspects of persona like these are the things that these are the services that they subscribe to these are the shows that they watch this is the person's name all the way down to these are the different emotional states that uh affect this person are they I and TJ whatever that type of thing I'm not saying that's 100% accurate but it's better than what we had before which was Vibes you know and so this is the thing I think about a lot of persona work and I said this to Sarah actually is that like the thing about that is you don't have to get it right you just need a starting place to jump off point to jump off a jumping off point to make you creative and then the performance of the creative validates the Persona right so like as you launch the creative if it works then you know you're on to something and now you can go make more like it and iterate and all those kinds of things um and so you you need a starting a starting point that gets you somewhere you guys should release that as some kind of a standalone product or like lead gen tool or something like that that would be a really cool thing just like instructions prompts things like that just like a Persona maker with AI like it would be talk about that every day y yeah that would be helpful I I've really struggled with this issue like what is the actual best way to sort of get at that information myself and then okay and then how do you ahead just just to add on the great thing about having that as an AI tool is you can query the Persona like it's a person like what are what are some things ask like what are some things that like make you feel good or whatever and it can do its best job at putting that out and again those what it what the out does not become the ad but it can become the inspiration for the ad you know yeah yeah um so and then how do you actually use that into your process because now what we're talking about is right if people are stagnated because they're not speaking to people sort of at a higher level or or a deeper level or however you want to frame it right you got to turn that research into an ad at some point and into a a script so like make that connection for me what what happens next so we try to understand the person and then the next step is what is the the interesting or I don't want to say like native but like what is the emotional way to to get that across for example um we're working with a skincare brand which I know you're very familiar with I'm not going to say but generally and it's for older it's uh the audience is generally older and so wait is it my SK is it is it the skincare brand that I worked on because you can say that if so I don't know you might have to beep beep it out it's bamboo oh I didn't no oh my gosh you you don't have to be it I don't think unless Dave wants me to um okay we'll I'm gonna make a note to this I'll I'll DM Dave right now I I think it's fine um has he said he doesn't want you talking about that I don't no he hasn't but we haven't like I'll damn him now uh but that's great I think we can talk about that this great so uh they've been really public about I didn't know you were working on bamb birth I'm going to go look at this are you have you already launched ads for them no so we're in the process we're actually we're actually presenting on Friday so um okay great hopefully this comes out later than that but uh yeah yeah yeah so for example like within like you have to you have to not understand the problem but you have to understand the the market or the space that the customer lives in where skincare particularly everything is like you want to you you look old this will make you look young or very much like you're there's all these bags under your eyes this will help and it's and people that go through that have been um hurt over not the hurt but they've been betrayed over and over by getting all these promises so just making those promises is not it so we were thinking like what is a way that we can say that but it's going to be it resonated so we come up with this particular skit where this woman is just like she's doing the routine and she just has this tea about this incident that happened at this store when she was shopping with her daughter and she and the cashier M mistook them as sisters and she was like my daughter was mortified and like for an older woman like this is like the juiciest this is better than someone saying you look young this is this is like the ideal thing so you put the customer in that like while they're doing the product and you don't have to say you uh this will make you look young because that is now disingenuous but you get at it in a much more emotional uh and roundabout way do something that this is something you guys do a lot of that's differently that's different than I think what a lot of people do which is um you do a lot of these like scripted sketches like you you have referenced using quote unquote creators but I don't think that's what you're using you're using actors you know you're just using actors at sort of a Creator level and I don't know if they're like fully scripted memorizing those lines if it's all the way down to that detail or if you're giving them like this is basically what I need you to say it's close enough but like this is this is a thing that really marks your creative in our space I think that's really different than what I think a lot of other places I've noticed this for a while with you guys actually it's that like it is it is like little sketches in that respect it's much more like a traditional traditional commercial um and uh in terms of what you guys do um which I maybe let's just just put our finger on that for a second why do you do that that's got to be a choice that's very different than the explainer you know yeah we do it because for the like this the script that we write we actually do need those words said in a certain way for it to to be pulled off um um we do we we work with some creators that we do allow for a little bit more ad living and stuff but those are like trusted creators that we work with so we do often work with with actors and side note um actors are cheaper than creators they are more thirsty for work um and so if you're if you like can't find a right Creator or you had bad experience with creaters go to your local theater find local actors backstage or something um those people can do where do you find them is that what you do you L go to local theaters yeah so we have a lot of connections to local theaters um backstage we also find people at um as well you know how practically every brand has like a 10% off for your first purchase if you give me your email address offer on their site that is an offer you should be testing and I know that because I just tested a similar offer with a client of mine using inms the client uh the client was running a sitewide offer with a stacked discount if if you added more items to your cart this client lives on aov lives on adding items to the cart and so they were testing different percentages off at different thresholds of how many of their product you added to the cart and what they found was uh they found an option that was producing 7% more profit per visitor uh by changing from the current threshold that they had to a new one that they were testing and I know that it wasn't just a 7% increase in conversion rate I know that it wasn't just an increase in aov that was actually a profit increase because we were using intellig to deploy the test so intellig has the capability of deploying a test like that sitewide which is already awesome it's actually really hard to do that uh kind of a test with most uh sort of average cro software and certainly Way Beyond what you could do back in the Google optimized days but the um but on top of that because intellig measures your actual profit per order not just your conversion rate change or anything else you tie it into your Shopify metrics and you know am I actually generating more profit because if you're going to change something like a discount that's a really big deal right so um so we use intell to deploy that test huge gigantic win we're going to keep testing it and you should be too this is the kind of thing that brands do on their sites all the time they just launch a 10% off offer because that's what somebody told them to do but I've heard other people say the moment they buy e-commerce Brands they shut that offer down because it just eats away at profit you don't have to guess about that kind of thing on your website same with your free shipping threshold same with even your price itself you should get intellig gems now and you should test it there is a link in the show notes of this episode intellig ms.

Andrew Ferris podcast with some dashes in there but go to that link and you can get 20% off your first three months of intellig with the code fairis 20 it's fis2 to get started with intell today it is the most robust cro software profit driven cro software in e-commerce get it right now start testing one of my takes is that like creators are terrible actors the people who are like quote unquote creators you know like and so um the actors you use I think are better than most creators but I uh yeah I think right and so there's levels to this and we we've worked with hundreds of creators regularly we probably work with like eight you know who who we know um do the type of work and and and working with creators is is hard because the good ones can charge a premium they become more expensive the more you work with them and this and that is why it is very important for us to have a good relationship with creators so for us to for them to say yes to our work at not the premium rate uh like we we also need to make money and the clients also don't want to pay $600 whatever you know um sort of leveraging our relationship to do that with the very talented I wonder if that' be true where because I live in LA I wonder if I wonder if people would all charge a million dollars you know or if it's the opposite if there's just so much GL Supply supply and demand yeah yeah right right yeah um everybody wants some work that's this is that's an interesting idea I might I might need to pursue that I should have easy access to those kinds of people because I've I've definitely run into this problem of like who do I use for a Creator because so many of them are so bad and they're so expensive and all that stuff um okay step back another stage for me really fast which is um wait sorry did you finish answering the question uh about uh about why you do the scripted the scripted actor style uh you know SC uh sketch yeah I I think it did because um we need to we need to get we need the script to be delivered exactly how it is and so um like we just come up with very interesting ideas that are that needed that need that type of support I guess yeah okay so and the thing is it's legitimately creative what you're doing too this is another thing that marks me actually one of the reasons I I don't try your thing is because I'm not creative uh I'm in the S like I I'm a I'm a I make points you know I'm I'm an I'm a I'm a non-fiction essayist that's like my my communication style you know which is why like in my content I can like flip on the mic and talk for 25 minutes you know because that's the way I communicate and I'm used to it um but it also is the reason why I don't try to make the kind of creative you do um so I think you could probably apply some of your principles to a bunch of different styles uh maybe you disagree with that and I and I'd love for you to say so if so but um but actually I still want you to step one step back which is like spend a little more time telling me about how you connect Avatar to that bamboo Earth ad or whatever like um like how did you determine like looking being perceived as younger with my skin is the thing this woman wants like that's sort of obvious in skincare but like can you say any more about sort of what what you thought about that yeah it's it's it's easy to determine that's what she wants it's hard to determine what is the the format to deliver that in a way that she's looking for um and I'll say that for for the accounts that we work with um it's not just me coming up with the ideas it's basically the our entire team touches all sorts of things and um like we were even having a discussion today about like have like a 30 minute discussion on what is the thing that the cashier is going to say that's going to sound like they're going to mistake her sisters but isn't going to sound like overly ad and we're just tossing all sorts of back in things together and so um you do need some other people like you can't it can't just be you with Claude to to figure it out you know um it takes multiple people in the room with different perspectives yeah um okay so you you think by essentially uh thinking about stage of awareness and where an not account is in terms of like really trying to reach out with these emotional hooks that that's where people stagnate they just kind of make the same very simple pitch over and over and over again in an ad account and that that sort of stagnates them um and that the answer to that it sounds like you're saying is to Anchor to core emotional drivers a little bit more really to do that you start with research um do you do you have anything else to say about the about how you get at this sort of like emotional core and and what you're doing to um to develop scripts that like really speak to people emotionally any any mistakes people make in that process you just mentioned one which is sort of like doing it poorly but yeah anything else about that process that will help people think through how to do that for eles yeah I I think fundamentally um it's about being a human yourself and allowing you to uh really have empathy and project yourself into other people's situation and where that falls apart is people will get into a they will write a brief that's in Excel that has like agitation problem and whatever and once you're once you once that is your process you've abstracted all the freaking the emotion out of it and you can't put it back in after that um so yeah I don't know how to teach empathy or anything like that but unfortunately for marketing at a certain level it is a critical skill but say more about that I this is actually I had a conversation the other day with a client it was actually the one we're working on together where I was saying like this this client is a highly empathetic person and I was thinking about this this is going to get almost towards my faith a little bit but I thought about the idea of like the notion of love love your neighbor as yourself right I thought I thought like what if you sort of treated your customer as a person to be loved not a person to be sold to how would you communicate to them you know UMES and it's a it's a little close to what you're saying there right the idea of empathy which is like you're just sort of coming in and saying like what does this person really want and and me like one of the things you do you would do right is you would not select absolute crap products to work on that's that's one thing right so you sort of you had that off at the past right so then once you've worked on once you're working on a product that you think actually provide some value back and exchange for people's money now you just have to communicate that like I don't know I'm just curious when you say have empathy for people do you do you think of any specifics of like how that's playing into your process so I I think your lived experience is important um one reason why I think we were're going to do good work for bamboo Earth is because we worked on a while ago uh Sylvester Stallone's wife skin care brand which is basically like botox and it was they only wanted ads which were like you were so ugly this is going to help and I just I did not and that's that's a lot that's one reason why we don't do a lot of weight loss is because I just I just don't want to make people feel bad about themselves and then Pi solution um but I think one exercise that I found helpful um because one thing that I'm really good at is reviewing an ad and making very quick uh edits or suggestions or something and then the way I do it is that I am watching it I'm I'm like viewing an ad but what I'm paying attention to is how I'm feeling watching the ad like even like the slightest hint of confusion I I notice that put a pin in it and and then come back to it like what is causing that confusion how can I fix that uh and so doing that with your ads like watching it but notice how you feel and even like second by second or or you know 5c chunks how you feel and writing that down and then figuring out why you feel that way is is ultimately how you can make a lot of ads better then playing that that will help you develop that empathetic muscle yeah that's a good that's a good start and I actually think Clarity versus confusion is a good place to start um I think uh I think a number one the number one reason ads don't work is because they're not clear and uh yes agreed and and I think most many people can pick that up although I actually think it's very hard to communicate clearly so um so but if you do that and say like do I do I understand why that visual is there do I understand could I use a different visual here this is where I think visuals are communication it's not just copy that's communication it's like visuals communicate um and yes and and so like finding the right visual to pair with text I think really helps um okay so um so you started to talk about the idea of like script um like you know Excel file sort of pre-built scripts a little bit as a problem in some ways now I know exactly why those exist which is you're trying to teach process to people internally and there are some rules rules for communication sell a product yeah that to productized things as well yeah that's true um you you're and I mean but also like I've just try to I've try to teach people this sometimes to say like what am I doing if I just break it down what am I doing in my communication to try to communicate clearly you know and there's some Frameworks you can use to do that um so I'm curious to hear you say more about that what you do you have any internal sop around how you how you organize a script to like get that somewhere or does that work or are you sort of treat everything fresh um not really uh in terms of in Terms ofina how that's fascinating I mean how are you hiring people and getting them to do it like yeah well it I'll say that like we do have some Sops so like the work we did for your client the work we're doing for um bamboo Earth to get to that we have six meetings um five of them are an hour with groups of people one of them is half an hour the first meeting is Way open just like uh we're just randomly talking about other things what what interests us about you know what the client said in our debriefer what are some nuggets or whatever the second meeting it's like we're really trying to figure out what are the things we want to say and it's refinement from there but um the Frameworks don't it's it's like the Frameworks factor into it but what what is is not acceptable is when you're watching an ad that the the Frameworks are visible like you can see the scaff scaffolding of the framework and that's how it works like I think in the stuff we do the Frameworks are still there but they're just kind of invisible in hidden by stuff that's more interesting you know um I mean the counter argument to that is like the people out there who just have like mastered the vsl and can just sell to the Moon with that you know um but but I I think I think go ahead the vssl is the most down funnel thing on earth like so I'll I'll give an example in terms of the stage of awareness like we audited an account and there's a video in there where the found they sell canes or something and the founder is talking about talking about canes and why you need a cane for about four minutes and so the content of what they're saying is is upper stage they're trying to convince you to get a cane or whatever but the only and this was a winning ad the only people who are watching four minutes of this no cut person with not great audio is people who are very lower stage so um the format and like it's the same with vsls the only person who going to sit through 35 minutes of that is someone who's like almost there yeah I don't know I've watched accounts get really big spending a lot of money on vsls I think I I I see your point I think in some ways I actually like communicating to that person specifically uh now it's it's somebody who at least is problem aware and may not be solution aware right but um I I think I think one of the things that I I think about some of this stuff is that people have ve like different skill sets at at um in involved with different different types of ads and so like what one of the things I always wonder when I talk to you is like if anybody should try to do the thing that you do but one of the things I always wonder is when I talk to you is should people try to do your thing or should they just hire you like you know what I mean like what can what do you think about that so besides of course they should hire you well yes they should hire me uh they should also do both but I think a healthy growing ad account does have four agencies in it uh including an in-house team as well um I think the last 30 days for the count that we're on we're getting close to 50% of spend uh that's almost too much I think yeah for an external partner to have and when it gets to that level it's like how what can we do that's a signal that uh the internal side needs to get their act together or you know something else but um I I love competing with other agencies no okay check it but I do love competing with other agencies uh other partners and the the most ideal solution and we do work with some ninef figureure Brands where that is that's an imperative uh you can't hinge your contingency on whatever but like uh a good agency can make good in-house better and good inh house can can really put the screws to an agency to do better and so you want that type of incentive in an yeah what um what do you what do you think with with all of this like if if we're thinking about okay the problem is of stagnation is primarily a problem of people not reaching the right new people and if the problem of stagnation is people um and is a problem of not reaching them emotionally where they're at and they're too focused on scripts help people take some practical steps towards um what they can do to break out of that so maybe it starts with some customer research building some kind of an AI tool even if you won't share yours to to like to do that what what should they start have some empathy what should they start doing to to break out from their plateau and their stagnation again besides just hiring somebody else that's interesting because it kind of depends on where the problem allies determine what the solution should be um one thing that I really like about bamboo Earth is like their customer feedback process is insane for getting that feedback and getting footage related to that and ultimately like the solution is in the reviews and what people are saying not just like the problem solution but the actual words that people are saying um the kernels are there and so like I was just going through um reviews of one of their products and someone said they they like the product they even used it on their grandbaby's bum that had a diaper rash and to me like that's not something chachy B would write that is something that you need that unique anecdote even if it does not relate it's not solving your freaking acne or whatever but you need that to to break into something those already exist in your account somewhere they they exist in the comments of your ads find those develop those into scripts um because they will feel more genuine right now develop that into a script okay that's this is a really good example I'm going to put you on the spot love it as starting point and then let's talk about something else which is something you're focus on which is quality at every stage of the process when we when when we go make the the put it on my grandbaby bum ad uh right let's go let's go make this script so so use that as a jumping off point for how you think and I obviously hold you to this but like how how do you think that turns that observation turns into an actual script um so quickly living the life of of a grandmother who is doing that what is an anecdote or experience that that's going to resonate with that person that older person and I I would love a scenario where so the the grandmother takes the kid for a period of time right they don't keep the kid permanently so they maybe they take the kid for a weekend or something and so the the kid had a rash um the parents didn't know what to do with it they were using other stuff but like the Grandmother Had didn't have freaking diaper cream that's not generally what she has but she put this on there um and it worked and she's telling that story and the reason why that stuck out is because especially with bamboo Earth the products are so natural um you wouldn't do that with freaking you know other stuff you know from CVS or something so it's like Sylvester salon's wife's Botox right for example um so she's she's she's talking about how she's using it but it goes down so fast because whenever her grand you know her grandkid comes over she uses for that but she feels comfortable doing that and so you know because and gets into the particular the reason why she feels comfortable doing that is because you look in the ingredients and it reads like a a shopping list of Whole Foods vers you know something else that's really good because because there's nothing grandma is going to be more precious about than her grandbaby right it's like the ultimate validation of the ingredients it's like it's like a much better way of saying this is a trap I get into a lot it's a much better way of saying uh these ingredients are really clean you know um cuz I can say that these ingredients are clean but the much better way to say that is to show the person who is the person in the situation who is going to be most concerned about clean ingredients in the deepest level of emotions because Grandma loves her grandbaby more than anything in the universe right and what what have they not seen before like you would think a before and after from sagging bags or whatever should do more work cuz that's actually what great question what if they not seen before in a in a highly saturated category yeah keep going sorry but but they have seen before and not only have they seen before that they probably actually tried a product that said the exact same thing and so you can't say the same thing as other people are saying particularly in skincare I mean there's there's a lot of products that are like novel or supplements a lot of people are like trying them for the first time but like skincare it's like if you're 50 you've tried uh you've tried it all so far you know yeah it's really good um yeah I like that so okay so that becomes do you think that's that's the hook in in your ad so to speak the hook like I know maybe you reject that term but like is is do you start on the on that and do you go get an actor to put to put that on a baby's bomb um the hook huh um I'm not sure I I'd have to do some more thinging about what What The Hook is because it also can't be a scenario like I need a as a user or the viewer I need a reason why this is talking to the screen and it can't be if it I think it's because she's pitching that's not it so I need to come up with a way where it's like she has her baby on her grandbaby on her lap and um I don't know maybe she starts with something else and then gets into this or something but I need a plausible reason why she's talking to me right now let me understand that because what you're saying I think is that is that you need some reason for this to be on my social media feed that is not just an ad ESS need to break down you need you need to break down the that's an I got a hook for you I got a hook for you yeah I got a hook for you but is okay but is that why because you you want to you want to break down the it's an Adam skipping it Instinct yes yeah that's part of it so if she's like she's like I'm 50 and I don't i' I don't usually give parenting advice you know anymore but I have to tell you about what just happened that's great yeah yeah yeah that's great that that feels very social um okay that's really good yeah I I know yeah one of them yeah I could think of a bunch of stuff I've seen you do that are like that that's that's really clever it's an interesting way to think about a hook instead of it thinking about it thinking about it as clickbait what you're thinking about it as like what is the reason somebody makes a piece of social content in the first place and then you have to take that as the pathway into the content of the ad um that's really clever I like that I'm going to try that uh I'm going try think I mean I think I do try that but I think I'm going to try with that explicit framework um okay um let's talk about quality a little bit this something I've heard you say in a lot of places um which is that an ad can go wrong in a million different ways I've heard you say that um the the the ad can go wrong at the level of script it can go wrong at the level of actor it can go wrong at the level of edit um T I don't know if there's some places you think ads do go wrong in those phases a lot or just sort of what's your perspective on that is this where people mess up a lot yeah it it is so you could and don't get me you can you can make not great ads that uh are top Spenders in the account that's what I'd call like the local Maxima but a lot of times as you're growing you need to be better than your competitor's top ad in their account and so that is where the pieces really need to come together and sometimes a be minus ad is not it and so um yeah so it's the script the talent and the edit and so it's where this where this all starts to fall apart is when you're thinking of AD production from an efficiency standpoint and you are optimizing for efficiency and the reason why you might be doing that is because you are in a volume state of mind or you're doing that or you're just sort of can't afford it or something but um once you once you and and you should always think about efficiency like we don't want to pay creators a ton of money too especially when they haven't been proven but it is not at the Forefront of our mind when we're not like we're not trying to save $50 on an ad and then hope it spends 100,000 that just doesn't work you know yeah yeah I um I mean the counterargument to to me to that is like like is that you're you're playing a different game than a lot of people are which is that you know you are trying to hit on a much lower percentage of ads I mean you're spending way I I've watched people who I've talked about you guys too be like wait a minute how much am I spending per ad you know and it's like compared to what I do it's like drastically higher and I I do think there's a thing where there's different ways to get here like you know again I'm watching every client I've worked with at this point has has made it from figures to eight figures and is now scaling still and and I'm watching that happen in part uh by just doing the thing we do at a level of quality that we do it at while also trying to maximize efficiency in the process by using some tools to make it happen you know and I think there's a way where you can make ad production so um cheap and fast but again I don't want to just make it say cheap and fast like I think you can still make it good uh I'm my my editing team I think is very good uh like and and I think that they they do really good they have strong resumes like they know what they're doing you know and um at one point a client came back to me and said I don't know I don't like the edits on this and uh and it just doesn't look as good as others and and I'm not sure you know they know that I work in the Philippines like I'm just not sure if that Talent is there or whatever and I went back to him said hold on hold on give me the feedback you want of what you have in mind it was a client where they had they clearly had an idea of what they wanted in their mind and we weren't doing it that way because I didn't think it would work you know so I said will we'll make some that way we'll test it I definitely could be wrong and they they delivered immediately on and they they were Slicker and all these things but it just wasn't what we were doing because I didn't think it would matter you know so it's just one of these things where I'm I'm very slow as you probably know to call something a both and situation um you know I I I think there's a right way a lot more often than a lot of people do you know um you and I have clashed over that at times in the past and um and but in this case I actually think there is like I think there's sort of like a place for both of these kinds of approaches where you can build something where you can build at a at a reasonable quality level maybe not as good as what you guys do I don't have a problem saying that um you know or with attention to details like you do and at the same time that there's a place for the thing you're doing as well and the mistake people make is just thinking like this is it or this is it when in fact like like we've talked about right like what I actually want to do is get you into the accounts that I'm working on I'll do my thing and you do your thing yeah yeah exactly like you need to do both you need to do uh well at a certain size the imperative to do both is more important um and I'll also just say side note uh it's the efficiency and cheap thing is not onshore versus offshore like you found you found excellent offshore Talent hold on to those people um keep doing it you know that's that's that's the ideal scenario yeah yeah um okay um what do I I'm curious in the edit process what do you think what do you think people get wrong in the edit process what do you what do you guys do well that you think other people get wrong um so just like in the the IDE ideation hits multiple people um we have a slack Channel where the edit goes into and everyone at least has the opportunity to participate in that particular edit um I think a lot of I think I think one issue that people do is they don't make edits they don't they aren't critically watching it and understanding how it could be better or whatever um we I it's so rare for an ad to come through on the first pass that we then pass to the client like there's almost always one round of edits uh sometimes more and so that's just part of the process and it and it needs to be and you need and developing the skill to make edits is is a little bit different than the skill to like come up with ideas and stuff and so you need to be able to do that as well so you think part of that is just just te the time to do it essentially just just like making sure that you're actually doing it it's not a problem that people are doing it wrong so much as they're just not doing it yeah or you know people might not have if you if you are not an editor you might not have the skills to know that like hey can we like speed ramp this or can we cut you know these seconds out or something so you might not be able to give that feedback to an editor after you get the you know the shot back and so uh if you can't the reason why people hire Ed is because they can't edit you know I'm I'm generally I'm like a generalist in terms of creative so I can do a lot of these different things and our editor our internal editor will also give feedback on our external editors as well so there's just layers of feedback that can happen um the efficiency part is doing that very quickly and I'm a I'm a huge process guy so doing that in a situation where it doesn't bog everything down is where our efficiency comes in and where our costs are kept done yeah makes sense I mean you guys have some of the best creative process I've ever seen like on your last episode you did with me you were talking through some of that and showing some notion cards or something like that and it was like astounding to me how detailed it was and how how well done it was you know and I think you told me that was just scratching the surface so U people should go watch and listen to that uh it'll it'll be linked in the show notes as well or just search ad feris just Bachman you'll find it um but um okay let's see we're about out of time is there anything that I missed in this conversation that you think people should hear um yeah man there is so much that you missed I think we should do a third episode I I'm dude I'm completely down so uh let's definitely make it happen all right yeah all right uh go work with Jess uh Jess where should people do that um fire team.is is our website everyone says it's it's the best website ever so check it out it is a great website uh people should go look at it um you can also reach out to H High fire team on X which is where most of our interactions are if you follow us both you'll probably see us argue about something at some point um and uh yeah man this is really great uh let's uh keep smashing I'm excited to see what happens maybe maybe uh maybe at some point we'll get me you and daon if you guys Crush for bamboo Earth and we'll do some ad breakdowns or something like that because they've been pretty public with stuff so yeah put on the calendar I'm sure we will all right man thank you all right thank you I absolutely loved that episode I love talking to Jess anytime I get to do it we will do a third episode at some point because he's just always got really good things to say so make sure you subscribe wherever you're watching or listening so that you don't miss said on that when it happens we pretty for sure will actually do that I also have a bunch of good episodes coming up some more interviews including Jeremiah premer from no Commerce just a great guy with all kinds of data in our space that nobody else really has um Aaron oror coming soon always great to talk to Aaron got Olivia Corey from house analytics talk incrementality that's going to be a great conversation Shireen Auber one of my very favorite guests to ever have on this show because I think it'll be her third time on the show because she's hilarious and she's also extremely brilliant and I just Giggle and also learn things the whole time uh don't forget to also reach out to me at ajfc for everything that I'm doing you can email me at podcast aaf.com or follow me on X Andrew J Ferris do follow Jess as well hire fire team and go work with those guys um and don't forget to follow up with my sponsors that's BTS Studio behind the scenes Studio BTS studio.com Merce brand for your agency they can do both of that kind of work and also of course intell gems to do c testing test your sitewide offer test it right now and don't forget to use the code feris 20 to get 20% off your first three months thanks so much for watching or listening I'll talk to you next time [Music]