Ugly Ads Work. Trust Barry Hott (And Me). transcript

[Music] Barry hot is on the podcast at long last Barry and I talked about doing this for quite some time and he's here and we are going to talk today the master of ugly ads himself the king of ugly ads in the world of meta advertising Barry hot and of course Barry actually is a super experienced Advertiser if you know Barry across a whole lot of different stuff in the world of meta ads but has carved out the ugly ads role for himself complete on this episode if you are watching it with multiple stick and a hat uh all pointing towards and a neon sign all talking about ugly ads so that's the thing we have to say is that very hot is the ugly ad sky and that is the reason that is the number one reason I brought him on today we can talk about all kinds of stuff with meta ads but I have been experimenting in a lot of ways with my clients with what can only be described as ugly ads including the posted note ad no and I and I'm ready to talk with Barry about what I can be doing better how to make my ads uglier and more effective at the same time and so I am shamelessly stealing time from him by having on podcast to talk about great advertising on meta ads using ugly ads and we may get into some media buying stuff who knows who knows as Barry and I talked about in the intro there's a real good chance that we could talk for many many hours about meta ads uh and we have before we have we have before yeah so all right so okay Barry is here his resume is very long the point is he's an experienced Advertiser and you should listen to what he has to say about these things let's talk to very hot about how to make more money on meta ads that's the point here sick intro thank you Mr you're so welcome Barry welcome welcome to the show the The Vibes are positive and and high and jolly I would say right now well let me let me change that real quick because Andrew I want you to know while we're recording I want this to be on the record I am such a big fan of yours I wish I could say I wish I could say I'm your biggest fan I can't say that because I know you have more rabid fans like I just and that's like the biggest compliment I think I can pay you uh I watch a lot of your content uh and I consume you know I think I consume every tweet you put out and I I'm a very big fan of what you say and some of my favorite things that other people say about you which I co-sign is how fair and reasonable and you listen to other people and you even when you disagree and it's very pleasurable and enjoyable to to argue or or to battle with you yeah because you're not you don't take it personally you're not being you're not attacking you're not being defensive it's just a joy and it's a treat and I don't even know we're going to disagree about much on on this today disre day we should have disagreement pod in the future where we just go I am a big fan of yours thanks that's so nice of you to say you know that yeah well you know I don't even know I remember maybe just through some Twitter stuff you had come out to that's a really it's really nice things you just said to me thank you very much I did have somebody say to me recently something about like well what's it like to be like uh you know have you thought about having like a more public presence and I was like bro like I am not a big like I have like you are significantly overestimating how much people care about my stuff so you're natural at this man you're you're really a natural at this that intro is killer like I mean every like everything you do on this is like you really do Crush at this and what sucks perhaps is then that you have to deal with the maybe not fame but like whatever that is of people admiring you from afar no I it's is not fame is not I mean gosh I feel ridiculous even bringing it up like that is so is there's some I think what it is that DDC is not that big and that so you just it's just not that big of a community and so you could sort of be connected to quite a quite a few people pretty fast so but anyway what was I going to say to you Barry it was something about oh when you came here you were in LA and I we didn't even really know each other but it was like Hey we've connected a little on Twitter let's go sit down it was a great time I told I remember leaving you and I were going to go take a nice walk down to the beach I said let's go look it's a beautiful sunset well it'll be it'll be romantic it'll be wonderful but but I remember looking at my phone be like it's a half an hour past when I told my wife I would be home and I have small children and I still have to drive 20 minutes I felt so bad afterwards I I like called her furiously in the car I was like I just we just got talking and I don't know so yeah that was how it was so I'm so sorry about that and I've not forgotten about that and I like think fondly of that like I want to yeah it was great I think back I want to just I mean this is not great maybe podcast material but like seriously like I now realize I'm trying to optimize more for getting to to do more of that with people that I respect and care about and who are just smart experts and I want I just am getting I get so much energy from it and so much joy from it so I'm trying to optimize for that so like even if this wasn't recording at all right now like I just want to be with you man like I just want to be here you yeah well I now have two New York clients so you know uh so next next time I'm out there there I'll uh I'll definitely I'll definitely hit you I'll steal them I'll steal them for you don't worry about that yeah it would save me some travel dollars for if you ran their ad account instead of me so that would be fine okay listen Barry I feel embarrassed to say it but the Post-it note works it works man the Post-it note ad works and there's a lot of other things to say about ugly ads and I know that ugly ads are not just posted not ads I know there's a lot more to it but here's the main thing I want to start with today I've been thinking a lot about creative strategy recently and I am planting my flag on the long form explainer I've recorded some content about the long explainer yeah as like one of so this is like one of the things that I think just like works and doing a great job on that works I'm I've got more content about that and we can talk about that in a minute but the other flag that I'm starting to put down I'm not quite and it's not really my flag I think it's yours actually is essentially the ugly ad and there's a couple things that I really like about the ugly ad okay one of them is it's exceptionally cheap and fast to make including with many iterations which lends right into to my media buying strategy Etc uh so being able to do that at scale fast matters and then secondly um I think you are right that ugly ads very often outperform non-ugly ads probably not all the time probably not for every brand I think but it's they just work they the concept of being socially native works and that what that amounts to what social Mount will probably change over time but the basic idea really can matter and if you pair that cheap easy to develop at scale with great messaging boy you can do very very well for an extremely low cost and in so I am bringing you here to tell people not only to do this but how to do it so let me start with the Post-it note ad and I just because I think it's just like a great jumping off point so talk about poting note ads go yeah I mean first of all you don't even need me here you just I'm like I'm just furniture at this point you just like nailed all of it you're here's here's where I'm really going you're going to have a a bunch of other ideas about types of ugly ads that I'm not thinking about and so that's actually where I want to get to eventually but right now just talk about how you thinking about that I've come to call the post not ad the text and context ad the idea is text is in the context of the image and so that post it is one example but you can do it with I used a letter board all kinds of stuff whatever yeah anything literally write on your write on your hand you know like you can just put it in in the world and especially if you can keep that relevant to what it is like if you're selling like beach blankets put it in Rock in the Sand Dude like that costs nothing to go do that and take a picture of it like have you done rocks in the sand no I've thought about this well because I live in Southern California so I've thought I can get to the beach I can get to the beach easy but New York yeah so I mean what what else though talk about more like what are the text and context ads that you see work what are the keys to doing it just say something about that for people you got it so really I mean the whole thing about ugly ads in particular this text in context thing right Post-It note Post-it notes are just a gateway drug right it's just like an easy way to like you said it's cheap it's easy it's quick you can just get an idea out and just get it done and do 20 of them and then you're doing copy testing for basically zero dollar and you know the the wild thing is no one does a good job there's maybe like one% of marketers or media buyers or whatever that like takes into account the cost of AD production into their cost per acquisition right but like that's basically zero people are doing that no if you're doing that and you hear this please tweet at me or DM me or something and let me know how you're doing it because I'm sure you're not but like that is a cost right we can't just spend endless amounts of money on Creative especially when you know a big swing can be really expensive and miss so it makes tons of sense just to be making lots of stuff and tlor holiday to call this cost to impact ratio right like potential impact relative to the cost as a way of as a way of sort of conceptualizing the the the thing and I'll just tell you like with what you're saying there pairing that with in my opinion bidc or cost CA or manually bid creative testing reduces the cost even further it takes this giant thing if you if you can make your ads really cheap and test them for really cheap like or you know man you it's just crazy the impact can be the cost can be very low the impact can be very high I I mean I definitely agree but going back to like poit like what are what are some of their text overlay Styles like look at like other just look at what Native ads exist like not even excuse me not ads don't look at ads native organic content go find content that is being consumed by your consumer go find content that is being consumed by millions of people right like go and look at that really broad stuff that millions of people are liking and engaging find viral meme Pages find whatever it is the thing I I recommend everyone do is if you have a brand you're working on or a problem you're working on go make a new Instagram account go make a new Tik Tok account about that thing and only consume content and pursue it and like it and engage with it from that interest I have one I look at for car stuff like and it's the ads I get the organic content I get is all car related right so it's like it's as if I'm a totally different person and I look at what those people are consuming natively organically and I try and find what can I reproduce from that so some of those are like you know how like a tag if you tag someone on Instagram post and you like tap it and it shows up as like a little overlay with the thing or a product you can build that into an ad just that style like you don't have to actually make the tag you can just do that in Photoshop or figma or whatever and then it looks native and you can do that on a organic looking type of picture and it will look and feel native you can do text overlays like everyone hates this I feel like so many marketers hate this but like the most common like Instagram font Instagram text overlay like white background black text it works well as an ad when it's native font don't use your branded font don't use your branded colors it works well for a bunch of reasons the most important of which is that that is the font and color that it defaults to and because of that most people make content with that and thusly a lot of people consume a lot of content that uses that it also helps that's high contrast easy High readability so like those are all things in favor of making stuff that doesn't look immediately and feel immediately like an ad and does look and immediately feel like something that people might want to consume because people are not on Facebook Instagram Tik Tok to view your very pretty ads even your biggest fans are not there for that those are the people that tolerate it more and like it more but those are those people are not on Instagram to go and engage with your brand they just they do and they they're okay with it but like that's not what they're there for yeah so okay there's a lot of things I could say about that so that second ad type you just mentioned which is the let's say phone quality image of your product with the white background black text caption overlay style that is usually what is going on is the other kind of AD besides the text and context ad that I would put in the ugly bucket that I most invested in with my clients right now and I'm starting to do this at real scale and the thing is there's a lot that I love about this concept as well so those two things we call them socially native Stills that's like the name for it and sometimes socially native videos will do the same thing with simple motion right so it's like five seconds somebody holds the product and kind of moves it around or whatever and just got the overlay there as well we haven't played with that quite as much yet but then social netive Stills and a lot of times we're pulling those from review platforms and things like that as long as we have licensing to do that I think the rules on various review platforms are different but you just pull actual images from customers especially if you're not showing their face they don't care if it's just the product and they and you can just grab this again for free in this case almost free it cost you probably a few dollars but here's the thing I love about this too is that I I will say you should basically never create an ad what you should create is five versions of an ad and launch them oh I so you tweeted that today you tweeted that today uh and I loved that tweet deeply and it did not get as many engagements as I thought it well just tweet let's see let's maybe I maybe if you would amplify it with your massive Barry hot reach but if you're going to sit there and hoard all the likes for yourself don't I feel like you have more I I I don't think so anyway the point is the point who cares I'm retweeting it right now so I was joking I was joking you don't have to retweet it keep them to yourself if they go to me then maybe they yeah no but this is true because then what it allows me to do because at that point I think the copy on the image makes a massive difference in the performance huge and you can test that copy with variations so fast and so easily you know it's like you can try just like and here's my method for doing this with with the way you're saying and I do the same thing with text and context ads I always have one of them that I consider sort of the control it's not truly a control it's because randomiz control Tri but it's basically control and and the control is the most direct simplest clear line of copy I can think of about the ad like I mean we're talking about like this product is great for this reason like essentially something like that you know and so that's always one of them that's always one of the ads and then I've got like four or five other sometimes I'm pulling actual review comments sometimes yeah like sometimes I'm like making stuff up or whatever but basically like that kind of idea and then you just go launch all of them at once and yeah I find with those ads they are rarely my highest spending ads in the ad account but but at least one or two of them consistently gets some spend and so there is some addtive value to them and also they get varying levels of spend so if I launch six versions of it one of them will get a good amount of spend another one will get a little bit of spend and then four of them get nothing and so that's part of the reason to launch six versions right is because if you only launch one of the four that got nothing you you didn't get anywhere but it took you you get to place free bets like literally why not the way I I look at that is like I'll have I I don't know I maybe call it a control but like I'm going to whatever my like kind of thought is I'm like okay how do I overdo this how do I go harder into this way way Beyond and then also how do I like reel this back in that way if I get to see a winner I get to see where it falls on that Spectrum you know and like where I'm going there by the way you said like you'd want to use like the words like this is the best whatever yeah if you can use the word you as the first word instead of this like find the way to make it about you like I don't think tell you that that's funny though okay matter let's argue let's argue let's argue right now matters no you're wrong about this here's my agreement here's my here's my here's my here's my position here's what I believe about this I think that I actually don't really disagree that much about this I don't think you is the problem but I think more direct comment about the product feels more more like it gets away from fake authenticity cuz I think the the danger with ugly ads is that people sniff out that it's inauthentic really fast and the the mo the most extreme version of this is the fake ugc it's the I'm obsessed at the I'm obsessed fake ugc sucks it doesn't work very well I think and I also feel gross about it probably did but I feel also gross about running it because it like it's content I hate I feel like I'm representing the brand in a crappy light but the moment you change I'm obsessed in the ugc to this product is great you can actually use the same kind of format pretty well and pretty effectively it's just that it's just that like as I've said Creator is another word for bad actor so like when you say I'm obsessed people can sniff it out and so anyway so it's so it's fake authenticity that then actually then actually works against the value prop so I think you and I maybe don't work as well but third person this it it's great I couldn't disagree more oh Andrew we could spend an hour talking about this no let's not spend five minutes tell me tell me why you disagree Andrew Mr Ferris come on like I or You language is is the direct route in when you use U language which you have to be a little bit careful about on Facebook is you don't want to say like you have herpes Facebook will will shut you down don't do that um so no herpes outs definitely don't accuse someone or suggest that someone has an illness like go I first by the way anyone listening to this I've studied Facebook's terms and policies like I recommend anyone who's running Facebook ads get real intimate with that it's very helpful don't okay say stuff like that you'll get on a lot of trouble and you won't I'm gonna send you a make herpes ads hat I will not wear it but I will proudly keep it in my office make herpes ads U don't make herpes ads but like but the here's the thing about the like I'll stick with the herpes for a second like if you said you have herpes question mark or like do you have herpes like you're gonna get flagged that's a problem but if you said if you had an someone in the ad saying I have herpes okay that's not against the rules and anyone who's watching that who has that problem is now in the shoes of that person who said that where if it's said as text on the screen or if it's being said verbally the viewer the consumer is putting themselves in the shoes of that and they if it's relevant to them then it's relevant to them and it's important if it's not relevant to them then they're going to keep then they're like I don't care goodbye so that I or You is potent absolutely potent that's like classic copywriting it might work for Stills better than videos to have the eye because you don't have the the person doesn't have to ask or doesn't have to act but I I just think almost every ad I run with I gets crushed compared to the same content the same messaging saying it or this now I I have to say it must like I it would have to go look at the ads with you because like it has to be related to what's being talked about you can't just say I and then it matter like you can't just say you and then it works it's not that you have so I have a brand that sells gifts for travelers okay gifts for travelers and every time we've tried to run formats that say you know and we've tried all kinds of different versions of this I love this for my travel obsessed friends or whatever it is it gets crushed um and because it's terrible like no one cares about that well yeah I mean that might it might just be bad but the moment you just feature the product and then say here's why it's great for travelers it it sells like crazy all right well let's let's talk about that then because we're talking the reason is I think I think it's because people suck at acting they just it's because it's so clearly and everybody everybody sucks at it they just people can just tell right away this is an ad fake I don't believe you it sucks this product sucks it's bad yeah but okay so we're actually going to talk about the real Nuance here which is exciting okay because it's not about just simple language it's actually a bigger thing like first of all that there's too much that has to get unpacked for that to be said for that for the consumer the of that ad to care I love this thing that like blah that's so much right and that thing you're talking about also probably doesn't solve a problem and I'm very sure I know what client you're talking about I'm very sure I know this product and I'm very sure it is something that is the wander Club I don't think it's that yeah yeah I I didn't think so either I just didn't want to say it because I knew I knew what you were talking about yeah yeah but like it is a product that is visually interesting now if you have a product that visually is interesting the rules the game changes a bit right I got really annoyed I'm gonna call out your call out Taylor I love I really like Taylor holiday I I really like but I also love disagreeing with in a different way yeah it's it's my the it's the fifth grade American sport disagree with Taylor yeah yeah right he posted about like how Kao Cayo is it the Rings yeah is that it yeah like why they're like What's it called ads like work so well they're they're yeah the team Enzo and that yeah the the product like the DPA ads or whatever like work so well and I was like be yeah they worked so well because there was visually like unusual like it was something that was like people didn't know like didn't understand what it was and it immediately UND it was immediately unambiguous as to like where this goes how you would use it and why like it was so simple yeah and like copy maybe the the thing that ties those two products together because the copy that worked there I ran that's how that's that was my first media buying job that's how I learned media buying was was running was doing Med buying for K in the days when you would exclude Instagram from your placements because it didn't perform so like right after they they launched the ad product and when we did that the headline on those ads was silicone wedding rings and I think to your point that's kind of interesting and and even though it's like really straightforward right because it's like what yeah so now now actually now actually not that also you know what it means yeah right it's it's one of those few things where in three words you got me like silicone is also an interesting word itself right just to get get attention silicone wedding rings you've explained the entire thing in three words and people are already reading that and starting to be like wait why would that exist oh wait right it actually makes sense know like I think you're right well so but it ties together maybe the wander club and Kalo in that sense is that they are category creators of their own you know like I I mean the wander Club doesn't I don't know that like you know travel tokens is necessarily a category or anything like that but it's the introduction that it's not it's not like selling supplements where it's like there's a million versions of this or skincare there's a million versions of this product and now you have to talk about why yours is good and the other ones are bad or something like that you can't just say like multivitamin you know it's like yeah yeah so what who cares like there's a million multi that game doesn't work that way so so what you're saying is interesting maybe maybe then I'm with you here a little bit maybe the thing maybe if you're selling multivitamins you actually want I had a great experience with this multivitamin whereas I specifically had this problem you really want to talk about the problem that ITV right felt before that's what I would always start with but with this with wander club like it's really one of those things where grab attention with the product yeah in the right setting too but like the product itself is kind of like it's a like a washer on a key ring type thing like not anymore they overhaul it's it's a beautiful beautiful new version yeah oh super sorry I didn't mean to over it's fine yeah but like effectively whatever it is you'd look at it right you'd see there are things that make sense to your brain but also you've never seen before but also have words or or like relevant things on it so you're like it already it's just like triggered a lot of emotions and connections and things that all make sense simply whereas a lot of other products don't simply make sense okay but I'm GNA give you a different example I so let's go let's go to apparel because I have had massive success recently my old theory of apparel is that own pce of creative and what I mean is like if you literally have the same image but 50 different products it's all but they're all framed the exact same way they're going to perform wildly differently because a red version of the product versus a Black Version versus it's going to have nothing to do with price or like it's going to be so completely at least not at the click level right at the click level at least what sells best what sells best and is most is yeah it's wild yeah yeah but I have recently instead seen significantly well really excellent performance but yeah this this doesn't work very well for my example because at that point if you're wearing it so I've seen really excellent performance with some ads that are just talking all about just like product product product product product and the way I thought about this for apparel is what you want is you want the custom you want the customer to try it on in the ad so that that's the goal I'm trying to do with my creative I want them to have a sense that that as they watch the ad they are having because the thing they can't do is go into a dressing room and try it on so you have to get them as close to that experience as possible at the odd level by talking about anything about how it stretches how it washes how it fits how it whatever you know any of those kinds of things and all the while they're gonna have a sense of whether they think it's cute or not you know or they think it's attractive or not because they're gonna see that in the ad that's the thing they come back to is like ambiguity there's most apparel there's very little ambiguity like most apparel it's just like how does that look do I want it right there's some differentiation in terms of like more premium things luxury things or if you're like getting into something that has a specific feature or a benefit right like there are some but it's still often going to come down to what what's gonna make it work or not is does that immediately register something I want visually yeah yeah and that's 90% of the battle so do you have C product categories that you I mean do you have is there a master ugly ads document somewhere at ugly ads HQ that is like in a file somewhere it's like okay in apparel do do this in supplements do this in category creators all up here I need to I need to like lay it all out and like I got to make my course man I got to like get that all out well see this is this is actually why I want to talk to you because I I was thinking about this I'm trying to build out more internal process around your range of products around a range of clients to think more directly about each one about how you apply some of these principles uniquely to the categories cuz you're convincing me on some of these things a little bit that like maybe I maybe my first person my frustration with the the first person is wrong maybe actually I need to think rethink that and it's about the category yeah and so what I've tried to do is start to layer in some of these and and I you know the problem with that exercise is that you you begin to find subcategories of categories and like the web of possible categories gets endless really fast you know but maybe it's not maybe there's five categories or something like that that like most brands fall into and you can basically have some best practices for each I try I honestly like I don't think I have lot of rules like when you cuz like I don't think there's ever going to be a time where I'm like oh I or You statements only work or only don't work like I would never I'd have to try it 50 different ways or hundreds of different ways before I really rule something out which is why I've ruled out like most pretty ads because they've just lost so many times but like you know something more nuanced like that like when there's so many variables about it I'm constantly I'm not saying you don't do this as well but I'm constantly back testing against my own hypothesis like okay like I I don't think this works you know usually but I'm going to try this again just because I can throw in this version and like it's often it's like uh you know you said this but the thing I that really pisses me off is when people start with the word we and when they're talking about we as the company if they talk about we as like we as humans or we men who wear hats right like that's okay but if we talking about we the company nobody cares to read anything about what the company has to say yeah we make the finest you know suitcases who cares no one like write it in a in a more personal way a more relevant way so I don't know like that's when I hear that's the thing I get annoyed about with you Andrew is when you're when you say like I don't think the I or You thing is like right I'm like I think it's just like you're like window of it that's all I'm looking all I'm looking for is rules because what I want is repeatable principles yeah right yeah and I want those and not it's not just to make my job easy it's because if you go into every Brand This is actually one of the problems people have if you go into every brand with a blank page and you stare at the blank page for where to start yeah there are too many possibilities and so I recognize that for media buying stuff I tend to think I'm pretty close to always right in terms of the best practices not that not that every position of mine is right but just that that like the best practices are right in most cases I really reject the notion that like there's multiple ways that's going to C I recognize that that's probably true to some degree on the edges but I think most people should do it my way that's what I think the vast vast majority and I feel like most people should do it my way which is slightly different than yours but the important thing I think we would both agree on is whatever nuances there are between what you do and what I do it doesn't [ __ ] matter just be consistent and be thoughtful I and then you're fine I don't think true I think that there are ways in which my way is either better or worse than your ways and and it's not that I'm necessarily certain that I'm right it's that right now nobody's convinced me that I'm not right about those about anywhere where you and I would have a disagreement and so I would need to be moved on the position and I think some ways are actually better than others but with creative with what you're saying it's more reasonable to me that there would be like actually the first person can work really well for some Brands and you're just doing it wrong or something like that like it's it's a little less it's a little less fixed but that said I want to eliminate the blank page and this is part of what I'm trying to do like I have talked about creative buckets before something like this I I want to make it so that when I sit down to work on a brand or when my team does we have a few things where we're gonna say we're actually not even going to go down that road and it that road may be useful but at least until we go down the road that we think is going to work the best the most often and get really good at doing that and then once we have dialed that in in our and have repeatable process around those possible things then we will allocate some additional time and budget towards exploring New Frontiers and so like the idea would be like and maybe the way I think about this is like 80% of your time and budget is built on scaling up repeatable process around corporate princi that work and then you've got a little bit of extra stuff on the side where you're tapping resources that you wouldn't normally tap you go to a different kind of Creator who you think is interesting you go to an Advertiser yeah you reach out to fire team and say like hey we want you to make some you know something that's just outside of outside of whatever you're normally doing and saying like we want some additional brains that are going to be think differently than us specifically because we know creative diversity matters and because I don't have all the ideas so so that's the way I think about so for principles here I'm trying to think like okay apparel what is mostly true in most cases that will mostly work in apparel and you know and so this is why to bring it all back around I brought you on today because I thought yeah ugly ads work and there's some things where the cost to impact ratio works that's a principle that we can is replicable and you can test them at scale and so how do we do a great job scaling up ugly odds as one of the buckets that we pursue well say anything you want I want to I want to hear more of your rules honestly I really just want to hear more of what some of where your rules are so I can pick them apart cuz like I might have rules right but like they're going to be broader like my rules are like make people feel something like that's my rule like that's my rule okay that let's go there let's do that let's do that that's a good one stop there for a second make people feel something yeah what do you mean in the first moment moment I mean frame five frames you know second if I'm not making someone feel something you've I've failed you've failed of things there's a lot of things I want people to feel curiosity is a big one um discomfort broadly like if I can make someone insecure really fast I hate that I say that and I hate doing that like I don't feel good about that um but it works like if I can that's a route that I'm looking for how do what are the maybe they should feel insecure I work with uh ad crate works with tushy but days and it's like I want every American to feel insecure about not having a bedet in particular not having a tushi bedet but not having a bedet yeah like and there are so many ways I can make you or anyone listening feel insecure about not having a bedet like that's one of my favorite things I get to work on because there so much of that is novel to the audience all of these insecurities and all of these like feelings I can make someone feel and them immediately be like whoa I need a bedet I should have a bedet I I love that so like it's you know it's about making you know I can dig into the examples of that do you have any methods or you know formula is probably too strong of a word but anything that you think of as like I know that if I want to make somebody feel something this is the route this is the basic structure of the message yeah so that's why I go back to the IU statements because I know I'm I can already make make something that's relatable and and it has to be authentic to your point before like yeah if you have people saying eye statements and they're inauthentic or they're not relevant relatable or making someone feel something then they're useless like they're worse than anything honestly to your point like those are just terrible so some of the things like what first of all chat gbt just put that in there and say pain points like here's the product I'm advertising what are the pain points right what are the common pain points what are the in order of you know most common pain to to least and like you get 10 and you know that is way easier than doing like market research you know and calling customers whatever you're it's so accurate and useful and usually it comes up with two three things that I wouldn't have thought of or known because I'm not in everyone's heads and I'll start going on that and you can also say to chat gbt like okay what are some statements that you could make about that in an ad or maybe not even an ad and then what I really do I'll go in the reviews for the product and I'll upload them to chat gbt uh I used to just do this in a spreadsheet and just search but I'll upload it to chat TBT and say find me past tense eye statements because those are where you're finding people that talked about I had this problem I was this I couldn't do this right relatable problems that were then as soon as you start reading that or hearing that your brain the consumer's brain starts solving it and assuming that whatever they're watching is solved by this product right this ad solves whatever that problem is and they're about to find out what that is they're already being how often do you do that a lot for yeah okay great yeah that's a great example of what I'm talking about like that's like a repeatable process where you're using a couple of things and a couple tools to come up with a way of of replicating this for brand yeah that makes makes a ton of sense I don't have them necessarily written as rules ad crate so I I advise ad crate i p crate like they have that written out nicely better than I do but like a lot of these are just native to me they're just in my head I've talked in this episode about the notion of cost to impact ratio and that is the very simple idea that you should take asymmetric bets in your business bets where you pay very low cost and you have massive upside I believe that is one of the core reasons you ought to be considering Staffing your business in the Philippines with my friends at more Staffing as your guide to recruiting training onboarding coaching incredibly eCommerce talent in the Philippines more staffing has done this a bunch they've done it for a bunch of folks who have listened to my show I yet to hear I mean this I'm yet to hear a bad word about the experience somebody's had with more Staffing from people who have been listening to my ad reads watching my ad reads about more Staffing on this show for a while there are a lot of them and who've worked with them it is consistent Rec ly been great feedback I use them for my own business and it is because of cost to impact ratio you can find incredible talent in the Philippines to staff up all kinds of parts of your e-commerce business like I'm talking marketing supply chain inventory planning all kinds of stuff customer service whatever your needs are and as you find that Talent you pay them a premium price in the Philippines but that is still lower than you would pay that same talent in the US which means you attract incredible Talent people with deep resumes High Integrity hardworking really talented folks into your e-commerce business from the Philippines and yet you do that at a lower cost than it would be to do the same thing in the US which saves you money it is a winwin go explore it if you are expanding any part of your team in your business I really don't know why you wouldn't consider working with more Staffing to do it they will be very very helpful to you and they even have a one-year guarantee they even have a one- year guarantee so if the employee they place in your business doesn't work out for a full year they will help you replace them at no addition charge more now.co go to more now.co tell them I sent you go to more now.co to work with more Staffing and staff up your business in the Philippines today do you have a team like what like do you have a team I have one person on my team at Great has a large team I have one yeah right yeah so I don't have a big team I and so and part of the reason for that is that I don't have I think one possibility that I ever try to like grow AJF growth as a real agent is that I am able to generate some of these things these ideas into documented processes and that would make it at least a little bit easier for people now at the end of the day you're GNA have to have you're gonna have to have a talented person at the end of the day right but to have some principles talk to you I could talk to you this about this for hours because like right you can't scale yourself and you're an expert and you're skilled and you're talented and there's only so much that you can train to someone else to execute at your level or even close to your level and then more you you grow the the less it all gets you lose all that quality no matter how good you are at training or or process or documentation yeah I mean I the thing I've watched people go every which way like grow too fast grow grow slow all those kinds of things and and seen this go a lot different ways but I think I think you're right I think there's just like a question of like how much of this is processed versus Just DE like welldeveloped instincts after doing it for a long time right and I I think it has to be more processed than than people think but probably also not enough to make a person who doesn't get it into a person who gets it like I don't think you can solve eventually and I think experience will matter yeah the Instinct thing is really is such a great Point I've been thinking about this a lot recently how like there are certain things about like metrics Facebook metrics that I just don't care about but like the only reason I can say that I don't care about them is because I spent so much time studying them and and paying attention to them and understanding the trends of them that I'm just like okay yeah I don't need to I don't need to look at that I don't need the I don't need to answer this question I don't where someone with less experience sorry no offense to everyone with less experience like that they have to look at that to better there's no reason to be offended about experience though right it's like you it's like that's that's the point is like you build up intellectual Capital with experience and that's that's why it's irreplaceable in a lot of cases you know this is why actually people are not paying you or probably me for per widget that we put out what what what people are paying somebody is for their brain and and for the for the experiential Capital they've built up over time well they're what they're really paying for is their expectation of it right what they're sold on but like yeah I mean I have done 20,000 hours right you know like right that's insane and like I didn't realize that how valuable that was until I started going out on my own and people being yeah anyway it's and this but this does answer some of the thing of like what you know people will say to me well like come on there's multiple ways to do it Andrew why is your way right and my answer is it's because there's there are better and worse ways to do it and yet there are also multiple ways to succeed and what I mean is no one of these things is the only important component of success so like let's just pull a number out let's say 20% of the success of an ad account is Media buying then that 20% and let's say 24 I don't know I I'm not I just I don't think that I I just pull the number out of th a like I don't even I don't really have an opinion about I just want to challenge you on something interesting I want I want to I want to pitch you something I would say 80% of failing ad account is because of bad media buying but but like I would say that a good ad account is like 5% media buying that's that's an interesting way of framing it okay so let well let's call let's just give me arounded 20% and say We'll 20% okay great great great yeah the 20% so let's say that means let's out of a 100 media buying out of 100 AD success points to get there are 20 available in media buying okay let's put it like that and what I think is you could get 80 points correct on the other 80 points out of the 100 available points for good me for for good met ads account and therefore be a really successful Advertiser and you could get a five out of 20 on media buying and that's still an 85 and so you end up being successful even though what I think is my you know my media buying principles are would would get you closer to 20 on that now you could be you could run the Andrew Ferris media buying Playbook bid caps and cbos and all the things I talk about right and get a 30 on all the rest of the stuff or a 20 and therefore still not be very successful and because you're total thing and that I think is that I think is the way to think about how there are multiple paths to success just but that you can also still be right and wrong within one of those lanes and that that's kind of the way I would conceptualize that kind of concept so I don't think I disagree with any of that unfortunately for anyone listening it's probably come on Yell like yeah I know right no like you know I generally like a lot of what you're saying I I do have some issues with your your media buying setup like but we can talk about that maybe later in future podcast have another ugly ad question for you finish this out though all right I kind of agree with you but I think there's like a weird curve to it regarding scale I think that at smaller scale very small scale your media buying structure is basically irrelevant unless you're doing something yeah I I don't even know what you could be doing that would be so horrible that would get in actively in your way from scaling good ads and good pages and good product but as you get bigger and spend more and and and the system starts to optimize differently and be able to like kind of lean further away that's what I see happen it's a it's a curve and the bigger you get the the more you spend the more traffic sources you have and the more quantity of traffic you have from different traffic sources right uh depending on also how much existing intent there is for your product or category all of this uh to me greatly impacts how much the media buying can screw you or save you so it's not I don't see it as that linear like 8020 I see it as like those could change at different times yeah I don't have really an opinion about how much of success media buying is 20 20% I don't know I I don't I'd have to think about it a little more come with an opinion so yeah I see your point and I think I would say that what I know of your media buying style like I wouldn't and I haven't and I wouldn't blatantly crap on like it's not like it's it's fundamentally great like even though I disagree with some bits of it like fundamentally it most people should yeah follow it I'm probably getting 15 out of 20 of those points and maybe you disagree with me about a couple of them is kind of what you're saying you know maybe I could get to 18 if I use the very hot method I think there's other elements like there's other Nuance in terms of targeting and exclusions blah blah blah and it also really depends on existing intent I can't say what it is right now but Dave Dave recook suggested something to me interesting that is real spicy and I'm definitely going to test it and then claim it as my own if it works I'm not I'm going to give crit I actually don't even remember all the details of it I have to look at it but it's a redeeming view through conversions that's really the point okay so but listen we have so little time I have targeting existing customers nothing to do with that nothing to do with that I have a a four-year-old to go pick up from school in a little bit but I want to ask you one more question okay the question is what kinds of ugly ads am I not thinking of we've talked about texting context we've talked about socially native Stills the notion of yeah caption overlay on a still and maybe a socially native video video as well like a caption overlay video is there anything else that is in the very hot ugly ad tool box that I should know about I mean my favorite tool is your favorite tool dude long form explainer I did long form explainer just like I'm actually the thing I'm thinking about making is like a on- hour mini course just to do that the way I do it there are I have made so many scalable long-term high performance ads just me talking because I have this like framework in my head that I just do and use and go and shoot and and it works because I'm speaking authentically I'm talking about it I'm not using Flawless like look at the difference by the way in the lighting between this and this yeah like huge difference right like in terms of like what's authentic what's different like is it relevant to like what the set like just being thoughtful about all those things and speaking and editing authentically and not you know like one of the things I often don't do in my ads my talking ads is use music I because I don't need to and it's often a trigger because you're either going to use copyrighted music and get yourself in trouble or you're going to use non-copyrighted music and immediately sound like you're in an ad yeah that's interesting okay long form explainer and I actually do think that I'm I think that uglier might be better on those I'm I'm a little more mixed on that I I'm Prett yeah you're certain you're certain I am very very strong I just haven't tried it both ways so I'll take your word for it like I don't have a very strong opin but I do think the core driver is the messaging in that ad I think that like that's the beautifully said yeah that I think is the most important thing but that you probably yeah anyway okay what about anything else I would have to say by the way the authenticity is really what what matters right in terms of that and if you can have someone who can speak with authenticity and speak with authority it's so hard to falsify that yeah but everybody it's so easy to fix it on the style this is my concern about the idea of ugly ads actually it's so easy to focus on people will talk about the style the style the style the type of content the format all those things instead of talking about the content like the thing the person is saying in the organization of the message and that's like always the thing I want to say is like I've run a lot of ugly ads that don't work and I and they wouldn't work if they were pretty yeah right either and it's because the message is bad and that's the real giant difference and so so helping people hone in on how to message well which is why like you know the conversation we just had about I and you and and whatever is really interesting yeah but okay what about last thing what about any other anything else that you think of as like go-to Styles formats I just said we shouldn't do style format so much but what you know just to give people a starting place for like um can I plug something can I plug something please I was going to ask you to at the after this question anyway well I well to answer that question I wanted to say this like one of the first things like I worked with creative OS to make a pack of ugly ads like you don't need to ask me you can go to creative and like 50 templates 50 templates I actually didn't know you did that my ugly my favorite ugly ad templates and like templ other creators and like you can just I mean like I literally had no idea you were doing that yeah great yeah oh man I haven't I got to tweet about it more I guess um I might tweet about that after this now that you mentioned that like but like yeah and just Fair note I make some money from that a very small amount of money but because I don't you like what you should you put together you should make some money from that yeah yeah but like there's a pub style ad or puberty whatever it is the viral page it's very common like if you can make ads this is an interesting ugly ad right I'm not saying to make an ugly ad to make it uglier I'm saying make an ad that isn't what your brand would do right and in this case make it look like this viral page there's some you know like go look at what these viral Pages do and a lot of them have common formats which is like white bar on the top black text or it's the image with a little circle image of like a highlight feature of it in it and then text on the bottom and like if you can make that look and feel like those organic piece of content then you you you know going back to your point before like the style does matter sure because you're making it in a way that people expect to see that content on that platform but that fails completely if the content is useless and worthless that's right and irr yeah so you need both in my very strong opinion okay go get that creative OS I'm I'm going to do that I literally didn't know existed I'm going to get it from you immediately it is in the show notes so you can get that there pay don't go share it for free with somebody just pay the little bit of money Barry took the time to put it together for you get make sure he get some some money from that it's like I think it's 150 bucks it pays for itself immediately that's so useful I'm going to do that I'm going to pay for it so great okay you're going to pay for it for everyone no I'm not going to do that Barry people should follow you on Twitter yes the link is in the show notes for that as well anything else that people should do to follow up with you check out yeah just just Google Barry hot I'm I'm wherever you are probably get I have a newsletter don't Google very hot where should newsletter newsletter great I have a newsletter haveu yeah have a cl.com which you can find through whatever my newsletter uh my new selling point for it is uh I don't send it a lot so if you if you hate newsletters have I got a newsletter for you because I I typically don't really send it out a lot I just send it when I have something like that's spicy and really well thought out and bigger than a tweet and bigger than like a it's a really so I I've been sending some Banger stuff in there you can access all of it it's on my website on Havoc website website is where to go get all those things Crea is in the show notes if that's if this conversation interested you thank you Barry this is great this was great thank you for being great thank you Andrew thank you for having such a great show I really love [Music] it all right huge thanks to Barry I enjoyed that conversation so much I hope you did too lots of stuff you can grab on to there do check the show notes for all of the links to all the things that Barry is doing to get more information from him and to use ugly ads in your ads also more Staffing don't forget don't forget to go sign up to work with more Staffing to get all of the staffing needs that you have done in the Philippines virtual assistance can be helpful virtual professionals can change your business go work with more Staffing now.co also Link in the show notes there and of course you follow up with me podcast at a.com at andrewj Ferris on Twitter and at AJF growth.com for everything that I am doing all the time in a few weeks I'm going to have my next opening the books episode really really good I've already recorded it it is very very helpful I think think again in a brand that is a younger brand that is up and coming as hit success after finding some creative that works switching their account to bid caps now building out their supply chain inventory planning all kinds of stuff so some stuff you've heard me talk a lot about some stuff that I haven't talked as much about and hopefully it will be really really helpful as well I think it's a really good episode don't forget to subscribe and keep an eye out for that episode of opening the books the third one of those that I'm doing if you missed my episode with Eric Van Holz and Mike Lawson from beard brand go back check that out gotten really good feedback about that I hope it is helpful to you and again if you want to do an opening books episode with me where I coach you for free and you just share the information with people don't forget to reach out to me podcast.com I'd love to do that with you all right until next time see you later thanks for listening and I all I know the with my eyes CL and I say that's [Music] all