Good Morning Operators!

It has been a while since I last wrote - I have been up over my skis with work and different projects over the past year so I figured I’d get back to this once the dust settled. In recent days, I bid farewell to my friends at Google (who I’ll miss dearly) as I jump into a new adventure (stay tuned for what’s next), and booked a few trips to spend some time by the ocean.

Today’s newsletter is going to focus on creative - making “winning” Ads is ultimately the secret sauce that determines whether or not you’re going to get consumers to buy from you or not (assuming you aren’t selling bottles of cold water in the desert).

Influencing Consumer Purchase Intent:

Generally, consumers that see your ads fall somewhere along a range of Problem-Awareness and Solution-Awareness. Building strong creative entails designing different messages to influence consumers at different points on this graph in order to increase their purchase intent for your brand (see below)

Most consumers who see your ads fall somewhere here:

In order to effectively move your potential customers from lukewarm / low problem & solution awareness and drive them towards conversion, you need to reach them with a message that resonates. How do you do that? The secret sauce comes down to building good creative - and no, you don’t need a huge budget and a production studio to build good creative.

ABCDs and P’s:

Ultimately, good creative comes down to understanding how to capture attention, educate your audience about why your problem matters & how your solution solves it, and drive action (ideally a purchase). The secret sauce that brings this to life is personalization. If your message doesn’t feel personalized, your audience won’t care about what you have to say and will skip or scroll past your ad. Other places to deploy personalization include building a personalized offer, which goes hand in hand with deploying personalized creative. Before diving in to some great examples, let’s walk through one of my favorite creative frameworks; the ABCD framework.

A: Attention. This is your hook. You should be able to get someone’s attention within the first 3 seconds of your ad. Bonus points if it aligns with your problem statement. One of the greatest hooks of all time is “Hey! That Soap you shower with??? It’s S*%$!” from Dr. Squatch.

B: Branding. This is where you introduce your brand to the consumer so that they quickly associate you with the problem statement and put your brand in their consideration set as they become “solution-aware”.

C: Connection. This is where the “why should I care about this?” portion of your message should sink in. Your audience should see the “connection” between the problem & their relationship with it, and your solution for that pain point.

D: Direction. Direct your audience on the action you want them to take. Now that your audience has watched your ad and absorbed your message, you should direct them on what to do next. “Shop Now” and “Learn More” are common but forgettable ways to do this. Brands that deliver punchy & memorable direction win over those without it. There’s a reason everyone remembers “Taste the Rainbow” from Skittles.

Now for the good stuff. I’ll dive into a few examples of ads that execute some of these elements well.

Opopop: “Reinventing America’s Favorite Snack”:

Why this ad wins: (h/t to Barry and his team for helping with an awesome ad)

Attention: The hook captures attention through triggering cognitive dissonance: “I’m about to try this new popcorn, my wife is making me try it blindfolded”. Why would someone try popcorn blindfolded?

Bonus points: The problem statement is implied with the way it is communicated. The problem statement here is “Big Popcorn” makes popcorn that doesn’t taste as good as it could and has a lot of added ingredients we don’t know about. Opopop hits this on the nose with the subtle “Us vs Them” taste testing clip.

Connection: Opopop establishes connection through social proof provided by the WSJ screenshot which reinforces the authority of Opopop’s voice.

Direction: “Click the link right now and get your discovery kit” - This hits because it combines both a clear call to action with the value communicated by the offer, so not only do we get great direction but we also get “personalization” because of how the offer communicates a message that resonates with value-sensitive consumers.

Truff: The Official Hot Sauce of Eggs: 

Why this ad wins:

Attention: A humor-centric hook playing off of the Humpty Dumpty children’s rhyme effectively captures attention though juxtaposing the familiarity of the rhyme against Truff’s announcement that their sauce is now available at Starbucks.

• Entertainment: The narrative development with the different egg characters responding to the news is a great touch. Humpty Dumpty saying “I’m not going to talk about my fall” coupled with the band-aid on his head adds to the humor.

  • Bonus points: The word play “People are scrambling for truff’s incredibly intoxicating and mouth-watering hot sauce” enhances the narrative development and humor because the announcements are coming from the egg characters in the spot.

Direction: “You can try Truff for free at Starbucks” - this is strong because it connects the dots for consumers so they know where to find you and they get something of value, they can try it for “free” at Starbucks.

Lume: “Smell Better for Longer”

Why this Ad wins:

Attention: This UGC-style ad featuring Dr Shannon wins by leading with an “in-your face” hook that highlights how easy it is to use Lume.

• Notice the verbiage: “Rubs in like lotion” + “Easy Peasy” pair well against the visual demonstration of the product’s application

Connection: The problem is front & center; smelly private parts. The intimate nature of the UGC format adds trust because of the conversational tone Dr Shannon uses to appeal directly to women with simple & persuasive messaging.

• Bonus points: This ad nails the KISS concept (Keep It Simple, Silly!) Lume’s team takes the cake with how they leverage visual aids to illustrate the value and impact of using their full body deodorant.

"We put Lume to the test and compared it to a shower… 12 hours after taking a shower and applying Lume, 0/10. No odor, all day”

Direction: Dr. Shannon directs her audience to take action by leading with the outcome first. Having a “0/10” body odor sounds like a desirable state to be in.

"Just take a shower or shower with Lume, and be 0/10”.

In summary, Ads that win do not have to be pieces of art with multimillion dollar production budgets. You can probably make a few right now with your phone and using AI to come up with a few funny hooks. If you can capture Attention, build Connection and drive Action with personalized messaging, you will win. Brands that execute these principles well can effectively move the audiences they reach from problem & solution unaware to problem-aware & solution-aware (and specifically aware of their solution !)

I’m signing off for now, see you all soon! I hope everyone has a great week 🙂 

Zach