How To Make Ads That Spend 10K Day With Harry Delmege
Harry Delmege, co-founder of Roly Poly Digital, joins Scalability School for a tactical conversation about what actually separates an ad spending $500 a day from one spending $10K a day. Harry's agency, named by Andrew's daughter Nora, has rapidly become one of the most respected creative shops in DTC by pushing back on a lot of what the industry is currently selling: high-volume AI-generated workflows, format obsession, and the relentless push to do more without slowing down to do it well.
The conversation digs into Harry's creative philosophy, which he distills into three things he checks every ad against: promise, proof, and (workshopped live on the episode) puzzling (big thanks to Brad). They cover his preference for long-form "yapper" ads, why he insists on manual research over AI-assisted research, how he hires creative strategists from non-media-buying backgrounds, and why he thinks the closest thing to a real "hack" in the current environment is just relentlessly studying organic content and ripping off what's already working.
Harry also shares his real take on the volume-versus-quality debate, including a pointed observation that brand-side complaints about agency performance have spiked at exactly the same time the industry adopted AI and started preaching volume.
Key Takeaways
What actually separates an ad that spends $500 a day from one that spends $10k a day
How AI-assisted creative research is actually hurting your hit rate
What is a "yapper ad" and why are most agencies/ brands not running them?
Why Harry believes a U-turn on creative volume is on the horizon
Where true creative innovation actually comes from and is it what you actually need for success.
Why "open loops" is the most misunderstood term in creative strategy
This 1 thing is the entire secret of high-performing creative.
This episode of the Scalability School podcast is sponsored by NorthBeam and they just launched Northbeam Incrementality. Northbeam Incrementality gives you easy, automated, self-service incrementality tests, while protecting you from the major mistakes so many people make while running incrementality tests. Your MTA handles the daily tactics, your MMM guides the long-term planning, and Incrementality provides the causal truth. It’s a closed loop that allows you to scale what works and cut what doesn't. Right now when you head over to www.northbeam.io/incrementality, they’re offering Scalability School listeners 50% off unlimited tests for a year when you join. Just tell them we sent you!
To connect with Harry Delmege, send him a DM at https://x.com/harrydelmege_
To connect with Andrew Foxwell send an email Andrew@foxwelldigital.com
To connect with Brad Ploch send him a DM at https://x.com/brad_ploch
To connect with Zach Stuck send him a DM at https://x.com/zachmstuck
Learn More about the Foxwell Founders Community at https://foxwellfounders.com
Learn More about the The Hive Haus Creators Community at http://HiveHausUGC.com
Full Transcript
[00:00:00] I think there's the amount of times I still go into account. It's like this UGC where there's B-roll every two seconds of the person chucking something in a bin or something. That was the playbook two years ago. Sure, I can see it work, but if you just turn that into a Yaprad and make it look like it's a TikTok video, that's easily how you go and get loads of spend. That's how we've done it. You don't have to go in and play. And then I guess the other big thing that we do process-wise is just manual research. That's the one thing that I feel is weird that people try and AI-ify. It's like, "Why don't you
[00:00:31] just get AI to write it?" And then you just do the research. I don't know. People just try and do it all. How do you know if AI is using the words that your customers are using? That it's talking about the experience the customers experience. I find it really... If I struggle, I don't want to... No, because I was like, "I'm calling people out." I'm like, "Not?" But I think with such a young agency, it's kind of coming into this account and competing like we are. It only comes down to the fundamentals. That's just what we do with basics. Welcome to another
[00:01:08] episode of Scalability School. We have Harry Delmege . Am I saying that properly? Right? Delmege? Yeah, no, you go that way. I heard in another episode. You butchered it. I went with that. I butchered it, yeah. Because we were in Lisbon together and you were like, "It's actually Delmege." Yeah, so look, for those of you that don't know, Harry is a legend and creative. He is one of the best people on making better creatives that I know in the world.
[00:01:40] The cool part is his agency that he co-founded with his partner, Georgia, is named Roly Poly Digital, which was named by my daughter, Norr. Okay. While Harry and I concepted how he was going to do this in my hot tub. So Harry and I are tied together tight, but now he's blown up. His stock is blowing up. And I've been telling everyone, I told people yesterday, at Motion, they needed to get to know you more because there's so many. Because I think the work that you guys do in creative, in terms of the team that you have, diving into truly understanding
[00:02:13] the consumer psychology of it all is like crazy cool. So I'm really stoked to talk to you today. So welcome, Michelle. Do we want to spend more time on the hot tub or do you guys want to talk about creative? We were wearing, we were partially clothed. And yeah, we were just like, you know, coming up with ideas of how it was going to work and what it looks like, etc. And yeah, it was good. You know, it's a good time to connect. It was a good time to connect. So it wasn't, it's nothing weird, nothing weird.
[00:02:45] No, it was a good time. Yeah, no, I remember when Nora named it. So, shout out Nora for giving the name. What a legend. Definitely. Well, we're stoked to have you on. And I think, you know, one of the things that you, you spend a ton of money on ads and one of the things that your shop does, I think if you can just give a 20 second, like this is what we do in our agency, I would be, I think we would be remiss if we don't frame it up. I don't know, it's tough.
[00:03:17] It feels like a sales pitch for me. I don't know. We make good ads, I guess. Yeah, I don't know, man. We just make good ads that spend a lot of money. I guess that's the easiest way to say it. Does that work? I don't know. Yeah, perfect. Perfect. Yep. That's all we need to know. That's fantastic. All you got to do is scroll, scroll your Twitter for like a couple of seconds. If you need the validation of the fact that you make bangers because you've just, you've been pumping out bangers recently and that's, I think that's where we want to, we want to dig into this. Yeah, no, I think it's good
[00:03:49] because I do sometimes feel bad. I'll just put like a screenshot up and then I'm just like, am I really adding value here? Am I just like showing some numbers? So like, no, it's good to hop on and actually maybe talk through some of it because I definitely feel like a bit of an asshole sometimes. Well, I mean, okay, so let's just talk about the first question, which is, you know, what makes an ad spend 10K a day? Right. What separates an ad that spends $500 a day versus 10K a day? Is it the hook, the offer, the format, the audience match? Like what is it?
[00:04:20] Um, do you think? I mean, there's so much I could go into this, like even before the creative that I don't think a lot of people talk about as well. But obviously I can just focus on creative, but like, I mean, you're literally talking like unit economics, like cogs, like products as well. Like some products are just going to be able to spend more than others. Like I think for one of the ones that like I put the screenshots up for, it's like that time shoot, like everyone in the world would buy one. This like, you know, obviously you're not capped to that. Uh, and then obviously, you know, you see people like creaming over like rises ads and stuff like that.
[00:04:52] And I'm like, you know, cause how much they spend on like, yeah, they fucking run at a 0.5 ROAS or something. So like, again, it's much easier to spend that. Guess we're not on to talk about that, but I think this is also like, uh, like an unsexy part that people don't talk about enough as well. Like you see these numbers and you have no idea the numbers, like, you know, that they're getting on return or how much they're spending. But just talking about ads, I would say it comes down to free things for me is promise proof. And then like, is it confusing? That's kind of like it.
[00:05:24] And I imagine if you've got a lot of spending ads, you're not taking like probably like two of these things, maybe not any of them, but for ones that do, there's a clear promise. What does this product do for me? What's the desire? Yada, yada. How much proof is that? And do I believe that proof that could be a unique mechanism? It can be a story. It could be like an authority figure, like whatever you want to say. And is there any part of that ad that's confusing or not? Like you see so many good ads that maybe they have a great hook and then it goes in some like mumbo jumbo that like takes the audience out and then that ad's just going to flop.
[00:05:55] Right. So I think that's like the free things, just like keeping it super simple that I like focus on all the time. Do you think or maybe do you have a process or do you think that every single ad needs to communicate all that or does it just need to show up somewhere in the funnel or the purchase journey? Like how are you guys filtering for those three things? Also, we need to come up with a third P for that because I think that that will work out a little bit more. So I'll be thinking about that. I'll let you know if I can. I appreciate it. Free P's. Framework wise, like are you checking all
[00:06:26] ads for that or can it exist outside of the ad? It can be part of the landing page experience. How do you think to that? I think, I mean, like obviously Fox was seeing a lot of my ads. Like I did a presentation recently. I think because we tend to do longer ads and like really focus on like top of funnel video, then like, yeah, we need all free for sure. Like, and again, I mean, they're kind of like free bake things, but like a promise, like every, like every product, every ad should have some kind of promise. And then like the proof is kind of like subjective to like, how much does that product need? Like I think, you know, if you remember
[00:07:01] in the ones that are showing, it was like, oh, I thought this drugstore thing that I had was good, but it only did X amount of vibrations. And then I could be taking a set of context toothbrushes, but then the one that this one has has like 40,000. So you're just explaining the mechanism, right? And it's like, how much does the product need? Like if it's a toothbrush, it can probably be smaller. If it's like a bit more complicated, you've got to really give people that like aha moment. So I think it really like, they're kind of like, you need to check all free if you're wanting to do those. And like, if you're doing native ads,
[00:07:34] even still native ads, the long form thing, you're probably doing all free, you know what I mean? Because that's long form copy. Yeah. And so maybe if you have an ad that doesn't have all three, it can be a supporting part of the funnel, but it's probably not going to be anything that's driving the scale in the account. I would just try and do all free at all times. You know what I mean? Like, it's just like, if you're like, we're on a creative shop, right? We do help with some like landing pages and stuff like that. But like when you have like little control outside of that, you might as well make sure your ad does all free. I think a lot of what you'd showed, it were ads that were very long form. And I know that you don't only make long
[00:08:07] formats, but that is certainly like a specialty. And it went through basically, you know, going through objection, busting to talking about the product to really addressing the problem right away. So the anatomy of a high performing ad for you, what like, you mean kind of talked about a little bit, but it's like the hook, the problem, the mechanism, the proof, the CTA. Is it, you know, what is it that that really seems to resonate when you go into an account? Because what the reason I say is I've seen you go into accounts that have had a
[00:08:40] hard time scaling and be able to with creative make them scale. And I think it's a lot of it is the re explanation of like figuring out the niche issues that people are dealing with and talking about the product and positioning it against the competitors all in one ad. Right. And because most of the ads you're making your video ads, right? Correct me if I'm wrong. I would say we're probably like very video first. Yeah. Like we try and do a lot of those like native static stuff, but I would say we have much better video. Yeah.
[00:09:11] And it's, and there most of the time, what percentage of the ads that you deploy are from a creator versus from a brand or from like a third party whitelisting type thing? Some ads, some accounts, it's basically like 90%. Again, it kind of comes down to us. Like, you know, we only make the creative, like we obviously like tell people they should run third party pages, whether that be like whitelisting or like pages they own. So I guess it's kind of down to them. Some accounts were like basically exclusively that because again, we don't
[00:09:44] try and make loads of bottom up funnel stuff. Like we'll obviously do it to supplement. Um, so like when we're making this top of fun stuff, we're often thinking like, okay, this would probably be suited best from some like third party page. I'm like, we even give like recommendations to like, Hey, you could name one like this, uh, purely because we don't want to make it myself just because like with a creative agency. And it's just like, it's kind of weird if we own that page and can get, do you know what I mean? And then we split ways or whatever. But yeah, I would say some accounts basically all from, from a third party page. And you're so going into this anatomy piece a little bit more like, and maybe
[00:10:17] we should just, I don't want to put you too much on the spot, but I'm sure you're ready for it. But like, maybe we just walk through like you, you're things are going really fast on the agency side, which means you guys are hitting bangers quickly, which means you probably have a pretty dialed process. We're getting to that point. So like, let's say clients onboarding day, day one, like walk us through what the, what from onboarding through ad live in the ad account looks like just to kind of give us a sense of like, what does that research process look like? What does that, what does it actually putting it all together look like? Yeah, no, for sure.
[00:10:49] Um, and like I can touch on the anatomy stuff. Like I think it's like hard sometimes that, you know, when you just do stuff like most days and then you don't really know what you're doing and you're just kind of doing it and it's on asking you and you're like, I don't know how I do that. It's just like, so it's a good mental exercise too. But yeah, okay. So we're bringing on a new client. Um, a lot of the times, like obviously a lot of agencies have their own like playbooks on like what kind of content they can do. I think like, you know, uh, I talk about yappers a lot and that kind of stuff. Like I'm not a lot of agencies or brands seem like they can do that.
[00:11:22] I don't know why. I like, I don't know how long that would be for either. So we know we've got that in our like head. We're like, okay, cool. We can make that piece of content. That I, and a lot of people come to me as well. They ask for that. So they, I will assume they don't have it, but like, okay. So we come in and I think where a lot of people go wrong is there's like winning desires. There's winning stuff in the ad account and they just try and do something completely fucking different. Like maybe they're like, Oh, I got to do this like new persona. And I'm like, no, but there's so much more different content that you could make. That would just bang and you've got all
[00:11:55] the like, you know, DNA there for the banger at like, you know, I think that the amount of times I still go into accounts and it's like this, like UGC where there's like B roll every two seconds of like the person, like, I don't know, like chucking sign can have been all signed. That was like the playbook like two years ago. Sure. I can see it work, but like, if you just turn that into a Yap for ad and like make it look like it's a TikTok video, that's easily how you go and get loads of spend. That's how we've done it. Like you don't have to go in and like try and prove our worth for these like crazy new formats. Like the evidence is there.
[00:12:26] You know what I mean? Like you just got to kind of bring something new to the account. And I think a lot of people talk about creative diversity and then they go on the accounts and just do the same fucking thing the other agency was doing. And I'm like, what are we doing? Yeah. I mean, like it seems, it seems pointless. True innovation. You know, I think like, uh, for those that don't know, like what do you define as a Yap or ad? I mean, I, hopefully people know, but if you don't know what is it in your day. Um, well, I guess I'll assume a lot of people know what Yapping is, but like you've seen them that like, um, if you go on like TikTok and it's
[00:12:58] just like, you know, often some like guy or gal or whatever, like telling a story and you just, you're just sucked in. There's no like B roll or anything. They just telling the story and you just want to hear the rest of it. And then, you know, sometimes I'll introduce a product. Um, but yeah, it's just someone just yapping away that like, and I think this is why a lot of people don't do it as well is because to find the talent to that is a ball lake. That's like one of the things that takes the longest. It's not like the scripting. It's not the, it's like finding someone that can do that. Um, but I'd say that's just the best way to describe it.
[00:13:30] It's just someone like talking a lot to a phone and they're usually telling some kind of story or whatever. And you just can't like see to turn away. So you, so I'm going back to the process side. I'm not going to let you escape the process side. Come from it. I'm trying to get some free game here. Uh, so, okay. So it sounds like you're pulling up the ad account and you're saying, okay, there's, there's two routes that people typically go and we try to avoid going those routes, but it's like, we're looking for evidence is something that's working in here, winning desires, like something specifically that you said. And you say oftentimes people will either try to differentiate too quickly away from that thing or it's like, okay, let's
[00:14:03] say they have a UGC video that's cutting every couple of seconds. It's like, oh, that's working. Or it's, it worked historically. And then everybody just tries to reprint the same thing, but feel free to speak to any of that. But like, what are you, what are you doing differently? Yeah. So I think it's just like being like, okay, what kind of the matching the content there'll be no consumers are watching to the ads that we're making. Like, and I know maybe that sounds oversimplified, but that's how we found the app stuff. I was like, oh wait, there's these TikTok videos and I don't see them in any ad account.
[00:14:34] So like, why don't we just do that? Like, and I know that sounds really simple is because everything we do, we try to keep like really simple. Like I was just like, Oh, maybe like all these B roll cuts and stuff like seems a bit weird and seems really ad like. So like, maybe let's just not do it. And that's not to say it doesn't work. And like, obviously mashups and stuff still do work really well. But like, I think a lot of agencies like we're crushing with those types of ads. Maybe like, I don't know, if I was one super involved and they just kind of stuck to that, that playbook. So I was just like, well, okay, like
[00:15:07] super simple, do something different. Uh, and I think a lot of that comes from processes being like, we're trying to be as up to date with organic content as possible and try to pivot with it as quick as possible. Like I'd ask all my strats on a weekly basis. Tell me something you've noticed about the organic feed recently. What's changed? Is anything changing? Do we have to pivot next week? Because that's the problem is like, it all goes so fast that like you have to keep up with it. Um, but then I guess the other big thing that we do process wise is just manual research.
[00:15:39] Like that's like the one thing that I kind of feel is weird that people try and AI a five is like, why don't you just get AI to write it? And then you just do the research to not like, I don't know. But people try and like just try and do it all. But I'm like, how do you know if the AI is using the words that your customers are using that is talking about the experience that customers experienced? Like I find it really, it struggles a lot to pull the stories as well. Cause that's often what we'll do as well. We'll just go, okay, cool. There's a winning desire. Let's go find a story that revolves around that on Reddit and then just go put it in the ad account and just retell
[00:16:10] it and like soft introduce our product. And then it backs like, and I think. If that was like the two core things people could take away from like the processes that we use, it's like relentlessly study organic content and just manual research. That's it. And how does like you said that you asked your strategist, like, what does the organic feed look like? And how is it changing? Um, is there anything like you you're doing process wise, like as part of the research or like are you guys saving a weekly kind of recap of what's popping up
[00:16:43] in the organic feed? Like, how are you actually doing it? Or are you just pulling up TikTok and scrolling? I want to give you one quick example for this, where I think like we have a client that does this extremely well. He's like perfectly curated his feed to be his customer. It's like, he probably is his own customer. So that certainly helps, but like he's forwarding examples. It's like, oh, okay, there's that carousel format on Instagram. That's really popping off right now. Like he's forwarding me a ton of those. Uh, and like, that's very clear or like he sends me a video and it's kind of got, um, you know, like the AI gen, uh, there's a bunch of AI gen stuff.
[00:17:14] It's like popping off right now. It's like, oh, okay. Like you are the customer and you've perfectly curated your feed for this. And so like he forwards it. It's like, I, we just need to recreate that basically swap it for his product because like that's what they're consuming. Um, and that's something that I've, I've been thinking a lot about recently is just trying to match the format. Cause you already have like to your point, it's like you have the messaging that's working. You just think the format you need to figure diversify the formats. So anyways, um, long way to say like, what, what, like, how are you staying on top of it? Just doom scrolling or. Oh yeah. Oh, like I am a chronic scroller like too much.
[00:17:46] So, but like, yeah, like with that AI stuff, it was just like, okay, cool. I found the accounts that were posting all this like AI slope as I like called it. I mean, it was whatever. Uh, and I found all the accounts that are pumping out good stuff that literally just spam sending it to my team. It was just like, we're gonna create this, this, this, this, this, this. And like a lot of them popped off because it was just like the same day I sent it, like free, like the script would be done then free four days later, the app was made. You know what I mean? So it was just like all about turnaround time. I'm not looking at like necessarily, I mean, maybe I should again now, but I'm
[00:18:17] not really looking at foreplay or like, you know, and necessarily like the ads library. I'm just like, what is the content people are making? And like, I trust that we can direct, responsibly because we stick to the fundamentals of that. So it should be, it should work. You know what I mean? And I mean, it's, it's interesting. Cause it's like your, I think a lot of people go and look, do creative research and they're, they're looking at on foreplay. They're looking at what's being done. And what you're doing is you're looking outside of that and saying what's happening now that the algorithms seem to be going off of and what's happening that
[00:18:50] people are utilizing. That's a format. And you're jumping on that as quickly as you can. I think that's a massive unlock for a lot of people. One is I think this, this simplicity, you do talk about simplicity, but I know that your research process isn't super simple, although it's quite deep. Yeah. Like the, you know, and we're not just talking about reading Reddit reviews or reading trust pilot or I mean, that's part of it, but really what you're trying, really what you guys do is the research of the pain points and the issues and correct me if I'm wrong.
[00:19:23] But the pain points and the issues, and then you're scripting it into a thing that's going to keep the attention the whole time. I think that's one thing that the ads that you guys create, like their watch times are absurd on them. Right. And some of these are like, some of the examples you showed, Lisbon are like two, three minutes long. Right. And so, but the watch times are like, they're almost watching the whole thing because it's from a third party page that people don't know. Talking about a toothbrush, but there's a story or a narrative that goes through it. And so can you talk about what else you guys do in terms of research?
[00:19:55] Cause I think that's a really interesting topic. All right, friends, quick break. This episode is brought to you by Northbeam, the marketing attribution platform that we love over here at the pod. And if you're a marketer, you probably agree. Incrementality testing is broken. Tests require a ton of labor, spreadsheets, statistical reference, designing tests is slow and error prone. Once the tests are running, you have to monitor them daily in case anything happens. If you don't, a test could blow through thousands of dollars while being totally useless. And how are you supposed to know what the
[00:20:26] test is in the first place and when there's a million factors that make incrementality testing really difficult. But good news, our friends at Northbeam have completely changed the game. They fixed incrementality. Only Northbeam incrementality automates your incrementality test design and monitoring while protecting you from the major mistakes that plague incrementality testing. Northbeam builds tests using your own MTA data, launches them directly in ad platforms and automatically monitors them throughout. If something threatens validity, you're alerted before it ruins the result.
[00:20:59] With Northbeam, you can launch tests in platform with a single click inside Northbeam, saving you tons of time and reducing any chance of errors. And when the test concludes, results flow straight into your MTA, meaning you can easily see results alongside the rest of your data. This is automated and accurate testing so you and your team can spend with confidence. Incrementality was broken. Northbeam. And so can you talk about what else you guys do in terms of research? Because I think that's a really interesting topic. Yeah, for sure.
[00:21:31] I mean, like we kind of like predominantly looking for, I don't know, it always changes because that's the problem as well. I'm always changing the research process. Like, you know, I try and like add stuff, take stuff away all the time just because I don't know, never perfect science. But like we're just like a lot of times we're just looking for like one, the desires of like the people in the market. Like what do they want? Looking for their experiences as well. Looking for their emotions, their behaviors. And they're saying, but basically a lot of it I followed from like, I don't know if you guys know the Evolve boys, like
[00:22:03] they had a really good thing on like personas. So like they had a couple of things that they had like built on top of what I was doing. And I just like swiped some of that over. I don't know where like I learned about it. But like, yeah, I think they had like some good stuff about that. And it's just like you got to really get like deep on that on that stuff because again, it's like you can't write to those like experiences or those pain points if you don't really know that that's happening. Like you're going to lose them at some point if you're not kind of echoing what they're thinking about or
[00:22:37] what they're experiencing. Like I can't I can't remember who who said it was it like Robert Collier or something? He said, yeah, they're like enter the conversation that's happening in the prospect's mind. I don't know. Those old old geezers. So like that's that's kind of really it and then to find the story to like plug that into because that's why I think a lot of people miss as well. There's like no one's telling stories anymore. I don't I don't really get why. Like I thought that's kind of what the core of advertising was. You know what I mean? Like it's like these three reasons why which obviously can work. Like that's not telling a story. You know what I mean?
[00:23:07] Like and I think when we look at the ads, whether it be a I slop because we had like a lot of a I slop that was like crushing as well. And it just like that was like the big thing when I see the winners is just if you can't find the story then like I don't know. You're going to have a tough time making ads at scale. Yeah, there's a narrative that ties it all together. I mean, you know, I think it's it's interesting on the storytelling side and I agree with you a lot of it is people have come from the age of Internet advertising of like why do
[00:23:39] you need this get it now? It's great. You know, and I mean, that's even a development from where we used to be. I mean, when I started doing Facebook advertising, you know, you would put a photo of a shirt on a white background and then you could make it four row as or 10 row as or you know what I mean on that. Like I remember, you know, and so my my my point is is that I think the storytelling piece is it's getting back to what truly is native to to marketing. And I think it's you're you're helping the research that you guys are doing in the world. And I think it's you're you're helping the research that you guys are doing as
[00:24:09] part of that of like, how do we tell a story out of this? And are you also like resourcing your team in terms of books that they're reading or, you know, are they also like are you hiring people that used to be playwrights or like, how are you getting them to this level of because I think a lot of people that do creative strategy start from the media buying perspective, right? And they just think about results versus I think you've brought in a lot of creative people that like just happen to work in D to C basically. Yeah, so I like head of performance. I
[00:24:42] don't even know how she's so good at storytelling, man. She doesn't even know how she's so good. Like I asked, I was like, where'd you learn all this stuff? Because obviously I said at the event, like, you know, I like read a lot about screenwriting. I got like really into that because it was just like I thought about like every single bit of content that we like consume and get really invested in is a story in some sense, whether it be like the news, politics, like whatever it is, you get like really sucked in. So I was like, OK, maybe I should like learn a bit about that. But the like I had a performance to like helps teach a lot of the other people.
[00:25:14] I'll be honest with you guys, I have no idea where she learned it. Maybe it was just like innate. But yeah, I mean, in terms of learning resources, we get people to do courses and I'll pay people if they do a course and they show me they've done it like they read a book again, I'll pay them. And you can decide on like whatever bounty you want for your staff. So I'm not going to give like recommended recommendations on that. But yeah, I think a lot of these people didn't have a they had a UGC background, interestingly. So I think we've got like free crit strats that had a UGC background.
[00:25:47] I had a media buying background. And then another guy we have has a media background. So I guess maybe from like the time working in like create a content, they've learned like storytelling and they've been around scripting quite a bit. Whereas like I was never really involved in that when I was just like clicking buttons. You know what I mean? Yeah. So like they can especially on the creator side, like they also know what it's like to be a creator shooting this content. Like they can they know how what what should be scripted versus what should be vibes in the moment and all that. Right. Yeah, exactly. And I think that's what
[00:26:19] like everyone should get on there. I mean, obviously, I've said before that I think the best creative strats are from from media buying background. That's just completely biased because of where I came from. So not sure if that's a hill I want to die on. But like I think everyone in the creative team, like agencies, brands, they should look at like pulling people from different places because they're going to have different experiences and different ways to look at, you know, script writing and creating ads, like whatever it is. And I think to Andrew's point, you know, maybe just like focused on results, you know, maybe these other
[00:26:49] people want to do other stuff. Again, I don't know. But that was something that was like pretty important to me. It was just like, how can we have like diverse backgrounds coming in to like create a strategy? Yeah. So you're doing all this research upfront, right? Which makes sense. But it's yeah. Every done every day as well. Like I always just like tell me they keep telling me new stuff about the market, the consumers, because like new stuff is happening to them every day as well. Like, you know, who knows what's changing? Like and I think like a lot of agencies, they'll go for the two weeks or like
[00:27:22] onboarding and then that's just research done, right? They decide, cool. Done it. But like, no, I'm like, no, we do this. Do this every day. So we're trying to work out like workflows to that. And then I guess other like researching stuff, if I want to like feel like I'm dropping some game is Kalo data. All the drop shipping guys and girls will know about it. But like that's been a favorite of mine for a long time, because you can see all the TikTok shop affiliates on that and you can learn how they're telling stories, new trends that are coming out there because like those guys are going to, you
[00:27:54] know, they're they're putting in work for their money. You know what I mean? They're like, they're slogging it day in, day out, making content. So if they're like popping off on there, like, you know, they're doing something well. So like there's a lot of formats that we've done where we've just like ripped off Kalo data and it's just like popped off. But you've got to be quick as well, because like obviously people start realizing that like you start seeing in their like accounts. Like there's a Deodorant brand like Carp Carp Carpe, whatever they're called. They're like really good at that. Like I saw some of their eyes and I was like, oh, yeah, you're just pulling from Kalo data. So you guys are definitely ripping. Yeah, that's funny.
[00:28:25] It's like I mean, everybody there's there's a lot of people on Twitter who say like affiliates are kind of like the OGs in general because you have to like build margin into you have to you. If you're not hitting your CPA, you're not you have no margin to use. They just burned all your money. Like that is like the new version of that is literally TikTok shop. Now the downside is your video didn't hit. And so maybe there's a little less skin in the game. But but yeah, that's like if they want to if they want to eat next month, they got to they got to make a barrier. So I don't know why everyone's trying to copy these like DTC darlings. I'm not no go look at these fucking guys who are slogging like 50 videos a day or so.
[00:28:57] Like yeah, the guys that you want to learn from. It's so funny. There's I see golly golly. I think it's going to be there like one of the shops they're ripping. They're ripping, you know, crazy, crazy volume and tons of gnarly discounts. But like they're they're pretty big in retail as well. But it's like you I get I'm sure they have much more than this. Like I always get the affiliate content that like kind of tells the same story. It's like somebody dumping something or some kind of ingredient that's like you take this. But like whatever it is back and forth. But it's like all the they must have just like sent this to all
[00:29:29] their creators like cool. Do a different version of this like use different use different things like pound different colored sand, dump water and different colored water or whatever. And ultimately what it does is it makes it look like this is what's in your you took all these things. That's what's in your body now. Why don't you just take this instead? This is really interesting positioning. Yeah, they do it with like the money and then they're like, oh, and it would cost you this much. But then you can do this. Yeah. And that's why I saw like the origin brand they like were copying like that. I even know when it was. But like I think back when we started the agency and that one's been like going
[00:30:02] going strong on take top shop for a while. But I think what they do is they will just like rip each other. You know what I mean? Like as soon as they see one pop off, they then rip each other. And that was kind of like as well. I think Andrew said like innovation. I'd almost like push back and say like I don't innovate anything. I just like to steal all the stuff I see is like working well around me. And I think maybe this is like a niche like UK reference. But a lot of people I do and like really this like probably believe to me, it's like I was like studying YouTubers again. And there's this like UK
[00:30:34] guy called KSI or whatever. I don't like, you know, he's like involved in assignment. So whether it's like UK thing by streaming, you guys might know of him. But I don't like watching, but I kept seeing like all this stuff pop up in my home feed. And it was just him ripping formats of people to come up with this on like such a huge volume. I was like, oh yeah, he's not taking anything that hasn't already proven his work. And he's just like taking and just like pushing it back out. You know what I mean? And like he's now getting like millions of views again. And I was just like, yeah, that's probably just like what you should do.
[00:31:05] Those that are really successful, you know, Elon mustn't invent the electric car. You know what I'm saying? It's so and like those that are truly successful. It's many times like a rare exception of like Rolex roughly invented the wristwatch. But other than that, like that's one of the only exceptions in history. I think of like somebody that's truly a new brand new thing. A lot of times those that are successful. It's like they've iterated on an idea that exists and they've figured out how to make it popular. Just clearly what you're doing. I have a specific question about ad creatives, which is everybody talks about like the first three seconds.
[00:31:38] How important is that to you? And what do you try to do in that period of time? Yeah, I'd say it's like pretty important, right? Like I don't get anything like too controversial to say about that one. Like, yeah, no, super, super important. Yeah, I mean with that, like a lot of times we're like, you know, really trying to like qualify people. You know, like really trying to show what the promise is. And like we kind of think about it in like three ways is like you've got a text hook, you've got a visual hook, you've got like an audio hook. I think people would be
[00:32:09] surprised how good a hook, right? Like visually can be like just look like a person, like just the person. They don't have to be like whether they're holding product or just whatever random thing. Like I think, you know, everyone's always trying to do this crazy visual stuff, which again, you should also do. But like, you know, just keeping it super simple. But like, yeah, oftentimes we're trying to like open a loop like what the promise could be. And like, you know, we've opened the loop like giving people to keep watching, reason to keep watching. And then trying to like qualify people as well. Like sometimes we're like ladies over 50. Do, do, do, do, do, do. You know, just because like we're not
[00:32:41] trying to talk to anyone else. So we're just like qualifying the audience that we want. Can you, can you give this, this might be, I mean, you might have a ton of like library in your brain on the open loop stuff. But like, I think I'm really fascinated by like the open loop concept. Can you give an example of like what that means or just like dig into that for a couple more seconds? I'm just really, really fascinated by the open loop. Yeah, so you've got to kind of like promise a payoff. And this is again, I like, you know, I keep saying promise, but like I think it's so important to like give a promise of the benefit, promise some kind of payoff.
[00:33:12] That just so you open it, so someone goes like, well, I need a resolution to that. You know what I mean? So like, I guess like that's the simplest way to explain an open loop. It's like you're promising some kind of payoff. Someone's like, I need to find out the reason for this. Like there was like a hook that we had. I can't even remember what it was. That's really bad. I mean, my brain's gone blank. It was something like, you know, if you're over this age, you should never do this or whatever. So we're like, there's like an intuition gap in there. You know what I mean? And it's like, well, okay, now I need to figure out why is I shouldn't do that.
[00:33:45] Clearly, I don't know something. So then I've got to like watch. But yeah, no, it was like, don't make the same mistake I did. And it had like a 73% hook rate or something. And it was like, to then talking about this common thing that people do and like why you should actually never do it. So we explain the information gap and it's like getting people to that aha moment, which is like the proof. And then yeah, that's kind of the way I look at it. I think people try and like overcomplicate it. Like you hear open loop and it sounds like this big like maybe scary thing. I don't know.
[00:34:15] I definitely had this thing in my head where it took me a sec to get over it like a couple of years ago. But it is just promising a payoff and giving but you also do have to give that payoff. If you don't do that, people be pretty pissed. You're going to like you're not going to get purchases. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because like I think what a lot of people do is talking a lot of people say I need creative diversity and I'm going to go into finding new personas based on research and then I'm going to develop creatives that are speaking to those particular people and the landing pages are
[00:34:47] going to match that whole thing, which I don't think is wrong. And I certainly think you also do that. I think the difference that you're doing is you're layering in. Whitelisting third-party pages, which gives it a different level of credibility. It's not from the brand. You're layering in storytelling and true long format like hooks that are very dialed in to exactly what you're trying to get them across on and talking about it, you know, different issues and you're hooking with the story and the actual like, yeah, not just marketing actually like a
[00:35:20] journey that you're taking them through of the different promises. And then I think you're figuring out other pain points as the time goes on that you can focus on and then hone in on and like talk about those. And so it's not just the we need to launch an ad for socks to snowboarders now and like we need to do snowboarding type shit. It's like, what are we going to talk about to them? What's a story that we're going to tell? That's that's a real difference, right? I think because there's been so much talk
[00:35:52] on consumer psychology that we all hear that's very much like, oh, this person, you know, they this is the way that you can you can angle with, you know, problems or, you know, there's always different levels that we go through. Right. There's an episode that came out with Sarah Levenger and she goes through a lot of those and it's crazy. Like it's really overwhelming when you start to think about that. And but in reality, I think so much of the core of it is like, what are you even telling these people? Like what's your, you know, so I think that's really interesting, Harry.
[00:36:23] And I think there's a reason that you've been successful because yeah, you're building it in a different way. Yeah, no, I actually list their episode like the episode of great. But I think with all those like, you know, what do you call them like heuristics and stuff like that, like they're really good, but sometimes I'm not as smart as Sarah, you know, I mean, so that's what I mean. That's why I've got to keep it simple where I'm like a promise proof and there's no confusion. You know, I'm not even smart enough to come up with another pee for that. So it's just like I got the solution. I got it. I'm going to puzzling puzzling throw in
[00:36:56] puzzling and you're good. I know it's kind of it's kind of the opposite. So say it the whole say the whole thing again, Brad promise proof puzzling, which is not like is it puzzling would make more sense because like you don't want it to actually be puzzling but we can workshop it a little bit more. But I think puzzling might be might be the winner and connected puzzling. There you go. Nice. Nice. I'm with it. I'm with it. I'm a little bit confused now. So maybe we're like, yeah, puzzling. See my brain can't but no, I think that's the thing is like I think a lot of people know heuristics and stuff like that are
[00:37:28] great and I try and use them as much as possible. But I also think sometimes they're maybe for slightly more. I don't know. No, yeah, I think that's for more advanced people. You know, I mean like, you know, think about the heuristics do that stuff but when you actually have like a bit more of an understanding on the fundamentals of advertising and just like strip it back where I feel like a lot of people are maybe trying to go from like here and then jump all the way over to here. And then and then maybe we're like more AI and stuff like that.
[00:38:01] Like they're kind of forgetting these parts here that maybe should be done manually that like if you just put in that 10% extra effort, you're going to make some bangers like, you know, the amount of times again going back to what's the difference between a 10,000 per day spend ad and a 500 at the start of that as well from creative. It's just the research like if you actually go back and look at that and be like, is that a desire that an audience gives a shit about you probably going to go no, maybe not. Is it like the messaging with the image for safety than static? Is it congruent?
[00:38:32] Is it like pointing to that desire? Is there enough proof and you're probably going to go no, I don't know if there is. Do you know what I mean? Oh, am I using the words that my audience uses? No, maybe not like, you know, Claude's just kind of like spat out saying that it's like the amount of times as well you will get called to write something from like a review and then you ask it is this verbatim? It goes, oh, no, sorry, you're right. It's not like even if you tell it to do verbatim, it's insane. So I think it goes back to that and like a lot of people try and jump to this other stuff and you just focus on the fundamentals. You're going to win because I don't know
[00:39:04] if everyone's forgetting them or I don't want to know because that sounds like I'm calling people out. I'm like not but I think we're such a young agency to be kind of coming into this counts and competing like we are. It only comes down to the fundamentals. That's just all we do is basics and do as much as possible. Yeah, well, it has to be has to be more complicated or there's no way it work, right? Like that's I think that's the assumption that people make is if it's not complicated, maybe it's that's easy. But like what you're saying is fundamentals don't don't equate to easy necessarily. No, no, no. Yeah, it's tough because you got to put in more effort. You know, I mean, like
[00:39:35] you've got to find that story. You've scrolled past the full story and you're like maybe that one would do so. No, you got to keep scrolling. You got to find that one that really hits home where you're like, oh, no, that's definitely a story. I know that for a fact that people having that in their day-to-day life. So as soon as I start telling that you just plug in straight in. Yeah, so I kind of segues decently into like some some formats. Just curious like okay. So are there any formats recently that that you can just like free games you mentioned you mentioned?
[00:40:07] Yeah, there's you said AI slot, but I think AI slot can be I mean, I know what you mean, but it can cover so many different things. It's claymation. It's Pixar. It's not not any of those anything between like any other formats recently that people can latch on to. Yeah, so yeah, there's for sure. Founders stuff. We love a bit of founder stuff claymation. Pixar like the skeleton stuff as well. I don't know if you've seen that that's crushed like native statics again. And if anyone's not sure what I mean by
[00:40:42] that it's just like some kind of like image that looks like it could been you know, it's not meant to look like an ad like you know, sometimes they'll do it with like nurses and stuff or just I mean that's probably like don't know why that example is in my head or like if you're doing dog supplements, you could just be a picture of a dog looking sad or whatever. And then it's just like really long primary text copy, but usually that's involving some kind of story as well. This like long form it goes through that that one I like a lot, you know, I was dunking on them, but sometimes I do look
[00:41:15] like a little free reasons why I had it can work. It can work. Well, it's like people take formats and they try to like they try to slap to your points like they try to they try to say okay, here's the script cod make it for my product and it's like that's the that's the that's the bad soft version of just like they're trying to use the format. Because somebody said the format was what was mattered, but it's like the format plus the messaging plus understanding the person is really like it's all exactly and we don't apply every format to every client because sometimes just doesn't make sense. It's like for some that like the app it
[00:41:47] just works so much better at then it's like okay, then we can just do that. But then if it's like a claymation and we're doing it with pets, you can make the fucking dog talk. You know, I mean like you can't do that with a Apple one. You know, and so you can make and people want to know what their dogs are saying. So they feel that kind of thing like, oh, wow, my do you know, I mean, so it's like it makes sense for different clients as well. But I think people see that now that okay, I've got to like shoehorn this into that and it just doesn't really make sense and you can't see a bit like, you know, I guess a good example of it would be podcast ads. The amount of brutal ones I've seen those is because everyone was
[00:42:19] like, oh, this is a great form. I need to do it, but it's like, no, it's tough to do. I mean, I've never tried to do one, but I imagine it's tough to do. And like, you know, it takes effort and like, does it work for every product? Does it make sense for every product? It's like, no, I just did it because it was the hot thing at that point. This stuff is like so much it's built on volume and the focus has been on volume, right? In terms of like AI can help you build better systems that do all these 25 things that create 300 ads, you know, and I think what you're you're you're like the anti of the hats, you know, to a
[00:42:50] degree, like it's you're slowing it down. You're trying different formats, certainly, but you're also like, okay, let's just like look at this objectively. Like is this three reasons why isn't necessarily bad, but like it would be three reasons why in the context of other stuff like it's in the context of a story. It's in the context of and I think that's a real difference. Like I wonder what the average character count is of an ad on a highly successful ad on a successful D2C company. It's got let's say that it's 200 words roughly, right?
[00:43:24] Let's say let's say that's what like most of these are going to be 100 to 300 words. The stuff that you showed in Lisbon Harry like those ads were easily 1500 to 2000 characters like or words like they were long, you know, and it's like a whole thing. And so I think that is a real difference. So it's like it's not just one style of format and we all want that answer, right? We all want like the answer that's going to make it easy to be like, oh, you take this format. It creates that ad and boom, it pumps it out. And I think you have to have that in an account as well.
[00:43:56] But if you want to truly see growth, there has to be like a real storytelling piece that slows it down. And I think slowing down is something that's really hard for a lot of people, including myself. So I think that's a really interesting way to kind of go about thinking about it. You know, I think that's why I like to force the manual stuff because that forces people to slow down, you know, I mean, like maybe you still feel like you're going fast because you got a lot of stuff going on. But it makes you slow down on the product, the market, because you have to be like sit with it and like actually sit
[00:44:28] going through these things, reading this stuff instead of just having like AI summarize it all for you and just being like, it's probably going to miss some like nuggets. Maybe it has. Maybe it hasn't, you know, I mean, like, because I'm always testing it out as well. Like it sounds like I'm done. Can I like a lot of the stuff I do, like I'm trying like new new flows and stuff like that. And like was playing with Reddit scrapers and stuff. But when I went back and checked the sources, I was like, wait, you've just missed stories out of this and maybe taking like a couple of words that you thought would be good and helpful. And like, yeah, sure they were.
[00:44:59] But like this story would have been great. And like I was even telling it to like pull me the longest stuff and like whatever. But I think just by getting people to do more manual, you are just making them slow down and be a lot more intentful with that ads. I also wouldn't say I'm necessarily anti volume. Because I think if you can do a good thing, you should do as much as possible. But it never made sense to me when people were like pedaling it like a year ago and like funnily, they've all made a big U-turn on that as well. Everyone that was like volume, volume, volume has backpedaled.
[00:45:32] But it just made, I don't know. I see. Brands being like, this is the most upset they've been maybe with like agency performance. I don't know. Like everyone I speak to seems to have like be upset. Buy it. And like this has come just after there's been mass adoption of AI and also everyone's spouting volume. And it seems like creative agencies are just like churned and burned through like all the time. Like every time I talk to a brand, I'm like, oh, just like creative agencies can't get any hits or whatever. And I'm just like, I don't know.
[00:46:03] Maybe it's coincidental. Maybe it's not, but it seems, I don't know. I don't know. It seems fishy to me. You, I feel like you just nailed the whole entire beef section on your own. So I don't even know if we need to go with any more beef, Andrea. Unless you got something you want to be mad about. But no, this is great. I mean, I think that, you know, I don't think it's beef. So I think the challenge is, is we all are right now the ecosystem is built on people putting out information that makes people feel left out and makes them. And it has been for a while, but it makes them feel like they're behind and it's
[00:46:36] based on a volume really of like, I'm doing all these things that are solving all these issues and I'm saving all this time and all this money hypothetically. Right. But I think Harry Harry going out with the message he's gone out with one is you have leads coming into your inbox or flooding your inbox in some instances because you because you're doing something different and you're slowing down, which is really challenging for people in the AI age to do. I think the other the other thing to point out is like many times the answer is actually is stopping and looking at
[00:47:10] this objectively and saying like, what are we trying to actually story tell here? And how that's that's that's really an interesting takeaway from this episode that I think a lot of people can can take something from because we get away from that so often. And so that's kind of that's kind of my my beef is like, slow down. It's okay, you know, and it's just because this stuff being yelled other places doesn't mean that it's actually more successful. Yeah, well, and like the amount of times I talked to a brand and oh, they just feel like they didn't really understand
[00:47:41] my audience like the amount of times. I've heard that this year is like insane. And it's like, come on, that's our job is advertised. It's like we got if we don't know the audience, what we doing, you know, I mean, like, it seems like basics again, but like the amount of times I've heard that this year has been kind of like just just mental and I feel like if people just did manual research, it would solve all those issues like I have no crazy flow to sell you what to let them say, no, just just go read through it and you'll be fine. You'll be able to make ads that like crush, you know what I mean? And yeah, I mean, like, what you said on
[00:48:13] kind of like, stuff being pumped out on, oh, you're missing out like after that paid partnership stuff like, you know, like I see stuff and it's like, oh, this industry is now finished. Oh, you just use all like whatever is like cooked. And now like before you never saw the paid partnership stuff and I used to like the parts I paid partnership. I was like, oh, yeah, you guys was being paid to say that the whole time. It didn't have to disclose it. I think there's quite a few. So a whole other thing. I mean, as I were trying to build our partnerships program right now transparently in a better way and really and I'm really conscious
[00:48:45] around how we want to do that. Right. And and the people that were like working with and making sure it makes sense because I think that's so true. I mean, you only have your word, right? And like I get DMS all times like we do this for $400 and like my word is not worth $400. It's priceless. You know what I mean? I've got to be able to have people come in and saying I use this all the times. Yeah, never take a partnership yet. Not yet. Except from Foxwell. I'll send you the money after this. Yeah, no, thank you.
[00:49:16] Thanks. And of course, I forgot that. Yeah, yeah. Harry, thank you for joining us. Really appreciate it. No, good. Hopefully people found that found that valuable. You know, a little bit late in the evening for me. So might have been a whole lot of nonsense, but thank you for having me. This episode is brought to you by the Foxwell founders membership that Andrew and his wife, Gracie run. It has been absolutely pivotal for not just the Homestead team, but
[00:49:49] the easy Street Brands team. We've had I don't even know how many members are currently in there that are part of our ecosystem. But when it comes to anything from learning ads to understanding what's going on to building an agency to knowing retention, it's been absolutely useful for our team when they get stuck or they need help to just go there and resource all the other experts. So definitely would recommend it for anybody that's looking to, you know, take it a step deeper. Try to get a little bit more knowledge on on growth marketing and all the world DTC is. I think one of the most incredible things about it is you can just like open up the slack group every single day.
[00:50:21] You can pin your favorite channels for the topics you care most about. And like every day there's going to be somebody who just like because they want to contribute something valuable to the group. You can go learn something every single day and it's going to be extremely useful. There's there's some ballers in there. They just get like the benefit of learning from that like for the for the costs like you couldn't pay them that for their time, but through the membership like you get access to some some incredible people and tons of resources. Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest resource to me too is like the events that you know, Foxwell founders does they've been able to do some even in Wisconsin even in the boring state of Wisconsin,
[00:50:54] which is pretty awesome getting people together in person and able to have really just like honest conversations of what's going on was working for them now, you know where they're at their business and knowing that there's going to be like Brad said some real killers in the space in this in this membership that can that can help and are willing to take the time and help. So that's been a huge part of why a lot of our team have really enjoyed it as well. And the applications are now open if you're looking to join. So Foxwell founders. Yeah, Foxwell founders dot com. Go check it out. Go play. The only way that we grow this podcast is
[00:51:34] by you sharing it with your friends. Honestly, like reviews kind of don't really mean anything too much anymore. They're really meaningful, but they don't do a lot for the growth of the podcast. And so sharing YouTube links sharing Spotify links sharing Apple, whatever we call it under the podcast app now anything you can share the better. We're going to be guys anything else you want to say on this. Yeah, please go check us out on YouTube rack up those views for us. We'd love to see it and then subscribe make sure to subscribe on YouTube as well. And I relentlessly refresh the YouTube comments because it dictates
[00:52:05] my mental health for the day. So please say something nice about all of us. Thank you everyone. Thanks for listening. Honestly.
