Question: How should DTC brands plan their Black Friday ad spend and offers?
Direct answer: Plan Black Friday around contribution margin, not a ROAS number. Run the exact offer weeks early so cart, checkout and discount-code problems surface before the big weekend, and set acquisition targets that account for the higher return rate after the promo ends. During the sale, use time-boxed incentives such as a one-hour free gift with purchase instead of a deeper percentage discount, track orders by channel by the hour against target, and put creative effort into founder-led storytelling ads rather than new landing pages. Zach Stuck's best customer cohort ever came from spending $100K before 9 AM on the Saturday after Black Friday, because the 12-month contribution margin on those customers still came out ahead.
Last Black Friday weekend's ad strategy started with a mistake that paid off: Zach Stuck
spent $100K before 9 AM on the Saturday after Black Friday, his team panicked,
and those customers became his best cohort ever on 12-month contribution margin.
Andrew Foxwell, Brad Ploch and Zach walk through how to plan BFCM spend and
offers: test the offer in October, set ROAS targets that account for returns,
run a one-hour free gift with purchase, pace orders by the hour, and film
founder ads instead of building new landing pages.
We discuss:
- Why your Black Friday ad won't save a weak business-as-usual setup
- Testing your Black Friday offer in October to find what breaks
- Setting ROAS targets that account for post-holiday returns
- Whether discount customers are really worse (and how to measure them)
- The one-hour gift with purchase that tripled hourly sales
- Building an hourly pacing sheet by channel, with Claude
- Why bonuses and gift cards beat a bigger percentage off
- Why a lower AOV can scale better on Meta
- Founder ads, yapper ads and the "source of the week" creative process
- AI character ads and turning blackhat tactics white hat
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Watch last year's BFCM recap with Zach: https://youtu.be/3POPSecWu_M
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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
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This episode of Scalability School is sponsored by Alia, the AI-powered pop-up platform. Head to aliapopups.com, book a demo, and mention AI DTC WTF for an extended 45-day free trial.
Scalability School is a weekly show from Andrew Foxwell, Brad Ploch, and Zach
Stuck about what is actually working right now in DTC growth. No theory, no
recycled LinkedIn takes, just the numbers and decisions behind real brands and
real ad accounts.
Chapters
00:00 Black Friday ad strategy: the $100K morning and why the basics win
02:10 Test your Black Friday offer in October
03:58 Set Black Friday ROAS targets that account for returns
05:49 Sale cohorts, BOGO and keeping evergreen ads cranking
08:04 Are discount customers worse? The $100K Saturday cohort
11:13 The one-hour gift with purchase that tripled hourly sales
13:05 How to pace Black Friday by channel and by the hour
20:59 Why a lower AOV can scale better on Meta
23:40 Black Friday creative: founder ads beat new landing pages
34:45 AI character ads and turning blackhat tactics white hat
Full Transcript
We Accidentally Spent $100K Before 9 AM on Black Friday Weekend - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pX7q1FYlqwE
Transcript:
(00:00) funny story. Like the team got upset at me because we overspent on Saturday after Black Friday and kind of was a little was freaking out a little bit because we spent like 100 K in the first, like at night. It was 9 a.m. central. We already spent 200 so the team is losing their minds. But the CCaC to contribution margin on those customers is still our best cohort that we've ever had.
(00:19) ran a gift with purchase. That was basically an SMS, an email that would go out that basically say, hey, for the next hour, get this product for free if you order, our hourly sales, even during the Black Friday, like normal trend, which is like up way above baseline, we're triple during that hour. in the world of AI slop that we're in, real people want to buy from real people where my brain goes most days is like, what are the crazy like, blackhat people doing? And how do I actually make that white hat? so here's the deal.
(00:45) We're talking about Black Friday, Cyber Monday. All right. And you know, there's a lot of different ways that you can go about this. I think there's a lot of different takes people have I think a lot of people want to hear what Zach Stuck has to say about this. Brad and I have recorded our own episodes. But Zack, like, what's your general feeling about Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and this time frame as it relates to what branch to do? Let's just pretend this is a mentor pass call, and we're paying you $12,000 an hour
(01:11) for your time. Okay. So first and foremost, I think that having good business as usual, like strategy is still the most important part of is your back. I'm going to go well or not, it's not like this one ad you're going to make that talks about the product being a great gift, or adding a Santa hat to your logo, or any of that shit is really going to make or break your VCM.
(01:37) I think it comes down to doing the basics really well. I tweeted this the other day like good ad good offer, make the ads entertaining. Make them educational. Make the offer as clear as you possibly can. If you're doing those things, like you're probably going to see success during BFS and hopefully you've done the math to figure out how hard you can push.
(02:00) So I'll try to break some of that down. The when it comes to like, creative when it comes to landing pages, when it comes to website for BFS and like tying it to an offer. I think the number one thing I see brands mess up is like they overcomplicate the UI of the offer. Sometimes it might be like the first time they run this offer, maybe like they're used to running by more, say more, and now they're going to run Bogo like you have to chua the shit out of your your UI with this offer.
(02:29) And I would try to do that pre season like even if the offer isn't quite as perfect. Like even if you want to run it for like a four day or a weekend or something like, I think it's worth it to do it because you're going to find kinks in your car or your checkout or a discount code. Not being like, being as like, stable as you thought it was going to, I don't know, whatever, whatever it is.
(02:52) Like you're going to find these little you're going to find these little pockets, of errors that hopefully you can find before it actually happens to be. We have an awesome tool. That's a little bit of a secret, and I'd like to tell you about it. It's called the Foxwell MCP. The Fox MCP connects into Claude, connects into your ChatGPT Pro, and it gives you direct access to every single thing we've ever said in the Foxwell founders community.
(03:14) Check it out at Foxwell digital.com forward slash. It gives you access to every podcast transcript we've ever put out, every workshop, every course we've put forth. It's honestly very inexpensive for the value that you get. You could get it plugged in and say, put together a report on this account of what I could do better.
(03:34) I mean, it's endless. What this MCP can do, and I encourage you to check it out today. Foxwell digital forward slash MCP. We'd love to have you. So that's one thing that we've done with hollow in the past is we'll run the same offer like in October, call it a warehouse sale, call it whatever. And just try to figure out what's broken, what's not, and then pull back to evergreen.
(03:53) And then when we launch the SM, we already know, kind of like what mistakes we hopefully already had cleaned up. When it comes to like, pushing, I think like this is a term that I've always, like told our team is like, I want to really know the threshold of how I create more profit during this peak period. Is it by keeping Roas higher during during the sale period, or is it by actually keeping Raw is lower, but being able to punch up way more volume? So I think like having the financial understanding of how your business works
(04:27) to offset opex to offset cost of delivery during this period is like super important. Also making sure you're doing the math on like things like return return rate might go up. So like if your normal return rate is 1% of orders, it might go up to 3% of orders. And that may have a huge impact on your January. So you should really bake that in and know that.
(04:51) And that may have an impact on how you set your targets for your cash or your row as targets on acquisition. Those are like big mistakes that I've made in the past where like we're like, oh, our target is a 2.05. Or really it needed to be like a 2.15 because the returns like went up after the promo period fell off after the holidays.
(05:11) So like understanding the math of how to set an equation for how can I scale into this if I have the opportunity to scale into this, I think is like one of the biggest things. So I'll stop there. I just ranted for a little bit, but like I think thinking about the financials and how you can actually push into it to take advantage of the fact that, like CPMs and CPAs are going to look really good in knowing, like all the moving pieces of that, and then ideally having the ability to run it like a pretest, even for like a day,
(05:40) and just make sure nothing is broken, I think is important. Before you run a promo for 30 days during the most important time of the year. So I'll stop there. Yeah. Makes sense of sense. Are you. So do you know loosely what you guys are doing for offer this year? I know we're yeah, it's technically beginning of October, so I don't know if you've run.
(05:58) You're running a pretest promo. Yeah. So we've already. Yeah. From Mars. You've already run the promo. Like we already know what rough CPAs need to be. What take rates on post-purchase upsell are. We already ran the sale that we're going to run for Black Friday, and then we're going to run for our New year sales.
(06:14) So we already know kind of what that looks like. The other thing that's really important for us is like, we're a subscription business at Mars. And so we run a cactus TV and a payback kind of model. And I need to know how a sale customer interacts versus a business as usual price point customer interact. So we already have cohorts now that are starting to back out.
(06:34) So we kind of know the threshold of how good and how like what the likelihood of the LTV is of those customers, which is inherently going to be a bit worse. And customers are inherently going to be a bit worse. They were worse last year, but because the catch and payback period, like, looked so good, it was worth it to even have like worse cohorts.
(06:56) So for Mars, it's fully baked for hollow. It's pretty much rinse and repeat. I think we're going to take the promo and just make it slightly stronger. We run kind of Bogo promos at hollow. That's it's important for us to run it there so that we can keep our prices high on our on.com so that retail can be at a certain map pricing.
(07:16) So that's why we have to run kind of the promo and pricing strategy we have at hollows. Now that we have retail employee, to not go below the map pricing with the discount. So that's that's pretty much fully baked. But yeah, I mean, I think the thing that I really have the hollow team just kind of obsessing about is like, evergreen has to be cranking before holiday, like, we can we can slap B at Black Friday sale on an evergreen ad, and it's just going to perform a little bit better.
(07:46) But I need that initial like winning ad winning funnel to already be working, and not just like bank on a new lander or a new template or anything like that. We're trying to keep things like business as usual, and then just like add in the promo overlays on on kind of everything. Yeah. Go ahead. I just didn't say there was a, I think a Daniel O'Connell friend, a friend of the pod here.
(08:13) He was he says, I'm on Twitter. That reminded me of like the the cohort thing that you just mentioned. I think there's like this common trope that discount customers are worse, but the context that matters a ton because like, yes, what you're saying is the retention rate is worse on them. And so that means that gross margin or lifetime gross margin on them is potentially worse.
(08:32) But that's gross margin. It doesn't consider what you acquired them for and the volume that that you acquired them. So if you can acquire ten X as many customers and you take $1 less, you know, it's probably more than a dollar or less, but you take less like it matters, but it doesn't matter. So it's new. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(08:48) You need you need to understand that contribution margin over 12 months, especially 36 months, which no branch in really look at in my opinion on 12 months is probably going to be a bit worse. But yeah, the to contribution margin like that's where we write in volume is kind of the important piece. So yeah, I mean like I know that Mars last year funny story.
(09:11) Like the team, the team got pretty upset at me because we overspent on on the, the Saturday after Black Friday and I kind of was a little I was freaking out a little bit because we spent like 100 K in the first, like at night. It was 9 a.m. central. We already spent 200 K, and so the team is losing their minds.
(09:28) But the CCaC to contribution margin on those customers is still our best cohort that we've ever had. So, on on like a 12 month contribution margin basis. So because of that, we added such a large threshold of new customers that morning that it actually helped us out through the rest of the year as that like compounded over time, even though that the churn even a month one was like 15% worse, which is insane or like not more than that, like 30% worse than our business as usual.
(09:56) But just because the volume was so high and was so low, it just backed out. And that's, that's for people problems. When you can, you can look at a one day cohort and know that it was better. No, no. Right. It's unbelievable. I mean, I was thinking somebody said to me something interesting at the founders meetup, which was that, you know, I think we have to start also considering the fact that on the Black Friday, Cyber Monday cohorts and on the weekend, each of these are these are actually separate people to a degree, they're kind of different.
(10:23) Right? There's the people that are the that are the grabbers of deals right away that are in there. Then there's the more considerate buyers, which actually tend to buy through the weekend and sometimes wait until the cyber until Monday, which is why it's big. But like sometimes actually somebody else was saying something similar, Zach, which is that they actually saw really good results on Saturday to this, you know, segment of kind of considered customers that had been around but hadn't made the purchase, and they had the time
(10:49) they sat down and purchased on it, and their comment was actually something like 40% of the purchases. Had taken place on a desktop versus it was it's normally like in the 20s for them. So, you know, one thing I think people are always curious about SAC is the systems around all of this. And how do you kind of get these together? I think there's obviously we've talked about, a little bit, you know, the offer and the things that you're, you know, adjusting their.
(11:13) So let's talk about the offer a little bit deeper when you go through and consider and you're let's say you're talking to another brand that's asking for your advice about, okay, here's how we're doing the offer for Black Friday, Cyber Monday. What are the things that you're looking at in considering and when you're starting to build that offer? the reason I ask this is, you know, you mentioned last year that you're doing things by our so, you know, you did hourly promotions and they were different and you tested a lot of different things,
(11:40) which I think is actually quite an innovative idea. And I don't know many people that do that. So, do you think about how do you kind of build that up in terms of framing an offer that's really going to be attractive, or a segment of offers that are going to drive people through? Yeah. So that was that was for hollow.
(11:56) We ran a gift with purchase. That was basically an SMS, an email that would go out that basically say, hey, for the next hour, you'll get this product for free if you order, in our hourly sales, even during the Black Friday, like normal trend, which is like up way above baseline, we're triple during that hour.
(12:16) And because of that velocity got so high, we were able to then spend into just like adding more new customers kind of throughout the day. So I would say, like if you have a compelling gift to purchase. So we were giving me like a $50 alpaca, 100% opaca beanie made in the US, like a quality, good free gift of purchase.
(12:35) So if you have something like that that you actually think your customers maybe wouldn't buy as the first product from you, but would consider buying if they've already been a customer or they like your product? I would try something like that. Something that can drive true, like fear of missing out true, like high bias to take action from the customer standpoint.
(12:55) Like, that's something that will we'll do again very likely for hollow this year. Kind of keep that in your back pocket, depending on how performance is balancing. But I mean, the systems that we think about is mostly not now, kind of like at the scale that we're at is mostly about like pacing throughout the day.
(13:15) So we kind of set targets and profitability targets and then we kind of know, okay, I need pacing to be at a certain degree on a daily basis by our otherwise like we fall behind on our profit targets. And for hollow specifically, it's such a seasonal business that like we don't really make any money most of the year.
(13:34) Q4 is where we make like our hay. And so for us, like the systems that we have in place are basically hourly tracking. So we can kind of compare, target versus goal. So what I've, what I've had the team build is we have this for marzban as well, but it's a daily report that's built on last click and it's orders per channel per day.
(13:59) So on a daily basis I can see did email, did SMS did organic did Facebook did Google, did each channel drive the amount of orders that I need in aggregate to kind of hit our target for the day? Because it's a balancing act, right? Like I think a lot of people are like, Facebook is not working today, but your email might crushing it might balance you right back out.
(14:17) So I think that's something that I would have people consider building. It's something that you can easily have, like Claud build for you. It's just have it like pull all your last click data and aggregate it all into Claude and basically say, build me a sheet of like, what a daily outlook could look like to hit my targets, which is X amount of orders per day with X amount of spend.
(14:38) So we've built that for Mars. We've now built that for hollow. And so the biggest difference there is the system that we'll build for Black Friday is basically the same thing, but it's on an hourly basis. So we basically trend out the day on orders by volume. And then we'll punch in and we'll say, okay, an SMS is going to go out at 9 a.m.
(14:55) central. What should that do to, to to SMS orders for that that our like it should pop from 100 an hour to 300 an hour. Whatever. I'm just throwing numbers out there. But the biggest thing for us now is, is truly actually keeping an eye on pacing to hit targets so that our team knows if we need to go push in another area.
(15:17) If we need to go spend more on YouTube that day, if we need to go move dollars over to Apple oven or whatever. If we're not hitting target or if something weird happens in meta. So, that's kind of like our current stage and more of the processes that we're at at our current scale. I would say, like if we make it and go back to historical, the biggest lessons are truly like knowing how to drive that action rate up.
(15:42) And I think a lot of that comes down to like these like unique offers that you can run these like hourly sales or like this day, only you get this, which there's apps like after sell that make a lot of that like really easy to just like add and integrate in. that's kind of like the biggest takeaway for smaller brands is I would say like think through what free gifts with purchases you can do.
(16:03) Some of that can even be like gift cards. Like if you're like, I don't know if he gives the purchase. Can you give him a gift card? Let's give him a $25 gift card, that you can add in to the order for a three hour period or even a half day period. Just as an extra raising for someone, an incentive for them to buy, versus maybe waiting, as Andrew said, like through the weekend or maybe and finding a different deal on something like that.
(16:24) The interesting thing to me, you talking about this, the interesting thing to me is, is I hear you talking about a lot of bonuses and people are getting product bonus, gift card bonus, whatever gift purchase type stuff, and it's not as much or and or it's like a Bogo offer. It's not as much around raising the higher percentage discount.
(16:41) I think to me, I feel like consumers have been so flooded with percentage discount and it just feels not fresh and uninteresting. And a lot of them are like a lot of brands are like, I'm pushing to 35% off or whatever. And it's just like, okay, like that's cool, but it's not necessarily a huge incentive. So it's I think rethinking.
(16:58) That's an interesting one in terms of what that offer can be to really drive that through. And the pacing thing is really interesting. I mean, I guess it's it's tough because you have to look at it year over year by our so much of it happens in the evening, you know what I mean? So I guess it's really an adjustment for the following day to that you might be making are just interesting.
(17:18) Don't know. Brad, what do you think. Yeah. I mean I'm going to I, I've said this and by the time that this actually comes out it will be recorded. But I'm going to put together like a video of like last year were to do the pacing. And part of that is for the week of Black Friday, it's, it's how to do the hourly pacing sheet.
(17:36) You can definitely have Cod just help you with it, but I'll, I'll give you a template. You can go into Shopify, export your numbers, paste it into the sheet and it'll show you exactly what to do. But I think something interesting in there which kind of relates to this, which is you're going to put together your hourly pacing and you're going to notice, like there's these random pops.
(17:53) And what that reminder is is, okay, well, what did I do during this hour last, last year? And then you might even find some values in your data. It's like, okay, well, what could we do to fill fill in these things? And, you know, maybe that's these, these moments where you add in those, some of those extra offers, one little follow up on the the offer.
(18:09) Do you guys edit like, do you do anything with the site experience for that free gift for that hour, or is it was it like just SMS exclusive? Like I just wonder if like you can you wonder you could add like a little bit of like a dynamic thing to the, to the SMS, like, okay, the UTM passes through and it actually shows that you're going to get the free gift.
(18:27) Like what was the what was the site experience when you do that? All right, friends, quick break. This episode is brought to you by North Beam, the marketing attribution platform that we love over here at Scalability School. If you're a marketer, I mean, you probably agree, right? Incremental testing is broken.
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(18:59) Only North Beam incrementally automates your incremental test design and monitoring, while protecting you from the major mistakes that plague incremental testing. North beam 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.
(19:20) With North Beam, you can launch tests in platform with a single click, saving you tons of time and reducing any chance for errors. And when the test concludes, your results flow straight into your MTA, meaning you can easily see results alongside the rest of your data. Incrementally. Was broken. North beam fixed Yeah, I think we've started to do more of that now.
(19:43) We didn't I don't believe last Black Friday of have any actual side experience or push them to a URL that showed it this year for these things like, we very likely will have like a banner that shows, for the hour, we'll just like, take it up, pull it back down. That'll be like on the collection page or bestseller page that we push it to.
(20:02) But last year we didn't. I know that we have since because we've run this same kind of strategy like a few times since Black Friday, because it works so well. But yeah, the. Yeah. So no, we did it last year, but we will for sure this year is have like the site experience feel a bit more in your face of like oh it's very clear despite what you just yourself just reading the text or the email that got you to click through. Yeah.
(20:27) I wonder if like because the, the scratch and sniff pop up thing is super popular. You know, it's like, can you just make something like that where it's like instead of scratching off your gift, it's like it pops up and it's like revealing your free gift and all you gotta do is click like, oh yeah, I do want this within this hour.
(20:40) I wonder if that would be like disruptive or actually, like, add to the fact that, hey, I'm getting this free gift. It's a good idea. I'll tell the team to like, look into it and see if after sell can build something like that and they after sells does like to to share things that brands are doing that are working well.
(20:55) So maybe, maybe, maybe they've already, maybe they've already done it and they'll give it away. The, the thing that you said, Andrew, I just want to like, comment back on is the like pushing up aof comment. I've like gone back and forth on this a bunch. I think that for like I, I don't know who it was that tweeted it.
(21:14) Someone tweeted recently about health and wellness brands and like whatever your offer is on the front end, basically like estimated new customer over on the front end, if you're a subscription based business, you can basically anticipate meta being willing to double or triple that as your whatever your front end.
(21:31) So for example, if you're if you're front end new customer, a Ovi is like $50, you can anticipate meta to basically run a cash at a 100 to 150 on that. Now, based on how many brands are in the ecosystem, what's going on, whatever. So I think what's been really interesting for us at like, Mars is actually taking the approach of saying, hey, I actually don't want to push up my front end AOV.
(21:57) I want to keep it in a healthy lower spot that has a allows for more impulse purchases and a lower entry point, and that should drive more estimated action rate with meta, which should hopefully then lower CPMs drive more, better users into like our auction. And so that's something that's kind of changed in the last like, I don't know, maybe a year from my perspective.
(22:21) And I'm thinking kind of similarly to hollow, where historically we were like, hey, we need to get a Ovi. Like it was so impressive that we had a stock company that had 128 and it's like, yeah, we did it because we needed the to work. But I'm I'm now almost thinking like, if we could have our AOF at like 75 to 99 in our CPA, as long as conversion rates stay strong, if we can bring our if, if we can bring our CPA from 50 down to 30, the amount of volume and contribution margin we would create would actually be a better thing for the business.
(22:50) So I do think like this is where testing these offers early to see like what happens. Is super important because this this completely dictated now how we're running our offer for Black Friday for for Mars then was actually us having like a lower AOV than actually a higher AOV. Yeah. I mean, somebody you're just pricing people out, right? Like these people just they don't want to buy three pairs because it's actually literally just too expensive for them.
(23:16) Like it's just yeah, that's that's the real this of people's everyday spending habits. Totally. Yeah. It's a, it's a, I mean, it's a, it's an interesting conversation, particularly during the holidays, I think that so many people just slap a slap a percentage off and then, you know, that's it. That's when we're going to start our sale.
(23:32) And I think that that works to a degree, but it doesn't work from a volume standpoint. I don't know. There's a lot more levers to pull, around kind of all the things that you've ever mentioned. So I guess another question, I have another segment of this is talking about creative, which is sort of where everybody goes, you know, what do we need? Brad and I have talked about in previous episodes about, you know, so much of it is, as you said in the early part, making sure the business as usual and evergreen stuff is running and cranking
(23:58) before you start to adjust from there. As it relates to, you know, looking at it from a Black Friday server Monday standpoint, you can certainly put banners on preexisting stuff and run that. And I think you want to because Meta's going to, you know, respond, people are going to respond. And meta wants you to do put out a variety because people are going to respond to different pieces of this.
(24:18) How do you think about the planning of creative, of what people are going to want based on what has actually converted for you in years previous, and based on knowing that the more variety is out that's out there, the more Andromeda is going to be, you know, helping you hopefully with more variety. Yeah, I think it's at the end of the day, it comes down to, from my perspective, it comes down to trying to find these ads that can that can really break out in your ad account and to do that effectively, especially if you're a smaller brand,
(24:54) I think you have a higher likelihood of trying to do that with like owners, operators, people within the business telling stories. So even if it's a Black Friday ad, like some of the best ads that hollow has ever had is literally me in the warehouse talking about value props, talking about USPS, talking about the things, and then also bringing in the fact that this is like a the biggest sale of the year and showing the list of, of like, Shopify orders.
(25:23) Those are the ads that I think a lot of people resonate with, especially if you're a smaller business and a smaller brand that isn't as recognizable. And you're trying to get people to impulse buy during that period. So, you know, if I, if I'm a brand that's a seven figure or low eight figure brand, like I am trying to shoot as much founder team content as possible, trying to tell stories that people will resonate with, and then trying to tie in how our offer is something unique that is time limited.
(25:54) And, you know, they have to buy it through your website. And you can, you know, if you're not on Amazon, you can always make the claims of, like, we're a small business we only saw on our website. Like, you can do all the things to kind of try to keep them gated in that ecosystem, but those are the creatives that still will absolutely smash.
(26:10) So like I haven't filmed funny enough, I haven't filmed any ads for marksman up until now. I finally just filmed like our first ad for our new product. And I think the likelihood of that doing well, I, I think is actually quite high because it's such a genuine piece of content and like talking about how I'm an entrepreneur and I'm a new dad and, you know, I own a few businesses and there's just like so much happening today and that normal energy drinks just, like, aren't able to help and help me keep up and stay sharp.
(26:41) And so our new product, which is a natural energy and focused supplement like, is actually accomplishing what I wanted to do. It's why we created it. And so I'm just like filming that ad like here. Like it literally looks like I'm filming this podcast right now. It just feels very organic and natural. I don't have like a mic either.
(26:56) I'm just like talking to my phone. I think people really resonate with that shit. And I think if there's someone that we want to, like, really give shout out to, it's like Harry over at really. Pulley digital has proven to me time and time again now made absolute bangers from ours, man. Made absolute bangers for hollow.
(27:12) Is that very simple, like storytelling and having a story that like is easy to follow but then still gets to the point of like the final point being this product solves that problem. This product fills that void, this product does what you're looking for are the ads that just absolutely smash. Because I think still, you know, in the world of AI slop that we're in, real people want to buy from real people despite being entertained in those AI ads, like still doing really well for some brands.
(27:45) So I think smallest brands all the way up to the biggest, like focus on, focus on that. That is where I'd put my eggs is like instead of trying to like spend a bunch of time coming up with a bunch of new landing pages or a whole new website, like, like, skin for the for the, for the sale period. Like go spend some time filming some ads, go study ads, basically three minute long videos of people just talking to the camera and telling their story.
(28:14) Like, those are going to be the ads. I think that make your holiday and ad account just like rip. So that's what I would double down on it. Yeah. I mean, you would create I create 5000 stacks a day now, you put them all into the account and separate CBOs. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Are you a you throw it on like a Santa costume.
(28:32) Any and any of these coming up here, you just you just going all Santa on top. No pants on bottom. That's that's the bad move. I can't steal your your creative genius. It didn't work. But, you know, you could always try. I mean, I mean, you know, Harry talked about this in depth at the foxhole event that we had in Lisbon, and he.
(28:51) I interviewed him, which is the only way I could get him to go on stage. And we. And we went through this, and he's gone through this episodes we've had, you know, with him on scalability school and on T to see if we talked about it as well, because he's kind of a to a degree in terms of these long form. Yeah. And it was so interesting about it is I think that yes, it follows a narrative.
(29:12) And I think really what these things go through is it's so organic, half these things that he showed us examples of these people sitting in their car, and they actually hired a person whose job they're actually trying to, you know, emulate the thing he showed us for a toothbrush. And it was a dental hygienist who does UGC and she's like, she's like, does your mouth ever wake up feeling super gross like mine did this morning? Like I, you know, I see it all day long.
(29:38) Like it was this whole, you know, and I'm and it's like these interesting hooks that felt really natural. And I watched the whole thing. And, you know, because it just, it captures you because you're like, yeah, what is that? It's interesting. And then you get convinced over time. And I know you guys are are aware of this and masters of it, but I think it's hard to it's hard when there's all these different options getting thrown at you of like statics work or high, high production stuff works.
(30:03) And I think, you know, to a degree like, you know, sort of the ugly eyed concept, that's what this is in today's world. Like, I think ugly type stuff sort of still can work and depending on what it is, of course. But I think that this is like that version of it for today is what a Yapa is is it's like doesn't have to be fancy, it's just talking about it.
(30:22) But really what it is, is it's deeply researched, brand new concepts that nobody else is talking about really. And that's really what I think the innovation is. It's not really the style. It's just the fact that it's, it's bringing something brand new to the account. Would you agree with that, Zach? Like, that's what it is, is it's not not regurgitating things that you're saying in other places.
(30:42) These are net new kind of ideas and ways to talk about it in terms of issues that it solves that aren't being that haven't been done before. The best way that I can describe kind of what's happening is this is like the source of the week. This is like boom, source of the week is basically CSS Creative strategist taking time to do more deep research.
(31:06) Meaning they're like going to go study whatever you're selling. Let's just even use this like toothbrush example. Your sign an electric toothbrush. Going to go figure out what dental hygiene is, what doctors, what physicians are talking about. That actually is a problem with with oral health. And so what what you might end up finding is like there's this like concept of, I don't know, maybe it's like the the floss isn't really where like the magic happens.
(31:34) It's where, like, the toothbrush doesn't reach to. I don't know that that a dentist might say, well, they're while they're in deep research and they're like digging through Reddit or they're watching YouTube videos of doctors talking about oral, that concept of just talking about like, okay, it's actually like the reach to the back of your mouth is where, where like the magic happens.
(31:51) And then it's going to go look and scroll through organic to go find something really interesting of a concept of or of an organic video that popped off, got a ton of use and a ton of comments and really resonated. And then like taking the two of those things and mashing them together and it's like, okay, there's this organic video of a nurse or a dental hygienist where she's wearing, like the crazy glasses or whatever, and she's like talking to the camera.
(32:15) And she's like, I don't know, maybe like there's like something funny about it or something unique about this video that, that an organic really, really resonated with people. It's like, cool, go take that and then talk about that. The issue is not the floss. It's the fact that your toothbrush doesn't reach all the way to the back.
(32:29) Combine those two and make it a like a real person is telling the story about what they found out and what they realized, and that this toothbrush is like the only one that has been able to do that. And that's like the real issue to oral health care. It's like, boom, that combo is now just going to like absolutely break out and smash because it's unique idea plus unique like filming concept combined into one.
(32:53) And I think, like you can take it, you can try to do, you know like a lot of just got a brief from one of our CSI's to like film content in my vehicle. Because I think it's just like such an organic, natural way. But there's other ways to do that that I think the organic content people, when things just pop off on TikTok or on, on, on reels, they're not even trying to do it intentionally.
(33:15) It's just like something that's happening that's interesting and unique, and it's just like, okay, how do I apply that to this, like ad concept? And then again, merging them together is where, where the magic happens. That's literally what Harry's done for us time and time again. We still can't. We still can't do it ourselves yet like we're we're trying to learn and figure it out.
(33:32) But that man and that agency, really, Polly is just incredible at taking those two things and combining it together to make make the magic happen. So that ends that ends. Today's segment. Source of the week. There it is. Thank you. Sponsor. Sponsor our sponsor. Boom boom boom boom. Yeah, it's just good stuff. I'm just gonna add one thing.
(33:54) One thing that we've seen work well off the back of that is like taking that creator. If they're like a really great representation of that demo. And like the founder, when you were saying the founder thing that really, that really resonated with me to like, if you are, if you are the customer or, well, I guess, subset of your customers as a founder and you've got a bunch of like really nice, like clips of you showing the use case of it, like, you know, you're not a probably don't wear compression socks from hollow,
(34:18) but like, that's the example that comes to mind. Like, let's say you were you were a nurse, you were at you're on your feet all day wearing compression socks. Like actually you in the clip showing it like your founder video, then went to a landing page that showed a bunch of clips of the USPS. We've seen that print, like aligning the creator video with the page that it's actually going to, and just like clipping from the actual video itself and just like showing it has been, really nice.
(34:42) So just throwing that in there, some random additional tip. I was looking at your your your latest tweets act to see if there's anything I want to ask you or your latest stuff, and you're talking about your AI character, which. Yeah, I know what that is. I gotta I gotta read this. I don't even know. This is the first I've ever heard about this.
(35:01) What is this? So there are so this is this is basically what I've been trying to do lately, is live in the fucking zeitgeist of the most cracked marketers. And so you just said are running insane blackhat shit. And then what is happening in organic? So what is happening there? If you can stay up to date there, and then you can take proper like marketing mechanics and just like general direct response marketing, combine the two together, you fucking win.
(35:30) And so there's super blockhead brands that don't even have to be as blackhat as they are. That could build really big businesses because they're so good at this thing. So what I, what I tweeted about is there's these people that are using Higgs Field to make what they're calling like characters. And so they're just these like wild looking individuals that look real, but they look fucking crazy, like insane hair with some crazy mustache or whatever is going on.
(35:57) And then they just make little storylines and they talk about them. So like, there's a guy that's just like this, like huge buff, like clearly looks like like a, like an action figure. That's also like a goth. And they like, combine these two things into this guy and they make a character and then like, make him go into the real world and just do, like, funny shit.
(36:18) But like, these videos are absolutely popping up. So like, they've done it. So, Sid from Toy Story, is that his name? Like the bad kid, the whatever. The neighbor. Like someone made one of Sid like a real life Sid. And then it's just like this, like little shithead kid that's like, going in, like, causing havoc in his neighborhood.
(36:35) But it looks real because Higgs field is absolutely cracked at, like, making AI videos that look so realistic. Staying ahead on that trend is like what I'm trying to do. So candidly, what I'm trying to do here is I'm trying to like, get someone, which I've got a couple DMs already, and we'll see how this turns out to make characters for our brands.
(36:54) So, like, my brain this morning was like, I really want like a person that has like a llama or a llama alpaca head, but just like a person that's just like telling stories about, like their issues and whatever. And like their legs have been swelling and whatever. And then we'll talk about compression talks like work it in, Mars men.
(37:11) There's a million ways that we could go of just like just crazy huge Shaq dudes to like skinny people or whatever, but like, it's basically taking the most forward AI concepts and trying to, like, loop them back in to like, tell a story that's actually interesting and then ideally, like have a product at the end of it.
(37:27) So that's what's going on there. There you go guys. Thing is really interesting because and Zach you can tell Shane if you want to cut this specific part out but like the the creatine bad you know like that that like that stuff like I've been watching that guy's videos for three months that I had never like for some reason I was like, hadn't thought like, okay, this is the most obvious ad angle of all time.
(37:48) You just have to convert it. And like, that's that's like sitting in the organic feed. You see formats that you can adopt, and then you just have to sprinkle in your own, your own product and USP and storytelling. Because yeah, that, that yeah, it works. It works. It does work. It does work. Yeah. It's interesting, it's interesting, you know, kind of the the idea of staying ahead of it and where the trend is and what like how AI is.
(38:11) It's just that's like always a constant thing that you're pushing against in terms of trying to, to stay relevant, although also algorithmically because like meta will know, you know, and well, what's crazy is like, think we've made some of these like song ads and like some of them have worked and it's like, okay, why is this working so well? Why is this convincing someone to buy a product that, like, you would never have thought that this would have worked previously? And a lot of it comes down to the story and people resonating with the story,
(38:38) despite it feeling like a, like a Disney movie or that, that they're watching. Right. So and the piece that meta loves about it is because the watch rates are so good, the hold rates are there. Like people are engaging with these, like the comments or whatever. It's like insane. And so despite it, even like I think consumers seen it as potentially even an ad right away, like the storylines are just so interesting and they like, I don't know, like they're just very punchy.
(39:06) So, I think there's something to learn from that too. There's I mean, what's what's really funny is like, where my brain goes most days is like, what are the crazy like, blackhat people doing? And how do I actually make that white hat? Because they're the ones that just, like, have to stay ahead. Most of them were like affiliate marketers that like, needed CPAs and robes to be, like, better than everyone else.
(39:28) And so they've always they're always like thinking on the forefront, but they're just not great people not doing great business things. But there's there's so much to learn from that, that I think a lot of us and me candidly, historically kind of just wrote off and was like, dropshippers are just like not good people.
(39:44) And so they're probably just their marketing probably sucks. Actually. It rips and they're really good at it. They just push the limits too far sometimes. I mean, I can completely agree with you. That's something that I was I actually said at like his dinner last week, just somebody they were asking about. And I, I agree that you'll always want to be looking for different areas where people are innovating.
(40:02) And one of the areas is in this area of stuff. And because, yes, they have to push the boundaries and that's ultimately going to lead to innovation, even if it's not totally like legal. But it can be it can be made into such, right. So I think that is good because there's like a hustling mentality that those people have that they have to stay ahead. right.
(40:21) Well, gents, always good to be with you. Always good to chat for anybody that wants to. Has any follow up questions to always feel free to email me Andrew Fox digital.com. I can send it along to the gents for any feedback that they might have, but thanks for being here you guys and hopefully you found this valuable.
(40:37) And thanks for listening. The only way that we grow this podcast is 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.
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(41:18) Thank you everyone. Thanks for listening. Honestly.
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