The Weekly Sharpener #109 - Creative Cuts

Ads are movie trailers - so many them short & sweet 😘

Author

Chase Mohseni
January 12th, 2023

Hey Fam 👋,

Welcome to the Creative Cuts ⚔️ Edition of the Weekly Sharpener:

We're going break down an ad and discuss why it does and doesn't work with the goal that you'll have some actionable takeaways on how to improve your creatives and grow your business. 🚀

The Weekly Sharpener #94_Is your brand part of the culture? If not, 😬...

Check out Pencil if you're ready to Create winning ads 10x faster with AI.

Partner with us 🤝

Marketing agencies, freelance creatives, e-comm experts…want access to our generous revenue share and co-marketing opportunities? Become a Pencil Partner today!

You can learn more here.

This week we are tackling one ad, with a quick video breakdown, and another amazing episode of Add Creative for you. Tell us your thoughts!

Thesis 💊

Our structure is as follows:

  • Hook

  • Trust

  • Benefits

  • CTA

  • Possible Changes

Let's dive into this short + effective ad!

Watch the entire ad with sound and better video quality on Foreplay (which is where I go to look/save ads for inspiration.)

Here's my video quick breakdown 🎥

Hook

A woman drinking coffee.

Copy: "Me when I take Adderal"

Moves to 4 split screens - shaking with frenetic music.

Why does this matter - Adderal elicits a response from us - we know or have heard about the jitters, and we also know about the focus-centered benefits.

This does a nice job of anchoring us in an easy-to-understand way against the enemy - which is the jitters of Adderal.

The music is a nice enhancement, that will deliver an even more emotional response from the hook if the user has sound on.

Components to use in your hook:

  • Simple line of copy,

  • anchor a well known product as the enemy

  • quad split screen for emphasis

  • music to enhance emotional response.

Trust 

There isn't much trust being built here.

Their one calling card is the anchoring of Adderal which has been part of the zeitgeist for a long time.

Benefits

Here they do a great job of resolving the problems of the hook.

4 screens -> 1 screen

Frenetic Music -> Calm Music

Adderal Case -> Thesis Energy Box

Worried Face -> Calm Face

Negative Copy -> "Me when I take Thesis Nootropics"

All of these changes were built into a very compact framework, which I love.

CTA

Similar to many TikTok-style ads - there isn't a standard CTA outside of the ad unit itself.

This cuts both ways - you can use something more custom to elicit emotion here at the end or depend on what you have built before that as they are going.

My take: "Get your bottle of calm now"

Possible Changes

  • Add a custom CTA

  • Get to the split screens faster - it takes a beat too long and sit there.

  • Push the talent to look more worried to start.

  • Have product more prominent or see the talent using it.

(I'm stretching here, feels strong to me)

TLDR

  • Short ads convert well if you pack them with the right ingredients, remember your ad is a movie trailer. Get them to your website ASAP with maximum velocity so you can do the storytelling/selling there!

  • Music + Visual formats can convey an emotion in a truncated period if you are thoughtful about how you use them.

  • One line of copy, done well, can do the job - don't overcomplicate it.

🎙Add Creative

This is an amazing episode with a great creative mind. There are many insights throughout about how to generate great creative, it's more than worth your time.

Apple Podcast 🍎 II Spotify 🎧

A sneak peek from Episode 31 👀

You need those photos and videos to actually convert and actually have an impetus. So when we plan those photos and videos to be used, there needs to be, well, why do customers buy? Let's figure that out. Once we figured that out, now that's gonna craft the visuals.

The visuals come when we actually understand why people buy. What would the setting look like? What does the script look like when we're creating a spoken video? And so that ultimately was the biggest thing that I saw was we can have high-quality visuals that also convert.

Matthew Gattozzi - CEO @ Goodo Studios

That's it for this week's edition of The Weekly Sharpener - Creative Cuts⚔️. Let us know if there are brands you think we should be looking at. Until next time keep on creating friends!

All my best,

Chase

PS - Check out our YouTube Library for amazing content from the best in DTC marketing.