What does an award-winning agency know about creative ads that you don't

So says Jacques Spitzer, the founder of an award-winning and 50x revenue-generating agency called Raindrop.

And here’s why you should pay attention to his insights:

• #1 YouTube TrueView Ad of 2020 (YouTube Leaderboard)

• 2 Emmy Awards

• #1 Performing Super Bowl Ad of 2021

• $750,000,000+ in sales generated

• 13 campaigns with over 100m views online

• Teamed up with the best DTC brands such as Dr. Squatch, Native, Manescaped, P&G, and more

Clearly, this guy knows something about paid media, human psychology, and attention.

Here are five insights I gained after having him in The Performers mastermind. Consider this a guest post by Jacques but summarized by me.

1. Never assume attention

People are sleepwalking their way through life. You need to wake them up from their sleep while they are mindlessly scrolling on the internet.

Let’s play a game…

Let’s say you are on your way to work. Which of these cars will catch your eye?

If it’s the green Lamborghini, you guessed correctly.

The reason is your reticular activating system (RAS), a bundle of nerves at the base of our brains, filters out unnecessary information so only the important stuff gets through.

Because essentially, if you were to drive to work, and you remembered the color of every single car or the license plate of every car or who was in each car, your brain would go crazy. So your brain is preset to ignore almost all information. I mean, think about how many times you remember any of the cars on your commute.

And we go through all of life this way.

This is why we are trying to create the green Lamborghini experience with our ads.

We want to create these moments so that people don't just see another gray Honda. Most advertising is just another gray Honda. It's just another brand trying to pitch whenever they want to pitch and they're not interested in stopping people's RAS and actively getting them to pay attention.

So, create something worth stopping for.

But how do you do that?

Here’s what Jacques and his team do:

His 5-6 writers spend 5-6 hours creating those moments and they focus on why you would want to watch this ad.

They ask: How are we going to earn their attention?

They come up with about 60 ideas and then choose 3 of them. And that makes a big difference.

And so you know, all of these ideas are trying to grab you visually. They’re trying to grab you with the sound. And obviously, different audiences are going to have different interest levels, but that’s how we approach these opening moments. We are creating a green Lamborghini. We are creating a grab-your-attention moment. And it’s not a production value thing. You can do this with an iPhone.

Always ask yourself when you create hooks:

• It's about what's happening

• Is it interesting enough?

• Is there enough happening?

• Are sound effects needed?

• Do these things grab your attention?

You get the point?

So, let’s hop to the next important bit:

2. Structure for your ad for success

This is a typical brand ad. And most people who are on their phones won’t really watch it.

But in today’s paid social media, the story arc has changed. This is how it looks now:

We have to start with the why and win their trust in the beginning.

The traditional arc assumes people will stick around, but they don’t.

People don’t have short attention spans, they have short consideration spans.

People want to be educated, entertained or both. You get the idea.

So the climax has to be in the beginning, not the end.

And so the way that I think about the kinds of ads we do is that they are more similar to the old-style 30-minute infomercials.

Infomercials do this thing where you think you have the product figured out and then it tells you another way you can use something. And another benefit, another benefit, and another benefit. And that's more of how we see how online advertising tends to work in terms of people actually converting. It is like: Oh, I like this product.

To zoom in further, this is another way you think about it. This is your screenshot moment.

3. What to say

The first thing most brands ask themselves is: What do we want to say?

And this is the mistake I think 99% of brands are making. “Here’s what I want to say…”

This is also what I (Jacques) attribute all of our success to. We don't start with that question.

We start with:…

What do THEY want to hear?

So, start with — what I want my viewer to do/take away. And then ask yourself:

What do they want to hear?

This is a very different way of thinking. This way gives you empathy.

And that is probably the biggest difference between what I think is good marketing and what I think is great marketing. First, you ask yourself, what do they want to hear? And then you reverse engineer that to get what you want to say.

Here’s a visual way of thinking through the next steps (and it’s not scripting).

And this is where you bring in your brand’s unique selling proposition. These are like the list of what the product does for you. This is how it does a great job. This is why you want to buy it. And so, as you can see this is this middle part.

People don't buy your what, they buy your why. Right? Wrong. Or partially wrong? Who remembers what they’re buying?

And here’s how we move right into the next key insight.

4. What is THEIR why?

Let’s look at this using Dr. Squatch’s example.

Dr. Squatch’s original why: “To bring the benefits and healing of all-natural soap to people.”

This can get you a couple of million, but not $100M in revenue.

So, Jacque’s team did this research to find their consumers’ why:

And here’s what Jacque’s team found:

They were trying to figure out the self expressive benefits to the buyer – what am I saying about myself as a person by buying this product? 

And what Jacques and his team landed on was this sense of worthiness, as in: I'm worth a great experience. I'm worth paying more for this product. I'm worth having this piece of joy in my daily morning routine.

“And as a man, that was a very foreign thing to be selling. I mean, these are $9 bars of soap we are selling. Like when you open the box, and you look at the product, we're selling a smile, we're selling joy, we're selling something that is a little bit more intangible than just, it cleans your skin. And if we were just selling, it cleans your skin, it would never work.”

In short, Dr. Squatch sees their customers as kings of their showers.

If you ever watch Dr. Squatch ads, especially anything from the last five years, you’ll notice throughout it's like: Smell like a man, feel like a champion.

This type of language is how they leaned into it and it is drastically different from their first ad where it was like picking at dry skin and talking about the benefits. They went from focussing on the brand’s why for the buyer to the buyer’s why for the brand. Genius.

So before starting any campaign do this:

• Write down all your unique selling propositions.

• What are the things that you know are great about your product?

  

5. Determine the length

Jacques encourages people not to be afraid to create longer pieces.

The longer people spend time with your marketing, the stronger people will connect with your brand.

Spend enough time with the brand, until it endears people and commits them.

You can always cut the longest version into a series of shorter videos for your ad funnel.

So, here’s the TL;DR for you:

• Never assume attention, earn it.

• Structure your ad with the end in mind.

• Figure out what your customers want to hear.

• Understand your customers why, not your brand’s.

• Make ads longer for higher affinity and don’t be afraid.

These were his insights from 12-year agency work and working with big brands.

If you like this content, then connect with Jacques Spitzer, and tell him I sent you. And, do check out his agency (it’s not that expensive for the work they do).

Are you hitting a learning curve with your paid social? What if you could learn from 100+ experiments from other marketers too?

For the last six months, I have been running a paid social mastermind group, and I have only accepted 20% of all the applications (because only the best can help each other level up). So, why do people join this group and pay €29/month for it? Watch this video for more.

Last month I asked my community what they love the most — here’s what they said:

So, if you are interested in our paid social marketing group, then I’d highly encourage you to apply where folks don’t just learn from me but from each other too. And the best part? The community loves it!

And here’s the interesting part, people are getting gigs and jobs inside the group:

Don't pay consultants $200/hr for advice. Join 40+ growth experts (and make more money).

Happy Growing with Paid Social,

Aazar Shad

Since this newsletter is free, I do it to follow my curiosity. But I’d love it if you could leave some feedback so I know if I am helping you or not.

Two ways I can help you, whenever you are ready:

1. Work with me to get you growth from paid marketing. Book a call here.

2. Promote yourself to 5,800+ highly qualified paid marketers by sponsoring this newsletter. Check it out here.