Transcription
So, Meta is a pretty simple game. If you're able to take the ads that you make that are losers and understand why they are losers to be able to make more winning versions of them, you're going to be able to scale.
Like if there is literally one skill that you can master, it's understand why your losing ads are losers and learn how to make them into winners. And so, in this video, what I want to do is just pull examples from big brands and together we can take a look at some ads that they've made that are clearly losers that are not working and compare them to their ads that they've made that are crushing it and winning in order to look at the difference between the two.
And this is the number one thing that I tell people like, "Hey, if you're struggling to make winning ads, go and take a look at the difference between other bigger brands that are potentially in your category or any brands in general and look at the differences because if you pay enough attention to winning ads, you'll notice a lot of patterns." I mean, I can begin to tell you how many thousands of ads I've probably analyzed at this point, but what we're going to do today is break down the difference between both of those so you can actually see firsthand.
Now, the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to review this image ad and then I'm going to go down and do a video version as well. So, first things first here, again, the losing ad over here on the left says, "Cortisol belly almost gone. AI Russ, right?" Of course, it's a real person cuz he's, you know, looking in the mirror and now he's jacked over here. And then it says, "Beat the dad bod with Mars Man."
Whereas, if we look over here on the right side, which is actually the winning iteration, you can see this ad has the text inside of the belly, which right away just visually is different. Like, why is there writing on this guy's belly? Whereas, here clearly this just like looks like a basic ad with a headline and it's not really a real review. But here you can see this text says, "That belly isn't beer, it's cortisol killing your testosterone."
Now, you might look at these two ads and be like, "Well, they're kind of the same like AI graphic." I mean, this is obviously not really an AI, this is like a cartoon, but they're kind of both cartoonish. And so, you might look at this and be like, "I don't really understand. They're both kind of talking about this cortisol angle, which is an angle that is definitely working for this brand, but for some reason this ad flopped on its face and this ad is crushing it. A lot of you will look at these two ads and not really know the difference of why this one works and why this one doesn't, and that is your problem. Like I said in the beginning, if you want to get better at making money in ads, you have to understand why this ad is a lot better than this one. So, let's break it down.
And just so you guys are aware, these numbers, so where it says number five, is actually coming from our brand new iteration playbook. You guys are kind of getting a sneak peek here. Some of these things are probably going to be blurred just because they're showing sensitive links. But, for example, the empty claims in a sophisticated market is usually one of the main reasons why ads will fail. And so, with that said, number five, standing for the empty claim. And if you don't know what an empty claim is, well, here's a great example. They're basically saying, "Cortisol belly, almost gone." Or, "Beat dad bod with our product." You're just making a claim saying that your product is going to work, and it's going to do the thing that your customer wants. But, the thing is, if you've watched any of my videos before, you'll know that's not a good thing to do, not all the time, but like a lot of the time, just because of the fact that like most people just expect you to say that your product is going to work, but the problem is they don't believe you.
And so, if you take a look at the winning iteration over here, which you'll notice that they do instead is they don't even really make a claim. What they do is they reassign the objection and remove some of the objections that would come from a claim like, "Oh, fix your beer belly." They're not saying, "Fix your beer belly." They're just pointing at a new problem, which is cortisol. And then on top of that, they're amplifying it by going more low valence, which we're going to get down to here in a second, by saying that this cortisol is killing your testosterone. And so, what we have done here is we haven't really made any claims at all. And so, we're not asking anybody to believe us. All we're doing is we're just kind of presenting new information and kind of removing this objection of like, "Hey, we're not saying that we're going to fix your beer belly. We're not saying we're going to fix your cortisol belly or anything like that. We're just saying that like, 'Hey, you think this is beer belly, but it's actually something else, and it's worse than you think.'" And so, that killing your testosterone creates this urgency that makes people feel like okay like maybe I'm fine with a beer belly but the fact that my beer belly is killing my testosterone makes me want to take action today. So think about what this does and again even just the placement of these words here is so much better because it's like inside the belly rather than just like you know on a stereotypical ad. But my point is we haven't made any objections here. We've just grabbed someone's attention and we've made them realize that okay this is a problem that needs to be solved which is why this ad is absolutely crushing it.
Now the second thing here that this ad doesn't really do a good job of. So again just so you guys have context this ad I'm 99.9% sure it was launched first. As you can see here was made January 15th and so this ad has been running for a while and there's a lot of different versions of it. And this one was essentially an iteration of this angle. And so they've identified that hey cortisol belly or just cortisol in general is an angle that's working and so they're trying to do a different execution. They're trying to do a different iteration of that angle. But again this one is failing. And another reason why it's failing is because they kind of went more specific. Not a lot of men have heard the term cortisol belly. But I can almost guarantee you that literally every man has heard of beer belly before. And so what they did such a good job of with this ad is they were able to take something familiar with beer belly and then turn it and and kind of say like hey it's actually this. And so for all these people that have been trying to solve a beer belly problem now they're like oh it wasn't a beer belly problem it's something else. Okay I'm interested. Click. Let me go and go through their advertorial. But you'll see that that is where they do a lot of their selling. But then again if we compare to this one cortisol belly almost gone it's like hey number one it's an empty claim and number two that's just a way more specific audience. And not a lot of people are going to be like what is cortisol belly right? Like I don't know what that is. I don't have that. I have a beer belly but I don't know what cortisol belly is and it's not obvious. And then even then you're showing this like jacked guy in the mirror. You can kind of see this guy here but it's a little bit confusing right? Like the visual doesn't make sense. It's not congruent. Whereas this one is.
And then the other thing with this is just the valence and intensity and how the ad makes someone feel. When I read this and I see this ad, I'm like, this is an ad of this brand trying to sell me their product. They're going to tell me that, "Hey, I'm going to go from being this overweight dude, and I'm going to get jacked." Okay, great. That's what literally every single marketing company does, ever. But, if we take a look at this ad here, I'm learning something new. I'm starting to become more problem aware of this big, you know, of this potential bigger problem of cortisol that is killing my testosterone. And so, my point is is that this also just has more urgency, and it's more of a zone four, so it's low valence, high intensity, which for those of you who haven't seen me talk about valence and intensity, I do talk about it in my $10 million in 90 days video, 2026 version, so you can go ahead and check that out later after you watch this one. But again, this one over here is just kind of more positive, and just kind of vague, saying like, "Hey, this is going to get you what you want." Where this is like really grabbing someone's attention, and getting them to click through and learn more, which is for a lot of the times the goal of your static ads is to do that. And I do like how they say results are not guaranteed, and may vary by individual. Obviously, they're smart with how they're making their claims and whatnot, but this is a great example of if you made this ad, and you know a cortisol angle works, how you could tell the difference between these two, so then that way, when you go and do more ads, or you go and make more ads, you're not going to make these same mistakes again. And this is why studying winning ads is one of the best things that you can do to get better at making winning ads.
Now, let's jump down to the video version here, and what I'm actually going to do is I'm going to have my editing team blur the changes made, just so that way you guys can try to think through this as well. But, I'm going to go ahead and play the losing version, and then I'm going to play the winning version, and you guys can hopefully see now, if you try to look at it from a marketer lens, like, "Okay, this ad is winning, this ad is losing. What are the differences?" Let's go ahead and play it.
>> At some point, chocolate stopped feeling like chocolate, and it started feeling like candy. It's super sweet, it's not that satisfying, and half the times it feels like it's more sugar than actual chocolate.
>> Cool. So, we've got that version. Now, let's go ahead and take a look at the winning version.
>> What is the number one ingredient in most chocolate bars? I'll give you a hint, it is not cacao. This is a cacao pod. This is where chocolate comes from. This fruit started off as medicine, and it's one of the most powerful plants that ancient cultures had access to.
>> Perfect. Now, you guys maybe have seen me break down this ad fully. If you haven't, I do have a video, so you guys can go check that one out as well after this. But now what I want to do before we unblur this is I want you to ask yourself like okay, like what are the difference between this ad and this ad? And what I would have recommend that you do as well is like go back and rewatch this part of it. And then go back and rewatch this part of it again. And this is what you have to do with your own ads, too, is like watch them over and over. And that's exactly what I did when I was actually writing down the differences between these two videos.
But the first thing that I have on here is the bridge. There's an issue with the bridge, okay? On the losing ad, the bridge is just all opinion-based. And I'm going to go back and play this for you, but you'll see she basically says it's super sweet, it's not satisfying, it feels like it's more sugar than anything else. And those are all her opinion, which is okay, that's great, good for you, I don't care. Thank you for sharing your opinion, but I'm not that interested. Whereas if you look at the winner on this video, the bridge is all fact-based. This is a cacao pod. This is where chocolate comes from. It started off as medicine. It's a powerful plant. She's not talking about how she feels about it or her opinion or that she thinks that chocolate isn't good or whatever it is, because that's going to cause people to like flare up. It's going to make them feel like oh well, I love chocolate. Whereas if we're just stating facts, it's kind of hard to argue with facts. You don't really have any objections when someone just tells you a fact. And so at the end of the day, when you use opinions, which this hook does, and again, I'll play this >> very quickly one more time. >> It's super sweet, it's not that satisfying, and half of the times it feels like it's more >> You guys get the point. Where we go here, she's like this is chocolate or this is a cacao pod. This fruit is one of the most nutrient dense, all that kind of stuff. It's just facts, facts, facts versus this is just all opinion. And even the hook as well, she's like at some point chocolate stopped feeling like chocolate. Okay, that's maybe relatable for her. Where if I take a look at this one, this is what's the number one ingredient in chocolate? It's like I'll give you a hint, it's you know, not cacao, aka, it's not chocolate, right? And I've already reviewed this video a ton. Now, hopefully, you guys can see the difference like, "Oh, I get why this ad didn't work." And that is what I want you guys to unlock.
Another thing, again, and I just kind of mentioned this, is the hook is just an opinion with no curiosity. There's no curiosity gap created where she's just like, "At some point, chocolate stopped feeling like chocolate." It's like, "All right, thanks for sharing." Whereas this one here, she creates that curiosity gap where she's like, "What's the number one ingredient in most chocolate bars?" It's not chocolate. And it's like, "Oh, wow, okay, what is it?" Explain more. And so again, when it comes to losing videos, and if you're reviewing losing videos, really spend a lot of time on the hook and the bridge. I'm not sure how you guys are reviewing your ads or if you even review your ads at all, but when it comes to video ads, we really don't care about anything after like the initial bridge. And if you don't know what I'm talking about when I say the bridge, I'm usually just talking about the first five to 10 seconds after the initial two to three seconds. So, after the hook, it's like, what sets up the rest of the video? Most of the time, videos are losers because the hook and the bridge are off. So, if you're going to review losing ads, really pay attention to that first 10 to 15 seconds because that is what will make or break your entire ad. And the only time we really fully review an ad end to end is when it is a winner version. So, just as like a pro tip for you guys, like don't spend a minute 30 watching this entire video when it's like, "Listen, the first 10 seconds are off. If we fix the first 10 seconds, this video might have a chance." But again, those are the differences between a winning ad and a losing ad.
Done a lot of reviews on the channel talking about winning ads, and I have one video talking about losing ads, but I've never actually compared loser to winner. And to be honest, that is just the best way to see like night and day, okay, it's very clear now why this is a winning ad versus this one being a losing ad. Now, you do have to improve your marketing ability. You have to know what to look for. You have to know that curiosity gaps are important. You have to know that authority is important. You have to know that positioning is important. You have to know that when you're making a claim, you're going to get objections, so you better be able to write in a way that handles those objections or remove those objections, just like we showed with the beer belly being cortisol. So, you definitely need to have an understanding of all those different types of things, and that comes with time as you start to learn, as you start to become a better marketer. But, my goal for this video was just to show you guys that hey, if you compare the ads that are losers to the ads that are winners, sometimes it's a easier to spot why certain ads are winning versus the ones that aren't.
And the final thing that I want to say is like if you have a winning ad in your account, and say you're spending, you know, $1,000 a day or $2,000 a day. The number one thing that I want you to keep in mind is that you shouldn't always just be looking at your own ads because you have to remember, your own ads are keeping you kind of stuck at where you are. So, your winning ad is keeping you at the current level spend that you're at, whether it's $50 a day, $5,000 a day, or $50,000 a day like some of our clients. My point is is that if you're holding your ad or your main winning ad is like the holy grail and like all of your ads have to be like that, you're just going to kind of shoot yourself in the foot a little bit. So, it's very important to make sure you explore and you look at other winning ads as well to try to extract the frameworks. It's exactly how I can look at a video ad of a girl that's trying to sell a chocolate bar to get learnings that I can apply to say for example a supplement brand or some cases even like a fashion brand or a pet brand or a skin care brand. So, the goal is for you to break down like the fundamentals that are being used, not just exactly what she's saying, but how she is saying it. And that is what you want to be able to analyze so then you can go and even compare an ad that you know is spending and probably crushing way more than your current ad, and you can compare your ad to that one as well and try to see if there's differences that you can spot. I'm a very visual guy, so that's why, you know, when you see me in Canva or in Figma, constantly like doing things, like it just helps me see it, and I would highly recommend that you do this as well to just be able to look at the differences.
So, with all that said, that's all I have for this video. I have a massive trench ahead of me to finish this cuz there's probably going to be like, I don't know, 10 to 15 more of these iteration ads that I've got to actually you together for the Evolved community, which again, if you're interested in Evolve or in Origins, the links are down below. Again, those communities are just filled with killers that actually understand this stuff, and so if you want to surround yourself with others like that, I'd highly recommend that you check it out. With all that said, thank you so much for taking the time to watch this week's video, and I'll see you in the next one.