Welcome back to another issue of Nice Ads. This week we're going to be talking about

Before we get started here, just a little note. I've just relaunched my ad creative course, and it's now live for you to purchase. I've completely overhauled all the lessons and included some new stuff as well. You can purchase it today here.

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In a world where AI is taking over our feeds and people are craving more authenticity, one of the main ways that we're seeing our clients achieve that is with founder ads. These can be of any style or format, but the key thing is the story, because that's the number one thing that is completely unique to you and your brand.

When I pitch founder ads to brands, a lot of them are a little apprehensive, often because the founder perhaps doesn't want to be on camera or doesn't want to make the brand about them. What's so important to understand is that we're not making the brand revolve around you. We're making the brand stand out because of you, and founders don't always need to be on camera to make founder ads. We've done so much with just voice-over, which has been sent to us as a Slack voice message. And if your founder is unsure what to say, work with them to write a script, but I've found the best results come from interviewing the founder and recording the interview. Again, it doesn't need to be high production. You can film this on a phone. The key thing is getting the brand's story across.

Think of your founder as a UGC creator and work with them in just the same ways. This is one we made for Chatbooks, which has a really charismatic founder. Our goal here was just to tell the story and relate to the customer. That's it. Simple. Fill your account with ads like this, and you will slowly cut through the noise that your competitors are making.

If you want some founder ads for your brand but don't want to make them yourself, then I would love to have a conversation with you. Apply to work with us here.

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This brand is so interesting because they are selling such an incredibly niche product that, unless you live in America, you might not even know it exists. Flavoured sunflower seeds. They actually look incredibly tasty, but what baffles me is how they market the product. They're taking so much inspiration from the TikTok Shop affiliate videos with this POV style, and when they find a winning format and script, they're just pasting that out to a load of different flavours and bundle combos to showcase.

For example, the hook in this video, where they use a TikTok comment suggesting a weird flavour, is across so many ads on their ad account. It works because it includes the product, is strange enough to stop the scroll, and creates enough curiosity that someone might watch the entire video to find out what this product is and what it's about. I think this is just a great example of what I always say: keeping your ads simple is often the answer, and so many brands just overthink their creative.

The example above is literally filmed from someone's POV as they put their product in a box. That's it, no fluff, no fancy editing. They're just packing the product, showcasing all the different flavours that they have to get someone that might be interested to purchase. I'm guessing that ads like this fall heavily in the middle to the bottom of the funnel for them, but if you have a really great top-of-the-funnel source like organic social, then this is really all you need.

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You know, before, how we spoke about authenticity in a world of AI ad creative. I think this is a really great example because many people would look at this ad and think their first thought should be to write a prompt to ChatGPT to generate the same thing. I've tried generating images like this, and it's always the one that I actually made that performs better. I'm not sure why, but I think people are starting to spot AI, and it almost feels a little bit lazy.

I know we all claim to have no time, but I'm sure you have 10 minutes to write your offer on a piece of paper, take a photo of it with your phone, and then upload it to your ad account. I consistently see handwritten ad creative like this perform well, and I know so many brands that are utilising it. Instead of just blindly going to AI to make this go, do it yourself!

Utilise those art skills that you learned in high school and colour in some bubble text. It doesn't matter whether it looks like trash; it will probably convert better

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That's all for this week's Nice Ads. I appreciate you taking the time to read it. Couple of bits of housekeeping:

I've got a brand new video where I rank all my favourite ad creative types. That's live now, and you can watch it here.

Just another reminder for my Ad Creative course: you can go here and purchase it and get lifetime access.

I'll see you next week ✌️