Welcome back to Nice Ads. It's time to break down another three ad creatives to help you get better at creative strategy. This week, we're going to be going over
Why you should be making EGC content
How to target with your hook
How you can leverage aesthetics in your static ads
If you're looking to scale your paid media while bringing down your CPA, it might be time to chat with my team and me about how we can create better ad creatives for you. You can click here To apply to work with us
Shay & Blue
This is an ad that one of my creative strategists made recently to build on the idea of EGC (employee-generated content). We see across the board that this type of creative performs very well, particularly if it's offer-focused.
The idea here is that we have a UGC creator play the role of an employee at the brand, presenting the offer as a solution to something they saw in the comments. Obviously, this situation is manufactured, but the trick here is to cast someone who is believable. What we did here was take a winning ad from a previous month as the hook and pair it with a comment-response graphic to provide context for the rest of the video.
It's funny, often enough, the ads you don't like when they're produced are the ones that end up performing best. When we first reviewed this video, we weren't entirely happy with it, but your customer always knows more than you do. Even if you don't like an ad, you should still test it. I'm so glad that we did, because this is going to be a really high-performing creative for the brand.
UGC is still possible. Even if you or your employees aren't willing to get on camera, you can hire actors and creators to play those roles to take advantage of a winning format.
If you're looking for something similar for your brand, then I'd love to make you some ads you can apply to work with us here.
The Essence Vault
Weirdly enough, it's another perfume ad for this second example, but I wanted to focus on it because of the clever way they use the hook to target the ad. If you watch the first couple of seconds of this video, you'll notice that they name a very common perfume in the hook. And it doesn't feel like it, but it is direct targeting because the only people who will be interested in watching this video are those who know what this perfume is and what it smells like. Meaning that straight away, you're eliminating a huge sea of people and finding the right viewer.
Your hook is your targeting, but a lot of people think this means calling out your demographic in the hook, like, "Hey, if you're a 23-year-old male, you need to watch this video." Yes, that can work, but it's very obvious and isn't a very good way to hook a viewer. By doing what The Essence Vault have done here, by calling out a popular product that only a select number of people will know about, it both interests and hooks the viewer in.
This is a top performer in the brand's account right now, and I think one of the reasons is that hook targeting, but also how straightforward the script is. We're not beating around the bush. We're saying:
This is what this product does.
This is what it smells like.
Here's why you should buy it.
Very simple, easy to understand, and it's clearly doing very well for them.
TLDR:
Your hook is your targeting, but make sure you're smart about how you do it.
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Snee
This static really caught my eye, and it took me a second to realise why. Let me share with you what I figured out.
First of all, the style. It's this hand-drawn diagram with a weird smiley face. It's not something that you see on your feed very often, and so you're bound to stop for that reason. I also think the way they framed it in this purple checkerboard style actually works really well for them because not only does it look aesthetically pleasing, but it also pattern-interrupts the rest of the feed. Think about this: if you're scrolling through Instagram or Facebook, you'll see the same imagery over and over again. When you see something that is visually very different, then even if you're not interested, you're probably going to have a glance.
But I also think they just know their customer really well and know that this aesthetic will probably interest them more than any other way of presenting this image. I think now, with how good AI is, you're really only limited by your creativity, because pretty much everything is possible. Something that looks hand-drawn like this, you might have had to outsource to an artist before. Now you can quickly test it with AI, and then, if it's worth investing in a better version, you could hire an artist
TLDR:
Not every static ad needs to follow the same layout
That's all for this week's nice ads. Thanks very much for reading. Be sure to share this with someone who might find it interesting. I've just posted a new video breaking down my entire meta process for 2026. You can view it here. Until next time, I'll see you soon.
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