The dropshipper creative code DTC brands should steal

Welcome back to Nice Ads, your one-stop shop for everything ad creative. This week, we're going to be talking about:

• Street interview ads and how to create them.

• Why dropshippers have cracked the ad creative code.

• How writing on your body can make great ad creative.

The Black Stuff

👉 Watch in full here

This is our first-ever venture into street interviews. We recently made a set of these ads for our client, The Black Stuff. I want to talk about our experience preparing, filming and editing street interview ads.

First off comes the planning for any good street interview ad. You need to have some concept. Simply going out on the street and asking people to use your product isn't enough, because they need a bit more prompting to get something useful out of it. To this end, we decided to ask people questions about the soap, have them smell it, and guess the ingredients. If they did, then they won a product. As the day progressed, once we thought we had enough of a particular piece of content, we could move on to simply asking people for their thoughts and opinions on the soap's smell.

Actually filming these was incredibly simple. We hired a really charismatic host. I shot everything on my landscape iPhone and used a set of wireless DJI mics to ensure everyone was heard clearly. Don't need anything too complicated here.

But these street interview ads really do come together in the edit. Our lead editor did an incredible job on this, pulling out the best reactions and content and squeezing it into a short video. The best part is that, because we had so much content, we can certainly explore other street-interview angles in the future without having to go out and re-film.

In terms of the actual results, these have only just gone live, so it's very early to tell. This variation with this hook is currently performing best, with a hook rate of about 45%.

One thing to note here is that so many street interview ads you see are scripted and already planned. But I really think if you want to do it properly, you have to put the time and effort in and actually get out in your local town to make some content.

If you like the look of this ad and you want something similar, then you can apply to work with us here.

Aora

👉 Watch in full here

I decided to highlight this video ad today because I think it demonstrates how good the dropshipping community is at making ads.

At the end of the day, dropshippers are working on incredibly low margins. To do this, they have to make sure they're not wasting money on bad creative. Leaning into very simple, cheap ad creative to make mashup montage content like this is essentially where all the money lies. You don't need to hire creators. You don't need to invest in a big shoot. Instead, you need a load of demo footage and CapCut.

In fact, I'm seeing this type of ad make a real comeback of late. When I started in ad creative six years ago, this simple text-overlay style was incredibly popular. But when UGC emerged, it took a bit of a back seat. But in recent months, I've seen a real surge in the performance of this type of ad. I think that everyone should be testing something like it.

Pull together a load of footage of your product being used, overlay the core product benefits, and voila!

This is exactly why part of the deliverables for every one of our clients includes this style of video. Because when they work, they really work.

TLDR:

• Pay attention to your local drop shipper.

• Just because an ad is simple doesn't mean it won't perform.

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Happy Mammoth

I've been looking at Happy Mammoth a lot recently. I'm writing a bit of a breakdown on their creative strategy for my Twitter. One static style they keep testing is this one: handwritten text on a body part while they hold the product.

I can't tell whether these are generated by AI or are actual photos, but I think it's a mix: some are clearly edited, while others look pretty realistic. So, I did a bit of testing myself using Google's Nano Banana, and it is pretty easy to create this type of UGC image and basically write whatever you want on any body part within reason.

I think this probably works for several reasons:

1. It stops the scroll because it's so ridiculous, and you don't really expect to see this.

2. It helps explain what part of the body your product works on.

For example, if you have a gut health product, then writing on the stomach makes perfect sense. It's all about experimenting with static ads, particularly with Meta's new Andromeda update. You really do need to be testing lots of different static concepts, not just copy changes, but entirely new angles.

TLDR:

• Always be testing and getting creative with your static ads.

• Using AI can dramatically reduce testing costs.

That's all for this week's nice ads. I appreciate you taking the time to read it, as always. If you think a friend or colleague will enjoy this newsletter, be sure to share it with them.

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