Welcome back to Nice Ads. Hope you all had a good Easter. Let's get into a couple of ad creative examples to fill you with inspiration this week.
In today's issue, we're going to be covering
What you can learn from failed creative tests
How you can make any UGC ad engaging
Easy wins for static ads.
If you're looking for help with Ad Creative this Q2, then I'd love to have a chat with you and see how my agency Fraggell can help you achieve a 20% lower CPA. You can click here to apply.
Shay and Blue
Shay and Blue are relatively new clients to us here at Fraggell, and this was one of the UGC videos we made for them in the first round. The idea here is to test many different personas and types of creatives to see what resonates with the customer. This one, a take on a Yapper-style organic-looking video, was one of those tests.
If you look closely, I think you would struggle to tell that this was actually an ad while scrolling through your feed. I think part of the reason for that is the organic editing, both with the textiles and just the simple cuts. It looks like something the customer would have made on CapCut, and that's the vibe you want for this type of creative.
Also, the fact that she's just coming out of the shower, and then we show her getting ready, talking to the camera. It just feels like something that type of customer would actually consume.
If you're a brand that's looking to branch out and find new personas, it's really important to run tests like this, where you just create and publish. You can talk about something all day long, but you'll never actually get to see the results unless you actually do the testing.
But the important thing to remember here is it doesn't matter if the creative fails, because at the end of the day you've learned something. You don't always have to learn from the winners.
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Oats Overnight
The more the UGC landscape changes, the more apparent it becomes that people aren't interested in UGC testimonials where someone stands in front of a camera and reels off a script with some b-roll shots in the middle. I see this in ad accounts as well. It's fast becoming an underperforming type of creative, but UGC is a format, and there's a lot we can do with it. I think this example is brilliant
Because, at its core, this is a testimonial UGC. The guy is just talking about why the product is so great, but because he's doing push-ups while he talks, you're engaged. He's opening a loop: you want to see if he can do all these push-ups and how hard it's going to get for him.
But it's still UGC because it's user-generated content. It's just not a traditional UGC testimonial.
When you're thinking of new ad creative ideas, write a script, then ask yourself, "How can I make this more interesting for the viewer?" Once you've come up with what you believe to be a good idea, adapt the script that you wrote around that.
It doesn't take a genius to come up with some of these ideas. You just need to reframe the way that you're thinking
TLDR:
Think about new ways to deliver the same message
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Nutrition Geeks
Static ads are becoming a more popular way to rapidly test different types of messaging, and particularly with the rise of AI and how quickly you can make static ads with AI, you really can't be spending too much time on your image ads. That's where formats like this fake news style become really important.
Because, realistically, all you need is a couple of lines of copy and an image of your product being held or used by someone. You can either generate these with AI or, like nutrition geeks have done here, just use a UGC image that you already have in the archive.
Pair them together, and suddenly you have a creative that you can swap out elements to rapidly test with. I use Claude quite a lot, and you could easily write a skill for Claude that generates this type of copy in seconds.
And if you have a ton of these templates set up in Canva or Figma, it literally becomes plug-and-play. With these fake headline ads, the secret is to pique someone's curiosity to win a click and get them to your landing page. You can either direct them to a PDP or an advertorial-style landing page. I've seen both of these work pretty well.
TLDR:
Find formats that convert really well and are super simple to create at scale
That's all for this week's Nice Ads. Appreciate you sticking around. As always, if you have enjoyed it, be sure to share it with a friend or colleague to help grow the Nice Ads community.
I've just posted a brand-new video outlining exactly the methods we use at Fraggell to generate converting static ads. You can watch that here.
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