Scroll-Stopping Hooks (And Copy Too) with Guest Sam Al Esai

Today, I am speaking with Creative Strategist Sam Al Esai about scroll-stopping hooks (and copy, too). Sam has worked at Motion and seen tons of data points on developing the perfect hook for your creative. If you've been struggling with the Meta Andromeda update, you will learn how to really use "creative as the new targeting" with hooks that stop the RIGHT customers. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:29

I'm here with Sam Alasai. We're going to talk about scroll stopping hooks and copy too. As I mentioned on our last episode, the way that we do these guest interviews, I guess, for lack of a better way of saying it, is we're going to be talking through a couple of prompts. But Sam, why don't you just introduce yourself real quick?

SPEAKER_02 0:47

Yeah. Hey guys. Name is Sam Alasai. I'm a D2C marketer and creative strategy coach. Been in the industry for, I think, six going on six years now. Done pretty much every single role from creative strategist, creative lead, creative director, uh, account manager. So I was working at Motion for the past year. Uh, worked at Foreplay. So I've seen every angle from creative strategy at this point. So now I've transitioned into creative strategy coaching for brands and creative strategists, and mainly focusing on the idea of strategy itself. While also putting out some unhinged content on LinkedIn, which is how we ended up meeting.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Yeah, yeah. No, we ended up meeting, I forget what like the initial post was, but then we got into the comments and we were sending like polar bear gifts and things like that between each other. And I'm like, I gotta get this guy on the podcast. It's gonna be a really fun, interesting conversation. Um, and something else that I always say about this podcast, I I really like having just like real authentic guests on here, right? And talking about these real, real topics with, you know, all the all the good and the bad about about all of them, so that we can really get into what works, why it works, and everything like that. So without further ado, let's just get into it. First prompt. So it's more important to stop the scroll than it is to stop the right customer.

SPEAKER_02 2:06

No, it's definitely more important to stop the right customer. Uh, we want to make sure that the hooks that we're creating are filtering, not just catching a uh a broad hook of or broad net of people, rather. If you have a an insane hook score or a hook rate, rather, that's getting a lot of attention, but your click-through rate is in the gutters, then was it worth it to stop a whole bunch of people? Possibly not. Really, we want to make sure that when we're creating a hook, we are still speaking to one person. And usually that comes into the research of your persona, really understanding who you're trying to stop as opposed to like, like I said earlier, trying to stop everyone all at once.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

Yeah, I'm sure you've seen those, I guess, gimmicky hooks in a way, like the things like with the baseball hitting the screen or just anything like that, that just like gets everyone's attention, basically. And although that will look really good for your hook rate, now with how the algorithm works, you're just gonna be grabbing and telling Meta, TikTok, really whatever it is, to just you know grab everyone who's stopping instead of the right people. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:13

I actually want to jump on that specifically, that that baseball hook that you use as an example. It's it's funny because when we, you know, first starting on the industry, we're thinking like, get the best hook, get the the highest amount. But we we don't get an understanding of what happens afterwards. We're really just thinking about the hook at first. But then what ends up happening is when you have a hook like that where the baseball is coming right to the camera, you end up pissing off the buyer. Because they get this really cool hook, like, oh, this is awesome, and like, oh, it's an ad. And then they just wipe off.

SPEAKER_00 3:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:44

And we don't want to piss off the buyer. We want to make sure it's a cohesive buyer experience. So our hook still has to attach to our body, to our messaging, to our landing page. It's full gambit creation. It's not uh individual, separate movements.

SPEAKER_00 4:01

And I'll see owners, a lot of new owners and even entry or mid-level marketers who really just think about it as like how to grab anyone's attention, right? And I've worked with owners before who they'll send me a bunch of these, you know, like that baseball hook or other things similar to that. They're like, oh, like we should try this and let's do this in our next creative cycle. And, you know, I always appreciate that the owners who are actually engaged enough to like be sending stuff of that nature. But I feel like we sometimes have that issue of stepping out of that owner mindset of like, how do we just grab anyone instead of like how do we actually grab the right customers? And that's something that I also see is that brands are sometimes nervous to, you know, niche down for lack of a better word or lack of a better phrase, and like really only get hooks or content or offers or whatever it may be to grab the right cut customers. One stat that like I always look at for all of all the clients that I work with is the quality of the new customer coming in. Um, and I see a lot of people who are like, oh, well, you know, the most important thing is just getting the highest return on ad spend, highest click-through rate, highest hook rate, whatever it may be. But if that person that you grab, you know, kind of like we're talking about with the hooks, is not the right person that kind of can mess up the targeting. But even if they do convert and it's someone who's never going to come back again, when you really factor in all of your marketing costs, ad spend, product costs, margins, everything of that nature, you are more often losing money than gaining money unless you have just a really high AOV product like furniture or something, something of that nature.

SPEAKER_02 5:30

Yeah, these are all really strong points. And I think the point that, or one of the core points you keep coming back to is targeting the right customer. Um, especially now that we're in this Andromeda world, we're we're trying to find the right signals of our personas, of the right people. So it doesn't even make sense to try to hit broad. We're trying to make the algorithm's job easier. So let's try to find the right customer as opposed to like, what am I talking about in this next five seconds? Oh, take a look at this really sexy first three seconds. No, that then you're just gonna catch a whole bunch of people who are going to leave. You're gonna catch a lot of people who aren't gonna click. And again, like you were saying, you're just gonna get a lot lower quality score on the ad itself.

SPEAKER_00 6:14

Absolutely. All right, let's go to our second prompt. Copy or overlay text isn't as powerful as a visual hook. How do you feel about that?

SPEAKER_02 6:24

Ooh, nuanced. Visual will get the attention, but copy is what assigns it meaning. You know, like we can have a very basic visual, but really strong messaging or copy assigned to it that gives us a really strong hook. I mean, we see this all the time in the industry. We have a talking head, UGC, right to camera, nothing special about the person, nothing special about their environment, but they're saying something so specific and so unique that it's targeting the right audience. So I think it really depends on what you are putting out there. In that same light, I guess, on the opposite end, we can have a strong visual and a weak copy. But then that what that does is that gives us confusion. If I have kind of like that baseball example, we have a really cool, strong visual, but then our copy says something that doesn't really relate to it, doesn't really make sense of the next five seconds, then all that work of getting that really cool visual at the start doesn't really work out.

SPEAKER_00 7:23

Yeah. And like I always say that it's important to make the whole ad cohesive, both in terms of how the copy, you know, mirrors the visual and the overall content that you have there, but you know, like we've said a couple of times now, and then also making sure it's really specific to that person or that persona that you're specifically trying to grab and that customer that you really, really want. And something that I hear a lot is that copy doesn't matter. Um, and another thing that I always hear is ugly ads work. And the copy that doesn't matter, when media buyers say that, they're more often talking about the body copy or the headline. And I mean, I could talk forever about copy. I'm a big copywriting nerd. Um, and I still think those elements are important. But when we're talking about this copy or overlay text, especially with how big the reels placements have gotten, or just like the TikTok format, that copy or overlay text on the ad itself, that is still extremely important to getting your customer. And then for the ugly ads thing that I think we we hear a lot, I think Barry Hott is someone who talks about that all the time. The reason why I feel like ugly ads work is because the only thing that you're thinking about when developing those is the content and what you're saying. Yeah. And at the end of the day, that is really what's most important. And if you nail that, then you can spend some time being a little bit more creative with how do we make this look a little bit nicer, maybe doing something slightly clever. I'm still someone who always thinks that clear is better than clever. But once you really nail the content or the core message, then you can kind of like go outside of that a little bit and be more creative with the visual.

SPEAKER_02 8:59

Yeah. And then another point to that as well is when it's super clear what we are talking about, we don't really need to shape anything. We don't need to do additional work to it because we understand it so deeply that it's simple. And the the true goal of the work is when you've done enough of the work, the simple is actually really complex. You're doing so many things, but you're not showing off so many things. That's why it's so important to understand the format that we're working within, the platform we're working within, the format that we are doing with our hooks, whether it's the copy or the visual itself. But I also have a uh second point around the text overlay in general. There's a rule that we had in my first agency, which was every ad, every video ad needs to start with text. And it's not that text is fading in, it's at zero, zero, zero seconds time code. Text needs to be on there. And I still firmly believe that because of the way I've doom scrolled social media. Usually everything is off. I'm not listening to any of the videos. I will click on the audio when I'm ready. So if I don't have a text to attach to, I'm usually gonna swipe off of it unless it's a really interesting visual. So for me, just making sure that going back to that simple, if I'm putting up a text in that zero zero second mark, make sure that it's really simple and make sure that the visual that goes with it is all aligned to it.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

Absolutely. No, I totally agree on that one. The so yeah, let's go to our next prompt then. Your hook is the most important part of your ad creative.

SPEAKER_02 10:39

Ooh, uh, I'm gonna say 90% yes to this, but uh it's a tough one to say because you still have to do like the more important part besides the hook is the research. The hook will come as a result of the research. Most people aren't watching all the way through the ads, anyways, sometimes. Like you see that the ads that are like two minutes long and they have like a 40-second long watch time. And those are definitely like outliers, more and more. But what I'll say is like if you have your ad, the core of your ad within the first 10 seconds, then you've done the necessary work of understanding your persona well enough to combine everything in that beginning. So this is where it gets funny to me is like you're doing all this research for the buyer sequence that you're going to put out in the rest of the ad. And then once you've got that set up, yes, then you're sitting there and you are thinking about what is going to get them to stop to see the buyer sequence. They both play really strong parts and they're both really essential. But if I can even go back on my answer there, the the most important part is really going to be the research at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_00 11:51

Yeah. And I think that's something a lot of people misunderstand that like how much time really should or goes into research when you're developing these ads and these concepts. Thankfully, for things like Claude and ChatGPT, I can research so much quicker than I used to. Um, before those tools, I would spend eight, maybe even 10 hours doing all that research myself to like really figure out what I need to be saying in that ad. Now that can be sometimes two or three hours. But the the thing is, it's still so important to be really thoughtful before you go into that execution. Um, and I work with a lot of clients who they're like, you know, why is it taking a week to like develop these ads? Or why is it taking a week and a half, 10 days to get something that we talked about, you know, however long ago. And the reason is because the best creative strategists are extremely thoughtful with that research before they go into execution. Because what really takes the most time, well, there's two things. One is just the editing if you don't get it right, you know, getting something into production and then having to go back and edit it and edit it again. Not only can that cost a lot, um, because usually you have to pay for those rewrites, but it takes so much time after you have that final cut or like that draft cut to go back and redo it. But the other part of it that's even more of an expense is launching ads just kind of almost in a spaghetti testing type of way. You know, you then you have two or three weeks of ad spend, you're not getting conversions, and then you have to go back to the drawing board. That's where you actually lose a lot of time and a lot of money. Where if you just spent an extra day, extra week, really however long it is, to make it right or thoughtful the first time, it's it's so much more efficient, even though it it acts like or seems like it's taking a lot of time, right?

SPEAKER_02 13:34

Yeah. And to jump on that as well is I'm so glad you're bringing up this point of like how long research does take and how necessary it is, because it's a common, it's a common topic that people throw to the wayside, especially creative strategists that I've talked and coached, where they're like, I'm I haven't been able to get a hit, and they're focusing heavily on the creative itself. I'm like doing all this research on the creative I gotta put out there. I've written out so many different hooks and written out all these different buyer sequences. And then when I go to ask them, like, what's your research look like? It's usually like, oh, I'll just put something through ChatGPT, or I checked out the reviews real quick. And I'm like, no, no, if you spend more time on that, everything else comes so much easier. One of the big wins of my recent student or uh uh one of my students recently was he went through this whole gambit of like, oh man, I am struggling to come up with concepts. It's so hard to come up with concepts. Once we figured out it was the research that was his biggest problem, then he was able to go, oh, I can pull up five concepts like that now. It's no longer this thing of I am struggling to be creative. It's I've done this work of understanding the persona so well that I am now the persona. I can do this format, I can write this hook. I know how they think and I know how they operate on the platform, and I know what's going to stop them if we're still talking about the hook, and I know what's gonna get them to click if we're talking about the buyer sequence.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

Absolutely. Those are all really good points. And I think that brings up something else that I've I've dealt with a lot. Because I actually went to school for writing for television. Um, and so I've always dealt with writer's block, right? And then even making ad concepts, I've done that. That's something you kind of just mentioned as well. And something that I've come to realize is you you never really get writer's block if you know the direction you're supposed to go with everything. Like that's where writer's block really comes in, is you have so so many ideas in your head, or you don't know really what to test. And so you just get kind of stuck. Um, and one tactic, I guess you can call it, that I like to use is just getting feedback from your customers, like that qualitative feedback instead of that metric data, right? And sometimes that can come from surveys, sometimes that can come from even looking at your customer support box, sometimes that can come from just looking at reviews. Another strategy that I like to do is look at competitor three-star reviews, because those are usually the most honest. And then you can find a common pain point that all of their customers say, and then your product might be able to solve that really well or just don't do it differently, and then you can use that as the hook. And it feels so natural, it feels like you're almost in their head in terms of what they're thinking, especially if you're trying to pull them away from something they've tried before. Those are just some methods that you can do to get out of that writer's block and really know where to go. And, you know, like you just said, you can have tons of ideas and your output gets so much better because you're not guessing anymore, right?

SPEAKER_02 16:35

Yeah. And to add to that as well, because I'm also a screenwriter. And I went through the whole the same gambit of like, I gotta get over writer's block. What is the problem of writer's block? Writer's block is you not asking yourself the right questions. It's not, it's not this issue of, oh man, what should I be writing? If that's your only question, you are not doing enough prep work. If you are sitting there and going, what is this person thinking about right now? What are their current pains? What evidence do I have to support this? A big tool that I advocate for all my students to use is Reddit answers. Like you just go into Reddit, you pull up a problem, you pull up a dream, you pull up some sort of question that your persona might ask, and then it'll pull up a whole bunch of Reddit threads that you can start seeing how people are interacting with this, easiest way to get into the persona. And then that way, you're not, again, you're not trying to come up with something creative. You're going, oh, I've read this a million times. I know what they're going to say. This is so much easier now.

SPEAKER_00 17:37

And I love that you brought up Reddit because I, in terms of ads, Reddit is can be really messy. And I know a lot of advertisers have tried to put ads up there, and the Reddit community just hates really any form of direct advertising. You'll just get roasted in the comments a lot of time when you do that. The reason for that is because Reddit is so authentic and real, and they hate being sold to, they hate, you know, seeing seeing ads that are just trying to get them to buy something. But it is a great place to look for that type of real feedback and real things that people are saying about that specific problem or product or whatever it may be. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:13

Yeah. Reddit is an underused tool by a lot of people in creative strategy specifically. Such an easy way to mine information on your customer.

SPEAKER_00 18:22

Fantastic. Cool. Now let's get to our next prompt. This is kind of on the same theme of what we've been talking about, but I think it's important to mention being clever is more important than being human.

SPEAKER_02 18:33

I'd rephrase human to being clear. And I think that's where the human side comes in. And you've seen my LinkedIn. I love to be clever, I love to be outside the box, love puns. But when it comes to creative strategy, I throw that pretty much to the wayside. It's so much more important to get to the root of what you're talking about, to really target either that dream or that problem for your persona, as opposed to like, look how cool I am with this wordplay. Look how like I shape this for my portfolio. If you are thinking about yourself in a creative sense, you've already failed the ad. You failed your customer as well. Think about the person, going back to your human uh wording there. We're trying to make sure that it's clear for the person, not for yourself.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

Yeah. And whenever I do, I do like a lot of copywriting for landing pages or headlines and like that sort of thing. And I I've done tests where just changing one adjective or just like rephrasing two sentences into one sentence can significantly improve your conversion rates. I think something that you may have heard before in copywriting, really the goal of copywriting is to just get people to read that next line or get down to that next part of the page. And you really need to think of it in that simple, simple context because if you are trying to be too clever, especially out the gate, you're just going to confuse people more than you're actually going to grip them enough to read that next line or get to that next part of the page or whatever it may be.

SPEAKER_02 20:03

Yeah, I've got a very specific example on that as well. Um, and it's not necessarily clever, but it goes back to that creative. I did an ad for a uh an exercise, uh, a treadmill, like a treadmill that increases 40 degrees incline, like super high tech. This is like early in my career, and I remember I wanted to make this so cool. I actually took the the asset that we had the studio shoot where somebody jumps on the treadmill, and I was like, okay, I'm gonna take this and I'm gonna edit it myself, and I'm gonna remove the background. And when they step on, they're gonna be at the beach and there's gonna be this treadmill, and I'm gonna make this look so cool. And I put so many effects on it. I was so proud of it. And then I was like, okay, something else I also need is going to be a very simple hook. So the other hook I used was literally the treadmill, like in two positions, not even going up and down, just one, two, one, two, like stop motion. One of them said, Can your treadmill do this with the crazy effects? And the other goes, can your treadmill do this with the up and down? Up and down took over the account. Yeah. And it was just like, oh, it's simple. I don't need to worry too much about this crazy emotional feel. Just makes sense right there.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

Yeah, yeah. And that's the best way that I found too is to really get the kind of going back to that quality new customer thing, get the right people to really engage with your ad. Um, and with all forms of writing, if you can get people to understand your product at a core level with just one line or just within two seconds, that's where great marketing really comes into play.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

For sure.

SPEAKER_00 21:39

And I always am hesitant sometimes when I get like a new client for a copywriting project. They're like, let me see your portfolio or let me see what you've done before. Because I know when they have that mindset before I've even asked them a question or they've given me a specific problem, they're just looking for very clever things. And I know that whatever I send them is is not gonna be what they envisioned in their head. But from people that actually are testing this stuff on a daily, weekly basis, that really clever stuff just it may look cool in a marketing sense or look nice on a portfolio, but in terms of what really works, that that clever stuff usually doesn't move the needle unless it's, you know, I don't want to say you're lucky necessarily, but unless you just do it perfectly with all the other context we've mentioned.

SPEAKER_02 22:22

Yeah, if I can throw another example of this specifically. Absolutely. Again, early in my career, I was working with this protein brand. And uh I remember at the time whenever I would make ads with my editors, I would be the one to do like, hey, let's put some motion graphics over here, let's do this, let's do that. And a lot of like really dynamic editing. And my editors loved me for it because I got them cool portfolio gigs. I felt like I was doing something super creative, but they weren't hitting and it never really worked. And then one day I get a new editor on the same account who's taken over from somebody else, and then she put in all these crazy effects, like off the jump. And then at the time I was looking at TikTok of how protein brands are marketing themselves, and then how the fitness community is being talked about on TikTok to men. And I was like, Oh, there's no effects on the authentic stuff. So I DM'd this editor and I was like, I hate to break your heart. I need you to remove all of these effects. She's like, Did I do something wrong? You did nothing wrong. Everything looks fantastic. Can we just kill all the effects, make this look terrible?

unknown 23:28

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 23:29

Like simple TikTok supers, no effects anywhere. We didn't even have a voiceover. That ad took over the account for like eight months. And I remember similar to what you're saying, like the portfolio thing. I remember at the time trying to show it to my friends who weren't in the industry, and they were like, oh, why is he why is he showing this off? This looks like a crappy ad. I'm like, no, there's a lot of work behind this, and it it does fantastic on social media.

SPEAKER_00 23:56

Yeah, no, that's a great example. And for any operators or owners listening right now, when you do get into these copywriting projects or you're trying to just like find a partner for hooks or whatever it may be, I always suggest just like give them a problem that you are specifically facing or an objection you constantly hear for your customers, and then let you know the copywriting team give you an example based on that instead of just going off of what their portfolio may be or what they've done for other clients. Because, like you just said, it may not seem like they put all of this thought or testing in it before it's developed, but there is so much more thought in the simple things. And not to talk too much about billboards or anything like that, but some of the most successful billboard ads that have that just like you know, five lines of copy on them or five words on them can be so powerful, but it wasn't like someone just whipped that up within 30 seconds, even though it probably took 30 seconds to execute, right? Um, there was just so much thought that went on in the background to actually develop that and make something so simple that it just like works every time.

SPEAKER_02 25:00

Yeah, I mean, speaking on billboards, Cluley is a brand that made waves, I think, last year, because they took out an ad in Times Square, and their ad was like a white background, almost comic sand, handwritten. And the guy was like, I'm the CEO, I spent too much money on this billboard. Download my ad. And it was that dumb, but that blew up the company.

SPEAKER_00 25:26

And I love stuff like that because it's so memorable, right? You know, we see ads all the time, consumers see ads all the time, but it's rare that you actually have something that you can just remember so clearly like that. And that's what clear hooks, clear copy really does, is it resonates on that deeper level where it's just like so easy to remember. It's very rare that people were like, Oh, did you see that ad with all the effects on it that looked like super snazzy? I I don't have a single ad like that that I can, you know, pull out pull out. It's always like the very clear ones that you know stick with me.

SPEAKER_02 25:59

Fully agree.

SPEAKER_00 26:00

I think that kind of like leads good into our next prompt. Highly produced and AI hooks work better than natural organic hooks.

SPEAKER_02 26:09

It depends on the visual. I think it's funny because I am one to say like AI slop can get really sloppy, but I've seen some really creative ways to use AI, so I wouldn't throw it in the garbage completely. And when it comes to the visual itself, depends on what you're doing with it straight up. Like I've seen some badly shot stuff do fantastic in the account. I've seen some really well-produced stuff do poorly in the account, and then I've seen the vice versa. I've seen these really cool, well-produced visuals that stop the thumb like 60% on the right audience. And I've seen stuff that looks simple but doesn't do well in the account because it's just not really hitting an emotional trigger. Really still comes down to who you're talking to, what what you've learned about them, and what's going to get them to stop. And understanding the format itself matters when you've made it matter to your persona, not the format itself matters standalone.

SPEAKER_00 27:14

Because something that, especially being remote, the marketers are always looking for is that like real content of the product or of the service or whatever it may be. And I'm always asking owners or in-house teams to like at least get some just like spe-roll footage basically of things in action in in real life. And I always get the question of, oh, do I need like a fancy DSLR? Do I need like a 4K camera? And even with how good iPhones have gotten, people still are hesitant to just bring that out and use that as their camera. But that actually is the best tool. Cameras are more than good enough. And kind of going back to the prompt itself, that's what people are posting on TikTok on Instagram, are just like videos from their iPhone. And that stuff really kind of gets rid of like the ad noise and makes it seem like it's not just an ad, it's actually like a content piece that they're looking at, especially if they're just like Doom Scrolling on Reels or something like that.

SPEAKER_02 28:08

Yeah. And also like they've shot full-on movies and high budget commercials with iPhones before. I mean, the new 28 years later, not number two, but part one of that, it was shot completely on iPhones.

SPEAKER_00 28:22

Yeah, that's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 28:23

It's insane. Uh, and anyone who says, like, I need XYZ in order to get this done. I mean, unless you're using a flip phone with, you know, one megapixel camera, you're gonna be fine using your smartphone. I mean, if you're able to get an ad with a one megapixel camera, even better. That's a great pattern interruption. I'm sure the storage on that phone is not uh not conducive to a UGC ad.

SPEAKER_00 28:49

Yeah, I'd honestly be interested to test something like that because I've used black and white hooks a lot of the time, and I always see those do really well. I've also done images that look like a Polaroid photo, basically, and those have done really, really well. It has to be in the right context still. You can't just do it for everything, but you know, again, just like being authentic and being different than what all the other ads are out there because consumers are just so much more attuned to what an ad looks like. So in the hook, it's so important to resonate about what your product is or who you're trying to trying to attract, but doing it in an organic way so they don't just scroll past, like, oh, this is an ad, this is someone trying to sell me something.

SPEAKER_02 29:30

And and like going back to the idea of like studio produced versus shooting something simple, I mean, again, people give AI a bad rep because we've seen so much slot. But the one format that worked last year, or not uh format, but there was this series that was coming out from a TikTok channel, and it was the Yeti boys. I don't know if you'd seen this, but these two guys figured out we know how to use VO3. Let's create two characters, a Yeti and a Bigfoot. And it looked AI, but they spoke like skaters, and they just did all these skits, and all these gigantic brands were hiring them to do stuff. And people would seek out their ads. So it's not necessarily that AI is bad or iPhone is good. It's more so, again, who are you speaking to? What have they seen so far? And how are you communicating to them clearly that they feel like they're being understood?

SPEAKER_00 30:26

Yeah, no, that's a really good point. And something that I always have said about AI is because there's all this AI UGC that's been coming out and like, you know, huge arc ads investment that happened a couple of months ago now. And I mean, there's there's some use cases I've seen where that stuff seems to seems to have worked or lower cost or whatever it is. But I've always seen AI as a way to do things that you can't do, you know, with a real person, like that, you know, Yeti example that you just gave. And doing doing things like that to that they we you almost need like an advanced motion graphics team to really execute, but then again, like having the content and like the message just be like really real and authentic, but using AI to make it creative in a way that you know still makes sense for that key demographic instead of just trying to recreate something that a human could be doing, right? Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 31:19

Fully agree with everything you said there.

SPEAKER_00 31:21

So kind of like to round things out here, I wanted to get your take on what are the fundamentals of constructing a good hook.

SPEAKER_02 31:30

Yeah, this is a good question. I'm glad you sent this to me earlier. Uh, because at this point in my career, everything is pretty intuitive. Like I don't follow an SOP when it comes to writing a hook, but I started trying to break down to understand what it is I usually do from step by step to get that hook. So I wrote this down. So bear with me as I look into the page here. Number one, we've talked about this a bunch. It's gonna be hitting the person. So, what do they love? What do they hate? What do they need to fix? Want to understand who we're talking to. The the the core of this essentially is find that one person, pick that one person and just try to speak to them as clearly as possible. Besides understanding their pain points and the way their minds work, what does their social feed look like? Um, that's why it's important to also uh create lurker accounts to get their algorithm. So then that way you go, oh, these are standard images. This is what's going to be the opposite that uh interrupts their pattern. So we want to understand their format, we want to understand their feed, we want to understand them. So that's number one. Number two is we want to create some sort of tension. So we want to call them out, number one. What is it about them that we want them to understand this product or this ad specifically? Um, but besides that, we want to call out a specific problem or a specific dream. And usually what I tell my coaching clients uh about um any kind of specificity is we want to paint the picture. What does this dream look like? What does this nightmare look like? Um, and then that way we can feed that right into our hook. Um, and then some questions I like to ask myself. And part of this is we want to keep this malleable and flexible. So you're not constantly asking the same questions, but these are thought starters I usually go for is what's unfair about the current industry or their life? What's ironic? So something that we can call out a sort of a myth. What's a secret or something that's uncommon that is gonna pique their interest? And again, what's that dream? What's that, what's that end goal that they're they're gonna, you know, feel like they're frolicking through the fields? That's what we want to paint for them. And then number three is simplify. This was this is where I started seeing some serious success across platforms is what is the core of what I'm saying? That's gonna be a hook. What is the question version of whatever I've found? That's a hook. What is the shortest amount of$5 words I can use to say this? That's the hook. And I want to elaborate more on that$5 word format. Um, it's something we talked about a lot in my days, but it's the idea of like, sometimes we run into this idea of like, oh, I gotta show my vocabulary, show how smart I am, or speak about the terms that my client is using or the brand that I'm using. Um, that doesn't work as well on social media. We have short attention spans. We need to get to the understanding as quickly as possible. So instead of feeding me that luxurious$55 burger with caviar and gold flakes all over it, give me the$5 burger I can scarf down in my lunch. Give me, instead of saying fundamentals, what is the core? Like bring it down to a basic level that I can understand it super quickly, scarf it down and get on to the next thing. So those are gonna be the main three tenets of creating the right hook for me. And then lastly, I also want to add this as an additional, make sure it's cohesive with the rest of the ad.

SPEAKER_00 35:07

Yeah, no, I think that's come up a lot here. It's just making sure it's all very cohesive. And that was a phenomenal breakdown of all of that. And for anyone listening, you know, whenever you hear that creative is the new targeting, that's the exact method that you really need to be taking into your creative, is really thinking about that persona. And as Sam was going over all of that, you may have been thinking, hey, like this is how I used to think about building audiences at the ad set level and whatever platform you may be using. And you really need to bring that mindset to your creative and really think of your personas on that level. Um, and it all starts with the hook, but it's still the same thought process in terms of, you know, who who is this? Who do I really want to be targeting? And all like the niche things that really resonate with them. Um, and you know, another theme that we've been talking about, doing it in an organic way that is just very clear and easy to remember.

SPEAKER_02 36:05

Yeah. And then I just to jump on that one more time, greatest creative strategists are asking the best questions. It's not about the creative, it's making sure you're just being curious.

SPEAKER_00 36:16

I think that's a great way of putting it. Well, um, in our last couple of minutes, I guess we have here, Sam. I know you have a coaching service. Um, would you like to talk about that a little bit?

SPEAKER_02 36:25

Yes, coaching service called Win on Purpose. Uh, website is in development at the moment, but you can find me on LinkedIn, Sam LSI. I've got a picture of my eyes and then a tie over my face. Uh, and it says, ha ha, stopped your scroll. That'll be me. Uh so you can reach out to me. I'm working with both creative strategists and brand uh creative teams. Um, and again, the fundamentals of what I'm teaching aren't about the creative ad tactics. We do touch on that later on, but I develop personalized lesson plans to understand your strategy and understand how you're going to develop your strategy going forward. The idea is we want to make sure that you are thinking like a strategist, you are constructing like a strategist, and you're not thinking like an advertiser.

SPEAKER_00 37:11

Fantastic. Yeah, go check Sam out. He has great LinkedIn content. Um, definitely very easy to spot his profile photo. And feel free to send him a DM if you have any questions. And thanks for listening to the D2C and Jelly Marketing Podcast. Hope to see you next time. We have a lot of creative discussions coming up over the next couple of weeks. So definitely stay tuned and stay tuned.