Let me just start by saying, this only applies to brands that have NOT found a footing in the marketplace. By footing I mean, you haven’t really defined your product, your pricing and your customer base. In essence, you haven’t successfully laid the first blocks upon which to scale your business on.
This blog post is an outlet for me because, boy, have I seen things. I have seen bad and scary and money-draining things brands do (especially new ones!) when it comes to Facebook or TikTok ad creatives.
Allow me to have my woo-sah moment and in the meantime attempt to explain why it’s hard explaining the nature of performance-oriented ads to creative teams.
People hyper-focused on visual branding will use the words, ‘on-brand’ and ‘brand consistency’ to describe ads they want to run on Meta or TikTok. I think they know what these kinds of ads don’t perform well but it satisfies their need to control. They’re also holding on to a dying notion of branding. Please let it go.
In a world where people are installing ad blockers on browsers and demanding privacy while surfing the web; in a world where Apple wages war on Meta and pushes iOS updates that limit tracking activity on pixels; in a world, where people get viral off of a random video made with a CapCut template and media soundbites become trendy, some brands are STILL insisting on running ads that are high-produced, have unseasoned hooks and boring call-to-actions. Well, at least they’re on brand.
Bruh.
The only exception to this are luxury, premium or legacy brands – these are the brands that have premium products and have an affluent customer base that will resonate with imagery that is focused on the details and the lifestyle. However, if your brand does not fall into either category, your prim and proper creatives on Meta will be uninteresting to the vast majority of people who would rather be spoken to like human beings. This is not to say that ads geared towards luxury can’t be human-oriented, but by definition, luxury products cannot be attained by everyone.
For products set up to be mass adoption, you need to speak to the masses.
This is a huge reason I started writing this blog. After several years of managing different brands ad accounts, it’s always an uphill battle trying to persuade them to create content that captivates and drives conversions from the first click. The prevailing concern us that pushing the limits on creatives would be far off-brand, completely overlooking that the true elements of brand building go far beyond logo placements + exact hex code colors.
It also doesn’t sit right in my soul to run ads that over-communicate quality, even though the products themselves are not. Demonstrating the product in real terms to real people is not oversimplifying the brand, it’s about being honest with the potential end user regarding your product’s true value in their lives. This is how you build a brand that lasts and it’s also an excellent way to reach the typical Facebook/TikTok user. Honesty gets you far.
This is why UGC ads work so well. This is why ads with comment sections of raving customers reach more people. This is why ads that break the mold snatch people out of their mindless scroll and into ‘take-my-money-NOW’ mode. These are the kinds of ads that take Meta’s powerful machine learning capabilities and make it go even further – teaching the algorithm to pinpoint the exact kind of user most likely to purchase your product.
Let this blog post be your call to be more creative and think out of the box when drafting the videos and images that will become ads. Close the gap between what your brand offers and the customer you are trying to reach. This is especially true if you’re starting out.
Happy testing!
