Savannah Sanchez has a unique approach to creative strategy.
As one of the most talented creative strategists in the world, Savannah’s agency has created top-performing ads for Fabletics, Athletic Greens, Dr. Squatch, The Farmer's Dog, Ipsy, Kate Spade, Poshmark, Aéropostale, Pura Vida, Casely, Bumble, BlendJet, and more.
With all that output, she is constantly coming up with new ideas and hooks. She spoke about her process at length during our AMA.
Essentially, she spends hours each day scrolling through TikTok and Reels to see what’s trending on each platform.
To help you put her advice into action, we rounded up her current list of ad hooks heating up in 2024 🔥
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While some brands are seeing UGC performance falter, Savannah contends that you needs to keep your UGC fresh in order to stop the scroll.
It absolutely still works—if you push it to new creative heights.
Here's a list of ten of the best performing hooks so far this year.
Savannah is big on taking organic trends and turning them into an ad format.
In this example, she capitalizes on the “silent review” TikTok trend with the brand BYLT.
This ad relies so much on the creator—Savannah made sure they executed her vision with high energy and big facial expressions to catch eyes on the feed.
Reverse psychology works.
People aren't expecting advertisers to say negative things about a product. So this hook can be a great way to get attention from viewers who might typically scroll past ads.
You can use the traditional “3 reasons why” script—but make it ironic.
In the ad above, the creator mentions how annoying it is that now she’s rested on long car rides 😉
This is a great format to use for retargeting.
It highlights social proof with customer comments & questions, while also putting a friendly and helpful face to the brand.
The irony (and beauty) of this concept is that you’re heightening the pain point of “endlessly scrolling for the right product” … while the viewer is scrolling on their phone.
It should hit close to home!
Coming off Q4, the gifting angle is still performing really well.
Apply the same style you would for an unboxing ad—keep the product front and center & show off the brand—but use the gifting hook as a twist to keep people engaged.
Viewers will want to stay tuned to see how the recipient reacts. So be sure to get a reaction shot of their “genuine” response.
Savannah is seeing big hits with girlfriend, wife, and mom gifters → then reaction shots from boyfriend, husband, and kids.
The best organic TikTok content keeps you coming back for more (case in point: the 50-video long “Who TF Did I Marry?!?” series by Reesa Teesa)—use the same technique in your ads.
Build suspense and keep viewers waiting until the end of your video for a big reveal.
This will increase watch time, which signals to TikTok that your ad is high-quality, which will lower your CPMs.
One of the best-performing and easy-to-create TikTok formats is a slideshow.
It’s a format that’s native to TikTok, so it’s inherently organic looking.
Just make sure to incorporate a “cliffhanger" so viewers have to wait until the end for the reveal.
While you shouldn't include random people's footage in your ads for a stitch, you can film a fake stitch with talent #1, and then talent #2 responds to the fake stitch.
Marketing magic!
The #1 mistake Savannah sees advertisers make is saying the same things to potential customers at every stage of the consideration funnel.
For retargeting ads, you’ll want to hook your audience with social proof:
The beauty of this type of ad is that it innately looks organic to the medium—thanks to comment overlays and question replies.
Pick one product benefit and show (don’t tell) exactly how it works.
In this example, Savannah wanted to highlight BlendJet’s leak-proof lid.
The creator put it in her bag, took it for a drive, and even dumped it over her most prized possession to demonstrate the benefit.
Thumbstop stans may recognize this format from our previous issue on demonstration ads—check it out if you want to dive deeper into dramatic demonstrations.
Trends move fast—so let’s zoom out and look at some general elements each of these hooks has in common to help us craft the next set of winning ads for Q2.
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It originally appeared in Thumbstop—a free weekly newsletter filled with tips to help you ship winning Meta, TikTok, and YouTube ads.
By entering your info, you'll join 25k+ media buyers and creative minds reading Thumbstop for a weekly dive into everything creative strategy. (Unsub anytime in a click)
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