How to Write Yapper Ads That Actually Convert (Direct Response Breakdown)

Harry Delmege: For people who don't know me, I'm Harry, the co-founder of Roly Poly Digital.

Uh, RPD is a creative agency that my partner, I think she's actually watching right now, so shout out my partner G. Uh, we started this together.

Uh, it began 10 months ago and we've been really lucky to work with some awesome brands, make some banger ads, and most importantly, work with some like awesome people at the agency.

Anyway, here's some results for you, just so you know it works. Uh, because unfortunately I can't share any videos. Uh, I asked all my clients and they're like, absolutely not, but can't say I blame them. So here we've got an ad, December, spent 500k, cool, you know, da da da. February, 1.4 mil on that ad. And then just to show it still works, we had one that launched, uh, July, sorry, not July, June 20th, and then the next day it spent like 40k. So cool, we've done the, done the boring flex and stuff. Let's hop into it.

First thing you've got to know before you make a yapper ad is there's three types of people that can sell anything to anyone. You have your expert. This is your doctor or derm. Uh, and I don't know if you guys remember, there was like a, there was a format that was popping off last year where people were like cutting veg and they just happened to be a billionaire's assistant and they're like, oh, this billionaire takes this supplement, believe it or not. Uh, this can also be an expert. Uh, just want to give you guys that information because I think a lot of people just assume it has to be some like kind of medical person or whatever. Then we have a friend. I like to think of this as like your Oprah. She just suggests the products that she thinks would help. She's like, hey, I'm just Oprah, I care about you, you should try this product. And then the convert, which is the key to yapper ads. This is the thing that we'll be looking at most today. Uh, so yeah, let's keep going.

So, the convert is key and I'll tell you why. Uh, I like to imagine things quite, quite literally, uh, and I hope this helps you too. Uh, so just for a sec, stay with me here. Imagine someone has a life event that converts them to religion, right? So they've had this like major thing that's happened and then they've been like, okay, now I go to religion. The reason why the convert is so powerful because if you try and then tell them that this thing isn't real, you're not going to be able to shake their belief. It's unshakable. And also what you'll find is that's like huge belief in something is really, really effective, uh, and really persuasive. So, you carry that energy and then you put it into the ads, right? And also the reason why we really like to do convert ads is because it means you have to tell a story. Because this person had this thing, they started here, they had this thing happen, now this is what life looks like afterwards. Uh, and also, let's be honest, storytelling, it's super entertaining. Like even if you go back to, uh, caveman times, they were drawing stories on the wall, right? So you know if you're telling a story, you are hacking your way into the brain and people are going to come and consume it. Because let's be honest, people are not on social media to be sold to, they want to be entertained. I think a lot of people think they're competing with like other brands in the auction. We don't necessarily view it like that. We're competing with organic posts. So like that's why we got to make people stop and watch.

Cool, carrying on. In essence, a yapper is a person, we'll call them the relatable hero, who went through an experience, they've now converted to this product and they love it and they're just trying to put you on. They're literally just telling you why it's great. So like we like to imagine it like, I've gone through this experience, I'm on FaceTime to my friend and I'm telling them why it's so great. So in essence, that's what it is. They're a relatable hero.

First, before we go on, I want to do a quick bit on creators. Uh, I've seen a lot of like rhetoric online. I don't know if this is a bit of a hot take or it's going to land me in some trouble, but people are like, oh yeah, we just give our creators like vague bullet points or, um, you know, just some general direction. I think this is a pretty bad idea. Uh, you want, really want people to be in their zone of genius. Like, we've, we view in our head, we're great copywriters, right? So we write the scripts. So why are we going to then outsource our job to creators, right? We need the creators to act and take our script and make it believable. Like that's, that's where the magic happens. So again, I've seen people say that they just give points. If you are doing that and maybe not seeing the results you want, just fully script it. But make sure you're giving people the space to have fun and add in like little details. Uh, again, I'm trying to blast through this, but I can give you a couple that our creators did that was absolutely awesome. Um, so like one of, like I spoke to two of our creators and they said when they're delivering a script, they purposely look for places to make a mistake, right? So she was talking about the free gifts. And she was like, oh, and you get to do that. And then she goes, oh, and then picks up the free gifts. And I actually asked her afterwards, I was like, did you, did you mean to do that? She's like, yeah, like, of course, because if I have it all perfectly and it's like, I pick it up, it makes it seem like I'm selling something. Like a normal person wouldn't do that. So you've got to give them space to do that. So maybe even next time you write a yapper ad or you see an ad, tell them like, hey, try and find a little, little place to make a mistake.

Moving on, time to get tactical and practical. This is the anatomy of a yapper ad. Uh, there's a lot to go through and I want to try and give you guys stuff that you can, you know, take now, use tomorrow and like, you know, make money from in like a week.

Cool. Again, maybe a hot take. In my opinion, this is what a yapper is not. You know, I saw some, uh, examples online. I think it was of like a really well-known brand. And it was just like, oh, are you tired of X thing? This is why I use da da da. And just because they're in a car, in my opinion, it doesn't make it a yapper. It's not necessarily a basic script with no story. In my opinion, it has to be a storytelling. And by the way, just as like a side bit, like most of our yappers, we are selling to older people too. So if it's younger people, maybe it has to be different. Uh, and then again, unscripted. In my opinion, a yapper is not unscripted.

Cool. Let's get into the research. This is the cornerstone of what we do. Essentially, yapping, like I said, is storytelling, so we have to search for the stories to retell. Uh, obviously there's so much other stuff to research, like desires, experiences, emotions, behaviors, but I've just got to assume you know all that because we don't have time to go through that today. I wish we could. Um, but we actually look for stories in two different places. Uh, the first one we really like is Reddit. Obviously, because people are anonymous on there, they have no problems kind of telling any kind of stories and unburdening themselves. Like there's no repercussions. So they're, they're just going to talk about a lot of different stuff. Um, the second one is TikTok. Again, people tell a lot of stories on TikTok. Uh, I mean, and share a lot of info with their face on it. Not necessarily something I would do, but people still do it. Uh, but the reason we really like TikTok as well because it shows you exactly how to present the story that you want, right?

Like people always ask me for like inspo or whatever. Like we just look on TikTok and look about how someone goes on a rant about something, how someone tells a story about something. Um, I also feel like a lot of people when they're looking for stories, they just try and look for it in their customer reviews. I personally think that's too narrow. Like it can work and you can recreate stuff, but we like to look at very broad subreddits. One of my personal favorites is like dating over 40. You get to see some fucking wild stories in there that you can then like retell and then like intro your product into. So like, go where there's a lot of traffic, where there's a lot of people commenting, and you're going to get way higher frequency of stories that you can then take and add your product into. So, okay, you found some stories. What means they're good and what means you can use them? So these are the three pillars. First one is just believability, right? Like I said before, we're going to write the script, we're going to get someone to like act it out really well, but the story needs to be believable for someone to like watch and then purchase from it. For example, we used one of, uh, someone going to the dentist and then just like not really getting the news they wanted, uh, because they had some problem. But like, this is basically a story that's happened to everyone or they know someone it's happened to. Like it's not a reach. You know what I mean? There's no kind of thing where you're like, oh, that doesn't sound real because it's happened. Or if it hasn't happened to you, which it probably has, you then don't want it to happen. Uh, another one we like is, you know, we're, we enjoy throwing wild stories out there. Like you read it and you're like, oh wow, that's fucking nuts. Um, you know, one that we actually did was, you know, about a date going wrong. Really good view metrics. Actually got like good spend. Um, wasn't like a winner like the believability one. And that's like why we think why, uh, just because it's harder to make someone believe that. It's harder to like keep them, keep them across. But still did really well. Uh, and I actually think like they have jobs to be done, great engagement, bring people in. Uh, and then performed well. I think, you know, as advertisers, we're always looking for like scientific methods to like do stuff. You know, like swipe winners, swipe stuff that has like lots of engagement. You can literally do that with stories too. Go onto Reddit, see what has, uh, up votes, see what has people commenting, same with TikTok, has it gone viral? Is it getting like lots of comments? So you know if you take that story, it's going to resonate with people, right? Like you know for a fact you'll be entering the conversations that are happening in people's minds. So there's no guesswork. You can literally just swipe it. Um,

cool, moving on. Again, apologies, trying to move quickly. So if there's any questions, we'll get to them at the end. Uh, how we do hooks? I guess in all ways, you pretty much have three ways to hook them. Uh, but yeah, visual, audio, text on screen. You'll just see me putting TOS throughout to save space, but it just means text on screen.

Sweet. With visual hooks, uh, obviously with yappers, it's not going to be some like crazy visual, right? Because it's just like someone's face to camera like this. It's not going to be some wild visual. But we've noticed when we looked at our winners, uh, us and the team, we noticed there was like actually some, some visual stuff going on. So I just want to give you some that you can start, start briefing up, get your like, your creators to do it, or even if you're a creator watching this, you can, you can test some of this stuff. So again, like one that we like to see working is just like clapping hands. Again, don't like actually clap it because it'll mess with the audio, but just to come in together. Doing up the hair, doing down the hair. Uh, one that we saw that worked really well in a car was like coming in, closing the car door. Uh, general hand movement, and then another one is just like, you know, as they start filming, like propping it up like that. Uh, I also really think people underestimate just how much like a human face draws, draws people in these days. Uh, like imagine like a feed with like all this slop, like, you know, all these like crazy things, just seeing like an actual person's face does a great job at, uh, at hooking people. I mean, you know, biologically we're wired to look for faces.

Now, audio and text on screen. Uh, so we usually, again, not always, create different audio hooks and match them with text on screen. Uh, and we actually, I like, well, me, we audited the best hooks we have and they tend to fall under three different branches. One, curiosity plus benefit. Uh, this is a classic John Caples. Uh, if you don't know who he is, great guy, you should read him. I'm not going to get too much into it. Uh, and an example of this was one single change, X benefit in Y time. Curiosity, what's that one single change? And then X benefit in Y time, that's, you know, that's obviously the benefit. Uh, then we like to go for biggest TAM possible. An example of this was, don't make the same mistake I made. Nothing about the product, nothing about, um, you know, any kind of benefit. It's just trying to go after the most people possible. And then qualification, women over 50, again, who are we trying to talk to? This thing might be doing X. Um, so I want to play a little game. Obviously I can't see you, so I'll just give you like 10 seconds or whatever. Uh, but which one do you think gets the highest hook rate? And then which one do you think actually got the biggest spend out of that? Um, I'll just give like a couple of seconds. Again, I can't see you guys because I'm presenting on here. I guess that'd be enough time. Um, so, again, I kind of gave away biggest TAM possible. That had like a 70% hook rate. Uh, it still spent well. I think that ad like launched in October and has like 500k in spend. Uh, but the one that we've seen work the best was the curiosity plus benefit. Uh, again, saw like a way lower hook rate, but it just brings a higher intent audience in.

Now for the body. Uh, just because we're modeling organic, we still want to use direct response principles. I think there's like another thing where people think that like we don't put a lot of direct response into these yapper ads, but like, I mean, like obviously we script it all ourselves, so we have to, right? And again, it's like getting the presenter to present that way in the way that the salesiness doesn't, doesn't come out. Like, I don't know about anyone else's opinion, but like we run ads to make sales. That's what we do. Uh, and I often get asked if we have a framework for yapper ads, but like honestly, no, we have more of a checklist. Uh, and I want to break down that stuff for you guys now. Here we can see you have an oracle, you have the mechanism, disqualify competitors, and overcome objections. If you've studied DR, you know that's like classic stuff. And what we'll do is get into that right now.

So, the oracle is the person who introduces the product to the speaker. Uh, this is also a very classic storytelling technique. Like if you study screenwriting, the oracle is like your Morpheus, your Yoda. Sorry if that's like really nerdy examples. I can't really think of anything else, but like, you know, Yoda teaches Luke how to be a better Jedi and then he can, you know, he goes on to then do that thing. In this essence, it's literally just the person who introduces the product to you. The reason we love to use an oracle so much is one, because I'm tired of the whole, I scrolled and found this online, like it's lazy and we can do, do way better. What I like about the oracle is because they can make claims about the product that the person speaking cannot without sounding too salesy, right? Like, I don't work for Motion, but if I hear something and someone's telling me about how great it is and I just relay that to you, or like, you know, it seems less salesy. I'm just telling you what I heard. So what the oracle can do is make a big claim about the product or about why it's so great, and then the presenter can just then tell you about that. So, this isn't like a verbatim example, but like, you know, we could have like, so my neighbor's 72, but looks 55, and I ask her, Claire, like, come on, what's your secret? Because, you know, maybe this person wants to look more youthful or like whatever. She then tells you, that kind of simple. In essence, that is what an oracle is. Again, I could probably talk more about this, but just trying to give you as much info that's practical as, as possible.

Sweet. This one just kind of crammed it all into one. Uh, so we have mechanisms, objections, and disqualifying. Uh, for people who don't know what a mechanism is, is it's how the product gives you the desire you claim it does. So, you know, with this in the yapper ads, you're really just trying to create that aha moment being like, oh, okay, I get why that product would work for me now. You know, it could be in supplements, you see it might be like a stronger dosage, it might be like an extra ingredient. Um, you just really need to answer that thing for someone for them to go like, oh, okay, now I understand why it'll work. You know, hopefully that makes sense, but that's essentially what you're doing. We also disqualify competitors aggressively. Uh, you can then do that with the mechanism or you can do it with like the oracle. And even sometimes like we'll get the oracle explain the mechanism. Like, you know, if it's like a doctor, he can explain or a derm or like whatever, they can explain why nothing else worked and why this one does. So like, you know, we'll very aggressively, I mean, I say aggressively, but if you saw the examples, it's not that much, but it's like, you won't get this desire because this product lacks this and this is why you haven't had what you want before. Again, you just got to create that aha moment. Uh, and then with that, we're always looking to overcome objections as they arise. So say for example, you tell someone, uh, let's take supplements for example. Uh, you tell someone like, hey, the reason nothing has worked for you before is because it didn't have this high dosage. For someone listening to that, like, let's, let's take magnesium for example. Like a common side effect of that is like maybe like, you know, a funny stomach, right? So if the dosage is really high, in my head, I'm going to think like, oh man, that's going to like nuke my stomach. But then you can just, you can just overcome that as it happens. Be like, oh yeah, like actually the dosage, like I thought it was really going to mess up my stomach, um, but it didn't. And so you just overcoming it as it happens.

Oh, that jumped ahead too quickly. What I will add that I did forget to put in the slides, so I'm sorry about that, is once we've kind of done the oracle, we've done the product introduction, we've done all that, what we really typically like to do is, uh, add in a timeline. Again, we work with like a lot of supplement companies or like things where like we want continued use. Uh, so we'll be like, you know, day one, I didn't feel anything. You know, like you really want to earn this trust and like the whole point of a yapper is because like it's just someone telling a story, so it has to come across believable. So if you're saying to someone, and also just, you know, ethics aside, if you're just saying to someone like, oh, there's some wonder thing where you're going to feel so much better in 24 hours, like it's not going to be believable. But then, okay, in week one, I felt this. By week four, I felt this. And by week, uh, by month three, I felt this. Like you don't have to follow exactly like that, but I think it's really good to kind of tell people what they can expect from the product. And also if we want people on subscriptions or something like that, we need to tell them like what the whole, um, what the whole journey looks like and also tell them that like you need to be here for three months. You can't just like stop.

And finally, the CTA. Uh, if you've taken them this whole way, just sell to them, you know? Uh, I think I've seen a lot of people say like, oh, we don't really like add a CTA or like we don't add the sale or anything like that. I'm like, no, tell them about the sale, include some scarcity, mention the guarantee. And also if you don't have a relationship with Amazon, tell them to not go buy some knockoff on Amazon because like people shop so much on Amazon now, they might go like, oh yeah, great, cool, I'll just go find the version of that on Amazon and you've just lost a sale. You've done this like banger ad and you've just gone and lost it. But, okay, so what I've said there, and also that's what direct response is, getting someone to act now to then go buy it. But what we like to do is do it with a bit of a twist. So it's like, okay, so when I ordered it, it was like 55% off, and I know they sell out all the time, so I'll leave the link below. Uh, and they also have like a X-day guarantee, so whatever. And, uh, but yeah, just make sure, and and also make sure you don't buy a knockoff from Amazon. I haven't delivered that well because I'm not a creator. Like I went back to before, you've got to have people in their zones of genius. I can write a good script, I cannot, I cannot present it. So like, that's how you can do it without it making sound like really salesy and like people being turned off. But if they've watched like an ex, like, you know, a two-minute video or whatever, like they're interested. Hit them with the CTA, make sure you get that sale.

Sweet. Just going to do some FAQs before we get there. Um, again, just curious of time. Uh, how long should a yapper be? It's something I get asked all the time. Well, books and films are all different lengths. A story is as long as it needs to be, you know what I mean? Uh, we've had winners that are like, uh, you know, 90 seconds, two and a half minutes, four minutes. Like, you know, the one that we did recently was like four minutes 15 or whatever. Um, again, and also the older it is, the longer you can do it. They're, their attention spans are not as, uh, not as cooked as ours. Uh, but one thing I will also say is make sure it's a yapper, not a waffler. Like there's a big difference. And what I mean by this is I'm going to give you an example quickly, is I reviewed someone's, uh, yapper script the other day. And it was like a storytelling one. Started with like a date story, so I'm like, okay, great. Date stories are, are awesome. Love them. Um, but then the first 30 seconds, it was just like, oh, so, you know, like my girl told me I need to start dating again. Uh, but I'm not really like that. She told me I need to be on the apps, but like, I don't really like want to be on the apps. So like she made a Hinge for me because like I don't really know how to make Hinge. And I'm like, who cares? You know what I mean? Like just get straight into the story. That's, that's in my opinion, that's waffling. Just get straight into the story. Like the audience doesn't need the context on if you're a kind of person who wants to be on Hinge or not. You know what I mean? Uh, then, when do you intro the product? Whenever you want. Honestly, like sometimes we intro it at three minutes, sometimes we intro it at the start and then like weave, um, like weave it back in. Just make sure you don't shoehorn it. Like there's nothing more jarring than just being like, here's the product. It's been introed at like 30 seconds. The story hasn't reached its like natural conclusion yet. And I'm just going to tell you every single benefit. Like weave in and out. You know, it doesn't have to be super, super linear. Like the story and the product, like they can just go like that together.

Uh, okay, got one minute left, so I'm going to blast through this. Here's a freebie. If you scan this, you'll get to see, uh, a prompt on how I break down winners. Um, I think I uploaded this on like Twitter at some point and it did, did pretty well. So I want you guys to all, all enjoy it now. Uh, it'll take you to a Google Doc. Uh, simply get the ad that you want, upload it to Gemini and paste in this prompt. I spoke a lot about direct response, so it's going to teach you exactly why an ad has worked, especially with like, you know, the big idea, the awareness level. Again, this is why we like doing stories because storytelling is a classic problem aware start. But it's going to show you all of this, like the nest, but like why it's new, why it's easy, why it's safe, like all that kind of stuff. So yeah, get this, plug into Gemini.

And then finally, shameless plug. If you're sat here watching this and thinking, I want to know more, I want to make ads like this, I want to get results like this, we would fucking love for you to come and work at Roly Poly. We're looking for creative strats, designers, video editors, UGC creators, everyone. Uh, you know, just hit me up on LinkedIn or my X profile here. We're just looking for like good people, good, good kind of person we want to work with.