Speaker 1: Look at me. I'm a static advertisement. Pretty convincing, right? You totally would have clicked on that if you saw me on Instagram.
An Instagram post overlay appears over the speaker's face. The post shows the speaker gesturing, with the account name "Motion Creatives" and "5121 like" visible.
Speaker 1: Right? I don't know. Anyway, here at Motion, we love challenging our assumptions. And in this video, we're going to go against the grain and ask,
Text on a purple grid background: "Is it possible"
Speaker 1: is it possible to build an eight-figure DTC brand
Text on a purple grid background: "Is it possible to build an 8 figure DTC brand"
Speaker 1: without any video ads,
A short, dark, action-movie-style clip plays in a frame on the purple grid background. A person is thrown through a window.
Speaker 1: just using static image advertisements instead?
Two static ads for Snickers appear side-by-side on the purple grid background. Left ad: "YOU'RE NOT YOU WHEN YOU'RE HUNGRY. SNICKERS SATISFIES". Right ad: "EXTRA HUNGRY? SNICKERS EXTRA NUTS".
Speaker 1: The founders of Obvi bootstrapped their health and wellness brand to $40 million in 40 months
A split screen shows two men, Ronak Shah and Ashvin Melwani, with an ad for "obvi. SUPER COLLAGEN PROTEIN" in the background. Text overlays appear: "$40M" and "in 40 months".
Speaker 1: with pretty much entirely static image ads.
A grid of six different static image ads for "obvi." products appears on a purple grid background.
Speaker 1: As you probably guessed, they went from 200,000 in sales to 5 million in the early days,
A number counter scrolls up quickly, stopping at "$5M".
Speaker 1: and they didn't even really start video tests until like year three. So, let's take a look at their playbook for crafting and scaling static performance creatives that not only capture attention, but convert that attention into sales for 2024 and beyond.
An ad for a playbook appears. Text: "AUTOMATE YOUR WAY TO 8 FIGURES THE MOST OBVI WAY". A button says "DOWNLOAD PLAYBOOK".
Speaker 1: Chapter one, static versus video.
Chapter title card on a purple grid background. Text: "Chapter 1", "Static ad vs Video".
Speaker 1: The benefits of static.
Text on a purple grid background: "The benefits of static".
Speaker 1: There are three major benefits to sticking with static images. The first is statics give you speed.
A clip from the Disney/Pixar movie *Cars* plays, showing Lightning McQueen.
Speaker 1: Videos are slower to make and they include a lot of complexity, especially with managing the creators, the back and forth with editors, the tweaks you want to make to each video.
A woman sits on a couch, smiling and waving at a phone mounted on a ring light. Then, a person with curly hair is shown from behind, editing video on a dual-monitor setup.
Speaker 1: With statics, you can ship new creative basically every week with little to no dependencies whatsoever. Second is that statics are cheaper.
Text on a purple grid background: "Statics are cheaper".
Speaker 1: If a video creative flops, you've both lost time and money, a lot of money.
An animated yellow alarm clock and a stack of green cash appear with the labels "Time" and "Money". This is followed by a video clip of a swimming pool filled with cash.
Speaker 1: And because of how inexpensive they are, you can create a lot of them. So this gives you a lot more volume, a lot more bang for your buck,
Text overlay: "A lot more bang for your buck".
Speaker 1: especially if you're using AI image creation.
Two AI-generated images appear side-by-side. Left: A black t-shirt with a dolphin on it, hanging in an underwater scene. Right: A sleek black handbag in a sunlit room.
Speaker 1: And lastly, statics can actually turn into video content.
Text on a purple grid background: "Statics can actually turn into video content".
Speaker 1: Yep, if you want them to. You can take your top performing static images, send them over to UGC creators or customers, and give it a go with some video testing in the future.
A grid of four different user-generated content (UGC) style videos plays, featuring women using or talking about the "obvi." product.
Speaker 1: Chapter two, squeezing diversity out of your static ads.
Chapter title card on a purple grid background. Text: "Chapter 2 Squeezing diversity out of your static ads".
Speaker 1: The first step to creating high-performing static ads is by doing an audit of all of the creatives in your ad accounts. Look to see if you have lo-fi versus polished ads, emotional benefits versus rational benefits,
Text appears on screen as the speaker says it: "Lo-fi ads", "Polished ads", "Emotional benefits", "Rational benefits".
Speaker 1: different types of messaging for different parts of the sales funnel. With Obvi, they realized that a lot of their videos looked pretty much all the same.
Two short video clips of the "obvi." product being mixed into a drink.
Speaker 1: So they went all in on static and decided that no two ads should ever look the same. The ads they were creating were entirely different, so they were hitting different audiences at different stages of the buying journey. Here is a graphic of what true creative diversity looks like.
A graphic titled "What true creative diversity looks like" appears. It is a 2x2 matrix.
Speaker 1: Look at it in all its beautiful, wonderful glory.
The graphic is surrounded by a glowing, golden, angelic light effect.
Speaker 1: Look at it.
The graphic is shown clearly on a purple grid background. It's a 2x2 matrix. The vertical axis is labeled "Static" at the top and "Video" at the bottom. The horizontal axis is labeled "Polished" on the left and "Lo-fi" on the right. Each of the four quadrants contains four boxes labeled "Creative #1" through "Creative #4".
Speaker 1: On the vertical axis, you have the spectrum from static to video, and on the horizontal one, you have polished to lo-fi. And in each quadrant, you have four different creatives you can come up with. This is ideally what your creative mix should look like. And if you're leaning too far into one quadrant, start filling in those gaps until you've, you know, balanced out your matrix of content. Chapter three, types of static ads to run and static ad tear downs.
Chapter title card on a purple grid background. Text: "Chapter 3 Types of static ads to run and static ad tear downs".
Speaker 1: Okay, here are eight static ad formats that helped Obvi hit 40 million in sales.
A graphic appears titled "The 8 static ads every DTC brand should run". It lists eight ad types in boxes with icons: Lifestyle Banner Ads, Community Ads, UGC Banner Ads, Us vs. Them, Render Banner Ads, Problem vs. Solution, Review Ads, News / Media.
Speaker 1: Lifestyle banner ad, a UGC banner ad, a render banner ad, a review ad, a community ad, us versus them, problem versus solution, and a news or media call out. Okay, now we're going to run through two different ad examples and share some of the tear downs and tips that the co-founders of Obvi actually gave us during a recent live streaming event.
Text overlay: "Click the link in the description".
Speaker 1: And you can grab that link to that event in the description below. First up is this ad that actually we've been running on LinkedIn for a few weeks. And here's how Ankit and Ash would rework it.
A static ad for Motion is shown. It has a blue background and features a laptop displaying the Motion software. The headline reads: "Don't use spreadsheets to analyze ad creative—use Motion!". There are three callouts with arrows pointing to the laptop screen: "Group ads with common attributes", "Find your hooks", and "Bring growth & creative teams together".
Speaker 1: First, they wanted us to bump up the size of the font of that headline and reduce the word length,
The headline in the ad is highlighted with a pink box.
Speaker 1: really telling us to pay attention to like visual information hierarchy and how important that is. So a bigger, shorter headline that hits people right away. We actually kicked around "spreadsheet killer" as that headline.
In the ad, the original headline is erased and replaced with the text "Spreadsheet killer" in large yellow font.
Speaker 1: Uh, next, we were like, let's bump up the font size on those benefits as well. Negative space is great, but there's definitely some room to like make sure those benefits are easier to read on mobile.
A hand holds a smartphone, displaying the Motion ad as it would appear in a social media feed.
Speaker 1: And then lastly is we should do something about that logo.
The Motion logo in the ad is highlighted.
Speaker 1: Putting logos on ads can be a bit redundant because your profile logo, it's already going to be beside the ad when somebody's scrolling in the feed anyway.
The Motion ad is shown again in the context of a social media feed, with the "Motion (Creative Analytics)" profile name and logo visible above the ad creative.
Speaker 1: So really, their biggest tip is just challenge a designer's inclination to make everything look balanced and beautiful, because that strategy tends to create ad blindness in the social feeds for your audience.
A gloved hand holds a spray bottle and sprays a black square. Another gloved hand wipes the square with a cloth, revealing the Motion ad underneath.
Speaker 1: This next ad actually came in from Gray Matter Labs, who shared that their ad was working really well. So shout out to Jim Phillips and Gray Matter.
A static ad for Gray Matter Labs is shown. It features a glass of liquid with a tablet being dropped into it. The ad is filled with text callouts pointing to different parts of the image, listing benefits like "Mental Agility", "Focus", "Happiness", "Anti-Anxiety", etc.
Speaker 1: They had some other statics that were conforming to best practices, but this ad performance kind of surprised everyone here because it's messy. It's a lot to take in. So the lesson again is audience is going to often break our expectations. So take a look at what an audience is going to find that makes sense to them. Ash and Ankit recommended an iteration, maybe with fewer callouts, some larger fonts to help mobile scrollers read it easier.
The Gray Matter Labs ad is shown again with animated lines pointing to different areas. Text labels appear: "Fewer callouts" and "Altered fonts".
Speaker 1: But again, it all depends on your audience. Okay, well there you have it. The static ads playbook for 2024.
An ad for the "Chew on This Automation Playbook" is shown again.
Speaker 1: And while videos are definitely awesome, static ads can get you faster feedback loops, more creative diversity at a fraction of the cost.
Text overlays appear sequentially: "Faster feedback loops", "More creative diversity", "at fraction of the cost".
Speaker 1: So for brands in their early stages, looking to build up that paid engine quick and cheap, there's definitely an argument for putting more emphasis on improving your static game.
