Jack (00:00)
Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of 4Play Fireside. I'm here with Brandon Wazowski. We're going to be waiting a little bit of time here for people to come into the room. But today, what is the topic? We're talking about how Brandon uses 4Play to launch thousands of statics, and not just statics, but high converting UGC and static ads.
Brandon Wasoski (00:24)
Yeah, yeah guys. So ⁓ first off, I'm Brandon Wasowski, of course. ⁓ I am the founder, the co-founder of Growth Hub. Many of you might know my business partner, Antonio Romero. He's got quite the following on LinkedIn here, but I'm in the background running the operations and then working with these brands as well. Antonio has great vision. We follow him as well. yes, as...
As Jack said, what we're gonna be going over on this training is like some processes internal. Like what am I actually doing to one, combine foreplay. How am I using foreplay? How am I thinking of concepts? How am I creating concepts? What am I doing in that process to make better ads, to improve on ads, whether they're new concepts or iterations, and then I'm trafficking them, and what am I doing post traffic, like post launch, and all the things like that.
this. Alright, so I can begin sharing my screen here, Jack, like once you give me the green light and then we can go through this process and how I do everything. Alright, awesome. Awesome, awesome. So in the in the middle of everything, let me know if anything breaks up or anything like this, but I think we'll be good to go. So one sec.
Jack (01:30)
Yeah, go for it, buddy.
Brandon Wasoski (01:48)
Okay, here we are. All right, how's this? Can we see this okay? All right, awesome, thank you.
Jack (01:56)
Yeah, it looks good now. What are
you using here? This looks kind of like Notion, but a little bit different.
Brandon Wasoski (02:02)
Yeah, so this is Gamma. So awesome AI tools. got on, was like, Jack, foreplay is awesome. I literally use it all the time. We got a couple different AI tools I'm gonna go through. Gamma is definitely one of them. Of course, course, chat.gbt. But Gamma basically makes me create this entire slideshow here. The only thing they don't let you do is embed like a video. So like, this was a video, I can't like play a video here. ⁓ But yeah, it does look like Notion a little bit.
Jack (02:16)
yeah, hey.
Brandon Wasoski (02:30)
just this basically I didn't yeah use gamma. You gamma for sure. If I was in college again like this would be awesome. So yeah, let's get into it. Basically, I'm going to be going over what I do. So inside of the company inside of growth hub what I'm doing, I'm the creative strategist. So I'm really thinking of ads, I'm trafficking the ads, I'm using motion to analyze the ad creatives like
Jack (02:35)
That wasn't... ⁓
Brandon Wasoski (02:58)
How well are they doing? What's my best working ad creative? Where in the funnel is it working? ⁓ And then we're taking that information, we're creating iterations off of what's already winning, and we're creating duplicates of them. So let's just say if I have one winning creative, I'll turn that one winning creative into about three to six more maybe images, image concepts, making small tweaks to them like maybe the background image.
or I might turn it into a UGC video, right? So I'm kind of just multiplying that one winner into maybe six more winners. And the ultimate goal is to get more winning ads in the ad account, obviously, but doing that more effectively. So this is basically what this workflow is going to be about. ⁓ My strategy, honestly, like it really depends what brand I'm working with, but what I really love to do, I love to rapid test, blitz, blitz test, whatever you want to call it, static images.
I really like to start with static images because UGC can get expensive quick working with creators. I know there's a lot of different AI UGC out there. It is really difficult. It's really difficult even when you do have the AI UGC. You still got to take it to post production and get it done. So honestly, I like to blitz test, rapid fire test, static images. It's really fast to produce, quick turnaround times to actually get it launched, brief it.
Design it takes virtually minutes honestly to get a test out there ⁓
Jack (04:33)
I love it. How
have you found AI-generated UGC? Is it performing for you?
Brandon Wasoski (04:40)
⁓ yeah, it is performing but what I really like to do with the aiugc is use it as b-roll or a quick talking head the voiceover ⁓ the voiceovers are great, especially if you that that is one thing like the voiceovers are great Especially if you can have some background music so like some light background music and then also awesome b-roll with like the voiceover talking over it and then Right. We have that maybe for 10 seconds and then we can come back into the ai character face the camera
and then take her off real quick. So therefore they can see the face again. Don't leave it on the face too much. Then you'll be able to tell it's fake and then get it off the B roll again. Also, one thing I've been doing with AIUGC as well is taking it down to the corner of the 9 by 16 video or 16 by 9. Forget the ratio. ⁓ taking it down to the corner. So then it's almost like a green screen and then having the B roll there as well. So we still have the face.
but so much of the focus is not on the face, it's on the bottom left corner or bottom right corner, then we have the B-roll of the video there. that's how I like, yeah, that's how I've been using AI UGC. ⁓ It definitely works, but you gotta get creative. You gotta get creative. Definitely do not run a 60 second video that AI UGC creator just doing a talking head. Yeah, you'll get to see it's fake real quick.
Jack (05:45)
I like that.
Right.
Brandon Wasoski (06:04)
Yeah, so I definitely like to rapid test static images just because it's super easy, fast, and it keeps our costs down for brands, whether it's the agency or whether it's the brand itself, doesn't really matter. Like it's just efficient, honestly. like when running any type of like creative pipeline or creative workflow or a company in general, like we're really looking at efficiency, like what's the fastest way we can do it with the highest quality possible, doing more with less.
⁓ People might think it's an impossible equation, but it's just the vision and the workflow that you put behind it to actually make it possible. AI really helps us. So, like I said, UGC can get expensive quick, especially if you do not have any UGC at the moment. So, essentially, static images let us turn these winning ads or headlines into winning scripts. I love to say this. I say every...
Every picture is worth a thousand words. We've heard that forever. So I just turned those thousand words into a UGC script. And then we start ⁓ creating winning images like, or sorry, winning UGC like this is literally what we do. ⁓ So yeah, and in general, I get to just test more images, headlines and hooks in days and definitely not weeks. With this foreplay is my starting point. Absolutely. The first thing I do, can we still see the screen guys?
The first thing I do is create a foreplay board for ⁓ any of my brands. So we're just gonna go through like a replica brand right now We're so good Jack you see this
Jack (07:46)
Yep, I see it. No worries, man.
Brandon Wasoski (07:47)
Sorry about that.
Riverside, the icon left at the bottom left. So I was just making sure we're okay. So anyway, everything that starts this entire process, I go to foreplay. I go to foreplay, I type in a keyword here. So we're just gonna use this brand here. And one of the competitors is gonna be Creeper Race. So the main thing is like with...
It's crepey skin. So it's actually, I've actually come to learn of this. I'm 27. I don't have a crepey skin yet. ⁓ This only happens to people over 45, 50 years old. I've learned so much about this market by obviously doing my competitive and market research on this. Now, ⁓ one of the competitors is Crepe Erase. Of course, the easiest thing I could have done was ⁓ the client tell me ⁓ Crepe Erase is our competitor. I go to Crepe Erase, I look at the ads library.
kind of save ads inside of my foreplay board. What I also like to do inside of foreplay as well is I like to type in keywords. So I'll type in like Creepy Skin, for example. Let's see what comes up. So then now I get many more brands that are not just the competitor, right? So ⁓ of course I can do this in ads library, but just kind of using this, I'm gonna get a lot of like,
important stuff if I go ahead and use ad library. I'm going to get exactly what I want to look at here. And then I can also start to filter down. I do, whether I'm looking for static images only, or I can go and just look at video, so format video. And then of course we can do the same thing with carousels as well. For the most part, I keep it wide open, because what I'm trying to do right now is I'm just trying to get my
creative research brain on demand, right? So literally, I'm just trying to create a database ⁓ of different creatives that I like here. And also some more competitors as well. So like for example, I like this. I have seen this ad before, I just haven't saved it yet. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna just hit this down button right here, I'm gonna save it to a swipe file into the brand. I ⁓ clicked statics by accident, but now it's automatically gonna be saved inside of my ⁓ brand folder here.
Okay, now I can continue doing this. And then basically what we want to create is gonna be something like this. See here, I have a lot of boards here. This is how I like to use it, consolidate every single business into its own. But anyway, now for this brand, have a growing list here. I have statics and I have different video concepts and UGC concepts in here. And of course I get to see the ad copy as well.
Jack (10:23)
Nice.
Brandon Wasoski (10:40)
So here's really how I like to do it. ⁓ I know that we are able to get the transcript now, which is a more recent feature that you guys came out with, which was great. ⁓ I don't know exactly how long ago, but I know it wasn't the, when I first started using it, we didn't have it here. Yeah, so it was great. ⁓ I do like, I really do love to use this ad copy here. I like that I can actually see it with the creative, but I'm really using this as like concept thinking, like.
Jack (10:54)
Yeah, it was recent.
Brandon Wasoski (11:10)
All right, I like this concept here. Like this is definitely working. I love this ad. I didn't even think about this concept until I saw it, right? So I definitely do want to use this type of concept, but use it for my brand with our offer, our images. I'm not actually going to swipe these images from them. I'm gonna use my own images, but use the same concept because my product can do the same thing. Exactly, essentially. So just going back into the actual process.
Everything that I do starts with foreplay, literally, because this is where I have my entire database of all the ads that I take inspiration from, right? So whether it's different UGC style concepts or different image style concepts, also how I really like to use when I'm using foreplay, I really like to look at how long the ad has been running. ⁓ I don't always take this into account because sometimes ads are just got launched. ⁓ For me, it needs to pass the eye test.
I have like sure, ⁓ sure we do need data on its side, obviously. Like this ad has been running for 108 days. We should probably do this, right? This ad right here, I love this concept. For me, it passes the eye test. It could definitely work for me, absolutely. So I'm not even gonna, it's still running or no, it's not running. It only ran for nine days. Honestly, for me, that doesn't really matter. I like the concept. I'm gonna test it and I'll find out for myself.
other times if it's running longer.
Jack (12:39)
Right. You never know
who's, yeah, I couldn't agree more. You never know who's running that ad account and whether they're just about to relaunch it. If it was launched in the wrong campaign, if they're not very good and the turning ads off too quick. You have a certain amount of, I don't want to call it gut instinct, but this aggregate knowledge from advertising that you're able to look at an ad and go, you know what? Fundamentally, this is right. This is probably going to work for my customers. I'm going to give it a try.
⁓ Brennan, do you have time to answer a couple of questions? By the way, this market has completely put me off of crepes. We've got one here from Ivan saying, do statics really work in 2025?
Brandon Wasoski (13:12)
Yeah, of course, of
Yeah.
Oh, yeah, definitely. For all businesses, like whether it's a startup for startups, or I don't want to say startups for people who are new to running ads, launch statics, it's the easiest fastest way to do it. Even for brands spending multiple hundreds of 1000s, like, I'm literally gotten to an ad account maybe like a month ago. And they're only running statics. And I actually did the opposite. I said, you guys should run you GC, you don't have any.
But they're like, no, we don't want to, just want to run statics. I'm like, all right, it's fine. So we're literally doing like 30 to 60 ish statics per month with them and doing this process. Status absolutely work, absolutely. And you can use them in all various stages of the funnel. And even honestly, just for the process behind it, like the actual operation, right? Like really think about what I said there with, you get your winning statics. Now,
Of course the video is going to perform better. I'm not saying that. In general, video is going to last longer, perform better. But you take that static, every image is worth a thousand words. Turn those thousand words into a UGC script, Rapid fire testing with that, and then just duplicating that process.
Jack (14:44)
We've got another one here from, yeah, I couldn't agree more on statics is, know, if you launch an ad in Facebook now and it's just videos in a whole campaign, Metal will actually give you a notification and say, hey, this campaign could perform better if you add some image ads in, right? So surely statics work. It's interesting. I speak to some people and because they're an expert at making video ads, they're like video ads are the only thing that work. Or they're an expert at launching, you know, a high volume of static ads.
Brandon Wasoski (14:44)
you
Jack (15:12)
So all static ads are the only thing that work. But maybe having different formats is a good idea.
Brandon Wasoski (15:18)
Yeah,
yeah, and ⁓ the way you launch them to like I get a question a lot like should we just have our statics in its own ad set? Should we have videos in their own ad set? ⁓ Unless they're different like sizing definitely put them in its own and it definitely put them in the same ad set together. Absolutely like and then you'll get to see where the spend goes and where a meta is gonna favor it and you get to actually see like where the performance is going. You'll see both of them performing
The video might get more spin, but who knows, might surprise yourself.
Jack (15:50)
Yeah, great shout. We've got a couple more
questions here. One from Matthew who says, do you save your own ads into 4Play?
Brandon Wasoski (15:57)
⁓
yes. Without a doubt. have even my B2B ads, ⁓ our own ads. ⁓ ironically in that example, we didn't see our own ads inside of foreplay. yeah, I like to save them as, like you can create another board, like ads that you've launched, or you can kind of like ⁓ start to categorize it. Maybe like tests that didn't work for you, or tests that did work.
That way your creative team or even you yourself can just clearly self communicate with yourself on saving ads inside of foreplay and how that self communication, talking to yourself on, all right, these ones did not work. Maybe we come back to the drawing board with them later or maybe we should focus on our winning ones now and this is the board I'm gonna focus on. So yeah, I actually do that with my B2B ads and also some of the clients but that example of showing you with the brand.
That one ironically I did not have any of our own ads in there. Which I'll probably add that today, was a great reminder for me.
Jack (17:01)
Yeah, you know, it's a really cool experience for me. used to introduce foreplay to a lot of different marketing agencies. And eventually there's this light bulb moment where they realized, wait, I can use foreplay for our own ads. Right. And seeing some of those agencies launch their best ads off the back of inspiration and maybe get a little bit of heat, right. If they get a little too close to the inspiration, but a launch from their best ads and really grow their agencies was a cool experience. Right. Cause they they're using foreplay for their clients. They're using foreplay to do research on, I don't know, products for Creepy Skin or whatever it happens to be, but
Brandon Wasoski (17:17)
Okay.
Yeah.
Jack (17:31)
then they end up launching their own agency ads based on the inspiration they're seeing, which is nice.
Brandon Wasoski (17:34)
Yeah, absolutely.
cannot just like running the company like I would say we cannot be the barber with the bad haircut at all. We should listen to our own advice. If we're using for play for our clients, we should use it for ourselves. If we're using motion for our creative analysis with our clients, we should use it for ourselves. Everything we're doing, like testing different landing pages, headlines, it's the same exact thing. Cannot be the barber with a bad haircut whatsoever.
Jack (18:03)
Yeah, for sure. We're going to get you on lens, by the way. You might like it. We've got a nice, soft question before we get back to your presentation. From Gabriel here, what's the difference between a static and an image ad?
Brandon Wasoski (18:16)
⁓ They're the same. They're the same. I don't know why people are calling it static. I don't know how that happened. What language did that come from?
Jack (18:23)
How did that happen? It
sounds like a video ad that doesn't move, right? It's strange. Yeah, yeah,
Brandon Wasoski (18:32)
Yeah, a non moving a non moving thing static. Yeah. I
don't know whatever you want me to call it who asked that question was with me. Gabriel. Gabriel if you want if you want me to call it image I'll call it image for you.
Jack (18:41)
This Gabriel, yeah, it's just the same thing.
Awesome, let's get back into it.
Brandon Wasoski (18:50)
Okay.
I'm sharing here one second, guys. Like I said, I'm new to Riverside. I'll go with the computer, I'm new to Riverside. All right, so now we're gonna go from swipe file to concept and some different AI tools that I actually use here. Okay, so kudos to my business partner, Antonio. He built a static image generator for us. This is how much we use statics. Like this is literally how much we use statics. So we use statics a lot.
and we want to go faster and going back to my keyword efficiency. So Antonio was like, okay, well, I can just create a tool for us and we can go faster. I was like, okay, great. And it's not absolutely perfect yet, but I love using it as mockups. And then sometimes we get a perfect output where I can literally traffic it immediately. But I literally love using it for a mockup because for someone like me, I can't talk to my designer or I can't like, I'm not the best designer either. So I need like a really good mockup that I can start to work with.
give it to a designer or even just pop it into Canva and start working on it myself, making some small changes. So ⁓ in the first section we went over how exactly I use foreplay. So many different ways I use foreplay. ⁓ And then I also do have, if you saw how I was using it, I do have like winning static concepts, so I do like to organize it with static concepts, video concepts that I like. Okay, so let's just stick with the static for now. ⁓
I'll go ahead and take like one of my winning ads. This was one of the ads that I have here. I took my winning ads. I uploaded it into growth of AI as a reference image. And I just prompted it. said, make the left side of the image say old me instead of week zero and the right side of the image say new me instead of week four. Okay. And how I got this is because of this one right here. Right. So this is the concept that I had in mind. And this was
one of my winning creatives already. So week zero to week four. So I was like, okay, actually, in an ideal world, I want to get rid of this headline, actually, I do want to keep this 50 % off offer here. And then let's just change week zero to old me. And let's change week four to new me and see where that goes. So ⁓ that's kind of like what I had in mind here. ⁓ So this is the prompt I it, I fed it. And then this is what the output was. Okay.
So I didn't clarify that I actually only wanted the arms because on my winning image here I only have the arms, but it actually gave me the face, ⁓ which was fine as well. So I used this as a mockup. So this was my prompt. This were the outputs that I got here, not too bad whatsoever. Pretty good here. And then what I can do now, ⁓ I'll use this as a mockup. So they aren't perfect, so I typically use these as a mockup sent to the designer.
and then I get back my tiny changes that I want in literally minutes. Excuse me, Or I can just upload these in the camera myself and make the changes based off of my winning ad creative already. this is literally, this is helping me just go faster in terms of concepts. This also spits out about four, it'll give me four images immediately right after I do my prompting, okay? So you can see here I did the prompt.
make the left side of the image say old me instead of ⁓ week zero, make the right side say new me instead of week four, and then they gave me four images. ⁓ And then boom, boom, boom, downloaded the ones that I like, sent to the designer, and then we're good to go from there. Then after I get these back from the ⁓ generator or from the designer, then I go ahead and traffic them. And this is kind of like my process when I go ahead and traffic or just creating in general.
⁓ So I will launch wait and then we track some key metrics. Okay, so the launch phase is down here guys right here where I'm circling So we launch it we wait three to seven days inside those three to seven days ⁓ Or three to five days that really depends on spend I'm looking at add the carts. I'm looking at purchases I'm looking at ⁓ Return on ad spend of course like all key metrics that we're looking at for. Okay
If it's doing horrible, which it most likely won't if it's in a, if it's an iteration, it's most likely not going to do bad. You're duplicating winning creatives and you should have some good research already. So after you launch it, you're waiting a couple of days, then you're going to conduct an analysis and we're literally only going to be focusing on top performers. We only want to iterate on top performers. There is a time where we do want to like, maybe go back to the drawing board on something that didn't win, but
⁓ Just our focus time energy resources, ⁓ sticking to like the North Star of whether it's the marketing efficiency ratio, driving in new customers, having 30 winning ad creatives in an ad account. Those are some of our North Star goals that we focus on. I literally only want to focus on top performers because I want more top performers winning. So I duplicate winning creatives. It's literally a no brainer. ⁓
So from there, I iterate on the top performers, so that makes me go back to the research phase. I can go into soon down here on how exactly I conduct some research. But I go back into my research phase, I issue out some ideas to myself, and then I start briefing concepts. And exactly what I was just mentioning. This concept briefing, take basically, now I don't really always send a designer
Words in my in a brief anymore. I'll send them like this image right here as a brief like hey This is like literally what I'm thinking in my head, but I'm not a design person. Please design this better for me That's literally what I'm doing with the designer and then I'm and then they're creating the ad ⁓ They're doing the designing. I'm saying okay. This is perfect and I'm going ahead and traffic in this I'm launching it and then I just go Repeat this process over and over and over again
But these two phases right here help me go fast. ⁓ so I can get a launch and I want to conduct analysis as quickly as possible because we have a waiting game here between three to seven days. So we know that we have a window here that we're going to have to wait to conduct an analysis. So we have to speed this process up from research to review immediately.
Just to add in some more concept guys on what I really like to do so ⁓ this This is like a like I said, maybe like a 10-day thing We're trying to cut this down to under seven days here, right? So this is how I like to think of my creative sprints new concepts and iterations So I like to conduct iterations on like a five to ten day window ⁓ Right. So going back to this right? I'm only focusing on top on top performers
That's because I'm conducting so many iterations. So look, in a 30 day window, I'm conducting basically two batches of, or I'm doing like two creative sprints. Inside of this creative sprint, I'm literally developing maybe like 30 creatives in these, in this. So going through this loop right here, I might conduct like 30 new creatives. Okay. And like I said, this spits out like four at a time for me. So I might conduct 30 here.
and then the next time I might conduct another 45, right? So that gets us closer to our 100. ⁓ And then every 30 days, I like to do a new concept. And new concepts are maybe like a new different ad angle, or maybe it's a new audience that we're trying to target, or maybe it's going back to the drawing board on one of the tests that might have not worked. Maybe it had a really high hook rate, so like it was stopping the scroll, but the CPM and the CPC were super high, so.
We just had to change the hook a little tiny bit. So maybe that's what a new concept could actually be. I'm sure it could be an iteration, but it's actually something that didn't even work in the first place. we had to go back and develop something new on it in general. So that's why I consider that a new concept. ⁓ This is my loop right here, guys. This is how we do this. This is a great way to think about it. For me personally, I'm really, really, really, really visual. So I like to show this process out. And I think this is really helpful.
Is there any questions here on this at all? I know that this is like process. This might not be the beautiful stuff, but this is the nitty-gritty on how we actually do it efficiently inside of a company. So we can not just do it once, but do it multiple times over and over over again every month after month.
No questions here, Jack. We can keep on going.
Jack (27:52)
We've got a few questions, actually. We've got one from Gabriel saying, how can we get access to this tool? Tina basically asked the same thing. What is this called? I think they were talking about the static ad generator. And then Ivan has said, I'm not sure what this is referring to, when does the loop end? Ivan seems a little bit stressed. So how do they get access to the tool? Let's answer that one first.
Brandon Wasoski (28:19)
Yeah, we can give you guys access after the call. We could do this through Jack. I'm the owner of Growth Hub, and Tony, my business partner, actually built this tool out. we can discuss giving you guys access right after this ⁓ call through Jack and Foreplay. Foreplay have been great partners with us. ⁓ And Ivan, ⁓ the loop does not end. ⁓ I guess in general, yeah, this loop.
Jack (28:43)
Ha ha.
Brandon Wasoski (28:46)
High velocity creative pipeline. That's what I call this loop. I guess in general, the loop would end. ⁓ This is a great question. Well, it only starts. Maybe the loop will end like right here when you actually ⁓ pick out your identity, like ones that you're identifying. So the top performers that you identified, like, okay, like we've identified our top performers. Now we have to restart. Okay. So two answers, I guess. In general, the loop does not end.
But if it works and it would end right after you identify your top performers, but then you have to start it again So, okay. This brings up a great question as well. I've been like, alright, we just identified our top performers How do I conduct research? How do I conduct research? And this is like something that's so important here. So I use ⁓ AI to help me conduct research. Of course, I don't use AI as well. ⁓ I go back into foreplay
Foreplay definitely helps me conduct some more research. actually bringing, because what I don't want to do, I don't want to actually copy their ad. Copying rarely works. When I first started my career, I started out drop shipping. So I would actually own like a lot of my different Shopify stores myself. ⁓ And early on, like when I was like 17 years old started, we would copy ads. And that might work for a little while. But you know, you're actually not building your own brand.
And you want to build something that actually works. So the copying phase will only take you so far. You actually want to start to create new concepts yourself. So I don't recommend copying at all. Maybe if I was 17 and didn't know anything, I'd tell you that it works. It work for a couple of weeks. But I definitely do not do that. going back into this, so what I really want to hone in on right here is restarting the loop. Because the loop does not end, but we restart it. So it starts back off with the research. Here are some different prompts that I
put into chat GBT that gives me ⁓ some different research ideology. I will, like I first start off with this question. Can you tell me everything about this product? So in this case right here, it's our product. ⁓ We're gonna be sticking with this one, right? So can you tell me everything about ⁓ crepe-less skin, skin-affirming serum, for example? ⁓ And then there's another part.
Or the category, so like the niche that you're in. So can you tell me everything about crepey skin, firming serum, ⁓ or crepey skin? And then it literally gave me a whole entire research prompt of like everything about it. Okay, like literally a legit massive prompt. Let's see if I actually have it here.
here it is. Look, guys, so. ⁓
You can actually see, this is just the, okay, so look, like, can you tell me everything about this product or category? Okay, and then this is a different product, but it gives me basically a whole prompt back, key benefits. ⁓ Then my next question, what do people want in this category? Let's just zoom in on behalf. What do people want in this category? And then it tells me top desires, visual results, lightweight hydration without grease.
Multi-use and simplicity right type top five concerns and perceptions about this product and category Well, it clogged my pores or break me out. It sounds like just another trendy natural oil, right? So it gives me a lot of things give me ten interesting facts. These are all part of my Research phase here. I've been in the whole crowd, but I've been asked a great question Okay, so give me ten interesting facts generate me five ideas One of my favorite prompts is going to be this one right here write down five nostalgic
TV shows, commercials, cartoons, soap operas, talk shows or events that happened in the 1990s or wherever your target audience is associated with. So for Crave Your Skin, it might be in the 70s that relate back to this category. And I can make a meta ad out of it. That's one of my favorite prompts. So I think I actually have one right here of this. Write down five nostalgic TV shows that happened in the 1990s that relate back to this category.
What I'm trying to do ⁓ in 2025, so we're about halfway through the year, June 1st is coming up, wow. We have, what I've really been trying to do is make funny ads, the comedy comeback, and then nostalgia effect. Okay, just having people, that relatability. People love to laugh, everyone loves to laugh. ⁓ Absolutely, I sure do. And people like to relate to things back in the day. So I'm using AI to help me do that. So here are five nostalgic 90s references.
and then they give me a couple different TV shows. So from 1991 to 1994, ⁓ Clarissa explains it all. I don't know what this is, but then I go back and ⁓ do research on this. Herberal Essentials commercials, late 90s iconic shower ads, the Oprah Winfrey Show, peak in the 90s. So this is interesting. So ⁓ I can basically use these prompts to then turn them into
Different concepts that I can use or add to my current creatives. I'm already doing right you just have to get a couple You just have to get a little bit creative on this Also, Jack I could share this This presentation with everyone as well so that you guys have access to these prompts Because I use them use them use them use them absolutely use them Yeah, so Right before we get to this right before we get to this research phase guys what we actually do
And then we have to conduct an analysis of what work. And then we, of course, we iterate using the AI prompts I just shared, really because this lets me scale testing volume while keeping performance high. Like I said, we want winners, as many winners as possible in the ad accounts. That's why we iterate on winners. And we use these prompts right here to help us even think of a winning headline or a good headline idea. There's different prompts in here, right? Write down 10 objection handling headlines for our product.
⁓ Create five emotional reviews for the persona that uses this product and add in the benefits problems features discredit this ⁓ Share five metaphorical visuals or symbolize the symbolize the pain point So we access the we assess the performance. I'm really looking at ads across purchases return on ad spend whatever Then I plug these into the AI to iterate to get some mock-ups same headline. I could I could say
keep the same headline, me different background images. Or I can do different headlines, same background images. ⁓ I also like to iterate, or I also iterate on winners with new colors, formats, and call to actions as well. Then I give this to the designer to start creating like an actual, actual ad from it, from the mockup that I get from here. Of course, I can launch this, but I probably won't want to, which is a good visual to go ahead and do.
⁓ And then the magic part happens where we actually start to turn so this right here is basically how we can create more static images Quickly everything that I just went over Now we want to turn these static images into videos. This is definitely what we want to do. You definitely want videos ⁓ You absolutely want videos in your ad account you want both so
⁓ What I do obviously we identify the winning element So the best winning element you can probably get is what headline is working the best and what's it showing so for us? In this ad here. We have the headline is I avoided sleeveless tops for years because of my arms This cream helped me feel good in my skin again Okay, and then we show actually show the bottom of the arm towards the wrist and the hand ⁓
the immediate thing that I think of is the upper arm for females and they have like ⁓ saggy skin on their triceps area, right? This is probably the main area that they're concerned about that our image does not show, but we can actually do this inside of a video, right? So I know that I'm talking about the arms and this is actually gonna be like my hook now of my video. So I'm gonna turn this headline into a hook and the visual and the hook is gonna be on the arms.
focusing on the arms, obviously, but like actually like maybe pulling the skin or whatever, having a real person actually do this. And that's how we're gonna turn this image into a thousand words into this script here. Okay, so what I really like to do, honestly, as well, I didn't even mention this in the beginning part of how I like to use foreplay as well, but I use foreplay spider mode a lot to consistently, I don't know if you guys call it spider mode, I call it spider mode. ⁓
before play Spider-Man. I know it's just called Spider, but I go Spider-Man on this.
Jack (37:57)
I like that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's it. I like it.
Spider mode. I like that. Yeah, yeah, that's good.
Brandon Wasoski (38:05)
Yeah.
To consistently look at what my competitor is doing. I'm constantly sending their hooks and headlines. ⁓ they're constantly meant to be seeing. I'm seeing their hooks as headlines for me. I get inspiration from this. I plug my GPT prompts into them. ⁓ I just think of more creative concepts. And it's really the spider mode that allows me to even think of headlines or ⁓
whether it's headlines or hooks, different scripts, then we can start to get inspiration from and just start producing this way faster. Like look what Spider Mo can do. Top performing hooks. Does your skin look like this? Look at what I got. Mother's Day sale. This is the best price on all the products, right? So you can easily put these or ladies over 40 use Crape Race, which is the competitor. They use Vernal now. Anyway.
we can have these as the headlines or we can have these ⁓ as the hooks as well or you can have your winning headlines be the hooks of your video. Okay, understand what I'm saying? So, ⁓ Spider actually keeps track, you can of course filter, but Spider actually keeps track of all of the ads in the ad account, like new ones that pop in immediately because if you keep it in a folder here, you'll actually have to manually save it. But if you turn on Spider mode,
then you're actually able to have, don't, I see like I didn't save this to a swipe file. It automatically populates it for me. So I use this a lot, especially for brands that I like watching their UGC off of. Okay, so this is exactly how I'm using it. And this is helping me build more UGC scripts. Okay, so this entire workflow that I went over ⁓ literally unlocks and allows me to test hundreds of static ads and then
Duplicate them and my goal is to get the 30 winning creatives as soon as possible I just picked 30 in my head. I think that that's a great number to get to it's a good like starting KPI depending on where you are with the brand but Even if I just started working with a brand my first goal Let's get to 30 like that might not be the North Star for the business But I know if I get to 30 I'm in a great spot like 30 new winning ads for a brand. They'll be super happy about that It gives me like I said that research
this research to review phase, I cut down this time. And I talked about exactly how I cut down this time because I want to launch as soon as possible because we have a window here, waiting, excuse me, we have a waiting window here. Okay, so this is automatically three days. We need this to be quicker, the review to review or research to review. Okay, so that's what we need to do here. We're constantly testing and always approving. So in the end,
I'm spending less time guessing and more time scaling because I'm literally only focusing on the winning iterations. Of course I go back and focus on the ones that didn't win, but that's not where I want my time and energy and focus at and my resources at. want to win it. We want winning creatives.
Jack (41:35)
Can you still hear me?
Brandon Wasoski (41:36)
Yes, you're a little bit blurry, but I can hear you.
Jack (41:38)
Awesome.
Okay awesome. We've got a few questions here from people we've got. From Peter, how do you find good ad designers? Apparently everyone that he finds is too slow or too expensive.
Brandon Wasoski (41:53)
⁓ Okay, well, if they're slow, ⁓ they're slow, could lead to the brief. Okay, so that's why I that's kind of one of the reasons why, as well, just thinking of like the tool, and the product of like how all right, like, instead of telling them the brief, and then waiting for an image to get back. And then me giving them revisions back on the image that they just created, I just give them something in my head. And that's in my head that AI created.
and I'm okay with it, it happens in minutes, and then I tell the designer briefly what to do. ⁓ That is how you can speed up the actual designers. ⁓ Now, for finding good designers, finding good designers is really difficult. ⁓ I've been fortunate enough to just come in contact with great designers. A lot of the great designers are taken up by great talent already.
So you are fighting that battle. ⁓ Yes, I have great designers, but where I found a lot of great designers are on LinkedIn as well. ⁓ I do and have used Upwork. Just give them a test project because you gotta filter out through a lot of people. Just give them a test project and see how you like to work with them. ⁓ Fortunate for you, you own a business.
So you get to pick and choose the people who you work with and you get to like everybody who works with you because you're the owner of the company. yeah, I would, ⁓ you can use that. give them a test project. Give everyone a test project. yeah, LinkedIn, Upwork. And then also ⁓ I've never actually used this, but a lot of people put their portfolio on something called Behance, I believe it's called. ⁓
Jack (43:45)
Yeah.
Brandon Wasoski (43:47)
There's almost like a platform where you can go and see portfolios and start to reach out to them. So it's actually a great platform to find some people on there.
Jack (43:56)
Right, and there's some magic in this. think for everyone listening, it might sound like a small throwaway comment, give them a test project. But it's so important. It's so important to test people. And one of the interesting things that I've seen with test projects, and in particular designers working with agencies or brands, is a test project that's actually related to what they're going to be doing on an everyday basis. It can't be some weird derivative that's just this.
little test that isn't actually related to what they're going to be doing every single day. So the way that I've done this in the past hiring designers out of the Philippines, definitely recommend the Philippines and job websites ⁓ for the Philippines. There's a few called ⁓ Calibre, I think is one of them. There's a few others out there. You can find really talented people who are extremely appreciative and are going to grow with the company ⁓ and tend to be quite good, you know, and have tenure because they're really appreciative of being able to work with.
American businesses, there's a lot more opportunity in the states than there is in the Philippines. Give them a test project. Make sure it relates to what they're going to be doing every single day. And what I've done is I've built four play boards with statics or with animated ads, the graphics. And then I send that to them, and I say, make this. And I don't even have a conversation. There's no conversation. It's in the job listing. So they have to complete that task in the application. They're not sending over a CV. I don't care about a CV. Show me your designs. Show me your ads. So it's in the whole.
job description before they apply. And then I don't even look at the submissions. Somebody else looks at the submissions before they get to me. Do they meet the criteria of somebody else who is looking at those submissions? And then if it reaches me and I look at the submissions and I think they're good, then it's time to see if ⁓ they'd be a good fit culturally, they're going to, how fast they did it. That's the other piece. Get them to record a loom video on how long it took them to do the test project. Because if it takes them
I don't know, three hours, then they're not a good fit. But if they can get 10 different designs done in, let's say, half an hour, an hour, then this is somebody who's not just doing good designs, but they're doing them fairly quickly too. ⁓ This process, you can map onto the actual job as well. It's not just the test project, because you can create your briefs visually, just like Brandon said, by just building briefs as boards and sending them to them and saying, hey, recreate these, but for this brand.
Brandon Wasoski (46:06)
Yeah, absolutely.
Jack (46:22)
And that process of recreating is also the training, because they're learning to design to the industry standard, to what is actually shipped and being turned on and kept turned on for a bunch of different brands. So yeah, that entire process from testing them to training them up to getting deliverables can all be the exact same thing. But it has to start right at the start. Otherwise, somewhere along the line, you're going to find out they're too slow or they're not very good.
Brandon Wasoski (46:35)
Thank ⁓
Yeah, absolutely. And just to quickly add on to that, how I like to do the test project is very similar to what Jack said. I literally give them exactly what we give our current team members, like literally exactly. And I just plug them into the process. And then now I have like almost like a baseline of what I'm used to with my current team members. ⁓ And then I see like how quickly or relatively quickly or longer the the guy I'm giving the test project to.
where they're at in it. And the most important part is making sure that they can fit the process as well, because you'll see like a lot of people don't have their own process. And so like, kind of, we went through a process today, essentially a center operating procedure, have them fit into the process. I do include foreplay boards. Like I say, like, here's all the content, here's the winning ad creatives, here's also the foreplay board of other winning statics that we like, that are competitors to this brand.
do this, this, and that, and then we get the test project back. ⁓
Jack (47:54)
Yeah, you know what's fascinating as well is that
if you put up, if you create more inputs, then you're requiring yourself to give those inputs every single time to your designers. Whereas if off the bat in that hiring process, you don't give inputs, you say, this is the brand, this is their website, then you're going to see how they're going to go retrieve assets. Are they going to ask you for assets or are they going to find high quality assets? Are they going to type stuff out and spell things wrong or are they going to copy and paste? You're going to learn so much about how that person approaches
a design and their success rate, given very low ⁓ inputs. Because ideally, you don't spend half an hour or an hour briefing a design every time. We've got some more questions here from Maddie. What metrics do you look at to know which ads work?
Brandon Wasoski (48:33)
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, so first off, when we first launch ads, you wanna make sure that you're launching them as a purchase conversion. So create campaign, click sales, and then when you head over to your ad set, you wanna make sure you're maximizing for the number of purchases and conversions, okay? So that is first things first. Then when you go ahead and do that waiting window that I mentioned, that three to seven day window.
You're going to be first looking to measure your ad how well your ad is working you want to look at your cost per click and then that click and then also your click through rate and You want your cost per click to just be for just for starters. Let's get it under three dollars cost per click just for starters ⁓ and then we want our click through rates to be above 2 % and If your cost per click is really high then chances are your CPM is really high
I'm not a huge fan of CPM, but I do see these two as correlation. And then if your cost per click and CPM are high, then this means that you have to talk to a larger problem. Like maybe the problem you're speaking about is not large enough. There's not a ton of people that actually relate to that. So go back to the drawing board on the research phase, use the prompts to get your cost per click down. Now that's to measure your ad. And then on the landing page side,
You have your ads to carts, have your checkouts, and you have your purchases, and your conversion rate. All of these need to be good, and then you're gonna have good return on ads, but a good ROAS. Everyone wants a good ROAS, but if you don't have a good conversion rate, or an ads to cart percentage, or high cost per click, then your ROAS is gonna be off. So yes, measuring your ad cost per clicks, ⁓ CTR click-through rate, and then measuring your landing page, ads to cart, checkouts, and purchases.
Jack (50:35)
Awesome. Does that answer your question, Maddie? we've got one more question from Maddie here. ⁓ What if you just focus on making one really good ad?
Brandon Wasoski (50:43)
⁓ Maybe a video, but yeah, maybe a video. ⁓ Even maybe like, but you want to test. You want to test in iterations and batches. You don't know what's going to work. So you really want to test in batches. Maybe I'll have one really good image, for example, like the image I showed you, we went over. I started that image off like week zero to week four with ⁓ three different headlines. And then we found that the one headline worked. And then that one headline, we just said the headline differently.
Okay, so if I only started and it was actually point three, so point, I label them like 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, so point three was the last one I created and that was actually the one that worked. If I only focus on 1.1, then I might not have a winning ad right now. So put the numbers in your favor. Not too many, but doing batches of three. A video, even with a video, because a lot of time and energy can go into a video script.
You can focus on making one really good video, but make the first three seconds, make three different first three seconds to hook. Make three different first three seconds and then you'll be in good shape.
Jack (52:02)
Awesome. Well, this was a really interesting conversation, Brandon. I learned a bunch. ⁓ You know, I think this is super valuable for teams that are bootstrapping, that are smaller, they don't have endless resources to work with. You're an army of designers and ⁓ creative strategists and really have to use the tools that are at their disposal right in front of them to make the best performing ads to have a chance in the market.
⁓ One thought on Maddie's last question there, what if you focus on making one really good ad? That ad better work, right? Because all your chips are on black, right? This approach that we've been talking about today is not about putting all your chips on black. It's about building a system so that you can create more opportunities to find an ad that wins for you. Not just one ad, hopefully, but more ads over and over again on repeat, right?
Brandon Wasoski (52:54)
Yeah, yeah.
Jack (52:56)
So your tool, Growth Hub, how do people get using it? Can we drop a link in the chat?
Brandon Wasoski (53:02)
Yeah, absolutely. So you can head over. I'm going to drop the link to our website right now. So one sec.
Do we have the chat here? Oh, here it is. So yes, this is our website here. This will take you to the home page. We are Shopify-based business, so we are proudly on Shopify, our website. Our website's on Shopify. It's the easiest platform to use. But anyway, in our navigation bar, you'll have AI tools. And you can go ahead and schedule a call with us, and we can book a demo there.
Jack (53:29)
Nice.
Brandon Wasoski (53:43)
And you also get access. We also do have a school community. ⁓ When you join our school community, you do get access to our ⁓ to our AI tools as well. So ⁓ if anyone is not on school, you should definitely get on school because it's a great learning platform. So you guys can hop into there. We do have a free and a paid school community. I just linked the ⁓
I just linked the free one and then now I'll link the paid one as well. The difference is just the paid one you get access to the tool. And then you also, we hop on trainings every single week. I actually have another training today at 4 p.m. We're gonna be going over diversifying your traffic as well. So yeah, that's how you guys can get in touch with me as well.
Jack (54:31)
Nice.
Awesome, I'm just moving over your links into the live stream chat. Don't worry, get it. stream, Riverside is complicated.
Brandon Wasoski (54:43)
⁓ sorry about this. Thank you for that too.
Jack (54:45)
Awesome.
Thank you so much, everyone. This was a great conversation.
Brandon Wasoski (54:52)
Yes, thanks for having me for playing Jack. Awesome. All right, see you guys.
