Jack (00:00)
Hey guys, welcome to another episode of 4Play Fireside. I'm here with Luke Thorberg from Bolt Marketing. And we're going be talking about how to stop the scroll. I think this is an awesome topic to talk about. You need to stop the scroll in order for everything else to happen with your marketing. So I'm excited to learn a little bit more about how to do that. Back.
A few years ago, it was actually probably pretty easy to stop the scroll, but ads these days are extremely competitive and I think it's becoming extremely important to learn how to do that very well, right? In the sea of organic content that's out there and the sea of incredible ads, how do you stop the scroll in 2025? So yeah, let's talk about it Luke, what's up?
Luke Thorburg (00:44)
What's up, Jack? Thank you so much for having me today.
Jack (00:48)
Thank you for joining us.
Luke Thorburg (00:50)
Awesome. Yeah, well, yeah, anyone who doesn't know me, anyone who's first time coming across me, I'm founder of two different agencies that kind of act as one more of like brands underneath the parent brand. ⁓ One of them is Bolt. Bolt is a performance creative agency, know, do everything from your run of the mill UGC agency to media buying, full service, partner up with a small amount of brands. And then a project that we've been working on for the last year here that's been
growing like crazy is an arm that we call 203 Media. ⁓ And what they do is alternative ad styles, right? And the whole hypothesis behind making this agency and this offer was everyone is offering UGC, everyone is running UGC at scale, and the consumer is starting to get to the point where they're getting more sophisticated and they're not.
locking in on any video that comes across their feed anymore. They're not just going to watch every UGC and believe it. People understand that this stuff is scripted and people understand that that people are paying these people to say this stuff about their brand and that authenticity that used to drive social media and used to drive brands outsized returns on these social media platforms isn't there anymore, which is leading brands to start looking at these different ways that they can connect with the consumer.
without having to send their product to a hundred different influencers or creators that no one actually ends up believing anyway. So that's where 203 came from. And really what we've leaned into is two major channels right now, which is expanding some stuff I might be able to talk about a little bit here. But one is a man on the street or woman on the street style of content.
where we're actually interviewing real people and showcasing their product in real time to people and then capturing authentic reactions. Because again, the biggest issue with a lot of this UGC content, everyone knows it's scripted, everyone knows it's fake, everyone knows that it doesn't work. Like if you get to any level of sophistication with your buyer, they're not falling for that traditional style of UGC anymore. So what did we do is we said, hey, let's go actually onto the streets and find real people
and have them rate your product in real time, have them try that product in real time, record that reaction, cut it up, and then actually run it as an ad. ⁓ And then we've found that people are much more likely to believe a real person than a obvious UGC creator or an obvious ⁓ influencer that's just being paid for by the...
Jack (03:32)
Nice. This is going to come... ⁓
Luke Thorburg (03:36)
Jack, I think I lost you for a second and you're paused.
Jack (03:39)
yeah, you can't hear me?
Luke Thorburg (03:53)
There we go, I think I got you back.
Jack (03:54)
Yeah, I was connected to my VPN. think that was slowing things down. This might be a little too long, but I love the idea of that ad creative style. Do you have any examples?
Luke Thorburg (03:58)
okay. Welcome back.
Yes, I
do have some examples I'd be more than happy to pull up. ⁓ We've gotten really, really, really good ⁓ feedback from brands. We've actually had much more demand for this offer than we've been able to service. We've done some wait listing. We're pretty much caught up now. ⁓ But some of the biggest brands in the space, for example, Dr. Squatch, Avi, we just signed... ⁓
Just today, ⁓ Tom Holland dropped a non-alcoholic beer brand that we just, ⁓ you know, finalized an agreement with. Goalie, Magic Spoon, kind of the list goes on. Anyone who's like a DTC titan that is known for really running ads and e-comm and being leaders, thought leaders in the space have been like flooding to this style of offer. So yeah, I'm more than happy to get some examples up really quick. I'm just going to go into our chat, Jack, and ⁓ pull up some of the ones that I sent to you.
And you know, we can, we can get a little bit more set up with this. We're, we're playing with actually doing like pop-up venues and booths and things like that, and actually going to different types of events. ⁓ and let me, let me screen share. then all the way down to like that really raw organic person on the street. So let me pull this up.
See ya.
Jack (05:32)
Yeah, I see it.
Luke Thorburg (05:33)
I'm
not quite sure how well audio is going to share over, but...
I mean, no, no amount of, you know, well-scripted, sanitized UGC is ever going to compare in authenticity to the people of New York actually, you know, who are using the product, trying the product right there in real time and giving their, ⁓ giving their reaction. I mean, look at this guy cowboy with his shirt off in the middle of a park in New York. ⁓
But yeah, it's definitely a fun new content style. And again, I think that's why a lot of brands have really been rushing to it as far as getting some new diversity within their ad account, right? Like they've got UGC, they have UGC agencies, they work with creators. And don't get me wrong, like that stuff's always going to have some level of a piece of the pie, but this is a way that they can actually spice things up and try something completely different.
Jack (07:08)
was awesome. I'd love to ask how did you land on this hook? And did you test any others that fun like law blowing and then animating in the people in that first shot?
Luke Thorburg (07:20)
Yeah.
I mean, I wish I could say I'm like the only one who was actually making this, right? And so how they landed on the hook, I'm not quite sure. But one thing that we do is we typically look for the best reactions possible. And then we want to try to put that towards the front of the video, right? Sometimes we'd like to have a little bit of an intro, right? Just like you're seeing right here. But oftentimes we'll just find like, you know, some very
eccentric person like the cowboy, where was he at somewhere in this video? And we'll put that at the very front of the video and that will be enough to stop the scroll or, you know, just like people do with organic content, like they'll find the part of the situation with the most tension or with the, you know, the most draw to it, right? To get people to start the video. And then obviously they'll watch all the way through and, know, get to the marketing message. And then obviously a call to action at the end to try to get them to convert. So a lot of.
Jack (08:17)
No.
Luke Thorburg (08:18)
A lot of those ad principles that still apply in other formats, we're just trying to ramp up authenticity, especially like I'm sure a lot of the conversations that you've been having on here over the past few months have been like, how can we scale things up with AI? Right? Don't get me wrong. I love AI. We're trying to implement it into every part of our business. We're trying to implement it into every part of our ad process. But as more and more AI slop goes into the ecosystem,
the more that the stuff that can't be made with AI is going to stand out. And I think that's where we're really starting to lean. It's like, it's not going to be, ⁓ we're not gonna make a hundred of these a day, right? But at the same time, the styles of content that we're making are going to be things that you can't necessarily just reproduce with AI. And they're gonna be things that stand out amongst AI, right?
So that's where we're really trying to go. Obviously we're trying to use AI to make things as efficient as possible. We're really trying to go into these formats that AI is going have a little bit more trouble catching than like UGC talking head in my bedroom.
Jack (09:25)
Right, right. So from a video like this, I mean, we probably had 10, 12 different street interviews in this one video. How many separate ads do you get out of all of that content? Do you use them for the brands you work with? So is this edit made by your team?
Luke Thorburg (09:39)
Yes.
Yeah, this type of edit is something that our team makes and something that our team actually delivers on. Typically the way it works and like there's exceptions, we'll have some videos that are gonna have more interviews than others. We're gonna have some videos that have an intro. We're gonna have some videos that might have a little bit more staging than others. But typically what a video consists of, it's like two to three interviews that we're going to mash together, take the best pieces, take the best responses.
put them together to deliver a final ad. And then I'll tell you one of the biggest, ⁓ I think, one of the most valuable pieces of this is brands can implement this stuff into their content library in a lot of different places, right? So it's like, not only is it final ads that you can plug into your account, and we've seen really great numbers as far as being able to stop the scroll. ⁓
but they can also use it as the social proof element in their other video ads in the future, right? And that's like a big piece that we see brands like Dr. Squatch do. Like, yeah, they'll run some plug and play ads from us, but we'll see like, you know, little pieces of our content being circulated through hundreds of different, maybe UGC or like AI voiceover style ads, whenever they wanna express that there's real social proof, there's no better place than you can go than find real people.
Jack (11:09)
Yeah, good shout, hey. And hey, it could exist on their timeline as organic social media content as well. ⁓ I've always wondered what it would look like if a brand took a street interview strategy to their whole organic social media. I imagine there'd probably be a lot of Northside in terms of the viral potential of those videos versus, I don't know, generic social media posts, right?
Luke Thorburg (11:36)
Yeah, yeah, I know some brands that are really ⁓ leaning into it. Off the top of a head of brand that we work with, Knobbs, so it's like a toothpaste tablet, it's really viral on TikTok shop. ⁓ They run a ton of this stuff as their TikTok shop organic presence, because it gets really good reach. And a lot of the brands that we work with, some of them don't run ads at all. Some of them run ads and they do organic.
But we have a lot of brands that will hire us just strictly to use this as their organic content as well, right? So it does double both ways. Like one thing that we've seen about this style of content is again, people land on it much more than they would a typical ad, right? The thumb stop is typically much higher, right? ⁓ The retention is typically much higher as well. Now where everything has a little bit of give and take, ⁓
where it doesn't perform as well as some of these other UGC styles is like immediate conversion, right? So it's like the direct response is a little bit lower, but the top of funnel is much higher, right? So typically the brands that are going to be using this style of content are going to be brands that are plateaued and they need to get new people into their ecosystem, right? They're not able to just to keep hitting direct response over and over the direct response button over and over again and continue to keep getting conversions.
They're brands that need to like figure out, hey, new ways that we can get people into our ecosystem that may have never heard of us before to stick around and hear our initial message. So then we can direct response them a couple of videos later.
Jack (13:13)
Right. I guess it's one of the limitations. I'd love to hear what you think about this. It's one of the limitations with Facebook's attribution and it being last click over a seven day click window. Right. Is that.
there's maybe a little bit too much value given to that last click and not enough to the first click to discovering new customers and new business, right? Unless they're the same, which is not the end of the world, right? It's quite a nice situation to be in, but what if, you know, the stuff that's closing the sale is treated preferentially over the stuff that's opening the sale, that's actually finding new business, right?
Luke Thorburg (13:52)
It's an age old attribution question, right? Like you see the same thing with like statics. You see the same thing with like the UGC versus static conversation, for example. Like oftentimes, if you have really strong UGC in your account, your statics are gonna be showing an outsized ROAS. It's gonna be showing a really good ROAS because what they do is they watch the UGC ad. They're like, this product looks great, right? They scroll.
And then whenever we get back to another static ad that retargets them and it hits on a very specific objection, a very specific pain point, maybe it just establishes a little bit more social proof, that's typically gonna be the thing that pushes them over the line and actually gets them to convert. Well, then people are gonna look at that and be like, ⁓ well, my static ads are performing way better than my video ads. Why would I not just dump money into all my static ads? And then as soon as they do that, the ROAS starts tanking.
Because what people don't realize at the end of the day, ads are going to be an ecosystem. They're not something that's just binary working by themselves. It's going to be something that's going to be working together to drive across that conversion.
Jack (14:58)
Yeah, can agree more. I can agree more. When I have conversations with brands, one of the number one things I say is that the term ROAS is a little bit misleading, right? Because what would ROAS look like if your website took eight seconds to load? Right? Probably wouldn't look that good. People would back out and carry on watching funny cat videos because they'd be waiting, looking at a white screen for too long.
Luke Thorburg (15:09)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Horrible.
Jack (15:22)
So that's not return on ad spend. It's return on, I don't know, your investment into your website. And there's a bunch of, I guess, web development agencies out there that, you know, will testify to the fact that your ROAS will improve if your website's better, if your conversion rate is better and so on and so forth. So it's just like, there's a thousand different pieces of the puzzle, know, slices of the pie that go into the performance of your advertising. Cause really your advertising is just paid amplification of your media to people who are likely to
engage
with your ad and purchase your product in DTC. So yeah, everything needs to work. It's not just the ad, right? Or the one ad, right? Like the static, has to be the entire, right? Finding new business, closing that business and everything that's in between, right?
Luke Thorburg (16:12)
I mean, at the end of the day, like there's a ton of variables that go into this. Ads and offer are obviously like the biggest one in my opinion. It's like, I've seen really basic generic websites, even ones that don't load quickly, right? Or as quickly as they should, right? If it gets ridiculous at the end of the day, then you know, maybe it's going to cause some issues. But at the end of the day, if you have an amazing product and you have an amazing ad.
Like you're probably going to drive conversions and then all this other stuff is just going to help and contribute. And then if you, you you sum up a bunch of five and 10 % increases, then of course you're going have a completely different business, but that's exactly what they are. They're like, you know, a couple of percentages here, a couple of percentages here, adding up into a whole, whole figure.
Jack (17:00)
Right, yeah, I can agree more on offer as well, like that combination of product and promotion. If you don't have a good offer, something that people actually wanna buy, that might be, it might be tricky, right? Awesome, so back to stopping the scroll. Are there any other formats that you think are worth paying attention to?
Luke Thorburg (17:23)
Yeah, think skits are doing really, really well right now. I should be able to get an example of that as well. Let me pull one up.
I'll use one of my favorite tools, Foreplay, to find a skit example here.
Jack (17:44)
Awesome.
Luke Thorburg (17:46)
Skits are working really, really well. We're seeing them work incredibly well on ⁓ TikTok shop as well. ⁓ But we're also seeing them start working really, really well as ads. So that's another one that we're working on. We're seeing podcasts work really, really well. AI and real. ⁓ I think real still has preferential treatment right now, but obviously like AI podcasts are starting to get really, really good. And let me pull up that.
skit example.
And then from there, I'll go into some other ones as well.
go.
Jack (18:41)
like this link to the more authentic content. I don't have a problem ethically or anything really with AI generated content. I think some of it's great. I'm sure you saw that calcium ad or
Luke Thorburg (18:41)
to.
Yeah.
Jack (18:58)
or the gorillas and Sasquatches. I think it's sick. I think it's great. And if people want to buy off the back of that sort of content, then great. But I do think that it gets a little fuzzy when it's obviously AI and when burning consumer trust with all these fake reviews for the product. I actually also, like, I'm not sure if it is, but I'm pretty sure it's illegal. So if it's not a fa- ⁓
Luke Thorburg (19:22)
I mean, it's ⁓
legal but unenforced, right? ⁓ Yeah, I mean, I've seen both sides of the coin here. I've worked with really large major companies that care ⁓ about every little ethical detail just because they're at much higher risk of being sued. I'm not saying that they're like morally superior by any means, ⁓ versus like, hey, I'm...
I'm an 18 year old who figured out a way to arbitrage the difference between a Facebook ad and the margin on my product, ⁓ who will go completely AI generated from end to end. Like the product image is AI generated, the ads AI generated, the reviews definitely are AI generated through and through. One thing where I think a lot of this AI generated content is going to start nestling and it's hard not to talk about it, right? ⁓
Is I saw a take on this on on X that I thought was really great. ⁓ That not everyone is going to be a high quality, sophisticated viewer. And therefore we definitely don't need to give everyone high quality, sophisticated content. So basically saying like, if you just want to like drool and look at your screen and not like really care about how good the content is, you just are brain rotting. You know, I think would be a Gen Z term of using.
It's like, well, then we'll give you brain raw AI content where if you're like a premium brand that wants premium customers, then you're probably going to want some premium content. And then there's going be a lot of brands that find a little bit of a mixed use case somewhere in between. Like for example, ⁓ you know, if you need some very specific B roll that you're not going to be able to go get, or you're in a pinch, you know, and you just need two second clip of something that would cost $10,000 for you to actually get in real life.
well then there's going to be like a little use case there as well. ⁓ yeah, it's definitely going into ⁓ an exciting direction. And I think there's going to be a use case for it, but there's always going to be a use case for the premium stuff too.
Jack (21:33)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I can agree more.
Luke Thorburg (21:35)
Yeah, let's go and let's take a look. This is like another style that we're seeing work performed really, really well, which is ⁓ skits. And this is by Cupid and Cupid is one of the best in the street interview space. We actually don't work with them, but they've definitely been a big inspiration for a lot of our methodology and like the types of content that we're using. ⁓ But, you know, they're using like these like real life POV scenarios.
Jack (22:14)
stuff. ⁓
Luke Thorburg (22:20)
You get the point though, right? Like it's much different than anything that you would see from like a UGC agency, right? Like this is real, it's organic. No one, this is probably an actress, don't be wrong, but it's real enough, right? And it's a much different content style. And then where we're finding a lot more success is we use this type of content for what it's really, really good for, which is stopping the scroll, right? Like that's what I've been.
been preaching here. It's like great for stopping the scroll, great for getting people in the funnel, ⁓ great for getting a really good watch through rate, And a view through rate. And then boom, here comes the UGC content, right? Here comes that like UGC that you would expect in a regular UGC ad to come in and close the deal. So now we're tying back that organic top of funnel marketing.
And then we're stringing it together with that UGC performance driven content to actually drive the conversion. And that is where this is going. That's where the magic is really happening.
Jack (23:24)
us and saying, we play that out again and see that transition?
Luke Thorburg (23:27)
Yeah, of
course.
Jack (23:33)
This is crazy because it doesn't get an ad at all.
Luke Thorburg (23:39)
What'd say?
Jack (23:40)
I said this is crazy because it doesn't feel like an ad at all.
Luke Thorburg (23:43)
It doesn't,
right? That's why if you look at our hook rate and you look at our hold rates, it's like incredibly better than a regular ad.
Definitely a little bit more sexually explicit brand, but.
Jack (24:44)
It's good here.
Luke Thorburg (24:44)
So yeah, that's where you bake in that direct response principle. Like I'd say the goal of advertising and especially in 2025 is to convince the person that they wanna buy your product before they realize that they're watching an ad. And if you're able to do that, you're gonna 100 % have success. I think this has always been true, right? Like whether...
The Trojan horse was authentic content. Whether the Trojan horse was comedy, like true classic has done really, really well and had a ton of success with whatever it may be. Like we want the person actually watching it, just like it was a piece of organic content that they're enjoying. And then realize that they actually were baited into a sales pitch, you know, at the end and then make it much easier to get them to convert before their logical brain turns on.
and starts functioning, we already want their subconscious brain to want to buy the product.
Jack (25:48)
Yeah, this is a great piece of content. It's funny. It's like you said, they're a little bit more sexual. It's a little less suited and booted, a little less professional. But man, there's a lot that went into that ad from some very serious people to build something incredible.
Luke Thorburg (26:08)
Yeah. And I can say like anyone who's, who's watching that may want to make this style of content. It is a little bit logistically challenging, right? Like I, I've been doing the UGC process for, you know, five years at this point. And like, we've got it down pretty well, right? Like we understand it's like find the creator, you know, vet them, send them to the product, send them the brief is the better the brief is, the better the creator is typically the better the content's going to come out. Right. This it's like,
You have people in the street, you have like a variable of like, even sometimes if you do everything right, the person just doesn't give you the reaction that they want. Right? So you sometimes have to get a lot more takes. Right. And then if you want to combine it with some performance UGC, you still have that whole UGC portion of the production process that you would with the typical piece of UGC. And then you're combining them together. You have one ad. Probably won't be able to find it right now, but
I know it's like, starts as a street interview, goes to a UGC and then ends as a podcast. It's like, got like three different layers to it. And like, again, it's, I'd say a little bit more logistically challenging to make that ad. And it's a little bit more expensive in some cases than like a, you know, a $30, whatever UGC creative that you might get on one of these websites. But at the end of the day, it's what actually converts and differentiates you from.
your competitors, right? We're getting in a closer to a red ocean in a lot of Ecom now, right? Like there's a lot of people coming in. have, you have to deal with huge corporate brands all the way to literal 16 and 18 year olds who just know how to use the internet and know how to use social media really well. Like it's easier than ever to start a Shopify store. It's easier than ever to create a product and get it from one of these many white label manufacturers, if not drop shippers.
if you're going to compete and you're going to stand out, like really, your offer and amazing ads are going to be the variable. So you're just not going to be able to do the same 20, 30 second UGC girl in her bedroom telling you how much she loves the product anymore. just doesn't. Once upon a time, it got a 4X ROAS. I miss those days. I would love to go back personally, right? And just like run up an ad account with some basic UGC ads, but it's just not, it's not that environment anymore. If you want to stand out, you got to be different.
Jack (28:33)
Right, competitive landscape just changes, right? I remember back in the day when Facebook was a chronological feed, whatever was posted last was at the top of everyone's feed. And then they introduced... ⁓
know, feeds sorted by engagement. But back then with my first brand, I just post all the time and I'd be at the top of everyone's And then I made like Facebook groups and added a bunch of people who followed my competitors to those Facebook groups and then spammed those Facebook groups with bunch of posts from different accounts.
Luke Thorburg (28:57)
Mm.
Jack (29:08)
And that was a pretty fun, low strategy for a minute. then the new system of delivering content to users on social media platforms came out. And your content actually had to be better. You entered the landscape of all the social media content that was being posted, not just what was posted the most recently.
So you have to post really great content. I don't know if you're like a legal services business, it's pretty hard to compete against a funny cat video, right? ⁓
almost impossible. So ads, right? That's the solution. Pay to reach the, my target customer. ⁓ but now ads are competitive the same way organic became brutally competitive. There's so much arbitrage in ads. There's so much opportunity in ads that ads are equally just as competitive now. So just a little image ad or a UGC ad from somebody's advocating for your product might not be enough to cut it today.
Luke Thorburg (30:10)
Yeah. Yeah. I'll tell you where I think this is going to. Right. And I think a lot of people are seeing this again as, AI gets better, AI is getting better faster, right? Like it's not just getting better. It's getting better rapidly faster, right? Which is like a little bit terrifying to think about, right? ⁓ but I I've heard a lot of, you know, back and forth about where does this go, especially with social media content, like social media content, the reason why, you know, the theory behind it was like, and why everyone's starting to go towards it.
is that it's authentic and it's not, know, it's real life, right? That's why people are so glued to it, right? Like it simulates a life, whether they want to, it's a life they want to live or whatever, right? But as people start seeing all this AI content that they know is fake, some aren't going to care and they're just going to watch it anyways, don't be wrong. But I think definitely a lot will, especially anyone with any level of like agency.
And they're going to start looking for types of content that have a validated human source, right? And where that is probably going to go is towards like the direction of live streaming, right? And we're seeing this with like TikTok shop and all these other kind of like social commerce.
applications kind of popping up or use cases popping up, right? TikTok shops, the biggest one right now, everyone's kind of hopping in on it. ⁓ But where we think this is going to go is like, there's going to be much more shift towards TikTok shops, streamers that are going to be like promoting their products and their streams. And that's where people are going to get like their real authentic taste, you know, to choose what products that they want to buy. And so one thing that we're, we're bringing in now, which is going to be really cool.
while we're doing these ⁓ street interviews and we're having people ⁓ check out the product in real life, we're also going to be live streaming that to TikTok shop at the same time, right? So like we've got the ad and imagine this package, right? We've got the ad that you're gonna be able to use after we cut it up, but you're also going to have the entire live stream at the same time. So it's kind of like, just like YouTubers are doing right now where it's like.
They shoot this long piece of content. So we do a live stream all day long. have all these people try out your product. We have maybe boost set up or we go to an event that's relevant to the product. Then we take all of that content and we chop it up and repurpose it into like real authentic content that you can make into ads or plug into your content ecosystem and use it as social proof, you know, throughout as well. So that's a spot that we're really excited about. That's something that we're just testing out actually getting, ⁓
not only like a third party kind of camera on a tripod or, you know, like a streamer with a videographer, but also like a GoPro attached to the person. So it's like a real life POV of you interacting with the customer as they try out your product, which is going to be really cool.
Jack (33:20)
Dude, that is awesome. You know, that is an offer as well. End to end, high quality. I don't even know if high quality is right way to describe it. It's adapted, right? This is...
to what users prefer today, end-to-end content strategy. I'm not sure how you would describe it, what ⁓ term you would give it, but this is your brand's content strategy, what you're gonna be posting, how you're gonna be online from start to finish.
Luke Thorburg (33:55)
Yeah. Yeah, it's a, it can be end to end for sure. I mean, what, it really is, it's like, it's very authentic, right? Like if you put your, everyone's seeing, we've seen different degrees of this. Like the more people put themselves out there, the more brands have put themselves out there. Those have been the brands that have really risen up really quickly, whether it be a personal brand or whether it be like a product based brand. Right. ⁓ I think it's just going to continue going in that direction and AI is going to, to help, help it.
more than like hurt it, you know, the more it's going to help authenticity shine versus hurt authenticity. ⁓ so yeah, we're leaning into it really using AI for backend processes, planning, you know, building briefs, ⁓ feeding, feeding data back into what's working. Right. I'm sure you guys are, you guys are absolutely doing the same thing. Right. We're feeding the data based on what's working, ⁓ back into models so it can give us better decisions in the future.
But outside of that, like the actual content, we're trying to go as authentic as possible and we're actually shooting it. And that's the way we've been leaning.
Jack (35:02)
Yeah, I feel like I've been seeing a growing negative sentiment around AI just because of how many AI products are out there that are...
over-promising and under-delivering and in marketing, there's a lot of early adopters, right? People who are looking for arbitrage. mean, that's kind of the, whole marketing endeavor is pursuing arbitrage, right? That favorable gap between input and output. And so as soon as any AI tool comes out that has some promise, we're adopting it. We're trying out seeing if the bang is worth the buck, if the juice is worth a squeeze. So I'm seeing a lot of negative sentiment around AI.
like icon for example. Icon is notoriously ⁓ made a pretty big problem for themselves. ⁓
Luke Thorburg (35:52)
guess who made their ad? We were making their, we used a bunch of on the street content for that initial launch, right? And we made that on the street content. And then a friend of mine actually made like their really viral launch video, ⁓ like the big one. It's like, ⁓ but did you know that I was AI too? Like that one that everyone's seen, my buddy made that. And then we made their short form. ⁓
Jack (35:55)
No way, did you hear that?
Luke Thorburg (36:20)
like vertical video man on the street style ads for them. But yeah, it's been, it's been a problem. I was just in their offices. I'm friends with a lot of people that are there. I was just there. I was in their office two days ago. and they are, they are pivoting well, but yeah, they're, the exact, ⁓ example of what you're talking about. Like they tried to get all this mind share. They tried to, ⁓ basically launch a product before the tech was really there hoping that the tech is going to be there.
And that's really their big gamble right now, which is they've launched a product. It's definitely not there yet, but can they stay in the fight for another six months until the technology catches up and then they're the first one there and everyone knows about them. But then the other possibility is that by then everybody hates them and wants nothing to do with them. And even even if the tech is there.
Jack (37:10)
Yeah
Luke Thorburg (37:15)
Nobody wants, you know, nobody wants anything to do with them, right? And someone else is going to come in, you know, and swallow up the, the, the, all of the market, right? Which you guys have seen, like, there's been a lot of examples of this, like, you know, there's the person who's in first, taking all the headwind, taking all the beatings of establishing the new market, just for someone to, you know, draft up behind them and shoot past. And then the second, second person right behind them all of sudden is in first, right?
So yeah, we'll see if they can survive in advance, but that's an exact example of that. It's like, there's been very few ⁓ companies right now that have launched an AI product that have been able to create something that surpasses just like basic chat GPT with good prompting, right? And that's something that I think is gonna come and there's gonna be more people that are figuring out better ways to implement it, because everyone's racing towards it. So someone's gonna inevitably get there. But...
There's been so many companies who have been like, we are AI enabled or we are all AI and then the product just doesn't do what it claims at all.
Jack (38:23)
Right. You only get one first impression, right? You wonder how much of the market is put off from individual products, but then put off from AI in general. It's a bit of a shame, you know, that there's some people that are put off from AI in general. Don't get me wrong, authenticity matters, but there's just so much.
Luke Thorburg (38:28)
Mm-hmm.
Jack (38:45)
There's so much in AI that isn't just the over-promising under the lever. And yeah, who knows? Hopefully they can sort it out and they can keep some of that market share as they ⁓ fix the product.
yeah, I don't know. You know, what was interesting? Do you remember when chat GPT came out with the generate images and the like marketing internet just broke, right? There were already hundreds of AI generated image apps out there. Some of them funded with millions, right? I think there's ad creative.ai or something. It's one of the big ones.
Luke Thorburg (39:10)
Yes.
Jack (39:24)
But as soon as ChatGPT came out with this, the internet just blew up, right? Everyone was like, wow, I can do this thing. I can make ads in a few minutes. I think it's lost some of the magic now. I heard some things I haven't really been generating any ads in ChatGPT, but I heard that the quality's not there anymore. I'm not sure.
But I think the reason that happened, maybe it's partly because chat GPT has penetration and no one's adopting all of the tools to see if they work. But I think a big part of the reason why. ⁓
it made so much noise is because finally someone was fulfilling on the promise. It could actually do the thing and do the thing pretty well in a reasonable timeframe. It took like three to five minutes to generate an image. And you got something that you could probably use. I don't know, eight out 10 times.
Luke Thorburg (40:16)
Yeah,
Yeah, that's a great take. I didn't think about that. ⁓ I was I rode that wave. I made some content on it. I mean, it did very, very well. I mean, everyone, if you basically just posted about that, like it did really well because everyone was so hungry for it at that time. ⁓ But yeah, I know it did. It did do something that I think not a lot of people have seen with a lot of these other apps. And at the end of the day, even if it's not perfect.
It got us a lot closer to where we were before. And even if it wasn't a perfect generation, it's something where you can take a graphic designer and touch it up and finish it. Right. And the ways that we've really used AI, cause like, get me wrong, even though we're leaning into ⁓ this authentic content style very heavily, like we use a ton of AI, especially if it comes to just like UGC creation. And at the end of the day, I'm a, I'm a business person and I'm
I want to use the thing that's most effective and makes money. I'm not like, I don't have an agenda one way or the other. And I definitely do utilize both of them. ⁓ But I think we may never find an out of the box solution where AI just makes you a winning ad. I just don't think that's ever really going to happen. We're like,
all of sudden you put a prompt in and all of sudden you have like the beautiful, perfect winning ad that AI figured out and AI made. I don't know if that's ever really gonna happen, but we are going to have all of these different little use cases that pop up. So for example, maybe you're not gonna be able to just put a prompt in and get like a perfect features ad with every feature that you want with a beautiful visual and it's just perfect and polished.
Maybe not, but you can put a product in there and get a really good background and you can do some really good creative research that gives you some features that you can use. And you can put all that together with a creative strategist to make something really quick in a really efficient manner. But is AI ever gonna be like sentient enough to where you can just say like, have X brand, I want you to make me a winning ad. It's probably never just gonna spit one right back at you. I just don't think that's going to happen.
When I've been talking with a lot of these guys at like these different AI ad startups, like icon, for example, the issue with a AI and detecting a winning ad is you can say that like maybe ad a did really well and add B did really well. And it can analyze all these different ads at scale.
But there's typically one or two little things about each ad that actually make it a winner. And then there's a lot of stuff that is either just okay or it might even be bad. And the issue with these models is taking in everything all simultaneously from thousands of ads that it thinks are winners and then overlapping all of their characteristics, whether those are the contribution to that ad being a winner or not.
And then what you're getting out of it is just like a big gray mess and blob. And that's where a lot of these companies, I've been talking to a lot of these AI tech startups is like, they've had a lot of trouble, I think, finding that intersection of art and science and figuring out a way to automate it. Like that's the biggest thing that they're, they haven't even figured out a way to start tackling that problem yet, which is, yeah, we can give it a ton of data. But then there's also like taste.
And there's like a human perception to taste. And it also changes like in real time based on who the person is and based on who's actually like in the driver's seat of making that creative. And they've had a ⁓ lot of time or a lot of trouble putting those two things together. Yeah, we can feed all this data into the model and yeah, can spit something out. But at the same time, it's not necessarily.
It's not necessarily something that drives conversions or taste. It's hard to describe, like the intersection that I'm talking about. you see where I'm pointing to at least?
Jack (44:23)
Yeah, of course. No, couldn't agree more. I think that, and I couldn't agree more with what you're saying about, I don't think we're to be able to put into AI to make a winning ad.
Because the reality is that the ad is going into the market. It's going to compete against all the other ads. And there's so much more to that ads performance than just the media, right? There's the offer, which we were speaking about before. Is the offer strong enough? know, the offer, maybe the AI generation tool is going to make an offer in that ad that you now have to go and build into your Shopify store ⁓ in order for you to launch the wedding ad. Hey, that would be cool.
⁓ But still, a big part of the offer is the product. Are you going to TikTok shops, for example, we talking about TikTok shops earlier, and then going to recommend a bunch of products that you probably don't sell. Hey, these products are hot right now. They're not saying, they're what they are. But they're not saying run a flash sale. They're actually saying, actually change your entire core offering. This product is working right now. So why don't you sell this product? It's like, can't sell that product if we don't sell those products. ⁓
Luke Thorburg (45:30)
You
Jack (45:32)
I think that's interesting, right? There's so much more, there are more variables, right? Than just the ad. So to say that the platform's gonna produce it, an AI generation tool is gonna produce the winning ad when there's more things that need to work or they have to work. The other thing I think with these AI generation tools is that there's really in my mind,
three places where the ad has to compete and win, right? And it's the expectation from the user, the expectation from the stakeholders and the expectation from the market. The expectation from the market is when it enters that market competition, is it fulfilling the requirements to make them click, to make them buy? Right? But you've also got the user's expectation. I've generated an ad, image ad, video ad, whatever happens to be. And it's met my like baseline for what I think is success. I'm accepting this ad.
started using ChatGPT and they were generating ads and it was working, right? They were surprised and they were happy and it worked, right? It fulfilling the promise. And then when people are using Google Vio and it's working and they're making fun content, they're surprised and they're happy and they've got a product. It's meeting the user's expectation, stakeholders. You can like the content that you've generated in ChatGPT or Vio or whatever.
AI generation tool it is, but does the brand like it? Super important, right? Because you can't just make something that only you like and you're serving brands and they don't like it. They don't want to take it to market. If it met those two and then it goes to the market and it doesn't work, then oh, oh well, we tried our best, but at least everyone liked the input. But ideally at the end of the day, it doesn't just meet your expectation. It doesn't just meet the stakeholders' expectation. It also meets the market's expectation. It works, right? And yeah, I think there's so much that goes into
into that. Just that first one, meeting the user's expectation is a win, but it has to go all the way.
Luke Thorburg (47:29)
think a big piece too is like these models and just kind of building on what you're saying is like these models also work on or they base their output on what's worked in the past. And I, this will go more towards like the authenticity thing too, but ⁓ really the big way to stand out in the market is to do something that's not currently being done. Right. And so I think that's where like a big lag.
with AI is always going to be with creatives and always going to have a spot for like a really dialed creative strategist as well, is to be able to look at something, maybe use a little bit of their personal taste and do something that hasn't been done before in the market, right? Then really differentiate yourself. So yeah, it's gonna be fun. It's gonna be fun. Every six months is fun, I think, in advertising and e-commerce and SaaS.
But I think it's going to be another really fun six months as we buckle up in the Q4 of this next year.
Jack (48:29)
agree more. You know what would be cool? Some sort of forward looking tool, know, some sort of crystal ball that looks at what's going viral right now on TikTok. It's just started to go viral on TikTok or on Instagram or whatever it is, but it's just getting there. It's starting to catch, ⁓ you know, some wind in the sails.
Luke Thorburg (48:50)
think people try, I just don't think anyone's been able to do it.
I think people try. I think it's really hard to do. And I think an issue with the platform is they try to put up a wall to a degree on some of that as well. But I feel like someone would have done that by now if it was possible. People try. I think there's tools. I just don't think there's any good tools.
Jack (49:14)
Right, maybe we need to build it. ⁓
Luke Thorburg (49:17)
Let's go. Let's go. Let's go ahead and build it.
Jack (49:21)
Awesome. Guys, does anybody have any questions before we wrap up here? We've just got a couple of messages. No, it doesn't look like we have any questions. Guys, we have three minutes left. If you want to slip in a question before we wrap up, now is the time. Luke, while we wrap up, where can people find you?
Luke Thorburg (49:46)
best spot to get ahold of me is, is Instagram. ⁓ my, my full name, if you just type in my full name, Luke Thorberg, you'll find me there. I make a ton of content on Tik Tok. I've been on a little bit of a hiatus, but that's like my biggest platform. that's where I make a majority of my content. I've got, you know, my biggest following there. ⁓ but Instagram I'd say is my spot that I'm really focusing my attention on right now. That's the best place to get in touch with me and actually, you know, get, get a DM responded to. Tik Tok's a little bit.
Wild West.
Jack (50:17)
Awesome, okay, I just posted your Instagram in the chat. And if anyone wants to get in contact with Luke, he'll be on our next newsletter and you'll see ⁓ information to get in contact with his team at Bolt Marketing.
Luke Thorburg (50:32)
Awesome. Jack, thank you so much for having me. It's been an absolute pleasure.
Jack (50:37)
Thank you Luke. Yeah, it was great.
Luke Thorburg (50:39)
to come down to Peru. We'll hang out.
Jack (50:41)
Yeah,
I'll be back in two weeks. I'll be in the States for the next two weeks, visiting Nashville, which will be fun. But yeah, I'll be back in Peru.
Luke Thorburg (50:45)
Nice.
Nice. You're flying
up from Peru to Nashville, Tennessee. That's the route that you took.
Jack (50:58)
Yeah, yeah, be there for two weeks. Looking forward to it. Listen to some country music. Should be fun.
Luke Thorburg (51:05)
It's a great time by the way, it's a great time, I love Nashville. It's just like a funny, it's a funny trip itinerary is all.
Jack (51:11)
Awesome. All right. Thank you. Thanks everyone for joining. Talk soon.
