Cover the product with your finger

My creative team brought me an ad for a Lion's Mane product last week.

Split screen, same woman, two times of day. 9 AM, calm and put together. 6 PM, hair a mess, toys everywhere, stressed look. Caption: "Make your 6 PM look like your 9 AM."

The AI images were clean. The copy was tight.

I knew it wouldn't work. Took me a minute to say why.

The test I eventually ran on it is the one I now run on everything.

Unplug the product. Swap in a different one. Does the ad still work?

In this case, the ad would work for almost anything that gives you energy. A sleep supplement. A B12 patch. A workout machine. A meditation app. Hell, just sleeping more.

That's the problem.

If the ad would work for ten other products, then it's not about your product. The product is interchangeable. Which means the ad is interchangeable. Which means it's not an idea. It's a shell.

A real ad idea is welded to the product. You can't swap the product out without the whole thing collapsing.

Think about Squatty Potty's old unicorn ad. A unicorn squatting on a toilet, demonstrating the stool. The visual gag IS the product's mechanism. Try selling anything else with that ad. It doesn't survive the swap.

Or the gut health brand whose founder had Crohn's for sixteen years. Surgeries, failed pharmaceuticals, the whole thing. He built a tea that helped him heal. Try swapping the tea out for a workout machine. The story collapses. The product is the resolution of the story.

Different categories. Different creative formats. Both welded.

The 6 PM vs 9 AM split screen wasn't welded to anything. It was a clever scenario that needed a product to inhabit it. So we dropped a Lion's Mane bottle in. Could've been any bottle.

This trap is everywhere on Meta. A team builds a slick visual scenario, then drops the product in at the end. The scenario is the work. The product is the afterthought.

Brand owners watch these ads and think they look professional. They do. They're also forgettable. The viewer remembers the punchline. Not what they were being sold.

The fix isn't fancier execution. It's working backwards from what makes the product specifically different. What does this product do that nothing else does? What story is only true because this product exists?

When you start from there, the ad writes itself. And it's a real idea because you couldn't run it for any other brand.

If you're sitting on a batch of new creative this week, try the test. Take the headline. Take the visual. Take the scenario. Cover up the product with your finger.

Could you sell ten other things with this ad?

If yes, it's a shell. Send it back.

If no, you've got something.

— Eddie

P.S. Same test, different application. If a testimonial in your ad could be lifted and pasted onto a competitor's website without anyone noticing, it's not specific enough. "Helped me focus" works for any nootropic. "I noticed it 20 minutes after putting it under my tongue, and the focus hit different than caffeine because I wasn't jittery" is welded. Specificity is what makes a testimonial yours.