YouTube is a different beast. It has arguably greater reach than Facebook, with more ad inventory available. 

But it’s not easier to scale on. And it’s not easier to measure. 

For brands that get it right, YouTube can accelerate growth like no other.

Take Dr. Squatch as an example. They scaled from $3 million per year to over $150 million per year, in large part due to the success of their YouTube ads. The same goes for Manscapped, William Painter, Organifi, and DOZENS more.

This episode is unique because Jacques Spitzer and I interview each other! Jacques is the CEO of Raindrop (the creative agency behind Squatch, Manscapped, Shady Rays, and more) and the podcast host of Marketing People Love. 

OMG and Raindrop have collaborated on several campaigns (including NATIVE), with Raindrop handling the creative side and OMG handling the media and strategy. 

In this show, we discuss:

• Why most brands get YouTube creatives wrong and how to fix it.
• Why measuring YouTube performance is harder than most and why you’re probably not measuring YouTube properly.
• How to truly achieve “exit velocity” with YouTube.
• Getting the proper view of brand lift, search lift, and halo effect from YouTube ads.
• Creative breakthroughs and much, much more.

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Transcript

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO, OMG Commerce. And today is a really unique, really fun, really high energy, blow your mind, awesome type of episode. This is a joint episode. This episode is going to be published on E-Commerce Evolution, but also on the Marketing People Love podcast because me and Jacques Spitzer, our joining forces and we're interviewing each other and it's like I'm asking questions, he's asking questions, but it just comes together in a pretty beautiful, organic way. And so we're talking about how to scale on YouTube, why most people misunderstand YouTube and how to make it work. I think you're going to love it. So here we go. Let's dive in and let's talk YouTube ads with Jacques Spitzer.

Jacques:

Brett, we are going to be, I know diving into topics that you and I we text about late at night after

Brett:

Yours. Your

Jacques:

15 kids are down for bed. I just add one every time I talk to you. Yeah, it's

Brett:

Only a eight, but it's

Jacques:

Only eight.

Brett:

It feels like 15 at night, so I think

Jacques:

You're like something. Yeah. But we talk about, and I'm so excited to surface some of the things that we talk about, what's working, what is really, really working is just what we get excited about. And so let's dive into some topics around the all impressive YouTube platform that so few people understand how to leverage

Brett:

True man and you know, speak at a lot of events. I speak at a lot of events every time I do almost. I ask people, Hey, who hears by show of hands running ads on YouTube? And it's always less than 20%. Sometimes it's 10%, and then people that have run it are often frustrated by it and they don't know why it's not working. And so I think we've got these two really unique perspectives. You've seen a lot of the campaign side. You're a creative guy, creative agency, the ins and outs of making killer YouTube content. I'm more on the campaign and strategy side, although I understand creative pretty well too. So I think this combo of ideas is going to be pretty powerful. So look out after you listen to this, plus, after we tell you about a little special opportunity that won't be right for everybody, but for some people when you can come hang out with me and Jock, I think people will be ready for YouTube. I think they'll be excited, motivated, inspired for YouTube.

Jacques:

Yeah. Can't wait to talk about that event later in the podcast.

Brett:

Exactly. Exactly. So I think we kind of, cool, let's talk about YouTube in general. And I think part of the reason people don't have success with YouTube is because they don't really understand it. They don't understand how people engage with it, what creatives should be like, how people are consuming it. And so I think it'd be kind of cool just to share our perspectives on what is YouTube and how do people interact with it. And so a couple things, and since I talk about YouTube a lot, I've got a few stats that are kind of memorized, but

Jacques:

Give us those juicy stats, Greg, the juicy

Brett:

Stats. So it's over 2 billion active users, which that's kind of a meaningless number anytime you get in the billions our minds just kind of break a little bit. But one set that I love is that in the primetime hours, which we're both longtime ad guys, I still like TV ads. I still enjoy watching how do people advertise on tv? But during those prime time hours, so seven P to 11 p or whatever, more adults engage with YouTube than any cable network. So more people are watching YouTube than any cable network. Also, what's interesting, I'm curious if your son does this. My kids, especially my 12 year old, through my 15 year olds in the evening, if they're watching TV on their own, more often than not they're watching a YouTube creator. They're watching YouTube on their the tv, right?

Jacques:

Absolutely. Yeah. My sons just about turned eight and that that's why I wasn't shocked. I heard the stat that something between 45 to 47% of people consume YouTube on their television. That blew my mind, but it kind of started making sense when I started thinking about with smart TVs, the way that they've just proliferated, it's just a button away and it just changed everything.

Brett:

Yeah, and I think we could even get into some kind of cool ideas on how that shifts creatives just a little bit if you're showing it on the TV versus computer mobile. But what's interesting about that is that I think the key is prime time has become very personalized. Just like everything else. We don't want to just watch a sitcom. We want to watch what we want to watch. And so YouTube is massive. I think it reaches like 97% of all adults. Actually, I may be fibbing on that. It's around 90. Let's go with 90. I think that's right. Of all adults in the US consume YouTube average session durations like 42 minutes. So it's a really lengthy amount of time spent on YouTube. And the way I like to talk about is my dad's 73, he's on YouTube all the time. My six year old son, Benjamin, he's on YouTube all the time. It reaches everybody. And so it, it's a powerhouse and their shopping experiences taking place on YouTube. So people look for unboxing videos and product review videos, and what is the best travel pillow or best noise canceling headphones or best waterproof shoes or whatever. People are searching for products on YouTube as well. So

Jacques:

Pretty cool. And I know this, of course, Google has all their search history. And so it's also for other personalizing whatever content that they're getting served, especially on the ad side, based on what they're interested in their life phase, if they have kids, if they have a dog, all the things that they have searched on Google or on YouTube that would make them the audience for anything that they watch.

Brett:

Exactly. And what's cool about that, what the search behavior is, people searching for stuff on Google or on YouTube, first party data. So you are, you're willingly giving that data to Google. And so Google can then target people based on that. So I know privacy changes are going to shift and who knows what the future's going to look like Exactly. But I think Google's going to be able to target people based on their search behavior for the foreseeable future because not third party data, it's first party data. And so very powerful though for Google to know, Google knows what you're shopping for, Jacque, Google knows when you're looking for the new sports code or the new shoes, they know when you're shopping for stuff. And so they can deliver those relevant ads. So I did see recently a billion shopping experiences happen every day across Google. So that's Google, search, shopping, YouTube, Gmail, like a billion search opportunities a day. So just a massive opportunity. And I've also seen almost half of people bounce between YouTube and search. So I see something on YouTube, I'm just going to search for it. So this combination of Google and YouTube is very powerful.

Jacques:

So Brett, I, I'd love to ask you about this. Recently, on my last two podcasts, I had two people who really, they have brands that have really been able to harness YouTube as a platform and to really grow their top of funnel ad spend to grow their ads, to grow their awareness and actually convert. We're well known as an agency for the work that we did with Dr. Squatch to take them from 3 million to hundreds of millions in sales. And U2 was a huge driver for them in that

Brett:

It was the, and just to brag on you a little bit, jock and on the Dr. Squatch team, you guys won YouTube out of the year, right? Yes. That was

Jacques:

In 2019 or something? No, 2020. So it was during 2020. The height of the pandemic, the height of e-commerce and spending. So it might be the highest converting ad in human history, which is kind of crazy to say. It's kind of crazy to say it's crazy

Brett:

Because it's soap and it's not like, yeah, it's not cheap soap either. I've got some at the house. It's fantastic. So worth it. Yeah. But it's not necessarily, how easy is it to differentiate soap and then get you to buy a premium soap? That's not easy to do.

Jacques:

Yeah, if you go to YouTube, you type in Dr. Squatch, save Your Skin, watch the ad. It's me mesmerizing. But we've since had so many other success stories. I think we probably have five or six of the top performing ads of the last five years, four brands on YouTube scalably. And when I think about that though, I always ask these brands, well, how were you finally able to, and I'm going to think about it in terms of exit velocity or escape velocity, almost like the gravitational pool. How are you able to overcome the uncertainty that is involved with triangulating all these numbers and all this information? Because it doesn't act the same way as a bond of funnel YouTube search, like a pay-per-click ad. And it doesn't act like a meta ad. And no one in the world may know more about this than you, Brett. So I'd love to understand how are you all, I think my question to you is how do you educate your partners to be prepared to understand what is and isn't working for their brand when it comes to YouTube? Because that is, I think, the mystery that's keeping so many brands from unlocking the potential that is YouTube.

Brett:

And it's so glad you brought that up. And this is obviously a topic that I'm very passionate about and you're passionate about too because you, you've seen these brands,

Jacques:

Seen it firsthand.

Brett:

Yeah. You've seen them explode and then you've seen the brands that don't touch YouTube. And of course they can still be successful, but sure it's not the same and they don't become doctors. Dr. Squatch doesn't become Dr. Squatch without YouTube, so Absolutely. So it is possible. I think one thing to keep in mind is that this problem of not understanding what ad is working or what channel or platform is working is the advertising problem. We've always faced it. It is the original advertising problem. I love the PT Barnum quote and the movie The Greatest Showman was kind of loosely based on PT Barnum. Brilliant

Jacques:

Movie is fantastic. I love the sound, I love the soundtrack.

Brett:

We listen to my kids, we like to listen to that in the kitchen while we're making meals. I don't know, it just fits kitchen. I listen

Jacques:

Kids myself just to get myself amped up. So we're on the same page. Brett,

Brett:

Yeah, I like it. But he said that I know that half of my advertising is wasted, I just don't know which half. So that, that's always been the problem. But you got to keep advertising. Now, I'm not suggesting that you just be like, well, it's okay. I'll never know. And so we'll keep going. But I do think you'll never know perfectly, and that's a big deal you'll never be able to fully pinpoint. But thankfully we can get way closer than PT Barnum did back in the day. And so there's a few things to keep in mind. One, I think that the YouTube is often the very top of the funnel. It's often the very first touch point, the very first introduction that someone has with your brand. I think it's a little bit different too in terms of meta for a few reasons. And I'm so glad you brought up, it's different than search, it's different than shopping, it's different than Meta.

It's certainly everyth than the Amazon ads. And so I think with Meta though, one meta is pretty good job of tracking and you often only have one meta login, right? You got one Facebook account, that's it. And all of that tracking was designed a little bit more recently than Google's, even though Google's improved and they got enhanced conversions and things like that. I think Facebook often has a better picture a little bit. But even more than that, YouTube is top of funnel. And usually someone is on YouTube for a purpose. I'm there researching a topic, I'm there watching a specific creator that I like. I'm there looking to research something I'm going to buy. So you are interrupting them. And they were not there to view your ad. So getting them to click and purchase right away is not very common. Not very likely. I think it's a little bit different on Facebook because you don't usually go to Facebook with a specific purpose. You're not going there to, maybe you're going there, totalk a particular person, but usually it's just kind of, oh my

Jacques:

Gosh,

Brett:

I'm just there. I'm just hanging out, right? And so easier to bail and go do something off of Facebook. So I think both of those are important. And then one thing that we, we've got to look at, I want to dig into a couple different metrics because we always want to look at like is this truly creating a lift for our business or is it just a waste? It's just a loss lost opportunity. So some metrics to look at, but one of them is view through conversions. People that see the ad, they don't click because that's not why they were on YouTube. But they do purchase within a given window and usually we like to a one to one to three day window. So there's a few other things I want to dive into there. But I'm curious, Chuck, from your perspective, and so glad you had those interviews with those two awesome brands, what did they say? What were some of the things they said? Yeah, that gave them confidence.

Jacques:

Totally. And as someone who uses YouTube myself and has bought things that I saw on YouTube, yeah, yeah. I recognize that when am on Meta, I click on the ad, it's a direct click. When I'm on YouTube, I usually go to my Safari ad tab and I open up and I'll type in the URL or I will Google search it. And so we see, just because of that behavior, a lot of people there, you

Brett:

Just clarification there, Jacque. So you're watching YouTube, you're watching

Jacques:

On YouTube, on your phone, Google. Yeah,

Brett:

On my phone or your desktop or something that's happen. Or

Jacques:

If it were on my tv, either way I wouldn't click on the link. And I think that immediately changes the way that you can truly track the behavior because the behaviors going to look different. People are going to come, we see they're not sure You do too, that we see a huge lift in branded search. We see a huge lift in Amazon search for the brand. We see all this behavior that's influenced by seeing the ad. It's just the route they take to buy or purchase is indirect. And of course you're going to have people that find out about it, go to the website maybe they don't necessarily buy, they get remarketed on meta. Now it looks like a meta conversion. So it is messy. It is messy, but so it's such a bigger ocean. It's a huge ocean of opportunity. And I want you to react to that before I tell you what our clients have explained. Does that all add up?

Brett:

Oh, it 100% adds up. And so I want add a couple of things to it, but before I forget, I remember my buddy Will Hughes, shout out to Will Hughes who was on the podcast a couple months ago. But he used to run, he was the head of growth at Organifi. We worked together for a while. We were helping with YouTube there. And he always talked about how there's so much more scale on YouTube than on meta. Meta I think is easier. And for some brands, Meta's always going to be your number one source of new customers. But YouTube has more scale, it's a bigger ocean, there's more ad inventory there, more opportunities to sell. It is bigger anyway, so that that's something to keep in mind. But I love this concept of branded search and I'm maybe just completely making up this name, but I'm just going to go for it cause it's fun.

I think the dude name is Mark Pritchard, but he's with a p and g. And if it's not Mark Pritchard, then that's a cool sounding name and sounds smart. I would trust a guy named Mark Pritchard. So we feel good about that. But he said one of the best metrics they track for their brands to see if they're succeeding is how branded searches are growing. Because they know that if, and they know tv that they know tv, they know radio, they know online, but they know if people are searching for you by name, that's when you've got something going. That's when you're no longer just someone who sells stuff online. You are a real brand that people want and that people search out. So that's a big deal. We also look at with this big haircare brand, then we ran YouTube. They were spending three to 600,000 a month, something like that on YouTube.

They had to pause when I was 14.5 first hit because tracking was broken. They just didn't want to keep running. So they paused. We also ran their Amazon ads and their Amazon business, their Amazon branded search cut in half when we paused, paused YouTube. Now we got it all back. Everything was fine. We got it all going again. But just a real clear picture, that branded search comes from somewhere. You don't just wake up with an epiphany of a brand in your head. You saw something that made you want to do that. So that's really important. We also noticed live bearded client, longtime client, if you've got a beard, you got to try live bearded, you'll smell better, your beard will look better. All that. Oh my gosh, you just turned this into a podcast ad. I did me. That was free. That was natural product.

I got to send voice. Oh my gosh. So anyway, we running ads for sample kits and stuff. And so for a while YouTube was clearly the top performer. Then we brought in a third party attribution tool, which I do recommend. I like third party attribution tools. And then there was like, well, I don't know that YouTube's actually working. Look what it says on the third party attribution tool. So we started digging deeper and then we looked at, every time we scaled up on YouTube, every other channel got better and there was a lift in unattributed conversions. Okay? Every time we pulled back on YouTube, the performance of meta got worse. The performance of every other channel got worse. And so it was really clear, actually, we kind of came to the point where I think YouTube's the best driver of new customers right here for this.

Yeah. So anyway, I think there's several things you, you've got to be really smart about what you're measuring and looking at, but the results are there if you have the right creative, we're going to get into that in a minute. And nobody knows that better than you. But then you got to have the right campaign structure, but then you got to measure it. You got to know what are you measuring, how are you measuring it, and are you looking at overall lift and are you looking at it in an intelligent way? So yeah, we'd love to hear what your clients were saying.

Jacques:

Every client that we have has truly broken through it that I keep calling it that escape velocity, but it's so true. True. Oh, that's cool. It's like this because you could just feel these, we work with brands that are doing a hundred million, 200 million, 300 million in online sales, and I can feel the fear from them and not understanding the picture. And the irony a lot of times is that they're getting a monthly budget to YouTube that's the same as one day on Meta. And they're expecting to be able to experience this amazing life-changing result. And I'm like, no, you're spitting into the ocean and expecting to, yeah, no. And so all three of them almost matting, matting, mattingly, Mattingly, I don't even know if that's a

Brett:

Wordly you got to say.

Jacques:

Yeah, I'm sorry. Sometimes it feels like, I remember asking someone when you were in love and every time someone tries to explain it, it's like it. No, I don't know. Somehow we just had the confidence that finally we were in love and YouTube. That confidence works very similarly. It's like all the triangulation of information. They're using post-purchase survey attribution tools. They are using viewed through conversions. They are using lifts on Amazon and Meta. They are using lifts in branded search, trying to see how much of it's lift lifts in direct traffic, all of these pieces to paint the picture. And at some point they go, what if we took that budget from $3,000 a day to $10,000 a day? What if we took it from 10,000 to 20 from 20 to 50, right? And they hit this exit velocity where they're like, oh my gosh, it's all working and we can continue to invest in this way and skill in this way.

Another thing that I think they've shared with me is that they use for their own like CPA targets and everything else, that they typically come up with some sort of CPA target that they're comfortable with. That's not the same necessarily as their true target. They're usually adding somewhere between 40 to 60% to their true CPA target to give themselves that sort of wiggle room of the unknown without feeling like, I know I'm not wasting money. It's just it. It's not as obviously efficient as maybe with some of my other channels. But that gives 'em the confidence to say, okay, as long as we're within this range, I can spend more and more and more. And then they do the reconnaissance on, okay, is this even if half of these V2 conversions are attributed? Or even if a third are, this is really working for us. And it seems to me that it is the ability to gain confidence and honestly just having the chutzpah to do it, there's some point where exactly how do you it? You just put yourself out, you go, but you have, there's a point up until the point that you're trying to get as much information as you can. So that's how they described the process to me. And it's pretty much never strayed from that.

Brett:

I love that. And here's why I believe if you've got the right creative, if you got creative that really hooks the right audience and overcomes objections and makes them really want, you're probably creates desire stirs people to say like, dang, I really want that. If you've got that creative and then you've got the right campaign structure, the right audience structure, you're reaching the right person at the right time in the right way, and then you've got the right bidding and all that, and then you're tracking it as best as you can. And if you've got a landing page that converts and follow up system and all those things, you get that in place going to work. And one of the things that I think is really interesting, and you brought this up earlier, but I couldn't agree more. I've seen this too, a lot of times the companies that get it and spend more on YouTube faster are those that have done stuff on TV before.

Because I think YouTube actually functions quite a bit like tv. We watch it on tv, a lot of us do. But it functions more like that where you're right, a lot of people do just what you do. They watch the YouTube ad, they don't click it, but they go search or they go check it out in some other way. It's the way TV has always worked. You don't click on the TV ad, it just leads to results later. And so often, and actually we just start consulting with without even invested on a brand that's doing well north of 50 million and all they've done is TV and radio and they're growing online and on Amazon. So we're like, wow, I think we could do some stuff with YouTube here for this one. But a lot of people just don't have that confidence. And they grew up kind of in a Facebook world and where they could track everything pretty well. And so YouTube is a little bit scarier. So yeah. Let's do this. Chuck, I want to think about and talk about creative, and this is your wheelhouse. I'm passionate about this too. I just talking about it and I geeking out about ads. But what do you do when you are talking to a client and they want to do YouTube or they're open to doing YouTube? How do you talk about creative in a little different way there than say if they were just doing social?

Jacques:

Totally. So there's a couple things to be keep in mind. One is, you know are right that I very much view it just, I do television, I view as an online version of television, which really isn't true anymore since 45% of it's being watched on television anyway. So you know what I mean does I think even if you think about it that way, it's a television commercial. It is. If 45% of it's being watched on tv, you might as well just call a television commercial. And so it acts the same way. People react to it the same way. And so that's how I think about it. One is ultimately we'll work with a brand. What is your goal? For instance, we collaborate together on native, for example. Native is highly at retail. I can walk into my ride in and grab some, I can ride, walk into cvs,

Brett:

Walmart, Walmart, wherever you want to go,

Jacques:

Right? Yeah. And so the, that's going to be a big opportunity for them to get as much velocity in front of people, get as many eyeballs on their brand because when they go to do their typical shopping experiences, they're there next to a lot of other potential options. Now, if we want to drive people to action right then and there, a lot of times we do more what's called longer form advertising. We try to make an ad that's over a minute and a half long, two minutes, three minutes. And that's something that we've like we do both become known for both. The longer form is definitely harder. And my dad asked me one time when we first launched the original Dr. Squatch video. I'll never forget, I had my wife, my dad, my best friend, everyone I shared it with, they're like, that's just a really long ad. Three minutes is really long. And I said, I

Brett:

See. So you make ads, you just make 'em longer. Good job. Yeah,

Jacques:

Yeah, exactly. They're like, man, that's a really long ad. I mean, it's funny and it's good. I was really long and my reaction to my dad was like, I understand that you feel like it's long, but you to this day still watch a 30 minute infomercial as you flip through your channels on tv.

Brett:

Yep,

Jacques:

Yep. This is just the new generation of the infomercial. Yes, yes. This is just the new generation of an ad that grabs your attention, holds your attention, educates you, helps you understand why you might want the product, and then asks you multiple times to take action. And in fact, it's easier than ever to finally take action. You don't have to call anybody, you can just go to the website. And once I started realizing that we'd done a lot of work with works power tools and some other brands that have actually transitioned a lot of their spend from longer form TV commercials into the internet, ad spend variety. That's how I think about it. The humans have not changed. We have not changed. I totally disagree. When people say humans have short attention spans, we have short consideration spans. And it's something that I've been preaching because I'm like, people

Brett:

Out are really good. That's a really good way to So explain what you mean by that. I think I know where you're going with that. Yeah. And I think I 100% agree, but what does that mean?

Jacques:

So when we launched some of our ad campaigns, let's say it's a three minute spot and it's, it's educational, it's entertaining, it just keeps hitting you with so that you just like, oh man, I just want to keep watching. Even though it's here to watch something else. This is actually more entertaining than what I just clicked on. Our average, average watch times for spots will be anywhere between 28 to 40 seconds. People that could skip after five

Brett:

Seconds. It's insane, by the way. That's insane. Yeah, I look at a lot of ad campaigns, that's a crazy high number for a two and a half or three minute video or even a minute, a and a half, it could awesome, right?

Jacques:

And then the people that complete it will range anywhere from 8% to, it depends on how you're targeting, but up to 20%. So that means one in 10 to one in five, somewhere in that range of people will watch the entirety of the ad. And so there's two reasons why that matters. One is I believe that humans have a sunken cost fallacy on their time. So if they watch the ad, if they're one of those one in five people are watching the ad that long and you're like, you're still watching this ad, you're interested, go ahead and take action, you won't regret it. And we have a money back guarantee, I

Brett:

Already just go find it, go buy it. It

Jacques:

Literally works like that. It's like if you can and in YouTube you have that opportunity to tell that story, maintain the connection, and then have that remind people, you're still watching this. You clearly have interest. Go check it out. You have nothing to lose. So that's why the long form I think does work well because you can close more people that see it for the first time to try it, rather than if they get just pieces of information, a 15 second ad, a 32nd ad, they never really get enough to stop and get their attention and then feel like they have to take action, then they're great as reminders or they're great. If you're truly an omnichannel brand and you're going to do a ton of damage at retail, a ton of damage, damage on Amazon, then I'm like, great. Run a bunch. I mean, I would run a bunch of fifteens and thirties or even bumper ads. We make a ton of bumper ads too. Little six second reminders. So creatively, that's how we think about it. It's just like how do you get someone to care about your brand and then actually listen and then actually take action? And you would think all advertising is that, but I think a lot of times it's just not, unfortunately.

Brett:

Yeah, I love the comparison that this really is a short form infomercial. If you're trying to drive direct conversions or as direct as is possible with YouTube, and there's still going to be a much higher percentage that search for later, go to a later see it on meta click, things like that. But if you want to drive conversions, you do need that longer form video because the more time someone spends with your brand, that the more likely they are to purchase. And one of the things, and I don't 100% love this advice, but I think it's illustrative and it's kind of good. I remember hearing Dan Kennedy, are you Dan Kennedy fan? Are you familiar with him at all? Maybe conference and yeah, she's with Russell Brunson now, but okay, he used to have the biggest marketing conference and then this was kind of pre trafficking conversion summit.

Anyway, Dan Kennedy, brilliant guy, but he used to speak at all the Zig Ziglar conferences and stuff like that. And he would say would always sell from Sage. So he sold this thing called Magnetic. It was a training course on how to market the way he does. And so he said, I never look at feedback forms. I don't care. I don't care what the feedback form says. I don't care if they like my hair or my suit. All I look at is the receipts who purchased, who bought from my talk. And I actually looking at feedback forms, I think there's some things you can learn there, but all he cared about was the results. What leads to sales? And when we look at that and we, we've looked at clients who run same version of an ad. One that's 30 seconds, one that's a minute 15, the minute 15 often has 5, 10, 10 x more conversions than the shorter version. But to your point, short versions can be great for reminders, for remarketing, for getting you to purchase in stores. It all works together. But that's where the creative strategy comes into play.

Jacques:

And I never want to set someone up for the wrong expectations. No one's ever scaled a brand off of 15 second YouTube ads.

Brett:

Correct? Doesn't happen. Doesn't

Jacques:

Happen. It just doesn't exist. So it's like, yeah, I'm not going to tell someone what it does. And it makes sense. It's just math. It's just math. It's like if you're going to reach people and they're willing to give you, I mean, because that's an average, right? So let's say 25% of people one in four is willing to watch 75% of your ad, they're willing to watch two minutes of your ad. Well, now they know your value propositions. They know why you exist. They know a lot about your brand. And what's crazy is that even if they don't buy, you've taught them enough in two minutes that they can explain to a friend so they can end up being referral source.

Brett:

They've become a referral source. It's so

Jacques:

True. A referral source it, it's pretty wild. Imagine you watch an ad about a backup generator for your home or something and you're like, I don't really need one. But then your buddy's out in Colorado and he is like, oh yeah, winter's coming last year we lost power. And you're like, oh yeah, I just saw this ad for this thing. Or maybe it's a pool fence or something. And you're like, I don't have a pool, but your kid, your friend just had a kid and they have a pool and they're like, oh, we need a pool fence. You're like, oh, you should check out this company. I heard about it literally works that way, but not if you only advertise for 15 or 30 seconds, you have to create the imprint in people's minds.

Brett:

Yeah. Love it. What are some of the, and I know people that listen to your podcast know all this already, but people that listen to mine might not. What are some of the campaigns that you're most proud of? So as you look back at the work, the Raindrop and a quick shout out team OMG is working with, so we partner together on clients a lot, but we just hired you guys to create some ads for omg, which I'm super, super excited about. But what are some of your campaigns you're most proud of?

Jacques:

Yeah, I mean, we've been spending a lot of time talking on YouTube. So most of our campaigns are omni-channel and they have a YouTube as they

Brett:

Should be component.

Jacques:

And so I mean, got to start with the doctor  Squatchwork because it was so transformative. Yeah, it's so good. And people loved it so much that the performance of that out on YouTube in 2020 allowed us to help with them grow the company to a point where they were able to afford a Super Bowl ad. So we did a superb bowl ad together and that was just an incredible experience. It's also been transformative for brands like Dossier, and it's been amazing to be working with

Brett:

Nas is affordable,

Jacques:

Affordable luxury fragrance fragrances. Correct. And Bones Coffee was another one where anytime we can watch brands grow by tens of millions quickly behind William Painter was a classic one too. That was way back when. That was fine.

Brett:

Yeah. That's one that I always think of with you guys is the William Painter.

Jacques:

Totally. Totally. Your

Brett:

Space is your money maker. I love that. Yeah, love that opening. And we had the chance,

Jacques:

Chance to work with Shady Rays too on multiple campaigns. So I mean, they've grown from 20 to, I don't know the exact number now, but it's closing in on nine figures and they are opening their own retail stores. They have three or four retail stores now. They're doing national television commercials. And it's just cool. I think I enjoy watching us take brands to that next level or just having the opportunity. We did this incredible campaign with Manscaped, just won a gold telly award and it's one of my favorite campaigns ever. That's one open

Brett:

With the torture scene or there's a torture

Jacques:

Scene. Yes. Torture scene of his, potentially of his crown jewels, if you will. I, it's like I could keep going, but there, there's in general, we love the work we get to do. A lot of it does involve comedy. I don't think it has to involve comedy. Right? We are getting into some other forms of work that don't necessarily involve comedy that are longer format, but you said it earlier, it's like people are only on YouTube for a couple reasons and usually it's to be entertained or to learn something. Yeah. So your ad has to do that. It has to entertain them and it has to allow them to learn something. And you don't have to enter if you're a traditional ad, ah, you're not watching it. You're just going to be like Skip.

Brett:

Exactly. So much, so much good stuff there. We both had the privilege of speaking at an event in Puerto Rico recently. Yes, as on Blue Ribbon Ribbon Masterminds. Super fun. And even though I'm not the creative guy, my talk was on seven ad tests or things to think about before you run. One of my favorites, and you guys always nail this one test is what I call the physical reaction test. Does the ad cause a physical reaction? And all of those you just mentioned, cause a physical reaction, you lean in, you laugh without being able to literally laugh out loud. You want to do something, you're motivated to pick something up and search for it or do it creates a physical reaction. And so you guys are so good at that striking the emotional chord. Put some humor in there to keep people watching, and then it just works. And I love the William Painter example, and then Shady Ray is super cool too. I've got to check that out in more detail. But I get to watch the William Painter one a little bit closer because I actually taught those guys YouTube, so they took my YouTube course and then Oh,

Jacques:

That's right, that's right. Yeah.

Brett:

That was actually our first intro. I think you guys saw the YouTube course as well. Something it's

Jacques:

Easy. So we, we watched the YouTube course and when painters was watching YouTube two, the YouTube course, and then because of that, the Dr. Squatchatch team was watching the YouTube course. So we were all on watching your courses. That was like five years

Brett:

Ago. You were great. And so I got to keep in touch with the William Painter guys, and so I won't give away any numbers that they don't want to be given away, but they were scaling so fast and they were spending a lot of money on YouTube, but they said, they were like, Hey, we figured it out. This was driving sales. So we're not even tracking YouTube direct performance. We're looking at all of it together. We're just mashing it all up and looking at it, they were more sophisticated than, I'm oversimplifying a little bit, but back to our original point, they had the faith and they were like, no, no, no, no. Look at total sales. They're growing whenever we scale this. And so they were looking at more merr, total media efficiency ratio, which is pretty cool. So Awesome. Well, so we just kind of teased a few things inadvertently. Dr. Squatch, we talked about us speaking at events. Yes, we talked about YouTube courses, but Jacque, we got something coming up, man, we got something coming up that's not for everybody. And by that, that means that we can't let everybody come because we're going to have limited space. But do you want to talk about the event we're doing together here in a pretty short period of time?

Jacques:

Yes. So Google, la, you and myself, maybe another person. We'll see.

Brett:

I think someone from YouTube is planning on speaking as well.

Jacques:

Someone from YouTube. Little

Brett:

Bonus.

Jacques:

Yeah, three people. I don't call myself expert in many things, but I am an expert in this. You are an expert in this. Can't wait for that event in September. I believe it's only going to be open to brands themselves. Google. Yeah, that's what Google Will is asking us to do. That's what

Brett:

Google's requesting. Yeah. Brands only appreciate, we're both agency owners, so nothing but love for our agency friends, but this event is just for brands.

Jacques:

And more than anything, I'm looking forward to the energy that I know you'll bring. In fact, I asked after the Puerto Rico event, if you could give me your presentation, I could steal half of it since it was so creative heavy.

Brett:

I will, I'll do that. I never did that want it? Still want it still. I'll do that. I'll do it as soon as we start hang up here. So let's do that. Yeah. And what's cool is I, I've been waiting a long time to do this event again. So it's the YouTube slash la offices and Ply Vista. It's the Spruce Goose Hangers, which phenomenal facility. If you watched the movie

Jacques:

Can be Spruce Goose. Like what's Spruce Goose? That just sounds

Brett:

Amazing. Oh, so amazing. Here's the story. Have you heard of the movie The Aviator with Leonardo DiCaprio? Yes. So he plays this eccentric billionaire, Howard Hughes. Howard Hughes lived in la. He was actually rich because his father was rich. That's another story. He built what was going to be like the biggest airplane, most ambitious, called the Spruce Goose. He built these two gigantic hangers in Los Angeles. The whole thing was a flop. It was a bust. But also Howard Hughes tried to make movies and stuff. Anyway, Google bought those two hangers and converted them into half as YouTube Studio, half as Google, Audi, Google offices. And so it's a phenomenal space, dude, it's, it's really cool. So in 2020 February, I got invited to do a similar event at those offices Packed house. It went so good that the people at YouTube or the people at Google were like, Hey, let, let's do something like this in Chicago, then we can do L New York or whatever.

But then guess what happened? A few weeks later, COVID hit, and so then we had not been able to do an event like this. So it is free. Some meals are included. You get to tour the facility, all that, get to hang out with me and Jacques, but it is limited. So we'll tell you how to go and register here momentarily, but coming up in September, and dude, I'm stoked. It's going to be a lot of fun. Now we're going to talk about YouTube and creative, but also Performance Max. I think there's this window, and this podcast is not about Performance Max. I don't want to get into it, but there's a window of opportunity because YouTube is kind of difficult. We have found some brands that have been able to scale YouTube placements through Performance Max. I think it's a little easier to get there, maybe is from a budgetary standpoint. So I'll uncover that at the event. Here's how, here's

Jacques:

Be P maxing

Brett:

Max, P maxing, P

Jacques:

Maxing. I don't know who's calling it, performance Max p Maxing baby.

Brett:

Pax Baby. Yep. Yep, yep, yep. So, hey, any jock for the listeners of either podcast? And this has been, so this has actually gone remarkably smooth, but it's also weird. Am I asking you the question? Are you asking me the question or we are just, we're

Jacques:

Asking other questions. It's a first podcast in history.

Brett:

Yeah. Yeah. That's so funny. Any free resources, anything you want people to check out, anything you want people to do other than go check out. Yeah,

Jacques:

I would say the biggest thing that we spend time putting out in a thoughtful way is every quarter we send out something called the Founders Report. So if you go to Raindrop Agency and you go to our little menu and you find Founder's Report, it's absolutely free. And it literally has the exact same type of content we talked about today and actual examples of the best performing creative at any given moment in time. And so we do that for free. It's fun. We now have over 6,000 people part of that community. And that's also how you would find out about events like the one coming up in September.

Brett:

Awesome. And I, I've seen that. I get that newsletter. It's fantastic. Quick resource on our end@omgcommerce.com. Under resources, we got the top YouTube ad examples, and so the Raindrop team made the list multiple times, but basically these are a collection of our favorite YouTube ads that we, we've either seen scale firsthand or we've managed them, or we just know they're really, really good. And so we got links to them. Some of my thoughts on why I think they're good, but I think that's another great way just to learn YouTube ads is by watching great YouTube ads. And so check that out as well. If you'd like to attend the How to Scale your brand on pmax and YouTube event, live at the YouTube LA offices this September 14th, then go to omg commerce.com/youtube event. Again, that's omg commerce.com/youtube event, and you can apply to attend for free. There. Space is extremely limited. This is only for brands. Sorry, no agencies. We love you agency friends, but this is for brands only at YouTube's request. Learn from me, Brett Curry, learn from Jacques Spitzer from Raindrop. Learn from YouTube and some Google execs while you're there. Get a tour. Breakfast is included, lunch is included. Happy hours included if you can stay, but space is extremely limited. So head over to omg commerce.com/youtube event and apply today and I hope to see you in LA and talk YouTube in pmax in September. See you then.