What’s the secret behind the runaway success of Dr. Squach, Manscapped, William Painter, Ruggable, Lume, and more?
Product design that people love is part of it.They also leveraged FANTASTIC creatives. They didn’t just create ads that converted; they had ads that viewers loved. This allowed for scaling. They entered the rare space of being able to scale profitably to 10 million, 20 million, several hundred million views - profitably.
Dr. Squatch rode the wave of incredible creatives from a $3 million annual run rate to hundreds of millions in yearly sales.How did they do it? They tapped into Raindrop’s creative genius and its CEO Jacques Spitzer.
Raindrop is one of my favorite creative shops and the creators of the videos for brands listed above, plus Native (also an OMG Client), Worx, Happy Egg, and more.
Here’s a look at what we cover in the episode:
- Why you shouldn’t start a video project by deciding what YOU want to say. Follow Jacques advice instead.
- How you’re likely assuming way more attention than your prospects are giving.
- How ads that scale can completely change the game.
- What people are really buying when they buy your product.
- Do shoppers actually care about your why?
- What branded performance creative is and why it makes scale and brand lift so much easier.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Jacques Spitzer
- Website
Raindrop + Native Deodorant Ad
Transcript:
Brett Curry:
Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the eCommerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry CEO of OMG Commerce. And I can't wait for today's content, we're talking about a subject that is very near and dear to my heart. This is a subject that I could talk about for days and days on end, and I would never get tired of it, even if everybody around me did. We're going to be talking about why your ads are not scaling and what to do about it, and we're going to be diving into creatives, and how to make great video ads and more. And so my guest today is Jacques Spitzer. He is the CEO of Raindrop out of San Diego, and you've seen their work. If you watch a little event called the Super Bowl, you've seen one of their ads.
They also had the top YouTube ad of the year, a couple years ago. Both of those ads actually were for Dr. Squatch, but they have not just worked with Dr. Squatch. They've worked with Manscaped, and Native, and William Painter, and Ruggable, and the list goes on and on. And so not only is this guy crazy smart, and super creative, and super fun. He's just a good dude. And we got to hang out in person about a month ago or so in San Diego, one of my favorite cities. And so with that, Jacques, welcome to the show man. How's it going? And thanks for coming on.
Jacques Spitzer:
Brett, thank you for having me. And it's been great to not only connect in person, but also collaborate most recently on some campaigns together and yeah, happy to be with you and cannot wait to see where this conversation goes.
Brett Curry:
Yeah, yeah. It's going to be super fun. I can't wait. Our paths have like crossed in interesting ways over the years, right? So I mentioned William Painter, which if you have not seen that ad, you need to go see that ad I'll link to in the show notes. William Painter, put that to, I'm sorry, Raindrop put that together. I'm friends with the guys at William Painter. I taught them YouTube ads, so they learned how to run the media side of YouTube from a course that I did. Raindrop did the creative, that kind of what started our paths crossing.
Jacques Spitzer:
Yep.
Brett Curry:
But then more recently we've managed the Google and YouTube ads for Native, now for years and years, you guys just finished a couple of campaigns that were brilliant for Native. We had so much fun running it and they did very, very well. And so that's when we were like, dude, we should like talk more and hang out more and do more stuff together. It's what brought us here today. What else would you add to that background? And then tell us just a little bit about creative, a little bit about Raindrop, what's the size of the team kind of give me the scoop.
Jacques Spitzer:
Totally. Yeah. I mean, well, we're 13 years into this journey, but really on the performance creative side the last four or five years is really where it's taken off. And part of that was that when we started working with Dr. Squatch. They were doing less than 3 million in revenue. And I remember Jack the owner and founder of Squatch asking me, do you work with a lot of direct to consumer brands? And at the time I said, well, I'll be honest with you Jack, not yet, but I have a feeling that we would be great together. And I'm glad that he trusted me in that. I remember exactly where I was sitting when I told him that. Because I was like, if I were him, I have no reason to say yes, outside of a, you know. I was like, well, it's not a really compelling argument, but we've gone on to do some really great work together and yeah, created some history. And so we're a group of about a hundred people.
Brett Curry:
And Dr. Squatch grew just to add a little more to that.
Jacques Spitzer:
Yeah.
Brett Curry:
They grew from 3 million now to over a hundred, right. Is that correct.
Jacques Spitzer:
Hundreds of millions, yes.
Brett Curry:
Yeah. Yeah.
Jacques Spitzer:
They're doing very, very, very well.
Brett Curry:
It's a lot of soap. It's a whole lot of soap.
Jacques Spitzer:
It's a lot of soap and it's so fun too, because the creative itself is just so much fun.
Brett Curry:
Yeah.
Jacques Spitzer:
The work that we get to do the partnerships with Disney with the Star Wars stuff and Batman, and some other campaigns that are coming out in the near future are just on another level. And they're just so fun. It's like, we were able to create a world to play in and people are responding to it. And it is a great product, like it really is. You can't fake a product, it's a great product. This is not a flash in the pan. It is not a Snuggie or.
Brett Curry:
Right.
Jacques Spitzer:
A Shake Weights scenario.
Brett Curry:
Fidget spinner or something, or Shake Weight.
Jacques Spitzer:
Yeah, yeah. It's like, this is a great product, which by the way.
Brett Curry:
Do you want to look ridiculous while you work out? Yes, I would.
Jacques Spitzer:
You know, what's interesting. I met the founder of the Shake Weight and I got to ask him like, so how did this all go down? And it was a very real, it was a real thing, it was a real product, and it is a real product, but obviously took a major left turn when the advertising came out, so that was not intended. It was not an intentional, I was like, I always wondered, like, did this person know that it was going to become this phenomena?
Brett Curry:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Jacques Spitzer:
Yeah, but it did.
Brett Curry:
Exactly, so funny how it ended up.
Jacques Spitzer:
It absolutely did.
Brett Curry:
That's crazy.
Jacques Spitzer:
Yeah.
Brett Curry:
You're about to talk about this, and your team and stuff, yeah.
Jacques Spitzer:
I was just saying. Yeah, we're based out of Southern California with people all over, but all of our productions are primarily out of Southern California, about a hundred people here. And yeah, just a really, really cool team, love the work that we do. And yeah, just looking honestly, to just do work that breaks through the noise. Nothing that we do is trite or boring. People don't come to us for that kind of work. And so we really get to create marketing people love, and that's a blessing.
Brett Curry:
Yeah, and I mean that's your hashtag, right. Marketing people love.
Jacques Spitzer:
It is.
Brett Curry:
And it's true, people love your ads. I was actually in preparation for this. I watched the ad for the new Manscaped 4.0. And I was literally laughing out loud by myself in my office. And that's one of those things, right. Some ads are funny and they bring a smile to your face, right. Or you're with a group and maybe laugh. But I was by myself, laughing uncontrollably, right.
Jacques Spitzer:
Yeah.
Brett Curry:
It like created a physical response. It was great. And so I got to know before we kind of dig into the details here and you guys are performance marketing. That's the way we've always been to more on the media and strategy side, but what was it like making that Super Bowl ad, right? Squatch did so well on YouTube that you guys made a Super Bowl spot. Walk me through that, what was that like? It had to have been surreal.
Jacques Spitzer:
It was, and part of the surrealness of it was, it was like December 5th or 6th. I should know the date, but like December 5th or 6th. And I get a text from their CMO, Josh. And he is like, we're thinking about doing a Super Bowl commercial. And I'm like, for like this Super Bowl? Like the one, like the one that we're in the middle of playoffs for?
Brett Curry:
Like in a couple months?
Jacques Spitzer:
Like the one, like this one? He's like, yeah, we're not really sure though, yet, like we haven't even started negotiating the rates. Like, we're not really sure, but like, do you think we can pull it off? Can we make an ad that fast? And I mean, we're going into like holiday season. We're going to have to, I knew that the place, we always shut down like the week after the holidays and Christmas and everything. And so I was like, uh oh. And so we started, we didn't even kick off concepting until mid-December.
Brett Curry:
Dude.
Jacques Spitzer:
And the final files were due I want to say, like mid January, so that was an exceptional.
Brett Curry:
It was literally a four week turnaround time.
Jacques Spitzer:
Exceptional circumstance.
Brett Curry:
Yeah.
Jacques Spitzer:
And.
Brett Curry:
But the good part about that. I mean, that's still crazy fast.
Jacques Spitzer:
Yeah.
Brett Curry:
The good thing is you'd already created this world, you had your actor.
Jacques Spitzer:
A hundred percent.
Brett Curry:
You had your theme, and your concept and all that, so it's more like just, but still coming up with something fresh and new related to that in four weeks is difficult.
Jacques Spitzer:
Yeah. And I think this actually is an interesting learning lesson for all performance marketers, especially ones with emerging brands or challenger brands, is that I think a lot of people overestimate the number of people who have seen their ads or recognize their brand. And so what our strategy was going into that Super Bowl spot was we are going to make a Squatch ad. The most 32nd Squatch ad, we can, that's appropriate to run to a hundred million people and families, but we're going to make the most Squatch ad we can, that is a summation of everything that's been successful to date, knowing that 75 to 80% of people that see that Super Bowl ad had never seen anything ever from Dr. Squatch.
Brett Curry:
Never seen anything. Exactly. Yep.
Jacques Spitzer:
And you mentioned the William Painter guys, I remember one of the conversations we had with them early on before the video that really took off for them was, well, what skew should we work on? What products should we work on? And we're like the hook, like your original pair, because.
Brett Curry:
Yeah, yeah.
Jacques Spitzer:
And the thing that I always tell entrepreneurs is, I give them this, I say, if you put a bunch of people on a stadium right now, and you ask them, how many of you have ever heard of this brand, whatever that brand is, even if it's doing a hundred million dollars, a lot of people are like, oh, that actually puts it in perspective. I bet a hundred people would know, or 150 people would know if they haven't really done a, like a.
Brett Curry:
So almost nobody in that in that stadium.
Jacques Spitzer:
Exactly. And so it's like, don't ditch, like in their case, don't ditch the hook, your sunglasses that open bottle caps, just because you stopped seeing.
Brett Curry:
Yep. Popping bottles and looking like a model.
Jacques Spitzer:
That's right, just because it stopped sort of like working top of funnel for you, it's still your best selling most interesting skew. And that's the one that we really honed into, it's what took off. And so that was our approach for the Super Bowl spot for Squatch, as well. Assume that no one's ever seen the ad because most people haven't and give people something to be excited about.
Brett Curry:
Yep.
Jacques Spitzer:
Yeah, but that was a wild ride and it was, I mean, I'll never forget when it actually ran. Like, I mean, I can't breathe thinking about it because it was just like, oh my gosh, is it going to run? Like what's going to happen?
Brett Curry:
Yeah, yeah, right.
Jacques Spitzer:
Is it going to glitch, you know?
Brett Curry:
Yeah. What's funny is like, yeah, I didn't know you at the time. I knew of Raindrop and I knew of course James, who's the actor in Squatch because of William Painter. And so when I saw that, I was like, are you kidding me? Like this is our world, like this is direct response, this is performance marketing, it's in this Super Bowl. I was so excited.
Jacques Spitzer:
Totally.
Brett Curry:
I do like a Super Bowl review on a Monday morning meeting with my team. And I just went on and on about it, I was like, can you guys believe this? But anyway, I'm sure it was a thousand times better for you.
Jacques Spitzer:
It was so much fun.
Brett Curry:
What about your family? Were your parents like we're just so proud, you made the Super Bowl.
Jacques Spitzer:
I mean, yeah, my family, but I mean, not only were they very proud, it was special because that was 2021 Super Bowl, so not this year, but the year before.
Brett Curry:
Yep.
Jacques Spitzer:
And if you'll remember, that was like height of COVID. It was like the second,
Brett Curry:
Right, right.
Jacques Spitzer:
It was right before the vaccinations, like big, big wave. And so we were in my backyard watching it outdoor. I think my wife's mom and husband drove into town, but like everyone's like 10 feet apart in the backyard watching,
Brett Curry:
Not the typical Super Bowl experience.
Jacques Spitzer:
No, no, no. Because, it would've been really cool to gather as like a team that produced it.
Brett Curry:
Yeah.
Jacques Spitzer:
I would've, that's like a thing I wish I had as a memory of like our whole company together for that moment.
Brett Curry:
Yeah. Yeah, totally.
Jacques Spitzer:
But we, you know, it was intimate.
Brett Curry:
Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. We've been kind of sprinkling things here and there. Most people are like, Hey, you know what guys, this is great. I'm not going to run a Super Bowl ad probably anytime soon.
Jacques Spitzer:
Right.
Brett Curry:
Although, don't rule it out. You never know.
Jacques Spitzer:
Never say never, Justin Bieber.
Brett Curry:
You might make an advert at some point. Never say never.
Jacques Spitzer:
Justin Bieber. I quote him all the time. Great ...
Brett Curry:
I think the more we can quote Justin Bieber, really the smarter we will look.
Jacques Spitzer:
Yep.
Brett Curry:
The better our lives will be.
Jacques Spitzer:
Totally, totally.
Brett Curry:
For sure. Yep, I'm a Belieber, so that's good. Let's dive in. I want to talk about why your ads are not scaling and we do a lot on YouTube. We're spending millions and millions a month on YouTube. And we know we've seen campaigns that just go to the moon. We've seen other campaigns that kind of fizzle. And a lot of it, certainly the media and some of the technical stuff behind there is important, but the creative is such an important part.
Jacques Spitzer:
Yeah.
Brett Curry:
Let's dive into that. What are the mistakes you see that brands make with their video content?
Jacques Spitzer:
Absolutely. Well, I will start with the most obvious one. It seems obvious, but it is the mistake that I see over, and over, and over, and over, and over. And if I could keep saying over for another a hundred times, I would again.
Brett Curry:
Sure. Let's go. I'll keep track.
Jacques Spitzer:
And that is that brands fundamentally will they'll have like a brief and they'll start with, well, what do we want people to know? What do we want them to learn? And they approach it from the standpoint of like, what do I want to say? And I think that fundamentally, and part of this is maybe just instincts of how I consume content, what I've seen from other brands that like have done this well is we flip it on its head and we say, how are we going to create something that people will actually watch? And then what do we want them to learn? And I know that it sounds like a very simple way of thinking about it.
Brett Curry:
Yeah.
Jacques Spitzer:
But I would say most people approach it more like they would if they just had a talking head video and they were like, okay, so I have a minute with somebody or I have 30 seconds. What do I want them to know? And they just start from that standpoint and it's like, that's not actually what you need to do. You need to think, how am I going to make sure that they're going to at least stick with me for 15 seconds? And you've seen the numbers on some of our ads, like some of the long form ads will do 25, 30, 35 second average watch times. It's like, you only get there by saying, okay, it's not just the hook, but it's like also, how am I honoring people's attention? And you talked about laughing out loud. I mean, I think you could be clever. I think you can be funny. I think you could be interesting. I think you'd be educational. It doesn't have to be funny, although funny is a good mechanism.
But fundamentally that's a mistake I see so many brands make is they're like introducing new product or like, have you seen this? Or I love this product. And it's like a neat like skit. I mean, that's it's, it's just like we're in the skip world.
Brett Curry:
Right.
Jacques Spitzer:
And if you make content that people are likely to skip, doesn't matter how much you like it, it doesn't matter how pretty it is. It doesn't matter What you have to say.
Brett Curry:
Right.
Jacques Spitzer:
People just skip it.
Brett Curry:
Yeah, exactly. I love that.
Jacques Spitzer:
Yeah.
Brett Curry:
Yeah.
Jacques Spitzer:
Yeah. I mean, that's the ...
Brett Curry:
Right. Starting with, this is what I want to say versus starting with this is what people want to hear and see.
Jacques Spitzer:
Yes.
Brett Curry:
This is what the people want to experience and yeah, you're right. It doesn't have to be funny because some people aren't naturally funny. That's the tricky part about being funny is if you're not a comedian, what you think is funny, probably other people won't, right. And so it's hard to be funny and to sell, you guys do it really, really well.
Jacques Spitzer:
Brent, can I double down on that?
Brett Curry:
Please do.
Jacques Spitzer:
Because, that's a learning lesson of ours. Like the first video we ever did was not very good. And one of our big learning lessons was like, we need to hire funny people. And now half of our writing team used to be full-time comedians, like toured the country, full time comedians.
Brett Curry:
Yep.
Jacques Spitzer:
And then we pair them with people who are also very marketing oriented, and then all of our comedians are great writers they are smart people, they've learned how to be smart about call to actions and everything else. But like that's the biggest aha I've had is like when people try to be funny and they're just not professionally funny, it shows. And that's the problem that again, if you try to get into humor, 99% of brands are making that big mistake.
Brett Curry:
Yeah. And that can really backfire on you. And I would argue that it's way easier to teach someone direct response principles and CTA principles than it is to teach someone how to be funny.
Jacques Spitzer:
That's fair.
Brett Curry:
Because, funny is so nuanced, right? Funny's about timing and funny is about pace and about tone. And it's about like choosing the right word, right? Like if you're making a joke about shaving your nether regions, like you can, you really, you got to tow that line between being offensive and just being hilarious, right.
Jacques Spitzer:
Totally.
Brett Curry:
And so you've got to be a master with words and you got to understand comedy. So yeah, I've heard a few people that say that, Hey, write a script, but get comedians to come in and make it funny, if you want to go that route.
Jacques Spitzer:
Yeah.
Brett Curry:
And I would say that you don't have to be funny, but you do have to be emotional, right? You got to strike some emotional chord to get someone to keep watching and then to get them to take action.
Jacques Spitzer:
Totally.
Brett Curry:
That's fantastic. Awesome, so mistake number one, starting with what you want to say, which usually is going to be boring, it's going to be bullet point driven or whatever, so that's a mistake. What are other mistakes that you see?
Jacques Spitzer:
Yeah. I mean a big one I'll see is people just assume way too much attention. I mean, and I'm talking about like I've seen videos that I know someone spent, I mean, I don't want to call out anybody because I'm not that kind of person. But like recently I saw an ad where they don't even bring up the product for two minutes into the ad. They talk all about the problem and the solution, and they think that enough people are going to stick around to figure out what it's about. And I guarantee you that ad's not going to work.
Brett Curry:
Right.
Jacques Spitzer:
It's just like there's just certain principles around attention that are so like important. And so when we go through our process, it's like which I can talk to in more detail later on. It's not about just being scripted, it's not about just being shot, but it's like when we get into editing it is every, not only every second, it's like we're shaving 0.2 seconds here. We are doing whip pans here. We are punching in here because like every second matters. And I think that's another issue that I see across the board is people just think I'll put together a video, I want it to hold attention. But then they just like sit on a single shot of someone talking for 15, 20 seconds. I'm like human beings get bored.
Brett Curry:
Yes.
Jacques Spitzer:
And so that's assuming attention is definitely like number two in terms of the problems I see. I mean, and it's just you'll see, I mean, check out YouTube and then notice the number of ads that like you'll be five seconds in and nothing's happened yet. I mean, I'd rather at least see someone blow towards something than do nothing. I mean, I joke with people, but I'm like, what's more interesting, like seeing a beautiful like shot of like a barrel going through a vineyard with a sun glistening and then a voiceover comes in and says like wine, you love wine. Or like someone taking a wine bottle and smashing it and being like your wine sucks.
Brett Curry:
Yeah.
Jacques Spitzer:
It's like most brands do the first one. They're like, Ooh, beautiful shots of our vineyards.
Brett Curry:
Right.
Jacques Spitzer:
And it's like, that doesn't work. It's just funny but it doesn't work.
Brett Curry:
Yeah, yeah. It's so good. And one of the things that I like to do and this isn't always practical. Well, the fir the first part is the second part isn't. Whenever I'm watching a video, I'll really try to pay attention to when did I like suddenly start thinking about something else? When did I start remembering what I have to do after this? Or when did I almost think about multitasking? And I was like, oh, well, that's the part that needs to be fixed, right? Because if the ad is good, there should be these little things happening all the time, like a few seconds and explosion, right.
Jacques Spitzer:
Yep.
Brett Curry:
And not literally an explosion necessarily, but got to keep that attention going. And yeah, man, we look at, so one of the things I wanted to mention earlier was you guys do longer form videos, right? The William Painter video, some of the Native stuff that we did.
Jacques Spitzer:
Sure.
Brett Curry:
Was two and a half, three minutes, which ideally for YouTube, like that's the sweet spot.
Jacques Spitzer:
Yep.
Brett Curry:
That's where we, if we're driving conversions, trying to get actual purchases, actual signups, things like that. We want the longer video, but not everybody watches the whole video. There's still a lot of people that just click through early and stuff like that. But you still want to come to a point relatively early, because even what you said, and your videos are funny, and they're engaging, and people want to watch the whole thing. The average watch time is like 35 seconds, which that may sound low.
Jacques Spitzer:
Right.
Brett Curry:
That's actually very, very high.
Jacques Spitzer:
Yeah.
Brett Curry:
And so, yeah, you don't want to wait two minutes to introduce your product. That's insane. Yeah.
Jacques Spitzer:
I'm just going to double down something you just said, which is.
Brett Curry:
Yeah.
Jacques Spitzer:
I have a seven year old son at home. Brett, I understand you have like, I don't know, 10, 15, 20.
Brett Curry:
We have eight, eight kids. It feels like 15 in the evenings, before bedtime it feels like there's a hundred, but we have eight. Yes, it's true.
Jacques Spitzer:
And so what I was going to add to that is that one of the most healthy things I do is I have my son watch our ads because I'll watch when he disengages. And he likes watching our ads, which is helpful. He's like, dad, I love your ads and I want to watch them, but I'll watch when he disengages. And there is a high correlation between ads that he's highly interested in and ones where he's not, because I think at some point, even though we get older and older, we all have some part of our brain that like has this, I call it a short consideration span, not a short attention span, but consideration because people will stick around and watch it. And the other thing I think brands get maybe confused by is, when you're thinking about showing it to a thousand people, the goal is not to have 80% of a thousand people, per thousand people watch the whole thing.
Brett Curry:
Right?
Jacques Spitzer:
It is finding the one, two, or three people that are going to watch in an impactful way that will get them to potentially buy. And so people have this mindset of like, well it has to be for everyone. And it's like, no, it just has to be for whatever your customer acquisition costs are. I mean, oftentimes, you just need one out of a thousand or one out of every 2000 or even in some brands case, one of every 10,000 to purchase for this to be profitable. And so it's not about getting everyone, it's about getting more people than you are now.
Brett Curry:
Yep. Yep. I love that, so have your seven year old watch. One of the other things that I was going to mention, this is the not so practical part, but if you can do it, I think it's important. I like to also show ads, ads that I've seen a lot, but show them to a group of people and then just watch the people. Don't watch the ad, watch the people and see when do they look down? When do they grab for their phone? When do they lean in? When do they, is there a physical reaction? I remember hearing B.J. Novak, one of the writers for the Office talk about good humor causes a physical response, right. We've all heard someone say that was funny. But they're not smiling or laughing. And you're like, I don't think you thought that was funny. Like funny is when you respond.
Jacques Spitzer:
Yeah.
Brett Curry:
And so I like to show an ad and watch people's reaction, which is super interesting and telling.
Jacques Spitzer:
Yeah. I would love to have more focus groups, but you have one at your home.
Brett Curry:
Exactly. Yeah, my wife just gave birth to the focus group.
Jacques Spitzer:
That's right.
Brett Curry:
It was not easier. I don't know. Anyway, that's awesome. Okay, so we got starting with what we want to say instead of what people want to hear as a mistake. Second mistake is assuming too much attention. What would be another mistake?
Jacques Spitzer:
Yeah. I mean, you talked about it earlier, but there is a functional when you talk about scaling. Because I think that's where it's like you can have effective ads that won't scale and maybe to define for people, what does that mean? An ad that you can spend behind and continue to spend behind in a way that will build, so some of these brands have done, I think we've done, I would say 10, like 11 campaigns where the brands have been able to profitably scale over 10 million views. And this is on YouTube. We've seen some of these campaigns cross over and do very, very well on Facebook or just meta platforms in general. And then we've had a handful that have done more than a hundred million views profitably as well. And so what we tend to see is that, I always think about it this way.
It's like people go through a sales process when they're interacting with their brands, so that looks like with most brands is that you think about it in terms of a funnel? I have my top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of funnel. And we all know that a majority of your transactions happened where? Bottom funnel.
Brett Curry:
Bottom funnel. Yep.
Jacques Spitzer:
Right. And so most people are going okay, well, how can I most efficiently get to this bottom of funnel and what the dynamic of a longer form ad, the way that changes the game and changes the math is that if you're getting 10%, top of funnel of your transactions, 20% middle funnel and then 70% bottom of funnel, what it does is it just starts to raise the number of transactions that happen top of funnel, just by some sort of statistical relevance, like 10% more, 20% more and at scale meaning, okay, well, whenever someone's like, I got a five row as I'm like, well, that means you don't have a big enough audience because ...
Brett Curry:
Exactly. You're not doing ... you're doing remarketing.
Jacques Spitzer:
Exactly.
Brett Curry:
You're doing brain dead that's all you're doing, right.
Jacques Spitzer:
Exactly. And so it's like watching a brand like Dossier go from spending tens of thousands of dollars a month on YouTube to much, much, much more in driving. I mean, I don't know if I'm allowed to say the figures, but you know, their ads done over 20 million views just in the last couple months. And watching them be able to scale that profitably at pretty much the same row as number as they were when they were just spending 40, 50 grand a month. That is how this all really works. And I think that a lot of times less savvy people and media buyers have this idea that you can have this like silver bullet asset, that's just going to like just absolutely outperform everything in a way that like, oh, well, if my CPA is currently a $57 CPA, I'm be able to run something that's going to get me $21 CPAs.
That's not the case. It's actually taking whatever your CPA is now. And if you can drop it like 10 to 15%, but at scale, spending tens of thousands of dollars a day behind that asset, well, that's how you massively grow so quickly. And that's what we've seen with these brands. Like you mentioned Lumi or Dr. Squatch, it's like those brands have been able to get assets that they can throttle spend behind and not see a huge dip in efficiency. And then every channel has a different burnout, like amount of time before it burns out YouTube being the longest.
Brett Curry:
For sure.
Jacques Spitzer:
And then TikTok being the shortest.
Brett Curry:
Yeah. One of the things I love about YouTube is yeah, we've had some of the same ads, like some of the same ads for Boom by Cindy Joseph that we've run for literally longer than a year, right.
Jacques Spitzer:
Yep.
Brett Curry:
And then you refresh it and you run it for another year, right. That can happen on YouTube, and I think part of that is just because one, the YouTube audience is so massive. It's almost unlimited scale on YouTube. Some of your audiences, some of the ways we target on YouTube is based on people's search behavior. Like what they've searched for recently on Google or YouTube, so those audiences are being refreshed all the time. There's several reasons that mean creatives on YouTube last a long time, which is awesome. And what's also interesting is that I think there's some creatives that they're good, but they mainly work like for a remarketing audience, like for a bottom of funnel audience or for like a really, really interested mid funnel audience, so someone who's actively shopping, actively engaged, they're in the know, they understand the problem, they understand the solution, they understand your category.
There's certain ads that work for those people, but then where you really see the magic happen is when you can create that ad that takes someone from being oblivious, to being aware, to being interested, to being like dude, I got to click, I got to check this out. And then you're right, that does change the numbers. And when you look at top of funnel stuff and so some don't measure it right either. And that's an art and science there too, but yet the right creative and then with the right media plan yeah, it can just keep going. And when you start to get like a campaign that's spending millions of dollars a month, that's like super fun. I will never get tired of that. It's one of my favorite things to observe and I'm sure maybe more rewarding or more cool for you because you're the creative behind it, which is cool.
Jacques Spitzer:
It's amazing. I mean, I will say not only that, like if I'm honest and I'm not the only one in my company that does this, but getting to go to the comment sections and seeing how much people love the advertising is also really rewarding.
Brett Curry:
Yep, yep.
Jacques Spitzer:
People genuinely love it.
Brett Curry:
Right.
Jacques Spitzer:
And I think that's what's fun. It's like we're not just making ads. That would be like, oh, that's like, we're making ads that are really, really fun.
Brett Curry:
Yep.
Jacques Spitzer:
And that's what it's all about.
Brett Curry:
Yeah. I mean the first thing that I wanted to do after I saw the Manscaped video earlier was I wanted to text it to some buddies of mine. Like you got to watch this, right? Like how often do you do that with an ad? It doesn't happen very often.
Jacques Spitzer:
Totally.
Brett Curry:
It's pretty cool. It's pretty fun. Awesome, I know we could dig into more mistakes. And if there's one or two more you want to pull on screen?
Jacques Spitzer:
You basically bled me dry of all the mistakes that people make, but those are some pretty big ones. I'll be honest.
Brett Curry:
Those are some big ones.
Jacques Spitzer:
You're like, if you could make your ads more entertaining, I guess at the end of the day, more entertaining actually sell and actually funny, then those three things go a long way. The one thing I will say.
Brett Curry:
Make them actually good.
Jacques Spitzer:
Yeah, I will. And the one thing I'll add about long form content that I think is helpful was and this was a breakthrough for me in our work with Worx. Worx Power Tools is a brand that went from like zero to a hundred million in sales, behind infomercial TV ads, right. And then they're a huge company now. And they found us three, four years ago. And that's what triggered for me like, oh, this is not anything new. Like we're just doing this for the internet. But like, I grew up watching a 30 minute, George Foreman commercial or whatever.
Brett Curry:
Exactly, exactly. Yep.
Jacques Spitzer:
And it's the same idea. It's like people want to be entertained and they don't mind being sold to as long as it's done in a way that's interesting. And it's like, there's been a lot of Flex Seal sold. There's been a lot of Scrub Daddy's sold.
Brett Curry:
Absolutely, yeah.
Jacques Spitzer:
There's a reason.
Brett Curry:
And those, and I always talk about, yeah, exactly. And I compare good YouTube ads, more to the short form infomercials that are on TV, like the two or three minute versions. But yeah, if you think about like P 90 X, so I bought P90X years and years ago, I was sick, I was laid up on the couch and I ended up watching like a whole P90X infomercial and I bought it and I did it. But I was watching and so it's emotional. It's not funny really, but it's emotional. And it takes you on this journey, and I didn't mind it.
Like, I kind of enjoyed it. I knew it was an ad. I knew it was an infomercial, but I was still entertained enough and I bought it. And millions of other people did as well, so very cool. Let's do this. Let's look at, kind of walk us through your process. And if you want to take one of these examples, whether it's Squatch, or Worx, or whoever, Native and kind of walk us through, like what's your process look like so that we can maybe get an idea of how do we try to do something like that ourselves?
Jacques Spitzer:
All right. Great question. I will say this, we have a pretty thorough process. We used to take every client...
Brett Curry:
Yeah, I know I have to condense it for podcast purposes.
Jacques Spitzer:
No, no, no, yeah.
Yeah. But especially starting out, it's like, we used to have like this well we still have, we do it for a lot of clients. It's the brand identity process. And what that looks like for us is we are trying to dive into a couple things that are so important that most brands have never even asked themselves. I'm thinking about writing a book called your mission statement is shit. Because I think that a lot of brands get hung up on their why. And I love Simon Sinek, don't get me wrong. Like I think he's a brilliant person, I love all his content, but he kind of took this paradigm from people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. And I'm sure you've heard that a million times. And I actually go, that's not true. People don't buy what you do, they don't buy why you do it. They buy how it makes them feel about themselves.
Brett Curry:
Exactly.
Jacques Spitzer:
That's what they buy.
Brett Curry:
Exactly. Yes, yes.
Jacques Spitzer:
And so when we first started working with Dr. Squatch, we went through this whole journey with them. And I remember Jack's why is like, he wanted to, he believes very strongly in the power of all natural soap. I mean, it had cleared up psoriasis, it clears medical kind of conditions. But we steered and we all worked together to steer the brand in a new direction where we're like, we're not really selling soap. If we're selling soap... I remember being in a conference room, a small conference room and being like, if we're selling soap, we're already dead because you can buy 30 bars of soap from Costco for the same price as like a bar and a half of your soap, like we're not selling soap.
Brett Curry:
Yeah, exactly.
Jacques Spitzer:
But we are selling a fundamentally different experience every single morning if you shower. We're selling an experience that where men feel like truly like a throwback to like men bathing like Kings, like this idea of being a king in your shower and in bringing out like this whole new sense of self. And so that's how we start with every brand is we start asking ourselves how do we want to make people feel? What are they saying about themselves by purchasing this product or this service? And we create a voice in a posture and an attitude around those pillars. And so we have like a very formal process we do. But over time we started working with bigger and bigger brands and a lot of them will come to you and be like, well, we've already figured all that stuff out.
And for the most part like they have, but there's always some nuggets you uncover just from being an outside voice. And so we do that work before we actually kick off the actual scripting or concepting. We always concept first because in general, we're taking some risks with our advertising. And so we want to get gut check what those risks might be with the clients. Before we just like run in a direction and just like script the whole thing, because for instance, the Scentaur video for Native it's like, that was an interesting one. It was like, how are they going to respond to the idea of like dressing up somebody as a Centaur and having it all about like, it's not a myth that natural deodorant can actually work, it's Native.
And this idea of this woman saying like, I'm going to gallop all day through these dense ass woods. And I have six pits and I treat them to Native. Like I was like, I don't know, like maybe they'll be down or maybe they'll be like, please never bring that idea to us again.
Brett Curry:
Yep.
Jacques Spitzer:
And they were down, so it's like we have to gut check some of that with the clients. But that comes from a place of like, we ask ourselves, what risk are we willing to take? Because you can't not take some sort of risk and then expect a reward. If you're going to make a risk free, boring ass ad, it's not going to work. Now you can cut that out of this podcast and put it out there in the world, because that is just boring ads don't work.
Brett Curry:
Yep, totally. Boring is the kiss of death. It's way better to be controversial, or weird, or out there, or offensive even.
Jacques Spitzer:
Anything, anything.
Brett Curry:
Boring is the worst without a doubt. Yeah.
Jacques Spitzer:
It's the worst.
Brett Curry:
You've got to take some risks. I love that.
Jacques Spitzer:
Yeah. And so that goes through a whole process. I mean, from the scripting to the way that we cast and the way that we set design, the way that we edit everything we do is just understanding what's the risk and reward behavior of these decisions. Including like when we do something that might be more funny, or clever, or humorous that takes us away from the main storyline, it's like well that's eight seconds it takes us away from the main storyline. Is it worth it? Like, is it worth doing that? And so oftentimes we'll cut 30 to 40 seconds of our video out before it's finally done. But I always say that like, it's nice to have too much and work down rather than not having enough.
Brett Curry:
Yes, for sure.
Jacques Spitzer:
And so, and I know I'm talking a lot about long form, but there is something about being able to tell the full story, talk about all of those unique selling propositions, also addressing people's objections and giving them like reasons to understand why it's a validated, verified, all the great things people have to say about it. You take people on this emotional journey that by the end of it's like, yeah, you can check out the website, but we just brought the website to you.
Brett Curry:
Right.
Jacques Spitzer:
We just brought a salesperson to you. Like we're doing a big campaign for Happy Eggs. And I told them, I remember in the kickoff we're like, our goal is to say, if you had someone standing in front of the eggs, in a grocery store, able to explain to someone why they should buy Happy Eggs, we want to bring that into everyone's home and into their mobile device.
Brett Curry:
Yeah.
Jacques Spitzer:
So that when they are there, they've already heard the story. They already know where the chickens are from and why the yolks are going to be orange instead of yellow. They're going to know all these things because we've put that out in front of them in an entertaining way.
Brett Curry:
Yeah. And I heard a friend of mine explain this, and I totally agree with it. That there's so much more a video that's done well, a long form video like what you guys create. If someone actually does watch that for a minute and a half, or two minutes, or the full three minutes, there's such an emotional connection that can never be duplicated on a website, right. You think about what are you willing to pay for a click to get someone to your landing page? Maybe you're willing to pay two, three, $4, whatever the case may be. Well, you could get that completed view on YouTube for like 7 cents. And it created, I guarantee if someone watched it a stronger emotional connection, more understanding about the product, more of a visualization of what is it going to be like when I buy this product than you could ever do on your website. And so, yeah. I love that. And that hopefully should, and you can do stuff in 30 seconds too, but yet creating that emotional connection with long form it's beautiful.
Jacques Spitzer:
Brett, you are my people, my friend, like you get it. I mean seriously, because I just think people, because I think about all the time, like one of my biggest, one of the things that people miss is like, I'll give you an example, Crossrope. Crossrope or you mentioned earlier, like you talked to this person with TUSHY recently, it's like.
Brett Curry:
Yeah.
Jacques Spitzer:
With these brands where it's like, you can't just sell people a jump rope or a bidet, right?
Brett Curry:
Right.
Jacques Spitzer:
Like you want them to choose your brand. If all you've done is educate them on the space and then they go to Amazon and buy a knockoff product for a third of the price.
Brett Curry:
Yes, yes.
Jacques Spitzer:
You lose.
Brett Curry:
Right.
Jacques Spitzer:
And so I'm like, that's why this really matters is like I think most brands underestimate how many sales they're losing, not only to competitors or to Amazon, but they've done all the hard work to get in front of someone to get them even thinking about this. And then they lose the momentum or they lose the brand connection. And they're like, well, I didn't really know. I wanted a bidet, but now I've seen an ad. I checked it out. And then I found one for a third of the price, I guess I'll gave it a whirl. You lost, you lost.
Brett Curry:
Exactly, yeah.
Jacques Spitzer:
And so that, it's really interesting.
Brett Curry:
Yeah, so then all you did there, which was still impressive is you convinced someone to buy a bidet, but you just wasted your money because now they're not coming back to you. Yeah, and that happens. And don't think that it doesn't. I remember I had this aha moment we're working on a, it's kind of an expensive skincare brand for a younger demo. And I was talking to a team member and she was in her young twenties and she's like, oh, I saw this ad, but I saw the ad on Instagram. And then I went on Amazon and I bought something else that was related. I was like, oh wow. Okay, we have work to do. Right. And we got to think about who we're targeting and how we're positioning it and stuff like that.
Jacques Spitzer:
Totally.
Brett Curry:
Yeah, yeah. Really good. Cool.
Jacques Spitzer:
I'll give you a weird example just to double down on that is I was just talking to somebody who they came out with a multivitamin and they literally just designed the multi vitamin to look kind of like a leading multivitamin. And they popped it up on Amazon and they just siphoned like a 10th of their sales by being $20 less.
Brett Curry:
Yep.
Jacques Spitzer:
And it's like, that's the difference between like selling a brand and selling a product.
Brett Curry:
Yes.
Jacques Spitzer:
You have to do both at the same time. And I think that's the difference like that. What we talk about the time is like, it's got to be branded, performance, creative. It can't just be performance, creative because if it's not, that's where you loose. It's like, you can't convince someone to buy the type of thing you sell and then just have them buy something $5, $10 less, because they don't understand the value or the connection to the brand.
Brett Curry:
I love that branded, performance, creative and the way that works together. And what's so great is we have the privilege of getting to see kind of the D to C site, but also Amazon, so we work with some really cool brands running their YouTube and Google, but then also running their Amazon campaigns. And it's so interesting to me, the impact that YouTube or other channels, Facebook, whatever has on Amazon, we see it, right.
Jacques Spitzer:
Totally.
Brett Curry:
Our teams see it they're like our Amazon team will ask us like, Hey, did you shut something off? Because like our branding campaign is way down this week and it's because yeah, we throttle back on YouTube for whatever reason. And so, but if all you're doing is an ad that just sells a product or a concept, you don't get the same brand lift, but if it's branded, then you get that brand lift. And it's significant. We did a study with our own clients of people that spend north of just 30,000 a month on YouTube, right. Which is kind of a starting point. But we've seen like on average, like a 26% lift in branded search campaigns after the fact.
And then if you start getting into several hundred thousand a month, then that creates a huge lift in basically all your channels. But anyway, yeah, so branded, thinking branded, not just selling the product or the category. Totally makes sense. That's awesome. Cool, anything else? And we're like, we're totally geeking out here. Like I'm getting all fired up. I can keep going for probably another couple hours we're running out of time. A anything else you want to kind of highlight on your process? Because I know we simplified that quite a bit.
Jacques Spitzer:
Yeah. I would say the final thing I would add is that we always make things with multiple openings, multiple opening hooks, multiple openings of tests. And I think one of the big things people worry about in investing in such high level creative, is like what if it doesn't work? Like what if it just flops? And I'm very happy to say, like it's very rare that it does. And part of that is because we go into it by creating anywhere between two and five different openings to run and test for these campaigns. And they can have a very significant difference in average.
Brett Curry:
For sure.
Jacques Spitzer:
In average watch time, and sales, and row ads. I mean, I don't know the campaign that we all just worked on recently. One of the versions outperformed the other by 50%, five, zero.
Brett Curry:
Yeah, yeah.
Jacques Spitzer:
I mean it wasn't like it wasn't five.
Brett Curry:
It was for the Native sun care, right.
Jacques Spitzer:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.
Brett Curry:
Which was crazy.
Jacques Spitzer:
Yeah.
Brett Curry:
And really that getting the right opening can just change the math of a campaign completely. And so you don't want to just have one option that's not good, right.
Jacques Spitzer:
Right.
Brett Curry:
Even the best of the best are going to get that wrong. Yeah, have two to five, love that approach.
Jacques Spitzer:
Yeah. That would be my final like send you away with that. But mistakes that maybe we made very, very early on that we'll never make again. And I also don't think there's a huge benefit to having like 10 or anything. I think that's almost TMI or too much information for your media buying teams.
Brett Curry:
Correct. Yeah. And from, and I know I've been speaking a lot about YouTube, that's just my frame of reference, but YouTube isn't really set up to test a ton of creatives at any one time, like three to five is ideal, really for true testing on YouTube.
Jacques Spitzer:
Yeah.
Brett Curry:
Facebook, I know kind as an appetite for more creative from what I hear, but this has been awesome, so Jacques, as people are listening to this and they're like, all right, I got to talk to Raindrop. I want to know what to do next. Like who do you guys work with? How could someone say, am I a good fit for Raindrop or not?
Jacques Spitzer:
Totally.
Brett Curry:
Who do you guys work with? And then how can they get in touch?
Jacques Spitzer:
Yeah. Well, I'll start with the easy one. How they can get in touch, raindrop.agency is our website. I'm also very active on LinkedIn, so if you want to look me up on LinkedIn, happy to see you there. And we tend to work with brands doing over $5 million in revenue, it tends to be the right moment to fit into like.
Brett Curry:
It kind of needs some traction already to, so you guys know what to work with and what to do next.
Jacques Spitzer:
Exactly, exactly. It's either that or people that have just raised funding and either want or need to hit some sort of gas pedal on getting their product out into the world. And we've been successful in many different fashions. Laundry Sauce is a great example of like, we started with them as a startup and they're growing rapidly and doing really, really well. But that's just the general, like when people are like, Hey, come to us and they're like, I'm spending $30,000 on media a month, like I want to make ads. It's like, ah, we're not the best fit for that right now.
Brett Curry:
Right. Not enough data at this point.
Jacques Spitzer:
Exactly. And we always, I mean, it's just maybe who I am, like I'm not going to work with someone unless I think we can really be successful for them.
Brett Curry:
Yes.
Jacques Spitzer:
I treat their money like it's mine, like I'm only going to live once. I want to do my best work for the right people. And so it doesn't come from a place other than we want to be successful. And so we try to work with people that are ready.
Brett Curry:
Love it. Check him out on LinkedIn, Jacques Spitzer, and then also raindrop.agency. Brother's been awesome.
Jacques Spitzer:
Thank you bro.
Brett Curry:
I'm ready for round two. We got to schedule it sometime in the not too distant future, but thanks for being gracious with your time and thanks for delivering the thunder man. This was good.
Jacques Spitzer:
All right. Thanks for being my lightning.
Brett Curry:
Awesome. As always, thank you for tuning in, let us know what you'd like to hear more of on the podcast. Leave us that five star review if you've not done so already. And with that until next time. Thank you for listening.
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