Secret of the DTC Universe #2: When it comes to ad copy - 90% of your effort should go into the concept and hook. This is true for basically any type of Meta ad at least: -A 30 second side-by-side comparison video with no voiceover at all… -A two minute long yapper ad… -A 3,000 word native style Meta caption ad. Virtually ALL of your work should be on finding the right concept and hook. Why? Because the rest of the ad is just a formulaic outline that can be swiped. This is especially true with LLMs. The process is so easy, and there are just 4 Steps. Step 1. Give the LLM an ad from Brand A and ask it to analyze the structure, voice, and word count… Step 2. Give it a new ad concept or hook for a different brand (Brand B). Step 3. Include some basic context for Brand B - either in the chat, or as part of a project. Step 4. Tell the LLM to write a new long-form native ad for Brand B that models the structure and word count of the ad for Brand A. Voila! 99% of the time you get a good ad. That part takes like 1-2 minutes. Maybe another 10 minutes for small tweaks to the first draft of the ad. It’s all super easy. The part that’s not so easy though… Is the work that goes into getting killer concepts and hooks. And so then, of course, the question becomes: “What makes a great hook?” Well, let’s talk about that next. A great hook is curiosity driven, emotional, or both. It is RARELY about the product. It OFTEN starts in the middle of the action. It NEVER tries to open and then close a loop in the same breath. And it ROUTINELY comes from outside the ad. Sounds good, but let’s look at this in practice, shall we? Let’s say you’re doing a 3,000 word long-form native style Meta ad. For those who are uninitiated… These are ads on Meta where you have an organic-seeming image without text or captions… Then the caption copy is this super long “mini sales letter” driven by an emotional story from the spokesperson… That ultimately leads to the discovery of whatever product the brand sells. So for example, let’s say that the brand sells a no-pull dog harness. The native ad might be written from the perspective of the adult daughter of an elderly woman who used to love walking her dog, and then stopped. The ad would set up that the spokeswoman’s mom really loved that dog…it was her best friend…and she loved their walks… But then, suddenly, the walks slowed down and stopped. At first the mom plays it off… But eventually she confesses to the daughter that it’s because she doesn’t feel strong enough to control the dog anymore when he pulls. Her shoulders ache, her back aches, she worries about the dog running off. Ultimately, her deepest pain point is feeling old, and weak, and like she’s lost her agency and control. Then someone (the elderly woman, her adult daughter, a friend) discovers the no-pull dog harness. The mom tries it out, she’s nervous, it works. She goes back to walking her dog and is happy. And of course there’s some kind of call to action. Broad sketch, but you get it… And here is an example of what would NOT make a good hook: “My 77 year-old mother used to love walking her dog. Then she stopped. Not because she didn’t want to. But because she was afraid she’d lose control. Here’s how a no-pull harness gave her back those precious mornings.” I wrote this manually, on the fly, without AI… But it’s fairly representative of the kind of AI riff-raff you get when you ask for hooks. And here’s what’s wrong with it: *First - it tries to close the whole loop. This is a really common AI issue. Most LLMs want to “close the loop” and resolve things… Whereas great direct response marketing opens loops and keeps them open for an uncomfortably long time. This goes back to curiosity… Creating a great hook is akin to creating an itch that your prospect can’t quite scratch. They want to scratch it. They need to scratch it. They can’t stop thinking about how good it will feel once they do scratch it. But they can’t reach that itch right away… They have to wait to get relief. *Second, and related to the first point… What the LLM is really doing is trying to tell you the entire story of the ad while pretending that’s a hook. This is another way of saying the same thing I did in point #1… But it’s worth calling out… Because it’s a super common pattern with LLMs. Look at the hook again. It’s literally just telling you what happened in the ad. There’s no mystery. There’s no curiosity. There’s no real reason to keep reading. *Third, it talks about the product when, for this type of ad, it shouldn’t. The whole point of a long-form native style Meta ad is that it feels like this organic post. The fact that the “poster” discovers and then recommends a product should feel almost accidental. It just so happens that this product was the best solution, and they want to tell you about it. – Okay, so what are some examples of much better hooks/openings? Let me riff: Hook Option 1: “My mom walked that dog every morning for 11 years. And then, one Tuesday, she just stopped.” Hook Option 2: “My mom’s the strongest woman I know. And she quit on that dog.” Hook Option 3: “The dog was laying there by the front door. It broke my heart.” Hook Option 4: “I saw Freckles laying by the front door. It broke my heart.” Hook Option 5: “At first, I was mad at my mom. Then, I felt sorry for her.” Hook Option 6: “I called the rescue shelter on a Tuesday. My mom found out the next morning, and I thought she’d never speak to me again.” – Okay so those are just examples… But let’s highlight why they’re better than the initial example hook. The biggest reason is this: They are all open loops. They convey emotion. And they create curiosity or conflict, but don’t resolve it. They also often start in the action: “Was laying” // “I saw” // “was mad/felt sorry” // “she quit” // “she stopped.” And while there’s no actual ad to reference… Some of them could have come from outside of the ad too. For example - maybe there’s nothing in the ad about the adult daughter calling a rescue shelter. That’s fine. You don’t really need to revise the ad. It can still open with the idea that she called, her mom found out and got mad... And then the adult daughter just goes “let me explain” and it transitions into the rest of the ad. — Okay, this is a long one. Hopefully it’s valuable though… And if it is, let me know… Because I have dozens of additional secrets to share… But I’m only going to keep going if people keep reading and engaging.