The Ads That Spend $1M Are Still Written By Hand | Harry Delmege
In this episode, Andrew Foxwell and Will Sartorius talk with Harry Delmege about using AI for ad creative — specifically where it helps and where it quietly destroys your hit rate. Harry co-founded Roly Poly Digital and is best known for long-form "yapper" ads that have scaled past $1M in spend. His team uses AI heavily for execution and almost never for ideation. You'll learn why manual research still beats AI research, why AI UGC fatigues faster than real UGC, and the one quality Harry now hires creative strategists for.
We discuss:
Where AI belongs in a creative process and where it doesn't
The Claude skills Roly Poly built for yapper ads, VSLs, and native long-form
Why AI can't find the customer story your ad actually needs
Where AI creative genuinely wins: claymation, Pixar-style spots, and b-roll you could never shoot
Why AI UGC dies faster than real UGC, even when it works
What a $200K/month ad account actually looks like in 2026
Why brand owners are firing agencies over "AI slop"
How to run a manual research bounty that keeps your team's skills sharp
Why human QA is what takes an ad from a six out of ten to a nine
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This episode is sponsored by Proppel, the hiring agency that has placed more than 75 employees for Foxwell Founders members. Get 10% off your first hire when you mention the AI DTC WTF Podcast: https://www.weareproppel.com/foxwell-...
This episode is brought to you by Runneth from Motion: https://runneth.com
To connect with Harry Delmege DM him here https://x.com/harrydelmege_
To connect with Andrew Foxwell reach him here Andrew@FoxwellDigital.com
To connect with Will Sartorious DM him here https://x.com/will_sartorius
To Connect with Thomas Moen DM him here https://x.com/thomasmoen
To learn more about Foxwell Founders and conversations like this one, go here: www.foxwellfounders.com
Learn more about Foxwell Digital: https://www.foxwelldigital.com All episodes: https://www.ai-dtc-wtf.com
AI DTC WTF is a short, tactical podcast from Foxwell Digital about using AI to get an edge in DTC. Hosted by Andrew Foxwell, Will Sartorius, and Thomas Moen.
Chapters:
00:00 Why AI isn't making better ads yet
01:27 Where Harry Delmege uses AI and where he refuses to
03:02 The Claude skills behind yapper, VSL, and native ads
05:03 Why manually written ads still beat AI first drafts
06:51 Why AI can't mine Reddit for real customer stories
09:07 Where AI creative actually wins, and why AI UGC dies faster
12:28 What a $200K/month ad account looks like now
16:56 Why ad volume is not the game
22:16 The pendulum swinging back to direct response fundamentals
24:40 AI psychosis and the 80/20 split inside an AI-enabled agency
26:20 The one quality to hire a creative strategist for
30:43 What the best AI users will be doing a year from now
32:58 It's not the format that's crushing, it's the story
37:14 Why human QA takes an ad from a 6 to a 9
40:05 How to stop your team from getting AI-dependent
45:27 Why big brands can't get AI animation approved
Full Transcript:
(00:00) We all hear a ton about AI. We all hear about what it can do and how amazing it all is. And I don't think that there's anything incorrect about that. But this episode is brought to you by an AI brain that is absolutely incredible for your marketing team called Runeth. It's from Motion and therefore you know it's awesome because it's from Motion.
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(01:04) So she uploaded all the context for the team. They ran it into Runeth and Runeth said yeah that ad is totally on brand. It's absolutely crazy a number of things that this can do and I think the fact that we all live in silos and the fact we all live separately is really really challenging and one of the hard parts about AI. So that's not what this does.
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(01:42) As I said you can ask it really anything and answers instantly. Weekly recaps, top creatives, which creators your audience trusts. It learns your brand, your playbooks and gets smarter every day. Ecommerce and D2C teams are using it to turn weekly reporting from a two-day job into a two-minute conversation. Head to Runeth.
(02:01) com and see it for yourself and it also has a 30-day money-back guarantee. So if you need a cheat code in ecommerce and D2C with your ads and your ad creative and your marketing team check out Runeth.com. 30-day money-back guarantee. It's absolutely incredible what this thing can do and I encourage you to give it a shot. What's up everybody? We are live recording a podcast of AI D2C WTF which is our new podcast.
(02:49) podcast if you haven't heard this or checked it out and I'm here with my man Harry Delmage who is has always been a good has has always been an awesome person and I feel like whose stock is absolutely just exploding right now talking about so many different things especially with ads and yappers.
(03:10) The episode we did with him on scalability school is everyone wanted to see it. It was it was just hot hot hot hot hot. So Harry thanks for being here man I appreciate it. Oh good man thanks for having me happy to run it back. We're here talking about you know why AI isn't great for creative and what happens in the creative process so we're actually kind of you know we talk a lot of about AI on the podcast obviously but for you it's not something you use very pretty much at all in terms of making great ads.
(03:44) There might be some areas where you use it in your process but tell us kind of where you use AI and where you don't and how you view that in terms of its negative impact almost on creating better ads sometimes. Yeah so I mean to be fair I wouldn't want to say like I don't I don't use it I definitely use it but like I think like we use it more for for execution right like you know but like less ideation but like because I think that's like what a lot of bottlenecks are it's like if you're a great strategist you have all these great ideas
(04:15) but you're just like well I just don't have enough time to write these all down but I think with AI you you do not have it so it's like you know for example where we do use it is like I'm constantly building skills or trying to improve skills that are like format dependent so we have like a Yapa skill a VSL skill like a native ads you know they're like the long form copy ones like have all that but really what we don't use it for is ideation like that's like a lot of manual stuff just because I think there's no way that maybe I'm
(04:43) wrong but like right now the AI can come up with a better ad idea than you I think like you know because it has different guardrails it can't like you know all this different stuff baked into it so I think you know we're very bullish on like manual ideation and then just like AI execution but saying that we also do find like write one bit of manual copy like per week and I'm probably actually going to start doing bounties for that like whoever writes the best banger that's all manual like gets like a like end of
(05:13) month bonus or something on top of like the commission they already get nice nice so what you're so you have skills that are let's walk through that so you have like a skill that knows how to write yapper ads and you built that skill in Claude and it and it it has every yapper ad you've ever written along with instructions from you I assume uh not every yapper ad we've ever written but like all the all the best ones uh and it's got like a lot of different contexts right like you can build it like you know I ended up doing quite a few consulting
(05:46) calls um and a lot of them around yapper ad so I got all the firefly notes and then baked that into like a new skill um you know took the breakdowns from all the winning ads like broke down like you know copywriting fundamentals basically like the way that we write yappers like it's going to change it's like baked into that skill but yeah only take the winners and then you know if there's any fireflies like any team meetings about it you just like get Claude to like scan that and see if it can like add anything in I think recently we were
(06:15) comparing output and from the original one that I've written um only now have we beaten the output with like the new skill and I do think that came from like all the firefly notes and stuff like that so I think if people aren't putting those into their skills they're they're missing out for sure I mean so you go through and you have that skill and then you have what are the other skills that you have like VSL um native long form like you know those ones where it's like the the image and then that like really long ass uh primary primary copy
(06:48) uh that basically for any format you can think of we have that as a skill um you know we have like you know ad analyzer skills uh anything you want to do with um as you just basically want to scale and give it as much context as possible so you don't have to keep like you know prompting or re-prompting stuff it just knows how to do it the way you want it to right so you have these built in and you're going through and then within the process of ideation of creating better ads um well I mean we don't have to get into that actually let me put a pin in
(07:22) that for a second why do you think the ads that you're manually writing are better than what it comes out with is it because of the human experience is it because of you know AI is just it has those guardrails so it doesn't know how to think outside of that like what is it about it because I think you know you look across the we look across all creative right now and performance creative and those ads that are working why are they working what's what is part of it that's work like that does it and I think you've had a higher hit rate
(07:56) than a lot of I mean there's a lot of people out there that have high hit rates I guess I'd be curious of your angle has been we're going to manually do this and do you know work on copy and make sure the angle and that like this there's a long form narrative almost to it what else are other people doing do you think along or and also how are you thinking about it in terms of AI and what it does yeah I don't know so many different ways I guess I could answer that but I guess like the reason we're very bullish on manual research and we also do a
(08:27) manual research bounty as well so like every month we run one like from manual research like you post it into the channel the thing you found out and if that like brings around like the biggest unlock for that account you also get like uh like an extra bonus at the end of the month I think the reason is like obviously as we touched upon like some of the ideas it just it just can't come up with like I don't know maybe if they're like pretty like crazy or out there ideas like maybe like gray hat ideas whatever you want to call it like you know
(08:58) it's it's not going to want to do that too much I also feel like you know I've played around with it so much and tried to like extract stories from reddit with AI and it just I don't know for whatever reason maybe I'm just doing it wrong I could be doing it wrong but like it doesn't really pick up on any good stories and it just skims everything rather than actually getting like any kind of good good thing like obviously based on the keywords it might I don't know I just feel like it just doesn't give me what I'm actually looking for it just kind of
(09:25) gives me like oh this kind of thing could happen and then also like you just have to trust AI like face value and like I don't know maybe other people are seeing I'm certainly seeing them like talk about it like Claude's output seems to be unanimously getting worse so it's like well it's going to do the same for research and if it's just like I feel like I don't know maybe again I'm using it wrong but the amount of times I'm like no take your time make sure you found this add in these guardrails like by that time I might as well just gone on to like
(09:51) some subreddit found the story myself and then I'm just like off to the races you know I mean like I don't think you can get deep research like deep knowledge on something just from like research alone especially if you're not like a like if you're cracked at ads like I'm sure you could the amount of time you're spending going through back and forth with AI anyway you might as well just fucking gone on reddit in my opinion maybe I'm wrong but like you know yeah it's almost like you have you have to prompt it and give it so many instructions on
(10:18) what you're trying to do that it takes a long time and you know I also think there's a piece of the the way that you connect dots as a human being of like what actually is interesting in terms of an angle that maybe that you know you can mine I mean I think you're using it if you use it to mine reviews and to mine you know certain things like data that you have on post-purchase you know surveys or whatever then that's one thing because that's not something you want to do manually but in terms of going and doing it on reddit
(10:47) like it's yourself I think that a lot of times it's harder for Claude to do that anyway like and it's easier if you go in and look around and say oh it's kind of interesting and whatever how do you I mean okay so right now looking across others that are really you know I know you're you're looking at other high-performing ads a lot what do you think are components that uh AI has played into those to make them successful not necessarily from you but from others like what are they doing is it is it like that their AI has helped them to create
(11:18) uh rapid iterations of animated ads or you know what what is it that they're allowed to do um and I'm just curious well yeah I mean I think a lot of it comes down to like what you can do visually like there's a lot of constraints where like if you do want to come up with these wild stories you know it's kind of hard to do sometimes with a real person you know I mean so like you know something I've been seeing like crush is just like you know Pixar stuff but even like Pixar music song stuff you know I mean like you can't really
(11:51) do that with a person um then like other things where like you know some people are using like AI b-roll to show situations that again with a person like I saw one where I think it was about a story about you know how someone went abroad and it like led to this like discovery of something well getting a UGC creator to do that in any short amount of time is just going to take you I mean it might be fucking nigh impossible to get someone to do that then to go like get the b-roll in this other country but like
(12:22) with AI you can have that tomorrow you know I mean so again I've seen that work really well uh I've also seen AI UGC work really well um you know but the one thing I will say with it that maybe again others haven't seen that I have is like it fatigues quickly you know I mean like you have to constantly with the disclosure and everything like it's because now in the U.S.
(12:49) like a lot of ads have a disclosure basically uh default so you've seen you've seen those work even with the disclosure on there but they die faster uh I mean to be fair like I'd have to look at like the disclosure again like we don't really do many of them so like we're never in a situation we have to like disclose um but I'd have to check but even before that like they were like working good but like it just would die out quick but you know there was that trend where someone was like speaking on stage you know what I mean and as like a presenter like that that worked good but I think
(13:17) just like whereas like if we write a yapper and it like bangs like that can last for months and months and months like at the top of the ad account and like we're seeing that now rather than being like okay it's crushing then we have to like whip something up uh like there's like an account we're in right now where it's like they have like a UGC that's crushing we've done some other stuff while we're getting the the appers it might take over for like a couple of days but then that real UGC just comes back to the top again you know I mean so it's
(13:43) like you know I'm sure when we get like more of the real UGC like we can defer on it like you know properly but again it's just something I see is like it can work but it just doesn't have the legs so I'm just like well why not just do that and do the hard thing and just like you know real people real research I don't know yeah yeah yeah totally I agree it's interesting like how do you think it's going to evolve in terms of looking across a successful ad account like is it is it going to be um you know for example would it be that
(14:21) you'll look in a successful ad account that's spending 200 grand a month and they have you know the yappers they have uh ads that are you know you like generated animated stuff from you know uh ai um they have a bunch of ai generated statics like what is what is it going to look like I mean because I know it's sort of some of places look like that now but I'm curious what your take is yeah I mean as you know I'm a fan of a fan of diversity and I think ai has made that like so much like I think that's genuinely like a huge net
(14:59) of ai is like now the new amount of like diversity you can bring to accounts like you know we did this uh ads that like popped off for this like pet brand and we had like the dog talking it and like a claymation and stuff like that like that just wasn't possible like you know for the average advertiser like three years ago so the fact that you can just like you know pretty much do that and have that generated like in a couple of days now is insane um yeah I mean like to 200k I think you can just you know just pop off with like one format but
(15:29) I definitely see the ones that are like you know when they hit like you know big spend is it's definitely like very diverse content like founder content uh like yapper content maybe like more performance UGC statics like ai like you know you're definitely seeing a lot more of those come in um at those like higher spenders and like all of them like you know I guess the ideal thing is like they all spend like a decent amount and you can just you know keep increasing spend with it rather than just like them fighting for spend and just
(16:01) the spend level staying the same yeah so basically uh there's the you know it's right it's going to continue to be used for diversity in what you're saying you know um which is good so one thing I've been curious about with you is let's say you know we're looking across Andromeda and Lattice and others right um and it's we know that meta wants diversity and that's what we've been aiming and building for do you think that as we're looking forward if I run a creative shop what's your advice to me in reference to like uh how do I approach building
(16:42) a bunch of different ads for clients is it like hey let's let's make sure that we're doom scrolling a lot that we're going on tiktok a lot to unlock new styles and immediately you know then we're rapidly iterating those for clients um like what's the how do I sort of set up my organization to continue to make great ads utilizing ai but also not utilizing ai yeah cool I guess I'll give an answer for both I mean also someone's like I've been explained like Lattice like three different times I'm still not even really
(17:15) sure what it means um I'm not even really sure what Andromeda means apart from diversity I don't know uh so I mean I'll be honest I'll be honest with you it's like uh but yeah I mean in terms of and this is where we come back to ai right like you know we talk about like review mining a hundred percent just do that with ai that means you can doom scroll uh what your prospects feed looks like even more you know I mean like you can type in the niches and watch even more like instead of just going through every fucking review one by one and being like oh
(17:47) that's another person that said very good okay that's like pointless like I think what it looks like in the future is just like really working out where is great to use it and that's still something that we're trying to work out as well and that also might change in six months because maybe ai will be able to pull stories like absolutely perfectly and then take that and just crank like an amazing yeah presence like okay great but like I think going forward it's like and what it is now is it's like you know people like
(18:17) using a blend and working out okay if I can review like where can I save time and where can I where should I be putting more manual time and that's the thing is like you know obviously we've had like a pretty successful like first 10 months of being open and like I can't tell you how many brand owners I talk to that like have a pretty like poor agencies purely from the fact they just say like all they give is like ai slot like they can tell the like scripts are written by ai slot so as again like you know learning how to make sure like
(18:48) you know you're gonna have to put in time manually to learn how to be a great copywriter and stuff like that you know I mean like that's all stuff yo what's going up man what's up sorry I'm late no problem by the way will we're live on x right now so oh what's up people yeah so feel free to go on rt me to get more viewers yeah it's no I mean I I think with one thing that's interesting harry um that you just said is you know I think that there has been a lot of folks that they see volume as the game and it's not about volume right
(19:23) it's about the quality of the create of what you're creating um and you know ai allows you to create a ton of volume but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to net you better results in any case and I also think it's really challenging because as has always been our industry there's a lot of people that are in our industry that give advice and that could be on well you know bidding or audiences I mean that this is as tales old as time like beauty and the beast but like the the thing that I see with that that basically they're huge
(19:57) accounts um and they are spending tens of millions of dollars and they tell everybody what to do and then these brands that are spending 50 to 50 to 100 thousand dollars a month which is a large majority of e-commerce brands to be honest like they are trying to implement a system where they're creating 400 net new concepts a week or something and you're just like you know that's not going to be it right and so it like lowers the bar enough and I think that's not good for anyone really that's not good for for for the you know any of it um no yeah that
(20:31) was like that was like stuff I used to hate is that you wake up to like some fucking x screenshot from like some like of like your favorite gurus but oh man like you know the accounts they're talking about are way bigger than yours so you're in completely different different situations but luckily that doesn't doesn't happen to me anymore but yeah that like back in the day that was a that was a painful one because like yeah they would want the same thing it's like I don't think you even cracked like what
(20:56) your core messaging is yet or what actually makes you different from other people right and I just think you expanding it go ahead yeah and it's also like I don't think you know the cpa that they can afford to have compared to you so like you know like it's a whole different conversation um but yeah I mean like it's weird actually talking about like the volume thing okay yeah obviously AI is great for volume and like execution uh but I actually saw a post about uh from a guy called guy called Jacob uh a friend of mine you know he's he's
(21:24) he's pretty active on Twitter and he's always been like pretty anti like volume for the sake of volume um and he made what I really liked was a great post about the fact that he's actually in like the top one percent of like advertisers with like the amount of ads live and he was like that's not because I like launch loads of volume it's just because I make great ads and they just stay active for like ever they've all got like a job to be done so I'm like you know people are like oh I need to launch like x amount of ads like all these ones uh but
(21:54) it's actually you can just make bangers that just have jobs to be done and just stay active for for ages and you just compound that way instead which is probably the way I would prefer to do it personally um but again some people are going to be like no that's stupid just make infinite ads um but also a lot of those people who say make infinite ads never really seem to supply results that come with that so I'm not fucking know yeah well I'm not trying to start drama but it's like you know you always say make infinite ads but I'm like post some
(22:25) post some fucking spend on those ads buddy come on the so first of all the um for those of you that tuning in uh this is a live stream episode that shall be recorded as well of ai d2c wtf which is a new podcast that will and I and our friend in Norway uh Thomas Mullen have started uh and Harry Delmage is on here talking about a whole bunch of stuff so Harry thanks for being here um the so let me ask about I'm gonna ask one more question and then will you can kind of hop in so one of the things that I think has been I was talking last night with uh
(22:56) Hannah Haug and um Matthew Gatozzi about creative in this whole ecosystem um and how I think that there's this there's this really hard push and pull between brands and agency operatives and or operators and owners that want creative strategists to be putting out more and volume is the name of the game and the creative strategist that actually is like I need to make sure that this is good and that we're getting back to basics of creating great ads how how do you see this right now and how do you think that we as organizations can be better in terms
(23:38) of uh helping our strategists write better briefs and deliver ultimately better ads one of the biggest questions that comes up inside the foxhole founders community is around hiring how do you know and how do you find great people that you can actually trust to do the job that's why I want to talk to you about propel propel has placed more than 75 employees for members of foxhole founders some of the hardest roles our members have been trying to fill for months they filled quickly and efficiently we're talking from video
(24:12) editors to graphic designers media buyers and more in latin america to managers directors and heads of department and vps in the u.s they have done it all they can help you build that team that scales faster I know that this is an ad read and I know that it's totally one of those things you're like well it's whatever it's an ad honestly though I literally use this and have used propel and the team over at propel for all of these things they've filled offshore they've filled domestic like I just said it's absolutely incredible and honestly the
(24:40) founder Leandro used to run an econ brand and performance marketing agency so he gets it that's one of the things I've always loved about Leandro and what I love about dealing with him I have never even heard a negative review about working with them one time somebody said it wasn't working out and Leandro immediately replaced the candidate that he had put in the position for a person that's like the only feedback I've ever heard the way that they work is simple it's performance based you only pay a one-off fee once you actually hire someone
(25:03) there's no retainers no ongoing costs and every hire is backed by a three-month guarantee so go to the show notes check it out let me know what you think and if you have questions about this feel free to hit me up andrew at foxwelldigital.com I'm happy to talk about it if you go to the link in the show notes you get 10% off your first hire with them it's a great deal really special for podcast listeners so I look forward to hopefully helping your brand grow and scale is that question for me or for Will yeah for you
(25:33) damn I thought you were talking to Will that whole time I'm not gonna lie to you I feel I thought you said Will at the start so I was like okay he's asking that but okay no I'm Will can answer that and then you can chime in if you'd like I mean I'm I'm with you I know I have to answer but sorry I was just like waiting for Will to talk because I was like I don't want to just talk over but no I can I can answer yeah I mean like I think it comes back to the thing that so much has rapidly changed over three years like I was saying before like three
(26:00) years ago I would have had like no way of knowing that I'd be able to create all this like wild Pixar or Playmation looking stuff that like genuinely does well like that just just wasn't something that I thought when I was like you know three four years ago and I was like new to create a strategy that was like okay this is a possible thing to to do um so I think it's like a natural pendulum swing right it's like you just like oh my god this is so cool I can just like get every single one of my ideas down and I can just like
(26:26) get everything out and now it's coming back to that thing where it's like oh shit I need to actually make sure this is grounded in like proper direct response proper marketing I need to QA this all properly because like you know depending on the day it will either give me something that's like actually pretty good or just it doesn't even make sense I think it's just a natural like pen and string back where like people thought they could just like one shot or was hoping they could one shot a lot of stuff with AI and it'd be a banger like
(26:52) that would be the best situation if I just have like a random idea and I'm like okay go write a yeah right about that and it spends like seven figures that's that would be the best thing ever like I'm not saying I don't want that I'm just saying it's like realistically it's not there so I think people are like now coming back to being like okay no we actually need to go back to fundamentals because like anything right it's like whatever sport you do if you stop doing the fundamentals and the basics like you will lose that skill you
(27:18) will forget how to QA a script you'll forget how if an ad is even good or not like you just won't know you will look at it and be like yeah that's fine but that's just because you've been like using AI for every day for the last six months and you just have no idea if that's got better or worse because it's just your new standard so I think it's just naturally naturally coming back to that and I also think like brand owners especially I mean you know again I'm not speaking for all people here just like you know they're they're coming to me and
(27:45) like the agency for quality like that that's what they want some people like are like oh yeah like we want some more volume but like they only want more volume once the quality is proven you know I mean that's when they're like hey guys can you give us more like it's not like you know I feel like if I told people what their like monthly like deliverables were like a year ago people were like that's nowhere near enough how do you expect us to scale off that and I just don't think people got the results they wanted to were like oh shit okay
(28:09) maybe we got to go back to basics here so that's that's my view on it yeah I definitely agree I think you know we have been actively hiring creative strategists and I think one of the most eye-opening experiences for me is that like a lot of creative strategists will just continually write copy with Claude and like in the application process you'll be getting a lot of responses with Claude and if you ask to brief out a handful of statics and videos you'll get Claude responses and you know I'm obviously the
(28:37) first to admit that like we are like sort of like an AI enabled agency but the reason we are AI enabled is so we can free up strategists to actually do the hard work right like we want to be able to produce 80% of your ads bottom of funnel statics with AI we still have editors on all of our all of our statics but then that other 20% needs to be like entirely human driven like copywriting is undoubtedly the most important part of creative strategy in my opinion and you can't just like skip that step and I think we're just like in this
(29:09) still in the stage of like AI psychosis where it's just like it's a really fun tool to play with and I again I'm the first to sort of fall into that grouping but like where you ultimately end up winning is sort of utilizing AI to uncover like angles personas emotions formats you should be testing giving the reins to like a really good copywriter uh who can actually deliver um and so yeah it's definitely a combination of the two and like finding good strategists that actually have copywriting jobs that are actually willing to sort of do the
(29:48) hard work is becoming much more challenging it's just I think people just assume that they can just uh skip steps by using uh you know language learning model so yeah I completely agree with Harry there um I guess my question to that is like when you're looking for a strategist now Harry like what is like if you had to sort of distill the the the the job down into like one most important quality of a person like what do you think that is one that's tough one important man okay I guess just willing to do the hard work like that's just just it like
(30:30) you know because at first I was like looking for people who uh okay how how skilled are they where have they come from like you know I want someone that's got like quite a bit of experience but like I'm also finding that to be somewhat sometimes again not always like a bit of a negative now because I've now got to like make them unlearn all the bad habits they've picked up whereas like actually uh you know onboarded some like really like hungry people who were like not green by any means like at all but like not
(31:01) these people have come from these big places or like you know had this like you know years of experience and they're like fucking crushing but just because they're hungry to learn they want like actually want to learn the craft they don't think they know the craft you know I mean whereas a lot of people are like oh yeah well I've done this for x amount of years now I I can just keep cranking out I know everything I already need to know and if like they've given up learning still you know I mean like they're not going to go read like breakthrough
(31:26) advertising for the sixth time do you know I mean they're just not going to do that because in their head they've like completed it so I think just like willing to do that hard work and go that extra 10 percent is like are you willing to like QA your scripts that bit more or are you just going to one-shot it with AI and it's like yeah that's good enough um so yeah probably that's the one thing I'm looking for but it always changes you know like first I was like thinking this is the case but then in three months I might find a new
(31:53) type of person I'm trying to hide but like yeah hungry people willing to do the work and like generally still curious and like wanting excellence whereas like I feel like that's died a bit not saying it's because of the use of AI but like it seems like a lot of people have just become happy with good enough like even like you know as for example when like I like I always do trial and I always make someone write a yapper at for trial like even if it's like they're not very comfortable with because it takes time it's longer
(32:19) like and we had someone um send one over the other day like instantly just replied and I was like write that again like you know and just made them do it again make them go longer because it's like no I don't want it just like oh with AI like just go back and do it again yeah I mean I think I think that that's I think it's true it's like that that desire of somebody who wants to and knows that it doesn't it it's um it's going to take time right um and also knows that there's always this constant desire to continue learning and to continue
(32:49) refining right like um if you asked I don't know Michael Jordan at the height of his career what's the number one thing you would say to somebody you know to continue to learn I mean I think or continue to grow like it had to be something like you have to keep training you have to keep developing this to developing it which I think is is the same because I think it's it's just very easy to fall into that the AI trap of of it's doing it for you and you think that you're improving but in reality you're really not so I think that that that's is like a trap
(33:22) that a lot of folks are caught in and they're out there seeing like oh I hooked up all these things and I have all this you know data and all these MCPs um and I'm pumping out more ads than I ever have but it's it's like it just loses that human element and it loses the hard work that it takes to actually copyright really probably um and I think that creative strategists know this I guess is what I'm getting at and I think a lot of leaders don't know this as well right so I think this is a call to to leaders to be like hey this is different
(33:55) right like we need to not just be pushing on the volume button or just generally saying personas right but like what does that even mean and what are you trying to do I guess a question I have for you Harry is you know let's say that we look a year down the road too I'm you know I'm always in the interest of equipping people properly we go a year down the road what are folks doing that uh you know has has improved their ads with AI like is it just that people are utilizing AI in a year more efficiently or that they've integrated
(34:31) into their systems better or you know what is it that it's that they've done with AI that's made their lives easier and better I think yeah there's like a case for efficiency like you know again go back to the review money but I think the people that use it the best and the people that can like really use it to bring their imagination to life you know what I mean like I think that's the case now and I think it will be the case like even more so as like you know it gets easier and easier to like create these wild things but like some of the AI
(35:00) stuff that I see working like you know people would do like fake like security camera stuff like you know as like a hook or like you know again we talk about like that like the pics are like musical stuff like anything like that where you can use it because before it was such a constraint and like now it's not and I think it's only going to get easier to bring your imagination to life but I think to do that you need to still keep that like creativity alive and like I think a lot of that comes from like manual stuff or like experiencing
(35:33) things and trying to like then turn that into to adverts but like yeah obviously things will get more efficient reporting like all that stuff like the grunt stuff is gonna um basically make it easier and then like the things that you'll probably do is be like okay well I'm gonna go out for like two walks today on those two walks I'm gonna try like ideate two fucking crazy ads or something and I'm gonna wait for like I'm gonna be ruminating over everything I've been thinking about and then wait for one to be like airdropped to me or something
(36:01) like so I think yeah it's just gonna become like you know the people that are crushing it the people that are still like you know keeping their like imagination and creativity cranking and then they can just like use AI to come up with this like mad shit that looks awesome you know what I mean yeah 100% and like sort of piggybacking out of that I think a lot of people are just like using AI wrong right like AI has opened up this like so many avenues of content right like as you were discussing earlier like you can do a full sort of end-to-end
(36:37) top of funnel animated you know claymation you know Minecraft whatever sort of medium you want it to be but like fundamentally you really need a strong script there like advertising hasn't changed at the end of the day we're all just telling a story right and now we just like have additional mediums to do it so like I think where people get what gets so wrong with AI in general it's like oh this format is crushing right now it's not the format that's crushing it's the story that you're telling behind the format and like again that's
(37:04) why people have this like sort of AI psych psychosis where they're just like building fucking dashboards and just like you know spinning their wheels and like oh yo look at my fucking sick dashboard and it's just like it's so infuriating so it's like not accretive that's not ROI positive like what's ROI positive is like using these tools to like underpin like where are my holes in my uh in the ads I'm running now like who who haven't I been talking to and then like using Harry's method where it's just like I'm actually writing end-to-end
(37:33) scripts you know I can use a creator to do a yapper ad or like if I want to even test it like I can spin up like an animated ad top of funnel ad in an hour right it's just like it's so people are just like are so of the mindset that like everything that they're creating with cloud code is is god's gift to the earth and like again this is sort of this psychosis mindset and it's just like you have to sort of go down to fundamentals like a good script is a good script and like nine times out of ten it's written by a human being but like then you can
(38:04) take that script like do a minecraft one and if that works well like then get a creator to go do it it's just like it gives you the ability to sort of catalyze testing in a way we've never been able to do so before um and and Harry I'm curious like when before you like go and create a yapper ad like are you testing that concept with like an animated sort of top of funnel uh no okay so you're going straight to creator straight from script to creator yeah I think so just because like honestly like a lot of people can kind of do that like
(38:35) animation stuff pretty pretty well I feel like um because I think like a lot of the visuals can do the carrying there you know I mean like because they look so like you can tell so much of that story with like you know it's a bit of like a cheat code for that kind of stuff um but like still a lot of accounts are in like you know haven't quite cracked yappers and like we're pretty confident with how we write it and how we QA it so we can just send it straight to a creator and just be like fuck it let's let's let's run it um because it's still
(39:05) like a thing that I think people struggle with so it's just like well while people are still struggling why not just just go for that uh but then if it does turn it into like AI stuff and just like you know spin that concept and that story uh as many ways as possible um you know for sometimes for example though like on certain accounts we would do like you know the long form native image copy stuff if that pops off we'll take like the core story of that and then apply that to a yapper because it's just like a cheap and easy way to test that story
(39:34) before you then uh go to that uh just like full warning for anyone that does that don't just like copy and paste the thing just because your yapper script will turn into like a 12 minute long thing and people can read way quicker than they can consume information and getting a real person with like not any b-roll or anything like that being charismatic for 12 minutes straight is uh pretty pretty difficult I wouldn't I wouldn't necessarily recommend it so yeah like that's like a really good way to test it but then it's more like once we
(40:01) have done that um you know I guess not that I ever think about like do the hard thing first then we can like do the do the easier stuff and just spin that up like different ways um and then there's just some stories that like again like I've spoken about it's like you know if you're in a pet like pet niche I would just spend more of my time doing like AI animation stuff because you can make dogs like talk and shit like that which is like so awesome do you know I mean like that's so cool you can like yeah you know I think we did one for a
(40:28) brand it was like you know it was like for like some joint shoes or whatever uh and like you know we show the claymation where like the mum gets like really upset when like the dog starts limping because like got old and the dog's like I don't understand why mommy's sad and all this stuff like I'm just trying to be like a good dog uh so it's like you know you just can do that with like you know like loads of people are commenting like this made me tear up like this like you know and it got like a pretty pretty healthy amount of spend but it's
(40:53) like you just can't do that with like yeah like the apparatus like you know I mean so it's like that kind of stuff we just don't necessarily bother with the apparatus and we just go straight to AI animation yeah but like fundamentally you still have a human being writing that script right like that is like the research needs to still come into play like it's not the animation that's carrying it it's it's it's a good script presumably yeah exactly I think like more what we do is like we're really like heavy on human QA because like I like I was
(41:19) saying like earlier like you know one of the great things with AI is like especially of skills is it like really lowers that barrier to like execution where you can actually get like and with skills you can get a pretty decent first draft but I think that's the problem is people look at that like oh that's pretty decent and then just like leave it there but it's actually the ads that like even when we've curated and I spoke to um like spoke to my friend like Luke the other day he's like head of performance like another and he said like the ads
(41:44) that he sees pop-offs are the ones that where you add the tiny details to it you make the small changes because like the nuances really matter so it's like for execution like and I fully agree with that I see the same things like even if it's not big changes you're just asking like so what can we add a little bit more detail here can we make that more emotive and like you need to in my opinion you need the human human QA for that um but yeah I think most people get to that point where it's like okay cool that's like a six out of ten we'll
(42:09) just ship it but if you can get to that six out of ten and then make it like nine out of ten like great that's like kind of like the way you wanted to do it because yeah starting from zero and being like fuck now I gotta write like a four minute script like while you've got all this other stuff going on it's like it's not a fun feeling so it's like if you can get that first draft great then cool but you but that's why you need to still be studying still be breaking down winning ads manually like you know like I got like a bloody like this here
(42:32) like I got the I got the prompts that I do to run like winning ads but I also watch winning ads manually and like write down notes myself so you can still just know what makes a good ad like I go on Kalo data and I write down what the affiliates are doing when they're like overcoming objectives like I'm still doing that manually so that I can do it when I get my script back and I've noticed when I don't do that my QAing gets worse because you just over-reliant on AI and you're just starting to accept what it's giving you because you're like
(43:01) ah fuck it it's been fine but a lot of the time it's not and then as it keeps going it's worse and worse you know what I mean totally it's such a negative feedback loop and like I definitely agree like journaling every morning like sort of keeps me humble and like you know puts puts the earth underneath my feet like so for your team like are there any things like you recommend for your team to members or like anyone else in this space like how do you sort of keep that grounding and not sort of lose yourself in the psychosis of it all
(43:31) yeah I mean I just like ask for for proof around stuff I'm just like where did you get that from and if like sometimes they're like AI I'm like okay go and verify it yourself but like also what we do is we do like a manual research challenge every month where there's like bounties and it's like if you get the biggest unlock from research uh manual research um then you get you get a bounty like you know I think like prizes go up to like like right now like five hundred dollars on top of like the commission they already get anyway so it's
(44:03) like you know it's all right it's not like it probably could be better and then also what I'm going to implement alongside that is if you write a manual ad that pops off alongside the commission you'll also get like a bounty to do with that as well so like really just trying to get them to get into the habit of like keeping the tools tool sharp um and you know I'd love for people to do it just because they think I'm like awesome and it's the best company to work at ever but like you know like money talks you know I mean so like just
(44:31) giving people like financial ascent like incentives especially when it's like something that's like becoming harder to do because it wasn't we never like we had mental friction to do it before but we had to do it you know I mean there was like well I have to just write this manually like yeah it kind of is like annoying that I have to do it but like I'm just gonna fucking sit down and get it done like that doesn't exist anymore you can just get AI to do it so it's even more mental things about oh fuck's sake I really have to write this manually it's
(44:55) just like okay cool I just I I gotta give you money for that effort you know what I mean yeah I mean I think that that raises a good point which is one I've said a lot uh in coaching calls other things which is with employees making sure that you are incentivizing them for the behavior that you want it's just like anything else but I mean like seriously it matters when you go through and say this is the type of behavior we're trying to reward that's not done enough people do that in they think it's under job expectation um which in some cases
(45:27) it is but if you are doing competition or you're gamifying it or you're you know doing some sort of bonus they'd say hey look like the more I see this better I am happy to incentivize you um and here's what it means like you will get x number of dollars like that will drive better results so I think that's kind of an interesting one um as you go forth one question I have Harry is on on those people that are utilizing you know AI in a way that makes sense uh in their organization do you think that they have is there some creative director or
(46:12) brand the brand owner has a good idea of what they are okay with with the brand in reference to AI like there's or is there like an AI captain in the organization or are they just saying you know what Harry we trust you you're the expert go for like which I just am wondering where people have been held back right are you talking about like in terms of like like you know I'll like the my company or terms of like like when I work with brands like what they're saying about the use of AI yeah I'm wondering specifically about the people that are um how do
(46:53) I say this I'm wondering specifically about those organizations that are really good at AI and they're like really good at making your job easy in terms of getting out better ads do do they have some sort of filter that says yes that can happen with that that's fine that's on brand for us um go for it and they trust you or it's like they have a process of okay this goes to this person they approve it it's good um like and there's almost like an AI captain internally I'm just curious of your take uh well yes okay if I've got it confused let me know but in
(47:25) terms of like you know when people I've like listened to that again I was like this could be a number of things but it's been a long day a lot of calls a lot of calls you gotta bear with me um you know it's a little bit late for me over here um yeah so in terms of like when I'm like sending of if you're talking about when I'm sending over ads to clients and like how they're talking about like are things on brand and like with the use of AI I'll be very honest like we mostly work with people that are pretty chill
(47:53) with a lot of stuff um you know we work with like a lot of like supplement brands and like that kind of thing um so I would say like and a lot of people I think would that come to me know that like we're very rooted in like direct response and like we like to push it a little bit um but yeah we've definitely had it before where people are like that's not on brand and like to be honest if it's like stupid stuff that I don't agree with then like we it's just not like I don't want to say stupid but like just stuff that isn't aligned with me then like
(48:26) the relationship's just not going to last very very long like we do best with people that are kind of just like yeah like fuck it you guys can kind of and like run whatever you want essentially like whatever you think is best because at the end of the day they have a freedom to it they're just saying that's fine I'm just wondering because I feel like there's a big thing that happens with AI people are either like there's a lot of places it has to get routed and that hurts them from creating better ads and there's other places that are like
(48:50) the extreme of your side which is like go for it whatever we don't care right and so I'm trying to figure out like there there probably needs to be a middle ground of this of like getting things out to because there's going to be more governance around this so that's what I'm thinking yeah yeah for sure like yeah I guess because I mean like with some brands like again with like some with fashion like makes sense like you know you don't like you know you don't be doing necessarily like pixels and it might work I don't know but like sometimes you
(49:18) see a bit more branded stuff with like that but I guess it kind of makes sense because fashion it makes sense you know I mean but like in terms of other stuff like I've been speaking to people like maybe at like bigger brands and they just can't even get like AI animation stuff approved by brand and I'm just like that's just the fucking death of advertising like what the fuck are we doing here like this is crazy like yeah you know like I get on the other side yeah and I get on the other side where people
(49:43) are like doing like fake doctors and stuff like you know it's a bit like whatever like you know people have like you know views on that so it's like you're right there definitely probably like is a middle ground but like I'm always on the thing of like lean on the like side of like a bit more aggressive you know I mean I think yeah you know you look at brands like crushing now and a lot of them that are up and coming again can't talk full of them because I don't see inside their ad account but like they are doing these like you know being more
(50:10) loose of it like because it's all like trend-based as well like you know there's only so long that these ads will like kind of work like claymation and stuff like that is like still work because in some cases falling off a bit so they're just like missing trends because they've got some people in brand who don't even know what direct response is being like oh we can't run that like well it's stupid it's obviously it's advertising it's so well and that's that's so funny I mean I I have this I we should name this like to come up with a
(50:36) law for the name the the the something law of like the bigger the organization the worse they are to work with usually and the and the more they shoot themselves in the foot like I'm gonna say nothing because there's so many layers you know you're like oh my gosh um yeah well Harry thanks for joining us thanks for joining the live stream everyone um if you came on live stream and uh we'll look forward to uh doing this again but Harry thanks for for coming on today yeah no all good I have no idea if I said anything helpful at all zero you
(51:08) didn't say anything good it's terrible yeah yeah no I just just complained about volume and big brands that was it that's it yeah people people got their their times worth with that one let's let's go you
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