Welcome to Intelligent Artifice, your weekly dose of insights to help you win with performance marketing in a Generative AI world.
Intelligent Artifice features hard won insights from the front-lines of performance marketing in a Generative AI world - delivered straight into your inbox. For free.
A+ vibes. F- execution.
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Hi [FULL_NAME GOES HERE], I just watched a team light $100,000 on fire. Not literally. But close enough. Soooo I was auditing this account that was spending in the six figures. They had this BEAUTIFUL creative briefing deck. I mean, this thing was a masterpiece: ✅ Hypotheses laid out like a scientific paper ✅ Cutesy little gifs to showcase every concept ✅ Brand values articulated with surgical precision ✅ Shot sequences scripted better than most Netflix shows It was the kind of document that creative teams frame and hang on their walls. Just one tiny problem… The account was BURNING TO THE GROUND. CPAs skyrocketing. ROAS in freefall. Performance dropping faster than the S&P 500. And you know how many new ads they were running each month with this immaculate strategy while spending 6 figures monthly? FOUR. That’s not a typo. FOUR ADS. I'll be brutally honest here. That’s not a creative strategy. That’s a guessing game in slow motion. I should say: a trainwreck in slow motion. It’s like trying to win the lottery by buying four tickets a month and being REALLY confident about your numbers. I wanted to grab them by the shoulders and scream: “THIS ISN’T ART SCHOOL!” Because here’s the awkward truth nobody in marketing wants to admit.... The key to winning in a Gen AI world isn’t your “brand alignment”… …or your “emotionally resonant copy” …or your “perfect hero shot.” It’s more shots on goal. Period. I don’t care if you have the most brilliant creative brief ever written. If you’re testing 4 ads while your competitor tests 40, you’re going to LOSE. Every. Single. Time. This is why our team is absolutely crushing it right now with AI. Because we are laser focused on CREATING & TESTING AT SCALE. More hooks. More angles. More weird ideas that have a chance of working out. Look, I’m not saying quality doesn’t matter AT ALL. ...cuz you cant get away with testing 40 crappy ads. In a Gen AI world though, quality vs. quantity is a false dichotomy. You can make a TON of ads - and have them be very strategic, well planned and well executed. This is why our approach has completely changed over the last year or so: BEFORE: 5-10 meticulously crafted ads per month NOW: 50-100 ads monthly testing different hooks, angles, and approaches. The results? We’ve seen CPAs drop by 30-50% on many engagements. Not because our IQs skyrocketed. Not because our design skills got better. But because we take MORE SHOTS ON GOAL. Soooo if you’re competing in a Gen AI world and you’re still precious about your creative, you’re literally burning money. If you are at $50k/mo in ad spend and want to explore how to win by taking more shots on goal, hit reply with “SHOTS” and let’s talk about how we can help you scale your creative testing to find the winners that actually move the needle. Later, P.S. The “brand purists” are going to HATE this email. But I’m tired of watching smart marketers waste money on perfect briefs that produce four precious ads a month when they could be testing 10x more concepts. PPS: Some goodies from our socials over here... 🤔 Subscription apps: here is why 'winning' Meta ad metrics might be killing your biz ** 📕We ship 1000s of videos monthly. Steal our visual storytelling playbook that consistently drives 20-40%+ ROAS improvements ** 🤬 If you thought "exact match" was protecting your google ads budget, you're getting ripped off 🚀 Why I break every 'statistical significance' rule after managing $100MM+ in ad spend ** |
Welcome to Intelligent Artifice, your weekly dose of insights to help you win with performance marketing in a Generative AI world.
Intelligent Artifice features hard won insights from the front-lines of performance marketing in a Generative AI world - delivered straight into your inbox. For free.
Hi Reader After 16 years in performance marketing, I’ve learned something most people don’t want to admit: Nobody actually knows what the algorithm wants. Not Meta. Not the gurus. Not the guy posting “7 hacks to scale your ROAS.” (Not even the guy who is writing this email to you all.) We all have pieces of the truth. Which reminds me of that old parable: A group of blind men each touches one part of an elephant. One says it’s a rope. Another says a tree. Another says a wall. All of them are...
hi Reader - Many moons ago, I studied improv theater in New York City. If you arent familiar with it, here’s how it works: You walk onstage with four or five people. The audience gives you one word. And from that, your job is to build a full 10-minute theatrical production. No script. No props. No plan. In one of my first classes, I took the word “cabbage”… “Hey, I’m a talking cabbage at a job interview. “Hi hiring manager, you are a carrot talking to me.” “Oh hey, there is ranch dressing in...
Hi Reader I thought it was the best thing after sliced bread. When I first wrote the code for Brute Force AI, I was fired up. The plan was simple: ✅ Take your top-performing ads. ✅ Take your worst performers. ✅ Use AI to analyze 'em. ✅ Extract exactly what separates the high-performers vs. the rest. 🤑 Profit I thought it was genius. I obsessed over the code to fine-tune it. And then I ran the analysis on actual ads. ...and waited with bated breath to see the results.... And it just… sucked....