Hi Reader -

"It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid instead of trying to be very intelligent."

That's Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's partner.

Everyone in advertising is hunting the whale (or unicorn, or outlier - pick your metaphor of choice). You know the one. The ad that eats your budget, makes your year, and gets you high-fiving your CFO.

Soooo every quarter somebody uncaps a marker and says "what's our big swing?" An hour later the whiteboard says AUTHENTIC, circled twice, and everyone feels great.

Anywayyy, it turns out investors have been hunting whales a lot longer than you, with more money and nicer offices. A finance professor named Hendrik Bessembinder looked at US stocks going back to 1926. The best 4% produced the market's entire net gain.

So that sounds easy enough. Just buy the 4%.

All you have to do is know which ones they are in advance, and if you can do that, I have no idea why you're reading this email instead of sipping a pina colada on your private yacht.

The investor Howard Marks spent decades on this problem. Here's his firm's actual motto: "If we avoid the losers, the winners will take care of themselves." - kinda similar to what Munger said, eh?

Soooo you can't pick the whale. (I've tried. I have been very excited about some truly terrible ads.) BUT you can make it a lot more likely that one shows up, mostly by being consistently not stupid.

Soooo how do you do it?

One: stop taking stock (or ad) tips from your cousin.

"Trust me, this one's gonna be huge. Nobody else is doing it."

(There's usually a reason nobody else is doing it.)

Dont. Just dont.

Two: buy some blue chips like a pro.

Build on what already works. That raises your floor, because your average ad gets better.

A growth lead I spoke to had a UGC video doing just okay. They slapped a fake tweet border on it and tested ten copy variations. One version, with just a few extra words, blew up globally.

That wasn't a big swing. It was a few extra words, and nobody circled those twice.

Three: Make new concepts, based on what is proven

And proven doesn't only mean your old ads.

Claude Hopkins was counting coupons to see which ads sold in 1923, so we've had a century to work out what makes people buy. A specific promise. A real person with a real problem. Proof. Annoyingly, those still work.

Storytelling frameworks have been around for centuries. (I wrote about some of these in my last email.) And yess, they still work too.

Could you perhaps use a story instead of a monologue? A Pixar-style animation instead of a wall-of-text? Use something timeless - and wrap it in a new outfit?

That raises your ceiling, because you still get a shot at something big. And your users notice something new, AND realize it has the kernel of something that is timeless.

So use these ways to stop being stupid. Then keep testing, and let the whale show up when it feels like it.

So before your next brief, ask one question: what proven thing is this built on? If the answer is "it feels fresh," that's your cousin talking. Instead, try building on what you’ve learned from the account - and from what has stood the test of time.

If you're spending $50k+/month and want better odds of landing a whale, reply "WHALE" and we'll talk.

Or don't. I'm sure the next brainstorm will crush it.

Later,
Shamanth

P.S. Here are some goodies from our socials:

​I will be speaking at Business of Apps Berlin this week - and will walk the audience through a demo of how we make 3 min+ long ads that are crushing it - with AI.

​How to make Hollywood-style AI videos (learned from 1000+ long-form AI videos)​

​What October looked like at RocketShip HQ​