Module 8 - Making your ads stand out when everyone looks the same

Why do so many YouTube ads end up looking the same?

Because there's a lot of very good practice that gets followed, and it becomes a double edged sword: a formula works well for a type of business, so everyone copies it. At s.media we work with a lot of business coaches, and there's a formula that tends to work well for them, on screen, very engaging, talking about ten times in your business or changing your life, and it's the same with car ads, which all tend to go a certain angle and show a certain thing.

Making your ad stand out means understanding your business, your sector, your product, your customer base, and what's really going to engage them, and I know that's easier said than done because it involves real work. Because YouTube lets you A/B test far more easily than most other channels, it's a great opportunity to avoid the trap of looking like everybody else, because every business, every brand, every product and every service should be different from the next one. There may be similarities, one sofa can look like another sofa, one cup of tea like another, but every business has a personality, and it's that personality that people respond to.

If you search YouTube for business coaches, you can clearly see the thumbnails start to look samey, people standing in similar poses, the odd exception like Tony Robbins standing out a bit, or someone famous like Warren Buffett who's different simply because of who he is. You get a lot of the same look with cars in shot too, the Lamborghinis, the McLarens. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with any of these individually, and these tried and tested formulas clearly work for people, but I'd encourage you to also test something more engaging and more different, because otherwise you just look like everybody else, when clearly no two businesses are the same.

Relevance still matters. It's important to stay true to who you are and keep things relevant, because people lose interest if an ad isn't relevant to them, but relevant doesn't have to mean bland or boring. Instead of the obvious shot of an expensive car, for example, you could show a little dinky toy car on somebody's desk while they think about how they'll upgrade to the real thing when they make the money. It's about approaching the familiar a little differently rather than doing exactly what everyone else does just because everyone else does it.

There was a famous Porsche campaign from years ago that showed people turning their heads to look at the 911 and having little accidents as a result: a man walking into a lamppost, a barber cutting a customer's throat because he was distracted watching the car go past. It showed the car, but did it in a genuinely interesting way. On YouTube in particular, where you can see page after page of business coaches or car ads that all look the same, it becomes almost impossible for a consumer to tell them apart, and I couldn't be bothered scrolling through all of that myself. If something stands out in a slightly different way, that's what catches attention, so I'd always encourage people to try different creative hooks and different approaches rather than adding to the sea of sameness, and to be unique to their own personality.