Why Do Ugly Ads Win?

Why Do Ugly Ads Win?
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This is an excerpt from MarketerHire's weekly newsletter, Raisin Bread. To get a tasty marketing snack in your inbox every week, subscribe here.

When Zach Stuck tweeted about an ad that performed unexpectedly well, we felt it. 

As our director of paid media Marc Barraza said, “This happens 70% of the time.” 

But why? We reached out to Stuck, founder of growth marketing agency Homestead, to get his take. 

So bad, it’s good. 

The ad in question features a scroll of outdoorsy clothing items on top of a stock image of a ski hill. 

The image bothered Stuck for two reasons:

  1. It was blurry.
  2. It was a stock image.

“[It] just felt wrong and not polished enough,” he said. 

But in the end, “[i]t gave viewers … an easy and clear use-case for the product,” he said. 

They can see themselves wearing the apparel on the slopes — because there’s a (blurry) slope right there! 

Our takeaway? 

The lesson: teaching customers how (and where) to use your product is sometimes more important than visual finesse. 

The ad has been a “significant win” for Stuck’s ad account, and it’s now getting 50% of total ad spend.

Kelsey DonkKelsey Donk
Kelsey Donk is a writer at MarketerHire. Before joining MarketerHire full-time, Kelsey was a freelance writer and loved working with small businesses to level up their content. When she isn't writing, Kelsey can be found gardening or walking her dogs all around Minneapolis.
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E-commerce

Why Do Ugly Ads Win?

September 8, 2023
January 18, 2022
Kelsey Donk

We got the backstory on an ad that looked “cheap and not polished enough to run” to an agency founder — and now gets 50% of its account’s total spend.

Table of Contents

This is an excerpt from MarketerHire's weekly newsletter, Raisin Bread. To get a tasty marketing snack in your inbox every week, subscribe here.

When Zach Stuck tweeted about an ad that performed unexpectedly well, we felt it. 

As our director of paid media Marc Barraza said, “This happens 70% of the time.” 

But why? We reached out to Stuck, founder of growth marketing agency Homestead, to get his take. 

So bad, it’s good. 

The ad in question features a scroll of outdoorsy clothing items on top of a stock image of a ski hill. 

The image bothered Stuck for two reasons:

  1. It was blurry.
  2. It was a stock image.

“[It] just felt wrong and not polished enough,” he said. 

But in the end, “[i]t gave viewers … an easy and clear use-case for the product,” he said. 

They can see themselves wearing the apparel on the slopes — because there’s a (blurry) slope right there! 

Our takeaway? 

The lesson: teaching customers how (and where) to use your product is sometimes more important than visual finesse. 

The ad has been a “significant win” for Stuck’s ad account, and it’s now getting 50% of total ad spend.

Kelsey Donk
about the author

Kelsey Donk is a writer at MarketerHire. Before joining MarketerHire full-time, Kelsey was a freelance writer and loved working with small businesses to level up their content. When she isn't writing, Kelsey can be found gardening or walking her dogs all around Minneapolis.

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