Mark Broadhead: If you piss off 80% of Australia, that means 20% love you. And 20% is a pretty big number. We've made about 15,000 ads. I've been with Sherbet in the last four years. If you made a good ad, it's going to work. Like no matter what pillar it's in, if it's good, it will work. I'm Mark Broadhead on this episode of Add to Cart. I talk all things creative, crazy creative, how we're bulking up our creative AI,
Nathan Bush: meta and yeah, enjoy Quick share before we start. It's one of the best launches of 2026 and it's a site that I'm constantly bringing up as an example and now Convert Digital have just dropped the full case study on how they move Showpo off of Salesforce and onto Shopify. If a RE platform is on your mind or you just like good looking sites, it's well worth a look. We've got a link to the case study in the show. Notes the Ladd Collective is a Queensland betting brand that most of you have probably come across before. Whether you like it or not, they are dominating Meta and Meta advertising. You may have also heard their founders Ed and bill on add to cart way back on episode 160. That's almost 400 episodes where they told the full story of how the brand started. This episode is about what happened next. Mark Broadhead is the head of Creative and Growth at the Ladd Collective. He's been with the brand for four years since they were still running out of a small warehouse in Logan. And he's the person, he's the one that is behind the Meta engine that's taken them to 200,000 customers, including just launching into the US. I reached out to Mark because I've been watching stalking what he posts on LinkedIn for a while and it's not the standard growth or LinkedIn content, actually just LinkedIn content. He shares experiments that haven't worked. He posts his thinking on meta account structures that most people are too nervous to try, let alone talk about. He regularly says things that goes against what everyone else is saying and I think meta is probably the topic that I get more questions about than any other right now. And when I kept coming back to Mark's content I thought I think I just need to get him onto the show to hear about it, both for my curiosity and to share it with you. We want to hear it straight from the source. So in this episode we go deep on how Mark thinks about creative as a brand moat. What it actually takes to find an ad that cuts through and how. AI is starting to shift the production side of paid social. He's created 15,000 ads. He knows a little bit about that. Now, just quickly, before we get into today's episode, a big thank you to our partners at Shopify and at Klaviyo for making ADD to Cart possible. We really do appreciate their support to keep bringing you these episodes. All right, here is the head of creative and growth for the Lad Collective, Mark Broadhead. Mark, welcome to Add to Cart, mate.
Mark Broadhead: Thanks for having me.
Nathan Bush: This is a random one, right? Because I've been man stalking you on LinkedIn, that cesspool of a platform, and you are the one light that continually, like, gives me a smile or a little burst of excitement on there. Because when you post, I've always gotta click the video or I've gotta read the caption, because you're generally doing stuff that is interesting and different and sharing it. So you're not like our typical founder or corporate person. But I'm like, I've just gotta pick your brain. And if I can have an hour of picking your brain on what you're doing, I will just be so happy. And if we can share that with our audience, I'm like, so that's when I sent you that, that little LinkedIn night to sky. Thank you. This is cool. Would you share it on the podcast? And you're like, yeah, so welcome. Thank you, thank you.
Mark Broadhead: No, it's been. Personally, I do a lot of random stuff and we're not the perfect being the Lag Collective is. We don't do many things by the book, so it's just personality fit for me here. And what we do is we get to have so much fun. And I have some in a creative lens, in a creative world. Ed, when I started, gave me the most amount of freedom and said, do whatever you want because whatever you're doing seems to be going all right, so just keep going. And that's. Yeah, that's what we've still been doing for the last four years with the Lad Collective.
Nathan Bush: Well, we had Ed and Bill on, and I think it was really early in the start of their journey because they were still talking about the Brisbane river stunt, where they got a microphone and went down the Brisbane river to promote the Lad Collective. Story's changed a lot since then and evolved, and it's probably all because of you, I'd say, you know, you're. You're the reason behind the success. Like Ed and Bill, they're nice faces for it, but you're the reason really.
Mark Broadhead: No, those, those boys before, they are, they're PR kings. They, they are very good at getting PR and it's, everyone goes, oh, how do you do it? It's, it's nothing special. They just, they work bloody hard and they chase and chase and chase. For every yes they've gotten, they've gotten 500 no's. So in the early days, that's how this company came to be, is just never giving up and really going crazy with the amount of. I've used to see their outreach, it was incredible. And they just, they just wanted this to succeed and they, you know, devoted a lot of their time early on to making sure that happened. And then, yeah, when they brought me on, it was more. They knew how to do all that. They just didn't know how to really then piece it together. On the creative side, where Ed, one of the founders, he could work a phone, that was about it. And he had some ideas and he's a great copywriter, really good writer. Just couldn't get it on the visual side. So they kind of brought me in to bulk up that, that area.
Nathan Bush: What were you brought in as growth hacker?
Mark Broadhead: No, I brought in two days a week, just doing social media content. Organic. Organic. TikTok that was out. That was basically the job posting when I, when I first started.
Nathan Bush: Because you were telling me before we jumped on this, you were making 10k an hour on TikTok live in 2019.
Mark Broadhead: Yeah. So back when, just before COVID I started a vintage clothing company just outsourcing from America, Japan, England, all the likes. I started it during uni, was doing two grand a month, you know, just a one drop here, couple, couple shirts here and there. And then TikTok Live came out on TikTok. And back then I used to always say to myself, if Instagram had that rise and you back in the day, you could do anything on Instagram and you'd blow up if you posted at 7 o' clock on a Tuesday night. But then TikTok, I always said if it ever, something like that came along, I was really going to try and hone it in. And I figured out with TikTok that if you back then, if you went live, if you posted a video before you went live, would make that video go 100,000 views like that and then your lives would pump. And then I would just make orders. I didn't even have orders at the time. I would just make orders, acting like I was getting orders. And then it just, there was yes Some lives I would do. If I didn't do a live on a day, I wouldn't make any money. So I would do an hour or two hours on a live and I think, yeah, the most I've made on a live sp, like $15,000 just making a live, like live boxes of vintage clothing and stuff like that. So it was pretty crazy back then when no one really even knew what TikTok was or what it was. Yeah, yeah.
Nathan Bush: So you were able to go over to the LAD Collective and still do a little bit of that in the background while starting over at Ladd Collective.
Mark Broadhead: Yeah. So when I started, I not a business minded person. Like back then especially I was a school, I was studying, I just finished school teaching. I mean my degree in HPE and English. So those who can't do, they teach and those who can't teach, teach HPE. So
Nathan Bush: you strike me as a PE teacher. You'd be a great PE teacher, 100%.
Mark Broadhead: So I was doing that. I just was trying to make a little money on the side while I was doing all my practicals and not get paid. So that's how it all kind of started. And then the content was always something I was super interested in and just picked up a phone and just started making content. And then the business basically post Covid. I had no idea I was making a bit of money through Covid through this business. And then post Covid. I wasn't running ads, it was all organic. And then like the algorithms shifted and it kind of like hurt. I had no idea what to do and had all this stock had no idea. And it was all starting to go a bit south of me. Cause I didn't really know how to run the business and I needed to kind of give it to someone that did. So I jumped looking around and it was weird. Ed posted on LinkedIn within half an hour. Like he posted a job posting and half an hour later I actually messaged him on LinkedIn. Cause we played footy way back when we were like 12 years old. And we weren't mates back then, but we just knew each other. And just being nice to each other at 12 years old helped me along.
Nathan Bush: Goes a long way.
Mark Broadhead: Yeah. And so I said, hey, look, this is my thing. And he actually had been watching what I'd been doing and he thought I was killing it. And I was like, man, I'm just keen to keep making content. But I just like all the business stuff I'm just not sure of. So they actually just said I had a warehouse at the time, like, rented out a warehouse in Logan behind lskd. And so they then said, move your warehouse into our warehouse, work a couple days a week, and then work the rest of it on your business. So that kind of kept me pretty close to them in their little warehouse back then.
Nathan Bush: And how long till you got absorbed full time into the Beast?
Mark Broadhead: I started in May and then I think in October 1st. I started. Started full time pretty quick. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was moving back then. It just started to. Yeah, move really quickly.
Nathan Bush: And for anyone who doesn't know the Lad Collective, if they missed that episode with Ed and Bill almost 400 episodes ago. Can you share the elevator pitch? What is the Ladd Collective? Obviously, you're in the betting category, which is a crowded category. What makes the Ladd Collective special, which is.
Mark Broadhead: Well, the Lag Collective is kind of first of its kind. So in basic, it is a. It all started with this bed sheet that the boys made that had four corner straps on it. So on the top left, top right, bottom left, bottom right, grab the strap, pull it under the mattress, and it makes it super easy. When we first started, it was all predominantly very male focused, trying to get males to make the bed. One in five Australian men change their sheets only three times a year. So.
Nathan Bush: Such a gross stat. So gross.
Mark Broadhead: Very gross stat. And so that was the kind of K for how it all came to be. Got a lot of PR early on, and then from there, we've been able to go pretty wild. But, yeah, that's kind of the basic elevator pitch. Now we've got a range of. In the last year or so, added so many different products and SKUs, which has been. Yeah, we're. We're heading in a really exciting direction now.
Nathan Bush: And I saw that you were recently over in the U.S. in Texas, of all places.
Mark Broadhead: Yep.
Nathan Bush: What's the play there?
Mark Broadhead: Yeah. So Ed Overton, one of the founders, him and his wife, post wedding, post honeymoon, are moving straight to Austin, Texas. Basically, what we found was we've been in the US For a couple years, and everyone we spoke to, like, you're in Australia, you're running over there. It's hard to. Hard to be when you're. When you're not there. And so. And a lot of some of the bigger businesses we spoke to that had done well. One of the first things that happened was somebody went there and actually lived there and bereaved it. And. And that's what, you know, we want to make this work. It's such a big market for us, and you know, it's the first of its kind over there as well. So Ed, you know, hats off to him. He's. He's taken his whole life and going over there for who knows, indefinitely at this point. But hopefully he does an amazing job and keeps it going. And then. Yeah, we just got back from Austin, Texas. It's an amazing place to kind of go because we did look to San Diego, looked at California, but E Com right now in Austin, Texas is just booming. Like, the amount of ecom people you just bump into at lunch or breakfast over there is incredible.
Nathan Bush: So is that it? Is it just the community, the startup community, the E Comm community, rather than the tax or the access? Well, what is it that makes Texas great?
Mark Broadhead: I think it's obviously the government is the reason why there's so many people. They obviously in the beginning is, you know, tax is a good catalyst, but there's the incentives for businesses over there are, you know, really good and there's a big culture there and it's really good to be surrounded. There's some like the brands over there, the people there. Like, it is just incredible. Like, we're going on a jog and we walked, ran past like Luther Lex, the Friedman.
Nathan Bush: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mark Broadhead: I've been Austin. And then, you know, you're going to see Joe Rogan and guys are doing the night at the comedy show. It's just, it's just. It's kind of crazy. But yeah, it's an awesome place. There's just so much happening. So it's going to be exciting. I think I'm going to be going back and forth a little bit to see Ed. But yeah, we're excited to kind of get the kind of little office set up, starting over there and see what we can do.
Nathan Bush: That's an awesome, awesome spot to be. I was over there for south by Southwest almost 15 years ago and I haven't got back since. And I was like, oh, I really want to get there. Tell me more. Because I want to deep dive. Like, this is going to be a different episode because we're going to deep dive into meta, into creative, into AI because. Because that's the stuff that's really capturing my attention from what you're posting. But before we do, just on the product itself, obviously, four years ago, one of the main questions I had for Ed and Bill was, yes, that's a cool idea around the straps and about labeling, how to make a bed. Obviously that's very copyable. How have you maintained a brand moat around what you're doing because you haven't gone crazy with product. Like you haven't expanded hugely into other areas. You've kept the messaging pretty simple and straightforward. How have you just not been copied and taken over?
Mark Broadhead: It's one of the big things, like, especially when I came on, it was just, how do you just do things that other people aren't willing to do or creatively. If you pulled up every other betting brand and then pulled us up, we just don't look the same, we're not the same. And we move fast creatively and we've built a brand around the style. Like people know us. People go, oh my God, you guys do funny ads. You know, all this type of stuff. And you know, some people say that's not the best moment you can have. But I think in this day and age in E Comm where anyone can kind of copy anyone creative is. Is a place where you can dominate if you have the. Know how to kind of pull that all together. And plus we've built a brand like with the boys. Like people know us. Like if people, people meet Ed out in the street now. I think we did a little test, like, and Ed's run almost half a billion impressions on his face on Meta. So everyone is pretty much in Australia. If you haven't seen Ed, you probably have. You just don't know it.
Nathan Bush: That's what happens when you call Stefanovic's best friend.
Mark Broadhead: It is wild. But we always try to stay on the competitive edge of creative and brand and always pushing the edges because, you know, you can very much end up in one lane where you look like everyone else and you're doing everything like everyone else. And I think there's probably too much of that in the market. Like I have a big thing where I don't look at any other betting brands. Like really all the ads. I just don't do it. I'm looking at your liquid deaths, your Dr. Squatch, all those types of brands. So I'm, I'm looking at other disrupting brands, seeing what they're doing. And that's, that's more where I look. I try not to look too closely at the other guys in our space.
Nathan Bush: Is there anyone disrupting in Australia, do you think, apart from you guys?
Mark Broadhead: Oh, there's plenty. Like Lucent Globe's a great example. They have got an amazing content system that seems to work for them pretty well. I was looking at that ad library the other day. They have like 1300 ads. Lived was pretty crazy, but yeah, they've done really well. Off top of my head, I'm trying to think there's a. In Australia. Like, I think there's all a lot of up and comers, but there's nothing top my head, really.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. But I am interested in hearing more around the positioning first because obviously Lad Collective is saying, we're for lads and we unpack this with Ed and Bill and they were like, actually a large majority of our buyers of women. Especially at that stage, it was mums buying for their sons. As the brand's grown and the targets get bigger, how do you not be limited to the Lad branding? Even if your tone is very male, how do you make sure that you've got that full market exposure?
Mark Broadhead: It's a really interesting predicament that we even find ourselves in all the time talking about the Lag Collective, but the name itself is disruptive. If you say the Lag Collective, everyone's like, bed sheets, like, what? And then it makes someone go and look. And I think one thing that I think a lot of people probably do, like, our biggest buyer is your mom. Probably that 45 to 60 range at the moment, like, well, anywhere between 35 and 60, like, we're around that zone. 65 plus is getting bigger for us. But the buyer, like, everyone puts a mum, I think when as a marketer, everyone goes, oh, mom, that's a safe, reliable character. Like, that's their type of avatar. But, like, people are so, like, people just don't think about the mom. Like we do really crazy, funny, like content. And they love. And we've been able to. I always say that a lot of the. The moms are falling in love with the boys and like, we do push a lot and they always see they almost a lot of them ring like Ed still take calls to this day and they always, like, you know, they see their own sons in the boy. So that buying the mom. I think a lot of people, yeah, put them into this one little stereotype where you can't, oh, how would they be buying off? You know, these silly ads and stuff like that. But it's like there's so many different versions of someone's mum. Like it's categorized, I think, too niche and you can go so wide.
Nathan Bush: So when it comes to brand then. And you've still got to capture the mums and the female part of the audience, but you still have a very specific brand tone and creative style. How do you put boundaries on where you will and where you won't go?
Mark Broadhead: The boundaries is something we don't really talk about or do we pretty much in my world have the freedom to kind of go and see where we can find new pockets and that's in this day and age. With Meta, you've got to be honed in on your creative to find those new pockets now. And we test so many random ideas. Testing is everything to us. Like we are willing to make so many different styles of ads, do so much say and do so many different things and we have this thing like I've always believed that if you, you know, if you piss off 80% of Australia, that means 20% love you and 20%, pretty big number. So if you put yourself into a box now, especially creatively, especially on Meta, you are just not going to get that extra reach and those extra, extra customers that you're going to need. You just need to be willing to, I think, go outside of the norm, especially on creative, because that's how you're going to open up your targeting. And you know, it's so hard. It's getting, I've been saved. Everyone saying it's getting easier, it's getting harder when you're letting Meta choose where it's going to go. Like you think you've made an ad for a mother, but you might have made it for some 18 year old in South Australia. Like you just don't know. So you've just got to hedge your bets and make as much content as you can and make it as different as you can.
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Mark Broadhead: Yeah. That's why when you were saying, like boundaries, like we don't test the boundaries in like, yeah, those really like harmful type of ways that can happen with your brand and you know, you're getting canceled and stuff like that. We just have, yeah. This cheeky, fun side to our marketing that is inherently us.
Nathan Bush: Like, just don't be boring.
Mark Broadhead: Yeah, just don't be boring. And it is like Ed has taught me a lot about copy and how that can really change the game for you. You can make any piece of content, but if you can put the right words with it and make someone feel something in a way just with your copy, like it can be done with. Some of our biggest ads are just come from just a really good piece of copy that gets people talking. And that's. Yeah. Ed around copy is. Yeah. Is someone that I've always kind of. I look up to how he does his copy because it's just. It's awesome.
Nathan Bush: That's awesome. How many ads would you be running at any one time in meta right now?
Mark Broadhead: Actually checked this morning. It's about 205 right now live.
Nathan Bush: Okay. And across how many campaigns campaign wise?
Mark Broadhead: Right now I think we're running about six campaigns in Meta. Our complete ad setup up changes all the time. It is never static. It's never the same thing. Especially with Andromeda and especially with the changes over the last, like, since I started, like, we. We name all our campaigns by number. So we have like number one, like when I started and that was like the first iteration. So like one to five is like with five campaigns, we're up to like I think 252 and like 260. So it's like that's how we've come in so many iterations. And I think you've always got to be. You can't ever get stuck on the same thing. And the way meta's going, you always got to be adapting and changing your style of your campaigns. But I like to run a more simplified setup. I've actually, I'm in the process right now of trying to figure that out. The more skus we go with. Yeah. I've been mentored by a few people like the likes of James, he ran Culture Kings, spent over 100 million. I did a bit with him for about two years, just mentoring and, you know, he was running 1500 SKUs a week. And that baffles me. Like, how do you. How do you run a ad account to that? And it's quite difficult. So, yeah, the more SKUs you get, the more harder obviously is to run an ad account due to obviously AOV on per product and how you split it out. Where in a beautiful world, you'd have one campaign and it does the job and you sell all the products evenly and everything's fine and the merch team loves you, but that just isn't always the case because as everyone's probably learned over the last year or two, if you have one ad that dominates, that's the SKU that's going to sell the most and that then causes problems downstream. And so no matter what, you're always battling, changing and just trying to make sure we're all heading in the right direction.
Nathan Bush: How many SKUs are you working with now?
Mark Broadhead: Oh, I actually, off the top of my head, I don't know. But I think we're at like, core products. We've probably got 10 to 15 core products and then they've all got colors and SKUs and everything is. That's where it starts to get a bit crazy. But as product, we're like, yeah, would recently come out with cooling blankets, pillows, mattress toppers, mattress protectors, towels, different styles of bedding materials.
Nathan Bush: Just spreading your dirty sheets all through
Mark Broadhead: the house quite quickly.
Nathan Bush: I just want to understand a little bit more around your current thinking around campaigns, because I think that's interesting where you're like, this has evolved so much and I'm actually just redoing them now. Again, are you still thinking that traditional format of top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, bottom of the funnel, conversion, traffic awareness, or is your thinking evolved beyond that?
Mark Broadhead: It's a mixture of everything and it's hard. I could imagine, like, starting out now, how hard it would be due to the amount of people going, oh, do this, do that. Like I always say, like, people just get one good win and they go, oh, this is how it all works. And it's just not like that. Everyone's so different, every account so different. You've got to really think about your business as a whole before you even start thinking about how you're going to run this system. So with funnels, like, obviously early days when I started, that's, that was the jam. But obviously with andromeda especially, like, that's just not the case. But I think the best error for me was when it had like the 5% caps and you weren't worried about your audiences. You could just put a 5% cap on and it was happy days.
Nathan Bush: What do you mean by 5% cap?
Mark Broadhead: So back in the day, about a year or two ago, you could run just like an Advantage campaign and then you could cap within that campaign how much it was going to spend on existing audiences. And in essence, I even put my hand up. It made me lazy when that transitioned out because you weren't looking at your audiences as much because you really didn't need to because you knew that it was spending 5% where now, like with the new systems. Yeah, you've really got to stay on top of your frequencies. I know, I've spoken to a lot of people. Like, frequencies is a bigger problem. The bigger you get, especially in Australia, the audience is not being as big. And so, yeah, you just gotta be really, really on that side. And so with the funnels now, like, we do a lot of exclusions, really heavy exclusions into cold campaigns, which is really scary because it's not gonna look the way you want it to look. But obviously we have a daily P and L. We know if it's working or not. So we don't necessarily trust too much in platform where we're pretty honed in on, you know, do we make money? Did we not? What's myrrh? Those are just things with every single day in the morning we're looking at to make decisions throughout the day.
Nathan Bush: Are you using an intermediary measurement platform or have you got the. The platform, the meta stats and then your business results in Shopify, are you using anything in between to interpret?
Mark Broadhead: So we have our own, like designed like daily P and L. That's like our bible. But then we do use triple whale and obviously we look at data through Shopify as well. But I use triple whale pretty much every day as well. I kind of use it daily because, like, if I'm spending, you know, a few grand and it's all gone crazy in the morning and then triple whale is going to be able to tell me if that's actually working or not. I think the hardest thing is when you get to a heavy level of scale, like in the. If you can just spend quite heavily in certain times and some ads can go relatively rogue and it's happening more and more often. So it's just having triple whale as a kind of a backstop to make sure. It's actually working because obviously attribution, you might not know too soon and you can get in a little bit of trouble there. But. Well, kind of is a bit of a backstop to kind of help me make sure that ads is actually working and not just going ridiculous for no reason.
Nathan Bush: Because there's a school of thought, isn't there? Around got to let your ads do their thing and let them work for a bit to get the right results because it will skew to different creatives. There's another school of thought going actually. You can't wait for the machine. You've got to get in there and trade it. Where are you at? Is it more of an inventory concern that you've got to make sure that you've got inventory?
Mark Broadhead: There's always concerns on the way I used to, we used to be in it every day making changes especially. It's so funny. Ed kind of stepped out of Meta and I run the Meta in Australia now. But he's kind of jumping back into do some of the US side and he's like, can't believe how much it's changed since he was in there.
Nathan Bush: Can't believe how much more money we're giving them.
Mark Broadhead: Yeah, I know. We used to tinker so much when now it's a lot less tinkering, a lot more waiting, looking at the data and then obviously making a decision where like back in the day. Yeah. If you didn't get the right CPA on the right ad, like, you know, I gotta cut it. Where now it's like you've kind of got to let it spin and like it's so interesting now. Like a lot of the best performing ads, like there's days where it's like it's spending a lot of money. It's not picking up necessarily, but it's bringing in a lot of cold for the lower ad. Like the ads that aren't spending a lot seem to pick up a lot of the ads. A lot of purchases now, super high rod and like return and low CPAs and stuff like that. But they're not the ads driving all those people. So it's just everyone would turn these ads that were just kind of just spending a heap of money and not really converting and people were just turning them off. Where now you kind of have to like use your things like triple whale and your daily PNLs to kind of make sure that if this ad is spending that's actually, you know, yielding results elsewhere.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, I had that conversation with a couple of clients and Retailers last year where they had really quiet months during the year, they kept spending in Meta and they were getting great impressions and great reach, but not getting the conversions that they normally had. But then when it came to peak season in Black Friday, all of them started converting. So it was like this long game that they didn't know they were playing, but it paid off for them at Black Friday.
Mark Broadhead: Yeah, we play a bit of that now, like because over the last like obviously leading up and end of financial year, you kind of like we're trying to go a lot colder and really open up that reach, like without even doing hype, just using what you've got and going really cold. We saw it work really well in after pay day as well. It's just the lead up obviously it's hard to do because you've got to have a bit of the right risk rewards set up and hopefully, you know, it's like right now I think we're going into end of financial year and it's like, you know, you're praying everything that we did that we hypothetically thought would work is going to work. But I think it's almost like if you're a gambler, it's kind of what it is. It's just every day you're kind of, you're gambling and you're hoping that you get the results that you need.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's been your best creative performer? I want to get into like some of your executions because they're so cool. What's been your best one so far?
Mark Broadhead: We've, I think over. I've actually I was doing some research on some of the stuff that we've done over the past little bit and we've made about 15,000 ads I've been with sure about in the last four years and then. But it's so funny, like your strike rate on that isn't. You know, it's probably below 10%. So we have these things called like unicorn ads and we've probably had about less than 10 that you like really, really scale and really just go nuts. And like these are the type ads you put in and you just smash results. Like you just couldn't believe it.
Nathan Bush: 10 out of 15,000.
Mark Broadhead: Yeah, proper. Yeah, proper unicorn. Like these scaling and like we had one like run for like two years and we just kept it in and they just kept yielding results. But when the first like three months of this ad, it was just like incredible. And I think I've posted on LinkedIn there is an ad on my LinkedIn that I posted like one of our best ads. So me and Ed with ads, like when we come up, we always try once a quarter, we try and come up with a bunch of like really high done, like ads off an iPhone, really. But we scripted out and we talked through it and the ideas and the biggest one we ever had is if you ever Google if thread count is real or not, it's actually like a marked myth. And then we'd realize that no one had ever talked about it. And we were like, everyone thinks that this is a thing. And so when you find something like that, it's just such a nugget in. If you're in any niche you're in, if you can find something that everyone thinks is a truth and then you can derail that. And then that is just the biggest, you know, stop gap you can get on someone to like get hooked in. And it was a minute.
Nathan Bush: You better be careful though. The Egyptians are going to come for you.
Mark Broadhead: We have dressed Bill up in a mummy and we've done all that type of stuff. We've toilet paper TP'd him and everything. They'd be coming for us already.
Nathan Bush: So of those 10 unicorns, can you bring to life one or two of them to kind of showcase what they look like?
Mark Broadhead: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've got. The one is we went to just a shopping mall and there's times where going out into public just always seems to work. Like if you go out into public, the viewer knows that you're in public and it's almost like a cringe thing that they're watching that you're in public and like, oh my God. But they work like so well. And so we, we would go into shopping centers and kind of demyst what thread count was within shopping centers. And I think the goal we had this ad, it was about a minute and a half long. Probably one of the best ads we've ever done. And for the first 45 seconds, we didn't mention our product once. And those are the type of ads that if you can get someone to get to 45 seconds in, they don't know why they're watching you. That's where you get to see a lot of gold. Like, yeah, we did this whole ad.
Nathan Bush: Do they still convert without the product in it?
Mark Broadhead: That one today, that ad. Not anymore. That was probably. We probably found that one about two years ago. Yeah. Okay. Every now and then when I get. If results aren't going my way, I might just turn it on to see if it's still got A bit of life in it.
Nathan Bush: Go back to your unicorn stable and pull one out.
Mark Broadhead: Yeah, yeah, yeah. When everything gets really like, messy, like, I'm just gonna bring back whatever I can to see if we can get this going again.
Nathan Bush: We've all been there, right?
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Nathan Bush: of your posts is about people are shy to repost their creative and you said on one of them you were like, I've reposted this, like, what was it, eight times in a day or something?
Mark Broadhead: Yeah, I think there's an organic post that I've posted like, I think it's like over 500 times now. And it's ridiculous. It's just this really American heavy soundtrack. It's like a guy announcing something at the nascar. So the reason I can keep posting this thing on trial reels is.
Nathan Bush: What's that on trial reels?
Mark Broadhead: Yeah, trial reels on Instagram. Not everyone has it. We were just lucky we have it and I talk about it and I didn't realize that not everyone has it. And everyone's like trying to hit me up to figure out how to do this. The copy is just two brothers have invented bed sheets that your husband needs to see. It goes for seven seconds.
Nathan Bush: Oh yeah. So simple.
Mark Broadhead: You can, you can hear it. And so like, as you can see, I've posted that. Just a whole heap. It just keeps going.
Nathan Bush: So that's not going to the feed?
Mark Broadhead: No. So trial reels goes to people that haven't seen you before. That's the whole concept of Instagram trial reels. They did figure out people like me were doing this and they, like, trying to, like, stop you. Like, you could, at one point, you could do it unlimited. And I took well advantage of that. Like, one of them got, like, 30,000 followers. It was like, crazy. Like, on Instagram, I think one of them did, like, 20 miles. And so it just went nuts. And then, like, every time I post it, like, there's a. There's probably been. Out of, like, the 500, probably a hundred of them have gotten over a million views each. Like, they just go nuts. Some of these. It's just the same video over and over again. And yeah, I posted that on LinkedIn and everyone was thinking I was crazy, but actually people have reached out to me saying that they're doing it. And it's just like. Because, like, if you post something, like, the way the algorithm works is, like, nowadays it's only going to show it, like, organically to a small percentage of your followers, and a very, very small percentage of people haven't seen you before. And then it kind of like, adds those results together and goes, will this go and reach people? And so with a trial reel, if you've got a video that you made five years ago that did really, really well, there's a high percentage chance that it can do really, really well again because there's, like, there's so many people. It's just. It can find more and more and more people.
Nathan Bush: So that's a great tip.
Mark Broadhead: Yeah, it depends now that they do have a cap on, like, posting it 25 times a day. So now I can only post it once a month. They put a cap on it because they know you've duplicated it. But I can still get. Always trying to figure ways around the old algorithm.
Nathan Bush: I reckon they've got cameras in your room now, watching.
Mark Broadhead: Well, that's the thing. They roll out all these new features, and when they roll out new features, it's just the best time to kind of get, like, because they just want people to use it. And so if you. If you use it and you can figure out a hack around it to get it to really scale, it's really fun.
Nathan Bush: Do you get early access now because you're such, like, a super user?
Mark Broadhead: Yeah, we get a lot of early access stuff we got given, like, we've gone on a really good run of posting organically and doing quite well. Like, we posted one, like, three weeks ago, and it's done, like, it's Almost. I think it's on 19 mil now. And so luckily over the years, like we've gone on like a lot of big runs of viral stuff. Like Meta gave us a. You get like a bump in your engagement, so your engagement rate, they'll put it up higher and show. So every post we do get shown to more people, like without going through pages. So it's an interesting thing that came up.
Nathan Bush: How are you thinking about content buckets? So in terms of hi fi content first, maybe UGC versus Influencer, Are you splitting up your efforts?
Mark Broadhead: So everything we do is just a pillar and usually how it kind of goes is you start with basically an image. For us it's like so let's say like an ad that did really well for us. I don't know if you've seen it says where Australia's most expensive bed sheets said by Darren from like Bondi or something. And so that, that's the image like so me and Ed sat in a room half an hour gone, you know, what's a new idea we can do? And then that's the idea. We put a bit of copy on an ad, put it in the ad account. If it works. All right, we've got a Street Talk pillar. So what's going on the street? Let's just tell people with Australia's most expensive bed sheet, let's put it into a UGC concept and get people to say, oh, I think these are Australia's most expensive bed sheets. Another pillar would be us saying it in a video like foundled and then another pillar. And then the thing is like, because everyone back in the day was like getting an ad and they're just making little versions of it of the same thing. But it's like if you look at all your pillars from street talk to founder led to UGC to like non verbal. So like just people talking like, just like with copy over the video. And then you got your green screen. They're all their own pillar and you can make that one piece of copy that you put in an ad, go across your entire range and way and hit different audiences because you are lots of different styles. So that's how I kind of look at it. And everyone's always like, oh, you know, this is working at the moment or this is working at the moment. And I always say like, everyone was like, oh, founder led is dying or it's working. It's not dying or working. It's like if you made a good ad, it's going to work like no matter what pillar, it's in. If it's good, it will, it will work. And that's why people get really hooked into a lot of the rhetoric. Because yes, like some theme might work really well because like someone's copied someone and it's worked and everyone copies it, but then everyone's in this thing and everyone's seen it and it gets moved on. So but if you made a very good version of the copy that everyone else is making, it's probably going to do really well still.
Nathan Bush: I really like that because the way I've heard it described before, which I like as well, similar to your idea is that you have one strong idea which could be most expensive and then you almost have franchises. So you like we do street talk and we always do street talk in this style so that when people see another street talk video, they kind of know what's coming. It's like that TV familiarity, like whenever you had a segment come on the footy show or whatever it was, it was like, I kind of know what this is going to be, but I don't know what the actual content's going to be. So whether it's founder, whether it's influencer, it's like there are little franchises of content that we have that we can insert our ideas into.
Mark Broadhead: Yeah, well, it's just the, it's the best way, especially in the Andromeda world because everyone back in the day was like, oh, change a three second hook or do this. And that's how you make one ad, 10 ads. But really visually it needs to be different. Like, like we're seeing it a lot now. Like it's like we have like a few main UGC people that we work with and like their bedroom's the same. And so the Andromeda is like almost picking up that, that's the same style even though it's filmed on a different day. She might be wearing a different outfit or something like that, but it's like the same bedroom. So it's still using the same like technology to kind of figure out, okay, this is who this person's for because of this bedroom. So it's like, okay, so we're really trying to bulk up our UGC and as much people as we can because the more variety, the more chance you're going to land in this Andromeda world. So like I said, try and get
Nathan Bush: content out on Meta. When you're filming in the same studio every week,
Mark Broadhead: that's the difficult thing. It's like you're seeing people are struggling with this, like with this Andromeda, because creative is so important and you're seeing everyone hire creative strategists and all these different creative people now because it's just so important. And it's also interesting about the changes of creative strategists and people. I think everyone back in the day is probably, you know, you needed to be a videographer and you're really good and you're quite like really into that space where now it's like my world is. I'm kind of crazy where I go from creative and then I run the ad account as well. So I'm kind of like data creative. I'm a. I'm a videographer. Like, I use my camera and then I use my iPhone and then I'm on Canva making ads and Figma making ads. And so you've got to have this like, range of what you can do now.
Nathan Bush: There's the range internally, but then there's also this weird thing that I've been thinking a lot about recently is because I'm an ex ad agency guy and you'd used to, you know, go create these ads and they'd cost you anywhere between half a mil to a few mil to make an ad. And now we're like, actually, Jenny from Boondle, go have this product and go create me three different ads for it.
Mark Broadhead: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: And we'll pay you 500 bucks for each. And then we'll put $10,000 in ad spend behind each of them.
Mark Broadhead: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: And you're like, how did we get here so quickly?
Mark Broadhead: It's. Yeah, it is such a. What? Like when I started, it was so hard yet to even fathom some of the prices that people were wanting to. To get paid for with like a lot of their videos and stuff like that, when now it's obviously so much more easily accessible. And yeah, we're, we're really trying to bulk up. Like I said, we got 200 ads live. Like, my goal is to get that to near a thousand. So we really, like, the content is everything for us at the moment. It always has been. And we're just looking, how do we expand on that?
Nathan Bush: And is that a struggle with content creators and influencers? Because it's still a very manual process to manage them.
Mark Broadhead: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it is. There's things coming out in America, not so much in Australia, so there's still a lot of manual stuff and a lot of outreach and systems like that. But our system, we're working pretty well. We've kind of gone this weird run where people are seeing Us use a lot of UGC now and then they're reaching out and then we get customer service to get them to fill in that A form. And that's kind of working stuff. Starting to work really, really well for us now.
Nathan Bush: How good is it when you get in that loop of its real customers who are reaching out to be content creators for you?
Mark Broadhead: Oh, yeah, a hundred percent. And you need a range of content too. Like, me and Ed had a conversation earlier today where. And so one of our designers thought it was quite weird. I was like, oh, the ad's not that good. But I was like, oh, I think it might work. And everyone's like, what do you mean? Because, like, if you get super, super lo fi where it looks terrible, there's sometimes these like little, like people would not put these in their ad account. But I'm like, I've seen just the worst things work really well. Like, I have this rule like anyone that gives us anything. It's like, if you give me something, There is a 99.9 chance I'm going to put it in the ad account just to find out. I don't really say no. I tried to give very little feedback because I've always said, like, I have no idea what's going to work. I have no idea what's right, what's wrong. Like, as long as it's like we're talking about what our product is or. Yeah. With something related to us, like, let's try it because it might work. I think there is a lot of gatekeepers in our world where a lot of people like looking at stuff and that. Perfectionists. I'm super far from a perfectionist. I'm a very test and learn and figure it out on the run. And yeah, there's a lot of different takes on that. But yeah, I pretty much will not say no to any ad.
Nathan Bush: I love that. Because there's no point arguing before it goes live. Right. Like someone's going to be wrong anyway. Tell me about the other end of that scale. So I saw that you recently partnered up with Shelly Croft from the world of Shelly Craft. Oh my God, she's going to kill me. You can tell. What was she on? She was the block. Was she on the block?
Mark Broadhead: She used to do Australia's Funniest Home Videos for anyone. Like. Yeah, yeah, she's awesome. She's incredible. Yeah. So lucky to work with her. We've done a big photo shoot with her already and there's a few extra things coming. We like our long term relationships with Shelley and we're, yeah, really got a few things in the pipeline with her that are pretty exciting. A little collaboration with some sheets that she'll put her name to as well, which is really exciting and it's. It is awesome that, like, someone like her put her faith in us and like the Lad Collective, which. It's an interesting brand and name and someone like her who's in the decor space, in the design space, really loves our product and is more than happy to work with us, which is just awesome.
Nathan Bush: Is that a big part of the strategy to balance out the lo Fi, to keep the brand elevated and seen as be big, to have these big partnerships?
Mark Broadhead: Yeah, I think we're always in this battle, like, we'll never lose. Our goal is to never lose who we are and what we do. Because that's disruption is everything. And it's almost disruptive us signing someone like Shelley Craft because everyone looks at the Lad Collective and a lot of people kind of write us off just because of the name itself.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
Mark Broadhead: And then you get someone like Shelley Craft and the Lad Collective, everyone's like, how the. What are these brothers from Brizzy doing? Like, it's just. It baffles people. And I think a lot of people probably, like, write us off in a lot of cases because of just the name itself. It's interesting because we actually have a very premium product and we have a, you know, a customer base that is super loyal, loves the product and, you know, that's half the battle in all of this. And then it's just growing it, growing your reach. You know, on Meta, there's only so much you really can do. I think we've lapped Australia a lot, like over and over and over again. So it's just like, how do you find those other buyers that are, you know, not your online buyers that, you know, are on there, but then they see someone like Shelly Craft and it really puts that reputation, like, for us, it puts us up there and yeah, it's going to be mixing our lo fi and our. All our content on social and then doing these bigger activations that we can then obviously get a whole new audience that we can show our other, other world. And, like, we've got, yeah, big things in the pipeline, like, yeah, we did obviously, Robert Irwin.
Nathan Bush: Robert Irwin.
Mark Broadhead: Robert Irwin. So that was just one of the wildest experiences we've ever come up with. Is incredible. To actually get to work with him and shoot with him on location at Australia Zoo. And, yeah, we're just the. The PR off the back of that. And the commercial itself is just incredible.
Nathan Bush: And for our female listeners. Did you set him up like the Bonds commercial?
Mark Broadhead: No, no, we kept it pretty tame, but there's a lot of animals and a lot of fun. And when you see. It's going to be an amazing piece of content that, yeah, we're really, really excited with and really happy with, and we think, yeah, it's going to help us bridge that gap in the US to get our name.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
Mark Broadhead: As hard and quickly as possible. And we hope they. They love it. We've. We've made some Australian versions of the ad, made some US versions of the ad, and, yeah, it's going to be awesome. And then we've got a lot of the social content that will roll out as well, which is really fun. And he's an amazing human being and, yeah, we really look up to him and he's just. Yeah, it's awesome to work with him.
Nathan Bush: That's amazing. That seems like lightning in the bottle, like perfect timing from a US perspective. And he's just great personality. I can see how he aligns so well. But Sunshine coast base as well.
Speaker C: So there's.
Mark Broadhead: Yeah, yeah, there was a bit of a. Like, the boys obviously were born in Atherton and up in Cairns and kind of adventurers themselves. They love their fishing, their surfing and all the like. So it's just like a bit of a match made in heaven on that side. And again, down to Ed and Bill being relentless on, you know, to land someone like Robert Owen. It's not the easiest thing to do.
Nathan Bush: He's like, fine, I'll do your stupid ad if you stop calling me Ed.
Mark Broadhead: But it's the thing. I just. They, you know, the. The way the boys communicate and work with some of these people is just incredible to see. And, you know, it's really. Yeah. Come together really, really well.
Nathan Bush: That's awesome. Mark, do you realize that we've spoken for almost 50 minutes and neither of us have. I don't think we have really said the AI word.
Mark Broadhead: Well, that's what. That's why you reached out to me with me little FBI.
Nathan Bush: I've really screwed up this interview because the one thing I reached out to you to talk about, we haven't even talked about.
Speaker C: Tell me about that.
Nathan Bush: As you know, 15,000 pieces of content, you've got 200 ads live. What role is AI playing? I'm really keen to unpack. Is it from an operational perspective in helping you systemize the amount of creative that you get out there, or is it in the actual Creative of the ad.
Mark Broadhead: Yeah, it's interesting. It's just another pillar that we've added to our mix that we do. It's just if you make an ad like this, you've got to go and make an ad like this because it's just part of the pillars now. And I think AI, I've gone to a few things and spoken to a few people and a lot of people are like, oh, scared to use it. But our whole thing is if, if we make it and you know it's fake and we know it's fake and we're just having fun, like it's okay. People are okay to see AI out there in the world. And I think it's really like from a creative lens, like it's so much fun because like me and Ed were big Family Guy, south park, like skits and stuff like that. And that's what we love. That's like when we're really making content. That's where our heads are at. And so coming up with a skit. You can just do it now so quickly because you're like, I can get people that look like a movie like if you look at that FBI one. That was just. I had this idea, I was like, oh, I wanted to dress the boys up in costumes and go into some bloke's bedroom and like. And I was like, oh, it's going to be, it's going to be like a nightmare to get together. And I was like, oh, I'll just. I went on was a Higsfield. I, I think I made that in about 30 minutes.
Nathan Bush: You've got to explain it because I've seen it. That was the post that made me reach out to you finally.
Mark Broadhead: Yeah. So Higgs Field now you can pretty much nearly make. People are making movies on it which is like, like wild. Like the Higgs Field team are obviously making like full feature length films and stuff like that. And they're actually like pretty good. So I was just like. And they've given their system on like how to use it and so. And with prompting. It's so funny. Like now it's how lazy we're getting. We're just asking another AI to do the prompt. Yeah, done for that system. And then it goes and makes a perfect prompt and then we're just writing the script. So I was like, I want police, I want FBI to rock up at this guy's house and they're going to take him to an interview and they're going to like. And it just. We were watching it so far, I was so ecstatic about it. I was like, everyone in the office, I gave them and I was like making them watch and I was like, it's so funny. But, yeah. Which is AI. It's not going to take over everything we're going to do on that. On the creative front, it's just a whole nother pillar. There's some audiences out there that will convert only through AI videos. And that's just a thing that. A piece of a pocket that you've got to reach. So. And you know, if, like us, we're lucky, we're in the disruption space where we can go a lot harder with the AI.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I understand.
Mark Broadhead: Like, there's. There's some limits to some people, but we're in the disruption space. If we can do it, we'll. We'll do it. And yeah, there's plenty more to come on that. I'll be trying to post all the crazy ideas I come up with, but most of it's just. We just love skits and we love just trying to just do silly things and people find it funny and engaging. That's just a benefit of just letting our.
Nathan Bush: That's the game.
Mark Broadhead: Yeah, yeah.
Nathan Bush: Did you put paid performance behind that FBI one?
Mark Broadhead: Yeah, didn't pump. It's so funny. Everyone LinkedIn was going, oh, this is incredible, this is funny. And then I put in ads and I was like, oh, it's work, I
Nathan Bush: suppose, out of context, too, because most people seeing on LinkedIn will know. You will know the brand will know where you've been. So if you see it just out of context by itself, it might not land as well.
Mark Broadhead: Yeah, yeah. But then my goal is to try and make one work. And so we've made, like, plenty of different AI stuff that has worked before. It's just one of those, like that. That was like a. Probably like a 45 to a minute full movie clip that look like at some stages. And we're determined to try and make some of those work because this. But it's just so easy and it's like, if that works, it's like, okay, can we do that in real life? Like, then it's just. That's how you just break down your pillars again and again and again. It's just constantly making something that works and then reframing it in different ways that look different and will appeal to different audiences, even though it's the same message.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Apart from Higgs Field, what are the AI tools that you're really using either in managing meta or in creating for
Mark Broadhead: meta, Kive is something that the team's starting to use a lot now. We've used a bunch of different ones, but Kive seems to be the one that the team seems to like the most. I use a lot of claw design for a lot of images now, even though it's really clunky and the limits are horrible. Yeah, it's really frustrating because it can make really good stuff. It's just like, yes, every fortnight, then you've got like, meta AI. Everyone goes, oh, I'm not using meta AI. Meta. And I. Me and Ed love it. We think it's the funniest, really, because it just does the dumbest. Like, sometimes it makes really dumb, like, versions. We were like, that's kind of funny. Like, it's so funny. Like, a lot of our content is just me and Ed going, what if. Like, like, what if it worked? And then it's like. And we will test that. So, yeah, meta AI is really interesting. And then they just. They just launched Meta Video Generations, which is played around too much yet. So that'll probably come pretty soon once we figure that out. But that's. We all just test so much. Like, whatever we hear, we'd be like the boys, the, like, collective. Like, everyone has the. You know, if you want to get a subscription to AI, like, we get it. We just try figure it out. You know, when I first started, I think I showed Bill Chatgpt and now he's like. We call him. He's a bit of a lobster because he's just like. He is open claw. Like, it's just like, we are. Yeah, we're so. Because we're a very lean team. So I think there's seven people in the office.
Nathan Bush: Okay.
Mark Broadhead: And so we're very lean. So if any. Any help that we can get, like, we all pretty much redline. And if any help we can get, it's always, you know, such a boost. So AI is just a big. Just a big part of. I think it's in most people's lives. And what we do is it's becoming bigger and bigger. It's just obviously. Yeah, it's. What do you use? There's so many out there. We've trialed so many. But yeah, Higgs Field's really good, I think, because you can connect that to your Claude McPs. Yeah. So it works. You can like, even create ads of just, like, prompts from a. When you're on your telegram and stuff like that, which is really, really fun. And yeah, we really testing what we can. And every time there's a new thing, we trial it and see how we go.
Nathan Bush: That's awesome. It sounds like you've got the funnest job in the world, mate.
Mark Broadhead: I have. I've so lucky. It's so funny. Like, I'm not a very like super structured like as a creative. Like, it's so me and Ed are very similar. Like we used to do things where you're like, okay, we're gonna, at this hour, we're gonna go sit in a room and we'll make an ad. And we really struggled. Like if you tell a creative person, like, you've got to come up with an ad, like right now, like, like most of our, like me and Ed will call each other at like 7:30 at night. Like, oh my God, you don't, you don't want to believe. I just thought of in the shower. Like that's being out in the world. Like we always come back from breaks, like pretty vital, like seeing things differently as well. And we've got some really good people around us as well that help us, you know, create all this madness. And you know, even our designers now, late collectors, come a long way from mine and Ed's crazy content to if you look from seeing us on social, we're really trying to get you to click and get you there. And then we do sell a premium product at a premium price and it's a product that people are coming back for. Like our returning customer rate is incredible for betting and you know, we're really bullish that we have an amazing product. So we've gone through this phase in the last year of really making the website a lot better, a lot more polished. On the photography side of the actual product as well has come leaps and bounds from, from back in the day,
Nathan Bush: we forgot to talk about e commerce and websites, didn't we?
Mark Broadhead: Yeah. Big part of the game.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Mark, this has been fascinating. I love it. And I just love picking up the conversation from where we had with Ed and Bill. As you said, just two amazing founders that are thinking differently, willing to try stuff, pushing the boundaries. And I can see why with, with people like you on the team who are willing to get in and get your hands dirty and try things and fail in some and find those unicorns occasionally. That was really great to hear. So thank you so much for joining us on Add to Cart. For people who might want to follow the journey and get all your crazy experiments, what's the best place to find you?
Mark Broadhead: Just mark broadhead on LinkedIn and obviously anything the lad collective does on Instagram
Nathan Bush: or Facebook Mate, you're a legend. Thank you so much for joining us on Add to Cart.
Mark Broadhead: Thank you very much.
Nathan Bush: How cool was that? If you haven't seen what we've been doing talking about with Mark, go and visit his LinkedIn profile. We'll put the link into the show notes where he actually posts some of those pieces of content, such as the FBI video and the one that he posted 500 times in a row. Three lessons that I want you to take away from this one. Number one, don't just look at your category for inspiration. Actually, first thing you should do is look outside of it. Mark doesn't study what other betting brands are doing. He's watching liquid des and Dr. Squatch. The brands that break out of their categories do it by borrowing from adjacent spaces, not by benchmarking against whoever's sitting next to them in market. If your creative reference point is your nearest competitor, you'll probably end up just looking exactly like them.
Speaker C: Look outside of this to push the
Nathan Bush: boundaries and to really break the market. Secondly, the unicorn rule. I love this one. Markers run right roughly 15,000 pieces of creative over four years and found about 10 of them that really cut through that really went viral.
Speaker C: 10.
Nathan Bush: Now, if you're not finding the ad that works, the answer might not be a better strategy or more expensive production. It might just be that you're not putting enough content out there to find your unicorns. You don't know which one is the unicorn until you publish it. As Mark said, he never steps in of front front of any idea. Even if he doesn't think it's a great idea, he'd rather test it first. Some of the ideas or the creative that you're less confident about are actually going to be the ones that land. They could be your unicorns. And thirdly, the tools, the AI tools. If you want to start experimenting with AI in your ad creative production. Mark gave a great one start with Meta. He loves playing around with Meta, even if the quality is not always up to standard. But it's. It's right there in the account, ready to go. And he talked a lot about using Higgs Field especially for that AI video production because it is purpose built for ad format video. Higgs Field lets you generate multiple product ad variants very quickly. Different scenes, different talents, different angles, all from one brief. Which means that you can test more angles and more creative ideas without a shoot budget, behind everyone, or even convincing your founders or your boss to dress up like an FBI cop. It's a very low barrier to entry. It's all brand new. As you heard from Mark, he's only been playing around with it for the last six months. Just get into it, start learning and you'll pick it up really, really quickly. A big thank you again to our partners at Shopify and Klaviyo for making Add to Cart possible. We really appreciate their support. If there's one thing that you can do for us, it is leave a review on your favorite platform, whether that be Spotify, Apple, or anywhere else. Ideally a favorable one.
Speaker C: That'd be great.
Nathan Bush: Until next time, I'll see you on ad.
