Creating ads that hook, convert and make money (with Quentin from Stride Up)

The first thing you need to know is that a good hook rate is thirty percent. If, from a creative point of view, you don't work on the hook and then, from that thirty percent, which is a good rate, you drop to ten percent, that's huge. And if you can't even attract the user, there's no way you're going to convince them. Hello, you're listening to the podcast about e-commerce. Once a month, I host an inspirational figure from the French e-commerce ecosystem for a friendly, unpretentious discussion on the subjects they're passionate about. The aim is to decipher e-commerce trends and share practical tips for making your e-shop a success. I'm Joseph Aubry, co-founder of Loyoly, the loyalty and sponsorship platform that lets you engage your customers through more than fifty mechanisms, sharing, user content, customer reviews and much more to increase your LTV and decrease your cac. If you like Loyoly talks, subscribe and feel free to leave us five stars on Apple Podcasts or Spotify to support us. Happy listening. A lot has happened in thirty minutes. It may seem like we're starting the episode. But in fact, a lot has happened. Right now, we've done everything. We dropped all the plants. We won a plant. We vacuumed. We're already into it, listen, it's great. Anyway, Quentin, I'm really happy to have you on the podcast. And, by the way, you're not on unfamiliar ground today, because for the record, these are the old Striked up offices. Exactly. A year and a half here, I worked right here, so it's true that it's nostalgic. Thanks for inviting me. Sure thing. No, but it's so cool. Today, we're going to be able to talk about a lot of subjects. So, we're going to talk a little bit about Amazon, ads, content, obviously UGC because that's also your part, you're going to explain to us in more detail what you do. Social networks, there's some advice, so it's going to be, once again, I think, a pretty enriching conversation. So listen, I'm very, very happy to get started, and before we get started, maybe you'd like to tell us a little bit about who you are, who Quentin is, what he does for a living, what company he works for, what he does for this company, and so on. With pleasure. So Quentin, I've been into video since I was eleven, so it's been a while. At first, I didn't like ads at all. But it's true that as time went by, I really turned to the com part at first, and in fact, both with advertisers and in agencies, and after a while, the main frustration was the very objective creation. And when I met Sofiane and Mathieu three and a half years ago, soon to be four, the whole discussion revolved around how we could reconcile data and creative. And that really got me going. So, for the past four years, I've been trying to answer this question at Stride-up, which is basically an acquisition agency. I joined Stride-up a year after its creation. So November two thousand and twenty in these waters, there were four of us back then. Things have changed a lot. Today you are. There are almost seventy of us now. So acquisition is our core business. And in acquisition, one of the sinews of war today, and I think everyone is starting to be well aware of this, is creative. So today, we're twelve creative people at Spread up, and my role is to make sure we keep up with the times, that we're currently working with around fifty customers on these issues, and that we always come up with the best creative. Too good, too good. So, Stride-up is basically an acquisition agency, and today you've launched several b u if you'd like to tell us about them. Exactly. So, acquisition is really the sinews of war. Initially, Strid up is really an acquisition agency with two values: performance and transparency. That's what drives all our customer support today, with around one hundred and forty acquisition customers, some of whom we also manage all the creative issues to ensure the best creative for maximum performance. In fact, over the months we've been working with our customers, we've added new areas of expertise, starting with SE0, with the arrival of Geoffrey Matane, who has brought us this new area of expertise. Then there's e-mail, because for our customers, it's a crucial subject, I think, you know, you know it well, and recently for Amazon too, so for you, here you are, in fact, accompanying the retailers we've already helped with ads, creating a step further. So you're supporting them in what areas on Amazon specifically So it's really the whole scope of Amazon. In fact, Amazon is a bit, it's huge to launch. It's not trivial at all, it's pretty heavy, and you really need people with a nose for it to launch the whole store. And what's even more interesting is that today, some of the customers we work with on creative for AAS, we're able to optimize the content behind it for Amazon. I have an example of a client we launched on Amazon, and we were able to manage all the visual declensions for the stores, for the product pages, having all the brand assets right from the start. And there are quite a few people who say, well I've heard quite a few, that it's very good to start with Amazon at the very beginning. Often, it's where you test your market in a way, because you don't have to manage a sales infrastructure behind it. And perhaps if you're starting to get a feel for this, you'd like to give us a few mistakes to avoid, because there are quick-wins and things to avoid. What you need to bear in mind, and I was discussing this with Inès, our Amazon manager, is that you shouldn't have any preconceived ideas or preconceptions about Amazon, and above all you shouldn't think it's easy. It's a bit like launching yourself on Amazon, there are a lot of things to set up that are quite onerous for e-tailers. So it's good to start there, but it's not as easy as setting up an e-commerce site. Right. So it's a bit of a common misconception. From what I've been able to observe, it's true that getting started on Amazon is a lot more complicated than it looks. There are a lot of subtleties that aren't native to environments like Shopify, for example, which many e-tailers are using today and which require very specific techniques. Ok. So you were just saying that it's a bit, it can be a bit of a preconceived idea to say ok I'll mix it up on Amazon, don't worry it's going to be difficult. It'll work right away. And in fact there's the store, but then there's also the whole part of managing reviews, replies and stock. And one of the most important subjects is margins, which are very specific to the platform and have to be taken into account right from the start. For example, how many com margins they take depends. In fact, there are lots of intermediary coms and there isn't a global margin. You see, there are a lot of ancillary costs that you have to add up and take into account in their entirety. Otherwise you end up with a loss. That's not the point. Have you seen anyone who's made a few big mistakes that can be avoided, apart from thinking that it's all so easy and that it'll be done in no time? Depending on your product typology and sector, you're going to have environments that are much more competitive than the others. One of the potential problems is to see many of your competitors on Amazon. So the market is well developed, but because there's a lot of competition, it's going to be all the more difficult to penetrate the platform. So that's one of the points I've been able to see, and the other is once again, depending on the type of product, you can get a lot of refusals to list you. And refusals on your specific products. There are lots of different, sometimes even obscure reasons why they refuse your products. As a result, you find yourself having launched your store, but having half your products rejected. And the mechanics of getting them whitelisted are sometimes quite long and complex. So it's a bit frustrating to say to yourself, ok, I'm launching, I'm putting energy into the thing, I've done all my store pages, all my visuals, and in fact, two weeks later, Amazon tells you ok, in fact, your products are being blocked for x reasons. Okay. And sometimes, it's to push you to take certain actions. Certain actions like. Use solutions that benefit them. Okay, that's all we're going to say. And that's it. Much Jeff, big kisses. Well, that was an interesting point about Amazon. And what's interesting is that, once again, people think it's too easy to get started. And in the end, to come back to your core subject, it's almost like launching without a creative strategy. Maybe that's a mistake a lot of merchants make. Jess, can you define for us what a creative strategy is and why you need one? Yeah, it's a term that's really developing and expanding, and it's really important because it's what we've been teaching our customers for the last three and a half years that I've been working on these creative issues. The aim is to have the most coherent roadmap possible of the tests we want to be, that we want to apply in our campaigns, and to be able to have the most precise insights over time. So how does this work? The idea is to start with an analysis of the main issues that our products have to address, or the benefits of our entry points, and to use these entry points in conjunction with the mechanisms we've already observed to be effective in a similar sector or in other sectors, and also to look at what our competitors are doing, because they've already tested, and this is a mine of information. The advantage of creative today, particularly on levers like Meta or TikTok, is that everything is accessible. You can't hide. As much as you see the performance of campaigns, it stays in the BM, that's it, it's specific to each individual and even confidential. You just don't have the indicators that we can't use for campaigns, but you already have a lot of information. And so, in fact, from these elements, we're able to associate an advertising concept with a payne or a marketing angle that we want to test, and we'll prioritize it so as to be able to analyze it in the best possible way and to have the most precise insights over time. And how do you go about coming up with ideas for marketing concepts? If you were to give us some details, here's a rough idea for brands that sometimes get involved in ads, we have examples with some pretty cool brands like la belle boucle, which we talked about the day with pl, where in fact everything has to be done. What would be a bit of a checklist and the main steps to take for inspiration, to find angles of attack? First of all, I think you need to project yourself into the product. Try to be as exhaustive as possible, so as to be able to create large, large groups of families, which will then be spread out over time. If we want to talk purely technical, there's also customer reviews, which are an ultra-relevant source of information on the relevance and problems encountered by your real customers. In fact, today we have quite a number of emotional analysis tools and JPT chat database analysis tools, to name but a few, which can provide a reliable and formidable overview of priorities. Normally, you give your customer reviews to a database to be analyzed, and then you pull out the most important elements. That's really interesting. And this is formidable. It works well. Yeah, it works very, very well, and as a result, in parallel to projecting yourself into the use of the product, into the persona, into the target, really the somewhat classic marketing elements, this complementary analysis often enables you to come up with leads you hadn't thought of, which in turn enable you to make hooks. So it's a bit of a continuity on the creative side, hooks that will typically address the target we want to charge. Okay, so basically, if I recap, you're going to list a few of the problems that your product could solve, and then you're going to test different formats for presenting them. Couple this with an analysis of your customers' opinions. I was talking the other day with a friend who founded the Regglo brand, and he was telling me that we actually called our customers, and that we should have done it before, because that's what we did. We've learned a lot of tricks and we've refocused our apps on these combs in a much deeper way, and that's where it's really allowing us to take off a little. Is there anything else you'd like to add to this? No, after-sales service is really interesting. In my previous company, I was in a start-up, and every day and every week we did a day of after-sales service. With the team, in the offices, you know, and it's true that it's a mine of extremely interesting information for understanding the issues, what tools you're going to use for your site, and the creative angles behind it. I was forgetting your question, but it's about what else you can do. I think that looking at the opinions of your competitors' customers is also a way of finding out if there's a pattern that emerges from their opinions of a win they've got, which could be an interesting angle to explore. And we were talking about Amazon, but Amazon has a huge number of products in very specific sectors, particularly in pure e-commerce, so going to see the same product ranges, whether it's how the sales arguments or the returns are constructed, can help to fuel these reflections in a fairly complementary way. Okay, so once you've got this list and the convert method, you're going to do some testing, I imagine. But listen, the most important thing is to prioritize and agree on a payne to test with different mechanics, or the same mechanic with several paynes. Be quite specific about the AB test you want to do. You can't test everything at once, otherwise you won't get any interesting results, because what you really want to know is what works. And so, to find out what works, you have to be fairly straightforward and precise in your test methodology and in the parameters you want to test. So we try to spread this out over several months. And then, from a purely creative point of view, what are we going to track as KPIs? So it's the classic, but formidable CTR associated with R0S of course, that's the same thing. But we also track purely creative indicators such as the stop scroller rate and the or crafe, which give us some useful information. The stop scroller rate is the impact of the catchphrase. It's the impressions over the first three seconds, and the hackrate is the impressions over the first fifteen seconds of viewing. These two parameters, combined with the CTR, enable us to draw up much more precise hypotheses. For example, we have a great hook, so we have a stop scroller rate. Basically, the guy reads his insta and realizes that sometimes the ad stops. He stops. And what you need to know is that a good one is thirty percent. That means you lose seventy percent of the people who are going to be counted in the impressions. They're not qualified in fact, they're not qualified and they don't stop. If, from a creative point of view, you don't work on the hook, and from that thirty percent, which is a good rate, you plummet to ten percent, that's huge. And if you can't even attract the user, there's no way you're going to convince them. So the hook is really the core of our business. And to understand, basically the stop scroller, so this is I'm on Instagram, it catches my eye, I stop and then the next step is the look, so basically I've stopped and now I'm going to consume a certain amount of the first fifteen seconds you were saying. Exactly, it's the old rate, old rate, old rate, it's also called the stop scroller rate. Okay, all three are the same thing. Okay. And so, once you've stopped them, you want them to look at what you're telling them, but ultimately click and convert. So it's not a question of making clicks our priority, at least for the customers we work with. It really has to convert. So, it's a good cursor between the two that we need to have to interest, to stop being interested, to maximize the click and then the conversion. Nor should there be any disappointment between the creative and the destination site. Exactly, to go back to that, by entering through a Payne, there's much less risk of creating a gap between what the prospect is interested in and the end result, which is our products. And that's why this approach is so relevant. Yeah, the two are really linked. The whole end is linked in fact, and it's important to have something coherent, because even if we go beyond the creative, once we have a creative and a creative strategy based on clearly identified and prioritized pay angles and entry points. Then you can have landing pages that are consistent with the issue, that take up the arguments and go one step further. And you do the landing page part for us too. We do it occasionally for very specific purposes, but it's not our core business today. Right, okay. Just for your information. Yes. No, but we think it's important to have the vision to be able to carry out tests to see the impact it can have. And on the tests we do, we can see the end result, i.e. the cost per acquisition, which can be a lot more interesting with well-optimized landings. Yes, definitely, definitely. And do you have any tips on how to create that moment when the user stops, how to maximize it? Do you have any tips and then the second part of the question, do you have any benchmarks on the optimal stages of the different steps we've just discussed? The difficulty is, if you want to stop people, you have to click bait. Yes, but click bait doesn't necessarily fit in with the brand universe and the values of the customers we're working with. So, in fact, our role in creative today is to have the best of both worlds. It's to make sure we have the best-performing creative. So we have to stop, click and convert without degrading or at least staying within the graphic and editorial constraints of the customers we work with. That's really our role today, because I think everyone has seen a creative that clicks a lot. Stop, stop with the photos, we're really going for some trashy clickbait. In this case, we're really on the hook and stop archetype, if you really want to understand what it is. But it's not necessarily consistent with the brand we're trying to promote, so they mustn't be out of sync. We're not here to ruin all the brand work that's been done on the side. It's really not the Euro. So it's really a question of finding the right balance of associations between hollies that will work well. So I'm thinking holly could be a video, a pop-up notification, an iPhone alert message, it could be static versus mechanics that work well. What's before and after versus before and after? Yes, it's before after. Yes, it's before after or my product versus its traditional version. Right. The old school version. Old school, yeah, that's the before and after word company. Yes, exactly. And that, visually, stops it. It's also a great way of making the added value of your product immediately clear, but once again, within the limits of what's right for the brand. Okay then. Do you have any other examples of content that converts quite well, even without mentioning stop scrolling, but that also really helps convince the user? I think before and after works pretty well for me. Do you have any others in mind? There are quite a few. And the funny thing is, you realize that the content that also works well is that which doesn't seem to be advertising. Yes, I can think of two examples. We have the impression that we're seeing content that is potentially broadcast by friends, and so we stop because we want to know what they're telling us. Stop-scrolling isn't necessarily something aggressive. Another is more media-oriented content. It's content that's taken from articles you've had in the media, whether print or web TV, and exploited as if it were the media exploiting it. Okay. And this is content that has the advantage of making people click and convert. Okay. I'm sorry, I'm bringing this back to my personal experience as an average consumer. One thing that works well for me is notes on the iPhone, and it's true that it's more relaxing content. Because it's true that you often come to the publles, that's how it starts. In fact, I think it's a more nuanced format in the sense that it really depends on what you put in it. The form, the advertising concept as such, works well because it comes back to the point I was making before about you not feeling like it's an ad. Potentially, it's as if someone had used their own iPhone note, taken a screenshot and broadcast it. So in that respect, we've already seen it work very, very well. But then, the arguments have to be as relevant as possible to your points, to the benefits you list, so the content has to be pure copywriting. That's what's going to make the difference, more than the advice. That's why it's interesting to test it on certain accounts. It's going to work very, very well. It'll boost performance and so on. And in some others, it's going to stink a bit because the arguments were perhaps less well chosen, or because on the bread point that was targeted, it's not the one that takes the best. And you help brands with this copywriting aspect. Is this part of the creative scope? In fact, it has such an impact on performance that we're obliged, well, not to do it, it would be counterproductive. So, no, we're obliged to at least be a source of proposals, to give both the strategy and examples. And then, of course, if we need to readjust certain elements with regard to the editorial side, the ways in which we put the news forward. We find compromises that allow us to end up with a design that they're comfortable with, both visually and in terms of content, and that allows us to attract share. Okay. So we're just taking a little break to wait and listen to the sirens. And the creative side, well, it's true that it's been three and a half years. And now we've reached a stage where retailers understand the value of creative and are much more mature about what works and what doesn't. Typically, there are, as we say, a few things that don't work. Typically, four years ago, when you were talking about the GC, you had to explain what it was, convince them that it was very interesting for fathers, but sometimes that wasn't enough. So you really had to insist on it for a very long time before it was okay to try it out and see that it made a difference. Yeah. And then say, okay, now that's all we do. I have clients like that, and it took a year and a half of various recommendations and formats to say, OK, we've found the right balance with UGC. It doesn't have to be dirty, but at the same time, it's a format that works well. So how can we get it to the point where it's okay to make it a first, or even radically take off in terms of performance? And so, today, with this customer, we do almost more than just that, more than just UGC, which we integrate into a creative strategy with identified breads for each product typology. And then, in the long term, the aim is that after a year or two, we'll have our magic formula in quotation marks on the creative side. We add up all the winning indicators, and you've got a high-performance design. Not for sure, because there's no magic, but really easy. With the odds on your side anyway. Ok, and I'm going to ask you a question, you see, because one of the first things you said was to look at what the competition is doing. At some point, have you noticed that if everyone's doing the same thing, it doesn't work as well, or on the contrary, it's just that there are trends and that, on the contrary, there are new trends being created, but there are still cognitive biases that you can play on, no matter what the product, no matter what the type, and that, as a result, there's no real impact on performance when you look at what your competitors are doing. What's your point of view on this? Yeah, no, I think that if someone finds a format that works well, everyone's going to try it out, as I said at the beginning, we can't hide anything. So the advertising library is accessible to everyone, and I think that's it, everyone's looking at each other, everyone's looking at what their competitors have done, and they want to try out new formats too. I've got one in mind about a podcast. The fake podcast format where YA6 months ago, everyone started making podcasts, or at least exploiting the mechanics of podcasts that are It's a real podcast. It's a real podcast. It's a real podcast. No, no, but test it even if it's fake. And why not, because in the end, from a performance point of view, having tested it, it works very well. Today, it's running out of steam, but it's not a format that should be thrown out completely. In other words, if it's relevant to the strategy, it can be exploited, and it's a bit the same with UGC. In other words, at the outset, we had to convince e-tailers to test this mechanism. Once they'd tested it and realized that it made all the difference in terms of performance, that's all we wanted to do, but it's not by doing only UGC that we'll be able to get to the bottom of all the glass retailers are faced with. It's a question of complementary formats. In any case, that's my point of view, but we shouldn't put barriers in the way of the content we test. Maybe depending on the brand's universe, more if it's more or less premium, has more or less room to maneuver, but all formats should be tested and sometimes we get surprises in the sense that I have examples of accounts on which it's static that works best. On accounts where we've tested UGC, we've tested reportage t d which works very well, which has worked very well on his account there too. But today, what carries the account is two three statics. Okay. If we hadn't integrated them into the strategy, potentially, we'd have missed out on de de step performance in fact. Yeah, totally. And because again, I was referring to my experience, but what I find pretty cool is when you have brands, I'm thinking for example of Space Goods, people like that who actually, there's a diversity in content that's kind of crazy where they'll present you with an ad, but in lots of different ways, even they wings, they also do that very well. And I find that it's, I don't know what proportion of people are going to buy, you see as soon as they see the first ad, I have the impression that it's not the majority, you're going to buy after a certain number of times, again, it's the repetition that means that after a while, you're not going to buy the product. Because it's been presented to you from so many different angles, and all the objections you had in your head have been dealt with by these different types of content, which in the end make you want to go through with it. In fact, it's totally true what you're explaining, it's the complementarity of formats that also makes the difference in testing to see what will take the best. And today, the advantage we have with Barametas in particular, is that it's the algorithms behind it that will be able to propose the best content to the most suitable user. So you're going to have a bit, it's going to premaster the work on these questions and so it's going to push the right crea to the right person right away. So that's already a very important point. As for what you were saying about needing time to convince, we have a format that works very well to respond to this problem, and that's what we call reportage. These are formats that are a little counter-intuitive compared to what we're used to hearing about content that works on Meta and other social levers: they're formats that are long, even very long. If you like. A long format on Meta is typically more than a minute long, in a minute or so. Whereas the conventional wisdom on Meta is that ads lasting fifteen or twenty seconds are very, very, very direct, so they can work very well. But a long ad, a minute, even much longer. We've got an ad that worked really well, that ran for over a year, five minutes. That's huge. That's huge. And why, or at least the hypothesis of why it works, is that we've just created a whole storytelling. As a result, we have the time to tell the story of the brand as a whole, or of a product in detail, to give all the arguments as exhaustively as possible, and to add customer life to it. In fact, it's a bit like a video synthesis of the product page, to put it very simply, or even of the site if we take the brand as a whole, with all the ranges, with the brand's specific features, customer reviews, with lots of incentives to action and a voiceover to tie all this content together. And so, in fact, why? Because, once we've succeeded in stopping the prospect with a good stop scroll, holding him with all the arguments, he finishes the video and says ah yeah, but why didn't I buy it before? As a result, we're able to get good conversion indicators on first viewings with this type of video. In fact, it's a bit like what we used to do with our products. These are very long videos. They used to do that a year or two ago when they were going hard on the acquisition side, and it works really well. Yeah, that's true, but wait a minute, we went a bit fast on the UJCs. I believe you have a studio at Stride-up for UGC. It would be interesting if I could explain how you work on that. And I'm also wondering, you know, thinking about it, if professional UGCs, in quotation marks, still work as well as they used to, or if people are starting to realize that okay, like, I've seen this format lots of times and I know it's someone who's paid for it, even if it seems more natural, etc.? I'm glad to have a bit of your process and then your take on UJCs a bit pro. Yeah, that's a real problem, the generation of g c for the customers we work with. At the beginning, it took some convincing. Now, just about everyone we talk to understands the value of this much more authentic type of format. And there are three categories, three levels of expectation in this respect. The first is someone who will be able to do the exercise themselves, to go and find content creators. I know that the UGC community in France, but especially abroad, has grown a lot in recent years. So they contact brands themselves to create content. So, potentially, it can be easy for brands to make initial contact. Then there's how I debrief, how I make sure the content is quality. But if it takes time, it's doable. Customers don't necessarily want to take care of it, in other words, they just want us to do it for them. They don't have the time, or potentially the internal resources, to do it. So they need someone to do it for them. That's where we came up with this offer, because it's such an important part of the acquisition process that if a customer we're working with doesn't provide us with UGC, we'll be stuck with a format that works. Good. So in fact, we did it to be able to respond to this type of customer, because there's another type of customer who wants to have control over content. One of the problems with content creators is that they can't necessarily have total control over the result. We have parameters, we're not simply there on the shoot. So this type of customer needs us to be in control of the whole production. And so we set off shoots where we're going to do fake UGC, but with a firm grip on the lighting, the camera, the actors and the scripts, so there are no surprises and we're very, very safe with the rendering. I was talking about three typologies, but then there's the last typology, which is actually sufficient if it exists, if the process exists at the merchant in question, it's real UGC. In fact, why fake UGC when you can generate real UGC? It's simply a matter of implementing a strategy to harvest these UGC. That's true. And we don't, but it's true, but it's not because it's what you do. But today, our expertise lies in doing creative for ads. I've got a client who sends me real UGC and I've got plenty of it to support performance, so we don't need to call in designers. If you do, it's because you either want to have a precise handle on the script, even if you can get a bit of that with real UGC, or because they don't have the dynamic of harvesting real UGC. Totally yes, totally. And is it a bit like you know h&m or others, I know it's a bad example, but a fashion brand, so not h&m, but you know who makes cash, you know they produce jeans and then there are people who scratch things like that. Is it more or less the same process for you for the UGCs, or do you try to play a little with the lighting so that it doesn't look too clean or not at all, precisely because you want the thing to be ultra-calib. Basically, do you try to add a few degrading factors to make the UGC look more authentic or not? We even do the opposite when we receive real UGC, real customers who are a little too low-quality. We have tools that enable us to improve quality a little, whether in colorimetry or luminosity, but the actual restoration of the content is something we can do. If the content is too good, we're not going to degrade it. We haven't come to the conclusion that it's really because it's dirty that it works. So no, we don't do that. I lost track of what you were telling me. No no, it was just something to deal with. No, no, we don't degrade. It's true that if we have hyper-quality content and precisely when we do formats, just last week, we organized a shoot for a client where we did UGC with an actor where we managed the lighting. We were the ones behind the camera, because the client has very precise requirements and wants to be sure that the result is exactly what he has in mind. But that's why, no, that's what I wanted to add, to make sure that our content is as optimized as possible, we're going to shoot it with the iPhone. Right. Potentially. In any case, that's a proposal we're going to make. Because the angle, the vertical format. The look and feel, the final rendering. When you shoot with an iPhone, you see less depth of field. There's, you see, there's a trick to it, we may have phones now that film with incredible quality, but they're still not professional cameras. Of course not. And that's normal. But as a result, if we do a shoot, we're always going to propose both mechanics: either we really shoot with professional filming equipment to get the best possible rendering. In which case, we're a little less authentic, or we'll use the phone directly. This way, we get a rendering as close as possible to what a real customer would do. We're in control. Yeah, okay. In fact, the most important thing is to control the script, to structure what the customer is going to say so that it's consistent with everything else. If you've got a handle on it, if you've got a handle on the shoot, you might as well make your sales pitch as structured as possible. Absolutely. With our hook. Yeah, it's like the template for a good UGC format. There are different frameworks like AIDA, problem solution and so on. Marketing. It's true that it's effective. No, but overall, you need, you need a look. You need to focus on the solution in one way or another, either right from the start, or during the video, a focus on the product benefits, the features of what you're selling and, above all, a call to action at the end. It's important not to neglect the idea of saying, okay, if my teacher is paying, he's got this far, what am I asking him to do? Globally, it's on the product sheet, but it could be other mechanics and whatever they are, you have to, you have to, you have to think about it. Okay. And then in the subjects, it's usually the series to focus on photo videos. I know that at one time, we were seeing a lot of that. Is this still the case? Real customer reviews, you know, you're going to put them one after the other with a little animation. I imagine this is also one of the types of content you'll be working on. Yeah, that's a content that works very well and that's also, well, the real source of the format and it's a format, as you say, that works well on its own. In other words, if we have a real customer who sends us a video of his entire shopping experience, or of his unboxing, and gives us his opinion, we can make an alve. It's very interesting to test it as it is, with subtitles and all the good practices we know, but also to integrate it into mashups. With several customers. Because it allows us to integrate passages, a very interesting sentence from a customer, but the rest wasn't necessarily as relevant for use in Asia. On the other hand, I know that today, there are solutions for integrating these subjects directly into your product sheet. Yeah. And that's what's so important in our support today. It's the synergy of content reuse. Yes, it's how, how you make sure you produce the content that's most adaptable to all your channels. Yes, okay. And in fact, today, in our creative support for AD, we find ourselves working on this type of strategy, supporting our customers in these methodologies so that what they potentially produce organically is as optimized as possible for reuse in ads. That way, it's a win-win situation, and can even be integrated into the product sheets on their site, in other places. With solutions like John stories, for example. Yes, exactly. It's a very good one that allows you to integrate this content directly into your ads, and why not into organic content? Because if it works in ads, I think it would work very well in organic too. It's interesting to see how we can reuse content. And when I talk about reviews, I'm also talking about text reviews. Is this something you do in the same way as video reviews? Yes, most of us now have dedicated pages with Shopify plugins where all customer reviews are grouped together with the associated photo, video and so on. So either we draw on this database, or we ask for extracts, databases of reviews that will then be used to feed advertising mechanics, typically highlighting customer reviews. One customer review, several customer reviews. You see, right now we're talking a lot about the before-and-after format, but we're integrating a before-and-after review into the result. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. It's a game of reassurance. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Ok very cool. Well, it's interesting to listen to and then we talked about the content, which was quite authentic in the end, and that brings me to a completely opposite subject, which is artificial intelligence. So a lot of, a lot of questions. Perhaps, if we want to stay a little on the OJC theme, the first question is a little provocative. Are we going to have artificial intelligence content creators doing OJC tomorrow, and that already exists? Ah, it already exists. Ok. I don't know if you've seen it, it's Agen, an artificial intelligence tool that started out I'd say three months ago, it's moving so fast, but it was really recent, they released an avatar feature, but a really advanced avatar. You put in two minutes of video of yourself, and then you can make it say whatever you want - voice generation, ellipsis and mimicry. So it's powerful. It's really powerful, and they've also really understood the UGC craze. So, very recently, less than a month ago, they released a number of features, and they've gone even further. The exact name of the thing is URL to UGC. You put in your product's url, and it automatically creates a script - well, four UGC script proposals based on your product sheet. But it doesn't. And it generates you on a base of ten creators, you choose your creator, the video. Knowing that it can be you, your own avatar. It can be your own avatar. Okay. But it can be any of them, and you can have the same script read to ten different ones and test which one works best on your brand. Like you can take a video of Emmanuel Macron, upload it and say a UGC about your cosmetics brand. No, because there's a limit, well, there's a security rather than a limit. You have to give your consent on video with your webcam. Here I am, I certify that I give my authorization to IGN to generate a virtual avatar of me, and you're obliged to do this via a webcam to avoid commitments. You're using another AI which is exactly. That would be a bit of a bummer. So there's still some security. Okay, that's reassuring. Yeah, yeah, it's a bit reassuring. But on the other hand, people who have lent their bodies, in fact, their image for UGC are okay with you using their portrait and image to generate UGC-type content. It's a chick in her car, or one at home. The limit is that they're not going to have the product in hand, but that's where they've been very smart, because there's a mechanism that also works well with content creators. It's all about integration and detour. You know, you put your order behind the product page, and so on. And that functionality is integrated. All right, so it's a breeze. It's really amazing. It's pretty incredible, and I think it's going to be a big development in the coming months. And I imagine you're following it very closely. You've already done a bit of testing on customers where this is concerned. There are still limits, for example on this particular tool, it integrates subtitles, you can't deactivate them. They're formatted in a way you can't control. So you have no choice. And in post-production, you can remove them No, well, there are AIs that can remove subtitles, but it's not perfect. It's a battle of AIs. But after the AI, it's really the combination of tools that's diabolical. But as a result, it's not yet perfect, perfect to be used today by customers. Okay. Well, on behalf of the customers we support. Yeah, it's after a brand launches, you can. Exactly. When you don't have any barriers about the brand universe and you're ready to test everything. That's right. Today, the limits are really liberated. Ah, that's great. I didn't know it was that advanced on this one in particular. And as you know, I don't know if you've seen this with influencers who have accounts in their own name and are taking on the role of real influencers who are paid even though they're AIs. Yes, yes. It's the same today, the tools to do this are very accessible. Yes, it's incredible because now you're doing collabs with brands, you've you've already seen several brands or just one, so why not, and it's really interesting. Are there any of yesterday's influencers that you recommend we follow on the networks? Honestly, I wouldn't recommend them, but I've been taken in. I've been fooled by some certain influencers yeah by thinking ok, that's a bit hot there and a week later seeing an article such a person was actually an IA influencer doesn't exist. Wow. Yeah, it's a little bit when I'm still getting paid for it. Yeah, that's for sure. I do it on a daily basis and as a result, I've been taken in because I think that when you're scrolling, you're not in a, you're not paying attention in the same way as when you're looking at content or checking whether it's authentic or not. You're actually falling for it. It's crazy. It's a bit funny. It'll be interesting to see how you can use it in your processes today. So that's it for today, it's not totally finished yet. But I imagine that you were talking earlier about importing databases and opinions into Chat GPT to ask for angles of attack or the main areas that stood out. Do you have any other cases of you at Strid up internally How do you use AI on a daily basis There are lots of tools today that we integrate, that we integrated as we went along before I b t arrived. One of them, which I mentioned earlier, is improving the quality of a video or photo. Today, we have ultra-high-performance tools, and a year or two ago, it would have been incredible to have this available. We have Topaz which is a very good tool, a software that has been updated quite recently. So you have the photo version, the video version, Topaz AI photo, Topaz AI video. And it's the same, they have several AI models depending on the type of video you have. And it's really quite interesting. And it's really quite interesting. See, you've even got some, so these are licensed programs, but you've also got online versions. I use créa point a I a lot, it's going to be a k and it's for adding texture to photos. Okay. And it's not just to increase the quality of a photo. It can recreate matter on the basis of a prompt. Right. That's really impressive. For example, you don't have, you're working with a customer, he doesn't have his product packs anymore. Let's say so. You can retrieve the ones from his site, and run them through an artificial intelligence of this type. And as a result, you get content that can be used in motion design, which you can reuse for all kinds of ads. And that alone is a technical barrier that's been lifted. A few years ago, we'd just have ended up with poor-quality pack shots in ads, and now that's completely open. We also have tools that enable us to translate the voices in videos, and tools that lips the content. So in fact, from a French or English version, we'll be able to translate it into several languages. A few years ago, you sometimes had to do a voice-over, but well, that was a bit cumbersome with actors, or you had to do two pieces of content, but today it's much easier. It's really incredible. Are there any other things you're working on internally, at Thread Up, where you're using AI to optimize processes and come up with ideas? We also use AI, although not to find ideas, but more to find things that our customers potentially don't have. Okay. With generative AI. So rather than fetching stock footage, we're going to fetch them. Stock footage, that's images of illustrations that you have in banks, whether photos or videos, we're going to use Midjourney to find additional content. All the work I've been doing for the last two weeks, I'm really into it. The main problem is how to integrate our customers' specific products into the AI results. Yeah, because that's the barrier. So you either have your own content that you've made, or you tell it to add a tree behind it, because that's it. Add some sun because it's summer. And here, it's the other way around, i.e. add pack shots to existing content. Exactly. Or you could say, “Well, summer's just around the corner, but they haven't had the money to do a beach shoot yet. Firstly, because the weather's not great, and secondly, because there's no time or money for it. When you're in Paris, it's not necessarily easy. And so, quite quickly, we're able to take an illustration photo using artificial intelligence to integrate our product on the beach quite easily. As it happens, I've been taking photos for a long time now, especially film photos, so it's a bit of a counterpoint. But it helps enormously with AI, because the most difficult part of a day's work is to create photo-realistic content, to do things that are very, very, very marked, steampunk, you know, universes that are very codified, it's more accessible, but to create very real content such as photo-realistic, it's a bit like pulling your hair out. So giving him the type of camera you're using, your composition, the lens, the grain you want, the type of silver film you want, will give him a lot of indicators to generate content that will be much more realistic and therefore usable in ads. Okay, that's cool. Are there any other tools that we haven't mentioned that might be interesting to dig into? Yeah, it is. No, but I've got another really crazy one. It's really aimed at creatives who are starting to really be creatives. On after effects. Yeah. In fact, it's a plugin for after effects, which is a really advanced piece of software in the Adobe suite for making motion design and SFX animations. It's actually a plugin that bridges the gap between chat GPT and after effects, integrating chat GPT or Open I into after effects, called Clut JPT. Okay. And in fact, you'll be able to use this tool to create expressions and scripts directly on the combs you encounter in the software. One of them is the import of subtitles into after effects to be able to make completely customized animations. Well, the basic way to import it is a file, a text layer. And I've created a script that allows us to import each text track on a single layer and then rework them very easily afterwards. I did this in five minutes with OpenAI in After Effects. And this is the same. Before, you had to be a developer to be able to do this kind of thing, and a good developer specialized in After Effects. So that's not something you find in the streets either. That's for sure. It's really, really interesting, it gives me lots of ideas. It's never-ending. I spend nights testing the tools. So what's a bit frustrating is that you have to test a lot of AI tools to find the right ones, the right way to use such and such a tool. Yeah, that's often what it's like too, it's like you were saying halfway through the day, if you ask it to do this and in the end the result doesn't suit you. What's more, if I tell him to use this film, that camera, et cetera. It's the use of the tool, rather than the tool itself, that's going to give you the results you're looking for. Yes, exactly. The tool remains a tool, and there are as many of them as there are tools. And the problem is, once you've mastered the tool, how do you ensure that the rest of the team, the rest of the creatives, can use it in the same way? On Midjourney, I've created a prompt formula that helps you generate prompts with drop-down menus, so you can choose your lense, choose the effect you want and, with the help of a few JPT chat prompts for universe descriptions and so on. After that, you get your Midjourney prompt automatically and optimized according to the various tests we've done before. It's amazing. In fact, your job is changing too. You're going from creative to Engine Point. Exactly. But in fact, it's really exciting because I think you have to be interested in it too. It's going to become essential. I don't think it's going to replace it. I mean, today, there's no magic AI that's going to integrate your product and have something that's exploitable as is. Yeah, sure. I know I've talked a lot about it with Cavaïa, who are very advanced on the subject and very interested in all the opportunities it opens up. But the problem is to have something that can be exploited for a brand. And that's very complicated without intervention. As we were saying again, you have to be able to use the tool properly, and that's something you really have to learn. In the end. Yeah, and you have to spend hours on it. I don't know how many hours it takes to master a tool, I think it's ten thousand hours, there are figures like that. Whether it's After Effects or an AI, it's more or less the same thing. The same idea. Yes, totally. So don't worry, you're not going to be replaced tomorrow by an artificial intelligence, but to be replaced by those who know how to use them and you don't maybe. Well, maybe. Not just yet. Okay, too good. Well, listen, we've, it's been really interesting to see a lot of things come up. And just to finish, so once again for those who are listening to us, there are perhaps two categories of brands, perhaps those who are just starting out and then those who want to move on, who are scaling, who want to go to the next level. So, I imagine that these are totally different approaches, in many respects. So, on the one hand, for a brand that's just starting out, and then on the other hand, for a market that wants to scale up. For brands that are just starting out, I'd advise them to really test as many different formats as possible on the creative ads side, to really find out which ones work best. Creative strategy is more for the second type of brand that's scaling up and needs to really set a direction and have much more granular insights into what's going to work on much more precise and quantifiable angles. So, what I advise clients to do is wait two seconds. Yeah. I think we're, I think we're pretty good. Sorry, that was really interesting what you were saying. No, what I'd really advise a brand that's just starting out is to consider all the possibilities with as few preconceptions as possible, even if that may seem complicated when you're just starting out, when you're working on your brand universe in a very precise way, you don't yet have any certainties, but you're establishing broad directions. I think you have to leave yourself some room for maneuver on the ads side. The big advantage of advertising is that it can also be cut off much more quickly, well instantaneously in fact, versus organic posts versus email. So, on this channel too, I think you need to leave yourself more flexibility. That's true. And for a player who's more established, who's starting to scale his budgets, test even more complementary formats, iterate on the ones that work best, i.e. on a creative that works well, cut it up, cut out its architecture to be able to duplicate it with another designer, with a format that works well - we haven't talked about it much, it's the founder's scam fact - which is accessible to all retailers as long as they agree to stage themselves and embody their brands, but it's content that's very accessible. It's a phone, so it's even better if you're on the street or in the market. Yes, Paul Etienne does that very well, I think, typically. Yes, there are lots of them, and they do it a lot too. These are formats which, from a production point of view, are accessible, so you can cut up the sequences, redo tests as you like to see what works best, and then put it into a creative strategy which we prioritize according to the, the problems customers have with the brand, the product ranges and also the benefits and characteristics. Okay, too good. Well, that seems to me to be a pretty rich learning experience for brands, whatever their stage. I know. That was the point. I've learned a lot, so frankly, I'm very, very happy to have done this together. And then, just to finalize, where can we find you and where can we find Strid up, the Strid up dot f r agency. No, but we're, we're totally available to talk. It's, we have a contact form that's pretty accessible. We can talk about the creative side of things, and I'll be completely available and happy to talk about strategies, whether it's about a customer who's just starting out, or about anything else. Today, we've got lots of prospects coming to see us too. I do this, this and this in ads. I feel like I'm stuck. And in fact, today, as an agency, we have visibility on a panel of brands from a wider range of sectors, which allows us to stand back and establish our creative strategy as objectively as possible. So on the site, and of course on our other areas of expertise too, we're happy to chat. That's great. Well, thanks a lot Quentin, it was really cool and very good. Thank you for the invitation. And it's great to chat again. Grave. But see you soon. Thanks for listening to this episode of Loyoly talks all the way through. I hope you've enjoyed it and found lots of tips to try out for your brand. If so, subscribe to make sure you don't miss the next one. Tell people about it and leave us a five-star rating on Apple Podcast, it helps us a lot. Finally, if you need to increase your LTV, don't hesitate to contact me on LinkedIn or on our dot I o website. See you soon