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Can You Use Stock Footage in Your Ads?

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes, 10 seconds

Author

Fraser Cottrell
August 21, 2023

Got yourself a drink? Maybe a snack? Well then. Let’s break down some ads.

If you’re new here then here’s the lowdown. Each week I break down 3 ad creatives I love and help you understand why it’s a good creative.

So let’s get started.

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Dossier

Exclusivity. One of the best ways to give someone FOMO. Entire businesses are built on this model - Look at Soho House, people love to feel part of something that others aren’t.

So why aren’t you using it within your ad creative? Well, Dossier are and that’s why this advert works.

They’re treating their mailing list like a club you need to be a part of - Telling you that it’s the only way to get rewards that no one else can get access to. What would you sign up for, a free mailing list to get 20% off? Or an exclusive rewards club? They’re the same thing! But we’ve framed them differently. You can use this same method to get people to join your community, just call it something cool.

Techniques like this are at the heart of marketing and can separate a great campaign from a total flop.

Bleame

Are you using stock footage in your hooks? If not. Why not.

This advert from Bleame has an entire hook made from stock footage and when they overlay voice-over it becomes a really powerful hook. There is such an opportunity here for you to test out new hooks without having the spend a dime.

We use stock footage a lot if we aren’t able to film it ourselves. For example, this week we needed footage of a sloth - We aren’t going to be able to film that ourselves in Manchester 😂

So to help you out, here are some stock websites you can use.

A lot of the above are yearly or monthly fees, but it’s a small price to pay for endless videos. Overall this above video is a solid example of a powerful mashup, using footage you already have. You never have an excuse for not making new ad creative when you have a growing footage archive!

Static of The Week

This week’s ad creative was made by yours truly and it uses a template that can be found inside the new Creative OS Expert Packs. Specifically inside Barry Hott’s pack of Ugly Ads.

It’s such a smart creative - Why? Because it looks just like one of those organic news images you see! It fools the customer into clicking away to a product page without even knowing. But the copy is so important for this one - So if you're going to replicate it, take some time to write something that would actually be seen on one of these graphics.

You can buy the pack for yourself here and give it a go today!

Muddy Bites

Muddy Bites are one of the very few ‘viral’ productions that I’d love to try. Sadly they aren’t in the UK so I’ll have to wait. But many of you have probably seen them on TikTok and picked up a bag because of that.

So it seems fitting that they make an ad creative around their story to use it as social proof. What a great idea.

If you watch the video in full they tell a story of going viral, selling out and being at breaking point when they managed to turn things around and come back bigger and better than ever. It’s a standard story structure - But they’ve framed it as a selling point for the product - That it’s so good people just had to have it.

This is such a smart move, I’ve not seen creative like this before. But what can we learn from it?

Well, you can use anything as ad creative. Got a story to tell about your product? Cut it together with behind-the-scenes images and you have yourself some creative.

As I always say, keep it simple!

That’s all for this week’s Nice Ads - Hopefully, you learnt something and it’s got you ready for the week ahead.

I’ll see you next time ✌️

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