"Good artists copy, great artists steal."
— Pablo Picasso
This quote is a classic.
The ultimate irony that most people don't know is that the poet T.S. Elliot said nearly the same thing 40 years earlier:
"Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal."
You could argue that Picasso stole Elliot's idea and adapted it to his industry, creating a more generalized, memorable, and punchier version in the process.
Which is probably why society quotes Picasso and not Elliot.
So, take a lesson from Picasso and use other people's great ideas and marketing dollars to your advantage by lovingly stealing and adapting them.
Today, we'll dive into how to gather inspiration for ad creatives.
– Neal
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Steal creative ideas from others
Insight from DC's Growth Program.
AI increasingly dominates the performance of ad channels.
These days, the optimal targeting strategies mostly let AI do the heavy lifting.
You feed Meta the copy and creatives, and it figures out who to show it to.
Which makes creatives by far the most important variable to test.
But you also don't want to waste money testing subpar creatives either.
So you might as well steal the creative ideas from others.
There are a few ways to gather inspiration:
- Creative inspiration tools: Tools like Foreplay and Atria let you browse a big library of ads.
- Ad channels themselves: The Meta Ad Library and LinkedIn Ad Library let you peak at ads that any company is running.
- Social media: Sometimes, the best inspiration organically pops into your social feed.
- Databases and galleries: Random sites have created databases of ads.
Let's dive into each of those now:
Creative inspiration tools
We'll start with creative inspiration tools because they help you:
- Discover great ads either organically or by searching
- See their accompanying ad copy, landing page, and whether they're still running that ad or not (a good signal it's working)
- Save great ads you stumble upon into collections (aka "boards").
You can then use those to inspire yourself, your team, or your clients.
Here are the two tools we recommend:
- Foreplay: The tool we use internally with our agency to gather inspiration to use internally and to share with clients.
- Atria: A competitor to Foreplay with some analytics tooling (for more $).
Here's a walkthrough of Foreplay from our in-house creative, Joey Noble:
Meta and LinkedIn Ad Libraries
Here are the links to the ad libraries:
These tools let you search for the ads being run by specific companies.
Here's a walkthrough from Joey of how to do just that:
And, of course, if you decide to use Foreplay or Atria, save any great ads you find to your boards. If not, you can also save them to a swipe file, notion, google drive, or whatever else you may use.
Social media
How to tell you're a real marketer:
You stop to watch the ads as you browse social media. AND you save the ones you find interesting.
Whenever you're scrolling through Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, or wherever, take note of an ad that:
- Catches your attention
- Makes you stop scrolling
- Keeps you watching until the end
- Has you questioning whether you should click or not
- Or, is just creative or interesting
Then, you can save the ads to Foreplay for future reference. You do that by forwarding the ad to the Foreplay Instagram account (assuming you linked your Instagram to your Foreplay account).
Note: I apologize in advance for the search results that come up when you search "foreplay" on Instagram 🙄.
Databases and galleries
Various websites or influencers out there have curated ads:
- Adfolio: Database of great b2b ads.
- Ads of the World: Ads from big brands.
- Commarts: Ads from big brands.
- The Ad Professor: An influencer who shares a lot of ad inspo.
- Copywriting Examples: Great repo from Harry Dry!
I also have some curated ads you can see here:
Some quick ad creative takeaways
Here's some rapid-fire advice:
- Hooks are the most important. People hate ads in general. So you better intrigue them as fast as possible.
- Don't make people think. People have zero patience for confusing ads.
- Don't be fancy. Simple, clean, & straightforward is almost always best.
- Try not to be a “creative copywriter.” You're not trying to win an award. You're trying to sell a product.
- Be novel/quirky. Peculiarity often stops the scroll.
- Leverage culture. Familiarity, topicality, and relevance help.
- Get in the mindset of the audience. The best ads often come from noob ad makers with an iPhone and an intimate understanding of:
- Who they are
- What problems they're struggling with
- What they're worried about
- What their selfish desires are
- What they care about
- Don't talk about you, talk about them. Make them the hero of the story. Your product is the lead supporting character.
- Kill your darlings. Ruthlessly cut meaningless words or elements that don't add to the value of what you're saying—even if you like it.
Let others make your ads more efficient
Don't create in a vacuum.
Finding inspiration should always be a part of your creative process.
Need help from a growth strategist?
As part of the natural rhythm of work life, some of our incredible team members eventually move on to new adventures.
Antoine is doing just that—going out on his own to pursue freelance growth strategy and advisory work.
If you're in need of early-stage growth support, Antoine is your guy:
- He’s a rockstar strategist with over 10 years of experience growing both bootstrapped and venture-backed companies.
- He’s already helped take 2 SaaS startups from early-stage to acquisition, and now he’s looking to bring that same magic to new projects.
- He’s currently taking on just 2 new clients.
He typically offers this for $7,000, but is offering a giant 50% discount for the DC audience. Work with him for only $3.5k.
Check out his website, or book a call with him directly.
Something fun
Every time I join a ZOOM meeting now:
