How to Find Your Unicorn Ads | #653

Making a single ad used to cost half a million to a few million dollars. You poured everything into one hero execution and you had to be right, because that was the bet. That world is gone. Today a brand can make a few hundred ads off an iPhone, put a bit of spend behind each, and let the market decide.

Here's the shift most teams haven't made: finding a breakout ad isn't about one person being braver, it's about how the whole team works. Loosen the approvals so more creative goes live, trust the data over opinion, and let go of the idea that any single Meta ad is your whole brand. Most of them are disposable.

This Playbook is anchored by Mark Broadhead, Head of Creative and Growth at The Lad Collective, who made around 15,000 ads in four years to find fewer than 10 that truly flew, and grew the brand to 200,000 customers and a US launch on the back of it.

In this playbook, we cover three things ecommerce operators need to know about finding their unicorn ads:

• Take more shots and ring-fence your testing budget from your proven winners, because volume is now a strategy
• Change your approvals, not just your attitude, so the default is that ads go live and the data decides
• Give your long shots their own budget, because the algorithm optimises for the next sale, not your next unicorn

Connect with Mark Broadhead
Explore The Lad Collective

Transcript

The Awkward Truth About Giving

SPEAKER_03 0:10

There's a link in e-commerce that mostly goes unsaid, and it's a slightly awkward one. It's the connection between giving and commercial benefit. When a brand partners with a charity, they're almost always doing it for the right reason because they want to do some good. But to get it off the ground and to keep it alive, especially when the budgets tighten, they usually have to rationalize it in commercial terms. And that's the part that often feels a bit icky to say out loud. That generosity also carries a commercial upside. It does, though. And being honest about this is often the very thing that lets the good happen at all. I reckon a lot of charities miss out right here because they don't like playing in this commercial space. It feels a bit grubby to them. The thing worth chasing, though, is a win, win, win. A win for the retailer, a win for the charity, and a win for the community in need. Get all three wins right, and it's hugely powerful. Miss

Go Generosity And The Win Win Win

SPEAKER_03 1:20

one, and these programs often fall over. I've known Rowan McCloskey for a long time since he was first bringing this idea to life. Rowan founded Go Generosity, which is a pay it forward platform that turns small customer donations at the checkout into full-value gift cards for people in need. He's since sold the business, but the thing that always stuck with me about what Rowan built from day one, the front of his mind wasn't just how do I amplify giving or doing good? It was how do I also amplify the return for the retailer while doing good without ever asking the retailer to give something away themselves. That balance is the bit that most people and most charities never crack. I recorded this one with the brilliant Rosa Willis. So you'll hear her in here too. Let's hear it directly from Rowan.

SPEAKER_02 2:12

So commercially, like the 101, the model of Go Generosity, where just think of the donations that are turned into gift cards. It's a no-brainer for business, right? So 100%, let's just say $5,000 comes through in the form of donations in any particular month. 100% of that is turned into a full value gift card, which is sent to the charity. Charity redeems at full retail value. So we've just now, now we don't try and say that, hey, we're going to increase your revenue by 50% or 60%. Like we're really clear that we're a business that is focusing on social impact. But what we're not doing, and this is very different to social impact, is we're not taking away from your margin. We're not touching affecting or hurting your bottom line. If anything, we're helping increase it because of just simply, hey, we brought an extra five thousand. Like everything we do is completely measurable for the merchant, and um, and they're seeing the generosity that comes in. The other thing that's like really important, and I'll probably even just start with this first, but the consumers being generous. So, some questions we have been asked is well, do I have to match the donation dollar for dollar? If the consumer is giving this, is it does it look like we're just passing the buck? You know, like what is it that we have to do? I think one thing that's really important is go generosity. Although we're selling a product to the business, we're selling the product to the business because we see the traffic of the consumer orders and because we know people are going to be generous. There is so many statistics out there now to show that consumers are more likely to shop with a brand that has like a full impact purpose, um, like all of these things around environmental things like that. But we know the consumers, we've actually got data to even show now that consumers um will be like 15% of consumers will donate every single time they shop online. And it and there's no friction, there's no fatigue, there's nothing, none of that. But one thing that's really important is Go generosity is about giving the consumer the opportunity to be generous first and foremost. And then secondly, we're also enabling the brand, they can partner with the consumer as well. So some brands, it is in their best interest to match dollar for dollar. Like they, it might be so some of the larger brands that are on their platform, it's like, hey, it's probably a really positive message if you do match with your customer. And they always got budget for this anyway, because they want to do that. Because it, because it might not, you know, the it could be a it could just be a risk if you don't, you know, in terms of you want to have that positive intention. So yeah, so hopefully that answers like there's the consumer element, consumers want to be generous, but then the commercial side of it is the fact that it gets turned into the gift cards, and then the other commercial side of it is that um, you know, we did a whole bunch of um uh mystery shopping work with Hume.

Proof It Works Without Checkout Friction

SPEAKER_02 4:50

So you'd know um Marila from Hume. And it was actually mind-blowing because Marilah said, Hey, can I do some mystery shopping and on on Go Generosity and just like checked out, want to see what consumers say about it. And you know how like it's always nerve-wracking. Like, even back in restaurants.

SPEAKER_03 5:05

Yeah, I wouldn't trust her.

SPEAKER_02 5:07

And back in back when I had restaurants, you know, um, it's like sometimes you're afraid to ask people, oh, how was your meal? Because I'm like, what if they didn't really like it? I don't want to know the answer. And so when she was like, oh, and my feedback, just the good feedback. That's right. So when she said she wants to mistress shop the whole platform and she wants to like go through all of our customers and get her mystery shoppers to do it. Yeah, I was a little bit nervous because I was like, what are people actually going to say? And I read the report, I cried when I read the report because the consumers, the mystery shoppers, and what they're saying around how this um, you know, going, seeing the donation, seeing that the business actually had a heart that cared for the community, that they even cared for people in need, seeing how it was so tangible because they could see where the money was going and the difference it was making. Like statistically, they were, what was it, like 98% more likely to shop with that brand versus a competing brand that was selling the same products.

SPEAKER_05 5:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:59

One of the one of the biggest questions we get asked from large brands is do you create friction in the checkout? And then we saw that 100% of mystery shoppers were like, no friction whatsoever. If anything, it made me want to buy the product more than if they didn't have that. And so commercially, there's there's that side of as well. I think that stacks up for merchants.

SPEAKER_03 6:20

What Roman's doing there is giving purpose a commercial backbone. He's not asking the retailer to give away anything, he's showing them the return, and that's the balance that makes the whole thing hold

Purpose Out Front With A Backbone

SPEAKER_03 6:34

up. So let's go back into the archive and hear how a few brands build purpose into their offering without losing the commercial benefit. But I want to be clear about the order here because it does matter. I don't think you have to lead with the commercial case. For a lot of retailers, purpose is still the actual reason that they want to do the thing. And it's one of the strongest ways to stand out in a crowded market and take a share from your competitors. So purpose can absolutely lead, but you can't survive just on warm and fuzzies. Underneath it, there has to be a commercial backbone, something that makes it durable. So it isn't the first thing cut when budgets get tight. Purpose out front and a commercial engine underneath. Clothing the gaps is one of the best examples of that that I know. Laura Thompson and Sarah Sheridan built the whole brand on their values, and it shows up in their numbers.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

It's not just because it's good for, like it is good for business, I'd say that, when you lead with your values, but you've also got an opportunity as a business to do this. You're not restricted for someone who comes from government funding where the government told me what I had to talk about and when and how. And in business, we don't have any of those constraints.

SPEAKER_00 7:50

If you keep those values and your purpose and the why really strongly at the core of every single one of your decisions, the outcomes follow from that, whether those outcomes are, it flows through. So we've got a returning customer rate of um almost 47%. So when you've got a community of supporters, we don't call our customers customers. They're our they're our community of supporters. We know that when we keep them as a priority, they will want to spend more time with us. They want to be involved in what we're doing. They're on the journey with us, we're on the journey with them.

SPEAKER_03 8:23

A 47% return in customer rate is that commercial backbone that I was talking about. Their purpose absolutely leads in everything they talk about and everything they do, but it pays them back in loyalty and repeat purchase. So don't bury your purpose to sound commercial and don't run it on good feelings alone. Lead with the why, but make sure there's a real commercial engine underneath it. See it in the numbers.

Where Giving Belongs In The Journey

SPEAKER_03 8:52

The second thing is where you place the giving. And the trick is to weave it into the problem that you're already solving for the customer, not to make them feel guilty at the worst possible moment. A donation that puts the ask on the customer at the checkout, it just adds friction. Most people say no and then they feel bad about it at the moment that you're asking them to give you money. The version that works sits inside the value that you're already delivering. So the good they're doing rides along with the thing that they came to buy. Instead of being a guilt trip bolted on at the end, that's why Rowan's mystery shoppers felt no friction. The widget lives inside the merchant's brand and the giving belongs to the customer rather than being squeezed or guilted out of them. James Bartle at Outland Denham worked this out very early. His fix was to lead with the product and let the story come through the product itself. They were still solving the customer's problem about delivering great jeans and great fashion, but they just made them feel good while they were at it by telling them exactly the impact they were making and the way that it was made in a sustainable and ethical way.

SPEAKER_05 10:08

We don't want people buying our product because it's a charity. We would have set up a charity if we wanted to do that. We want you to buy our product if you'd love it. And so the product has to speak for itself. So communicating that story has we've relied really heavily on a PR strategy for that. We've been so, so grateful to the media because they have honestly backed us in such a big way. I hear so many negative things about the media, but my experience for our brand is that the media have absolutely supported it. So people are reading about it in the newspaper and then they're coming to our website at another time or maybe after that, and they're now that's the dopamine that's pumping through their brain and they're looking at these products. It's aspirational.

SPEAKER_03 10:50

So don't lead with the cause and don't guilt people at the till. Sell them the product, solve their problem, and let the good that they've done while doing that for themselves be peppered through and land as a bonus, not the big pitch. Now,

Cause Fit And Showing Impact

SPEAKER_03 11:05

once it's running, two things drive how much your customers actually get behind your charity or your giving program. It's whether they can see the impact and whether the cause fits your brand. Rowan found the charity a merchant choosers can move donation rates by a few percent. And that a trusted brand like Harris Farm gets generosity month after month because their customers trust their judgment. This is also where the win-win-win gets real. The community in need has to actually benefit. And your customers need to see that they have made it happen. Homey's co-founder, Nick Pierce, put the visibility side better than anyone else that we've had on the show.

SPEAKER_04 11:52

So probably the biggest thing in terms of promoting our message and the impact is just to be accountable to our stakeholders, which is our customers. So that's probably the way in which we view it is that this is you have enabled this to transpire. So to make sure that that's felt as much as possible and to have access to that. So that's that's the you know the principle.

SPEAKER_03 12:09

So pick a cause that actually aligns with your brand and your customer, and then show the impact back to them because they're the ones who make it happen. Alignment plus visibility is what turns a giving feature into a real relationship.

The Simple Framework To Keep It Alive

SPEAKER_03 12:25

So here's what I'd leave you with. The link between giving and commercial benefit is real, even if it's a little uncomfortable to say out loud. Doing good isn't why you do it. You don't do good just to achieve great commercial results. But done properly, a great charity or giving partnership strengthens your brand, sets you apart, and earns you a share of the market. It only works, though, if there is a strong commercial case behind it, one that actually strengthens your brand positioning market, not just warm and fuzzy on its own. Purpose out front, a commercial backbone underneath, and a real win for the retailer, the charity, and the community all at once. It's a beautiful thing when it happens. If you're weighing up whether a giving program actually stacks up for your store or which cause would actually fit your brand, that's exactly the kind of thing retailers and brands are working through in the Ad to Cart community every day. It's free to join. We'd love to have you in there. Head on over to AdDocart.com.au to join up. That's the playbook for this week. I hope we got you thinking around ways that you can partner with some great charities or giving partners to help amplify that win-win-win. I'll see you next Friday.

Marketplace Partner Message From Pattern

SPEAKER_03 13:42

Marketplaces in Australia aren't just emerging or a nice side piece to D2C anymore. They're established, they're complex, and they are moving fast. Amazon continues to accelerate. TikTok shop is looming. And for most brands, managing a marketplace properly has become a full-time job. Forecasting, content, ads, logistics, compliance, it's a lot. And it requires specialist knowledge. That's where Pattern can help. Patent don't just advise on marketplaces, they actually buy your product and then sell it on global marketplaces as your partner. That means they have real skin in the game. They only win if you win. Simple as that. Through their marketplace accelerator model, Patent handles everything from inventory forecasting and listing creation through to advertising, fulfillment, and international expansion. So if marketplaces feel overwhelming or you know you should be doing more, but you just don't have the time, the team, or the energy, contact Patten to help you make the most of the marketplace opportunity. Learn more at au.patten.com.