Happy Sunday, Everyone!

I hope you’re all having a wonderful week and enjoying the summer solstice – June is always one of my favorite times of the year (long days, pleasant weather, relatively light on the holidays). I’m writing this from London, where our family has just landed for a (much needed) vacation – we’re excited to spend quality time in a new (for them, not for me) place, explore and make some new memories.

Before we dive into this week’s newsletter, I wanted to share two other exciting announcements:

1. Collin Slattery & I have officially launched a podcast: Marketing Uncensored. It’s in all the usual places (Spotify, YouTube, etc.) – if you enjoy candid, no-holds-barred conversations on some of the most interesting topics in growth & marketing, check it out. We’re actually getting kind of good at it.
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2. If you’re a YouTube user, check out my channel – the whiteboard series officially hit 20 episodes this week, and we’re going to be introducing detailed platform/account breakdowns, campaign guides and more.

Thanks to all of your support, this newsletter has eclipsed 6,000 subscribers in just over 2 years, all without a dollar of advertising (that’s changing!) Building this whole thing has simultaneously been one of the more enjoyable and challenging things I’ve done, so thank you for sticking with me through it.

And with that, we’re back to our regularly-scheduled programming.

“Creative Is King [or Key, or Critical, or Targeting]”

I’ve heard a variant of that phrase at (virtually) every event, meeting, pitch and interview for the last decade – and for good reason. The relative importance of creative has (arguably) never been higher; the average consumer is exposed to anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 marketing messages a day, and (somehow) that number is still rising as platforms find ever-more-creative ways to turn literally everything into a billboard or ad network. But what isn’t rising is our ability to recall what we see. Creative variety and volume are increasing faster than human mental capacity – so we filter it out. And there is where brilliant creative - the stuff that breaks through the clutter and lodges in your mind (consciously or not) - shines.

Time and time again, I’ve seen the brands that produce brilliant creative thrive, and those that cannot (or do not with any consistency) be thrown into the price competition coliseum.

That has all led me to obsess about how to get to brilliant creative - what is the formula that elevates a creative from basic to brilliant, and (most importantly): how can I replicate it? Unfortunately, after far too much time spent thinking, way too many late nights and reading somewhere around 200 books (there’s something wonderful about holding a book, smelling the paper, turning the page), I’m no closer to an answer. But, I might have something better, inspired by this quote from Bill Bernbach:

Most marketers today would do well to tape this quote to their screen. Not because it’s poetic, but because it’s a warning. A warning we’ve ignored.

We’ve trained ourselves to optimize creative the way one might tune a piano or optimize a manufacturing process: with mechanical precision, statistical rigor, and not a hint of soul. We all (myself included!) celebrate incrementality while forgetting what made ads powerful in the first place: people.

(Aside, Bernbach also penned this banger: “However much we would like advertising to be a science - because life would be simpler that way - the fact is that it is not. It is a subtle, ever-changing art, defying formularization, flowering on freshness and withering on imitation; where what was effective one day, for that very reason, will not be effective the next, because it has lost the maximum impact of originality.” OGs are OGs for a reason.)

This may seem sentimental or romantic - but it isn’t. It’s survival. The single biggest lie we’ve told ourselves is that attention is the same thing as persuasion. That engagement equals belief. That winning the click is the same thing as winning the customer. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

And that is the common thread that weaves through the brands that win: an understanding that if the creative does not resonate with something unchanging, it isn’t advertising. It’s just more noise in an ever-louder room.

That’s led me to an uncomfortable truth: most creative optimization as it exists today is anti-human.

We’ve developed the most sophisticated set of creative tools in the history of humanity – tools that can (quite literally) invent reality – and instead of using them to create masterpieces, we’ve unleashed them to create a never-ending supply of sterile, soulless, precisely-calibrated content that we can offer up to the algorithmic gods on Meta or TikTok or YouTube.

Somewhere along the way, we stopped making ads for people and we started making ads for machines. When I share this with colleagues, the reaction I get is reflexive, universal denial – we do audience research! We talk to customers! We have personas and mood boards and decision trees and brand standards. We test our creative, have heatmaps on our sites, introduce 500 new ads a month, whatever.

Strip all of it away, because none of it matters.

At a basic level, marketers have forgotten that platforms take your money, and customers (people) make you money. We’ve optimized for platforms to such a degree that we’ve cut the person out of the equation. Even today’s UGC feels lifeless – think about it. What’s the last UGC ad you’ve seen that you truly believed? That made you stop and think, “Wow - that’s exactly how I felt / what I feared / what I needed to hear?”

And that’s the problem. Because creative that is built to perform rarely performs to build.

We’ve engineered ads (a phrase I’ve actually written in proposals and ad copy) for performance metrics (CTR, CVR, EGR, CPA, ROAS) within a specific platform’s rules/requirements – but in doing that, we’ve sacrificed the deeper, uniquely human elements of the creative in order to optimize for the mechanical requirements established by the platform.

We’ve removed the friction (i.e. the challenge, the surprise, the exclusion) in service of accessibility (not the compliance kind, the kind where everything is open to everyone); we’ve eliminated belief (i.e., the conviction, the unique angles, the truth) in service agreeableness and mass appeal; we’ve disregarded identity (most ads look and feel like anyone could have made them) in service of algorithmic predictability (platforms like Google + Meta use common characteristics to predict the performance of creatives with less data). The result? An ever-increasing number of ads that look like every other ad (hell, we’re now launching companies - like ICON - whose central value is expediting the process of imitating other brand’s ads). Surplus value declines with adoption; when everything looks, sounds and feels the same, nothing moves the audience; when nothing moves the audience, nothing moves the business.

We’re in the age of creative homogenization when we should be in the era of true creative optimization.

What Bernbach Understood (and We Forgot)

Bernbach understood something timeless: the levers that move people aren’t technological. They’re biological. Evolutionary. Emotional.

• We fear loss more than we crave gain
• We signal status instinctively
• We long to be seen, respected, and loved

These drives don’t show up in spreadsheets, but they’re all over results. They’re the difference between a click and a conversion. A visit and a customer. A sale and a shared story.

That’s what today’s creative optimization has missed. When we reduce the work to component parts - the headline, hook, CTA, image, angle, offer - we stop asking the only question that matters: What truth about the human animal are we speaking to?

The I.R.I.S. Model: A Blueprint for Instinct-First Creative

The I.R.I.S. framework is designed to refocus creative optimization on what actually drives human behavior. It's not a testing methodology. It's a thinking methodology - a way to diagnose weak creative, shape bold hypotheses, and build creative that moves people. Here's what each component means in practical, usable terms:

Instinct is where every brief should begin. What is the raw, universal, deeply human drive you’re tapping into? Not "pain point." Not "persona insight." But the actual, evolutionary-level motivation behind the behavior? Are we activating the desire to survive, to be admired, to succeed, to feel love, or to protect what’s ours? Weak creative doesn’t fail because the copy was bad or the model didn’t strike a perfect pose; it fails because it wasn’t anchored to anything real in the first place. If you’re not sure, find a member of the target audience, show them the ad and ask them what they felt. If they start explaining what they thought, or reciting what you do, they probably didn’t feel a damn thing.

Resonance is about tone and tension. Once you know what drive you’re speaking to, you need to choose the emotional posture. Fear can show up as dread or urgency or righteous anger. Admiration can show up as aspiration or envy. Success can be joy, pride, or relief. Creative that resonates makes people feel something specific. That specificity is what generates the response in the target audience (and, often, a different response in a non-targeted audience).

Imprint is the test of memorability. Remarkable creative sears itself into your audience’s mind. It has a line you quote, a face you remember, a visual you can’t help but to screenshot. It is less about the "content" and more about "creative moments." If there’s nothing in the ad that would make someone pause and think, there’s nothing to optimize. You can’t fix forgettable.

Signals are how we communicate with one another, and how your ad communicates with your audience. The question to ask is whether every detail - the model, scene, script, copy, color, pace, music, lighting, all of it - supports the instinct and emotion you're trying to activate. As I’ve poured over our top performing ads, one thing has stuck out like a sore thumb: every single one tries to only do one thing for one audience. Great ads don’t mix messages. They don’t try to appeal to everyone or to be agreeable or to be non-judgmental. Just as every great brand has haters, so too does every great ad. That’s the price you pay for remarkable.

How to Use IRIS

Use IRIS as a diagnostic tool before you brief, build or test. It should be the first thing you do as you’re brainstorming new concepts.

As an initial exercise, log into Meta. Pull your top-performing creative and run it through IRIS:

• What instinct is it tied to?
• What emotional resonance is it creating?
• What element gives it sticking power? What do you immediately want to screenshot?
• Where is the signal strong or fractured?

Then take your weakest performing creative and do the same. You’ll start to see patterns immediately. You’ll start to realize that what wins isn’t cleverness or targeting, it’s instinctual relevance. IRIS gives you language to articulate why certain creatives work, and why others fall flat.

One thing I’ve found in working with our team (and our clients) is that, quite often, what looks like a performance problem is actually a human problem. The IRIS framework helps you identify where the divergence is occurring and how to correct it.

The second truth I’ve come to is (likely) even more controversial than the first: Most ads today should not be optimized. They should be deleted.

They’re too weak. Too safe. Too bland. Too meh. Just as I can’t optimize my basketball game to the NBA, your creative team can’t optimize an uninspired piece of creative into something remarkable. If the fundamental elements of the creative don’t evoke emotion or provoke a reaction, the ad is DOA. The best thing you can do in that situation is to stop compounding the mistake. Instead, redirect the time, energy and effort you were going to spend in a futile attempt to save something that was already gone into building something that has a chance to be remarkable.

Put another way: stop testing what font to use. Start testing what truth to tell.

When you build around the unchanging man (or woman), you don’t just create more effective ads. You create more meaningful ones. And meaning is the ultimate performance unlock.

Bernbach’s 5 Drives (Sam’s Version)

Let’s get tactical. Below is a breakdown of the five core human drives that every piece of great performance creative should be built on-and how to activate them in real campaigns.

1. Survival: The Fear–Agency Arc

This is the original trigger. The root of urgency. The voice in your head that says, "If I don’t act now, something bad is going to happen." We’ve all seen these ads, and we’ve (likely) all converted in response to them at one point or another.

The thing is fear alone doesn’t convert – fear without resolution is a recipe for anxiety (which, ironically, kills conversion rates). The most effective survival ads show both danger and relief. This narrative arc avoids the anxiety trap and gives your audience a way out (if they act).

To get the most from ads based on this fundamental drive:

• Set up a plausible risk or loss scenario that reflects a deep-seated fear
• Show AND tell the consequences – you want your audience to feel it
• Then immediately introduce the product as the shield, the tool, the out.
• Use high-contrast visuals, tension-filled pacing, and clear before/after framing.

Survival plays work especially well in insurance, finance, cybersecurity, health, and familial/parenting-related spaces (including senior living). Basically, anywhere protection is core to the value prop.

2. Admiration: From Utility to Identity

This drive is about social currency. It is natural to want to be liked or seen as impressive, intelligent, stylish, trendy, in-the-know. Performance creative that taps into admiration turns products into identity markers. Your overriding goal should be to make your audience feel like choosing your brand makes them look better - more impressive, more successful, more sophisticated, more trendy - to their peer group. It sounds cliche, but it’s real.

Execution tips:

• Design matters: polished, aspirational, modern
• Position your product as a taste signal or social flex
• Use language that implies status: elite, exclusive, breakthrough, premium
• Show beautiful people or aspirational archetypes using the product confidently
• Imply (subtly or not) the change that comes from using the product/service – flirtatious glances, invitations to previously off-limits meetings, etc. Your goal should be to show how the product/service levels up the users’ social status.

The standard consumer examples are brands like Apple, Equinox, Tesla, American Express, Porsche, Louis Vuitton – but there are plenty in the B2B space, too. McKinsey, Deloitte, IBM Watson, Salesforce, Palantir all do the same thing as the consumer brands above, just with a corporate spin (and often, more emotion – those B2B decisions are career-makers or career-breakers).

3. Success: The Transformation Engine

Success isn’t just about winning-it’s about leveling up. Feeling more competent, more capable, more in control. This drive works because it speaks to the deeply personal story we all tell ourselves: “I want to dominate. To be the best. To reach heights others cannot.”

Effective success-driven ads walk the viewer through a transformation. Show who they are now, then who they could become.

Execution tips:

• Use clear progress framing: day 1 → day 30
• Lean into metrics: time saved, skills gained, ROI delivered
• Use testimonials and UGC that celebrate the user’s win, not the brand’s feature set
• Cast the product as the enabler-not the hero, but the tool the hero uses

This drive works across fitness, education, productivity tools, financial services, and any outcome-driven B2B offering.

4. Love: The Connection Catalyst

This is about belonging. Intimacy. Familiarity. Not just romantic love, but any relationship that feels emotionally safe, validating, or personal. Love-based creative works when the brand takes a human-first posture. You’re not a vendor. You’re a partner, a friend, a protector, a trusted advocate or guide.

For anything related to connection, story trumps all (after all, isn’t the old saying that you can’t put a price on love?). Invest in telling that story in a way that will resonate with your target audience.

Execution tips:

• Use real stories, not scripts or fictional accounts – case studies, client testimonials, etc.
• Tap into nostalgia or emotional contrast (joy/sadness, vulnerability/strength)
• Prioritize tone and pacing over production value
• Speak directly, not performatively. Avoid marketing-ese

DTC brands thrive here. But increasingly, so do B2B brands that understand that trust, not product, is the currency of long-term relationships.

5. Protection: Rallying the Tribe

This is where values, loyalty, and moral positioning live. When you tap the protection drive, you activate something tribal. You create a sense of us versus them.

You’re not just selling a product. You’re drawing a line. This kind of creative doesn’t attract everyone-and that’s the point.

Execution tips:

• Explicitly define what you stand against (cheap alternatives, unethical practices, low-effort brands)
• Use visual symbols of belonging: flags, badges, team identifiers
• Use rallying language: built for people like you, forged for the mission, backed by real grit
• Use founder faces and origin stories to create emotional alignment

This works brilliantly in Made-in-America, sustainability, mission-driven orgs, and challenger brands trying to punch up. The more personal the “protection” frame, the more potent the conversion.

Most of this issue has been blunt (and likely, a bit different than what you were expecting – see, friction!), so the third and final bold claim: your creative can not serve two masters.

You can either optimize for platforms/algorithms, or you can optimize for the people on the other side of the screen. You can’t have your cake and eat it, too.

Algorithms reward novelty. People reward meaning.

Algorithms reward frequency. People reward truth.

Algorithms reward sameness. People reward difference.

If your goal is better performance, start treating creative like it matters. Because it does. It's not a variable. It's the variable.

That means taking bigger swings AND ruthlessly prioritizing your efforts on the creatives that have transformational potential. Too many performance marketers are polishing pebbles. Making bad ideas slightly shinier. Testing them to death in the hope that one might turn into a diamond. Candidly, I’ve yet to see optimization transform a piece of quartz into a diamond.

Instead, dig deeper. Find the fundamental emotion you need to convey, and the ownable truths that can help you communicate it. Ask harder questions. And remember:

Platforms change every day. Human nature doesn’t change for millennia.

If you want to win, stop chasing what’s new. Start mastering what’s unchanging.

For next week (since I’m on vacation!) – the issue will be a little different: we’ve created a “greatest hits” of the 10 most read, reacted-to and referenced issues since the launch of the digital download way back in January, 2023. Whether you’ve been a subscriber for all 120 issues or just joined, I think you’ll get something from it. (aside: this is also me taking my own advice and repurposing content)

Cheers,

Sam

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