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The Growth Newsletter #157

Valentine's Day hooks. Repeatable themes. Reframe the boring. 

2024 🟩⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 2025

We're officially one month through 2024.

Quick check-in: Are you still making progress towards your goals?

Topics for the day: Valentine's Day hooks. Repeatable themes. Reframe the boring. 

Let's dive in 🪅

– Neal

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1. Applying hooks to Valentine's Day ad copy

Insight's data derived from NRF. Hook types from Un-ignorable Hooks.

Americans (mostly men) spent $26,000,000,000 for Valentine's Day last year, and only 52% was for their partner. The rest was for their family, friends, coworkers, and kids.

It's one of the biggest gift-giving days of the year and is a huge opportunity for DTC brands.

You should test some ads using copy and creative targeted to Valentine's Day. Here are some example ad openers using a few of our hook types:

#1. Credibility: 12,166 boyfriends have already bought X for their partner.

• Leverages the social proof of how many have bought from you.
• It also triggers an "Oh damn, I'm behind.”
• Depending on the product, you can try variations other than boyfriend or partner.

#2. Fear: There's only 2 more days until Valentine's Day.

#3 Counter-Narrative: Valentine's Day is BS. But your love isn't. Treat your partner anyway.

• Gets attention with the opener.
• Calls out the growing sentiment that people think Valentine's Day is overly consumeristic or fake but reframes the day as a positive.

#4 Celebration + Curiosity: It's Jack and Jill's 25th anniversary! Here's what Jack got her for their special day.

• Ad creative could show a couple with Jill looking excitedly down at the gift she's getting, but you can't see what it is. Piques the curiosity. Here's a quirky AI example:

#5 Identity: Still looking for the perfect gift to show your love? 

• Speaks to the situation they're in using a Barnum-style question.

#6. Surprise:48% of Valentine's Day gifts aren't for partners. Treat your mom for Valentine's

• Surprising fact gets their attention. 
• Make it seem socially normal to buy for someone other than a partner.
• It reminds them of a specific person they could buy for.

#7. Value: 10 Valentine's Day gifts that will WOW her (him/them).

• The ad sends to a piece of content where your product is the first on the list.

As always, get creative with your Valentine's Day experiments. 

2. Create repeatable themes and formats

Insight from us, featuring MrBeast.

Look closely at most successful creators and you'll notice something. For example, let's take a look at MrBeast's YouTube channel:

Just in his last 20 videos, you can see a few repeat formats:

1. $1 vs $XXXXXXXX [thing]
2. [something] vs [adjective] [something else]
3. I [verb] X [thing]
4. World's [superlative] [thing]
5. Somebody surviving something and winning money

You'll also notice his thumbnails have recurring elements. And the videos themselves follow a certain structural pattern.

There are a few great reasons to find repeatable formats:

1. If you like $1 vs $1,000,000 Hotel, you'll probably like $1 vs $1,000,000,000 Yacht. Which in itself is smart because:
   1. It's easy for the YouTube algorithm to know what to recommend next.
   2. It's easy for your audience to decide what they should watch next. It's de-risked that they're going to like it.
2. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Hence, the 5,000 Marvel movies. Every piece of content is an investment. You de-risk the investment by repeating what worked in the past.
3. It's less effort. This newsletter has a repeat format: Intro → sponsors → 3 growth tactics → news → something fun → outro. I'm not reinventing the wheel each time. I know what a "growth tactic" looks like. I like to say it's more like "filling in the blanks."

Get creative and find your repeatable content formats. Then, you can be creative within those boundaries.

Note: This concept also applies to ads :). If you find something that works, keep experimenting with that idea.

3. Reframe and re-position an existing boring product

Insight from First The Trousers.

1986: 6 pounds of carrots eaten per person per year
2002: 11 pounds per person

The cause for the 80% increase? The invention of baby carrots.

Baby carrots now account for 80% of all carrot consumption.

(For those who don't know, baby carrots are simply a sweeter variety of carrots that are chopped up into shorter pieces and have rounded edges.)

What can be learned from the humble baby carrot:

#1. Create a new experience for an existing product

• A full-sized carrot: A vegetable you cook.
• A baby carrot: A healthy snack food—at home or on the go.

This shift allowed for 4 interesting benefits:

1. Convenience as a value prop. Making carrots "grab and go."
2. Reframe from vegetable to snack. Are carrots the healthiest vegetable? Unlikely. Are they healthier than a chocolate bar? Absolutely. 
3. New usage  occasions. Instead of just in soups, now carrots can go in veggies trays, kid's lunches, and in the backpack for a snack in the park.
4. New distribution opportunities. As a grab-and-go snack, it makes sense for them to be in gas stations—a place that will never have a vegetable aisle.

#2. Push into the new category, don't fight it

Instead of leaning into the health value prop (carrots good—junk food bad), they found that treating baby carrots as a part of the junk food category, rather than in opposition to it, led to 10% more sales.

People already know they're healthier than candy and chocolate.

People need to be convinced that they're delicious, addictive, and indulgent, and can satisfy their junk food craving.

Quick question: You are a...?

Your response will help us personalize the content you receive from us :)

News and links

News you can use:

• Google reveals its first AI-powered conversational advertising experience.

• Meta releases a new version of Brand Rights Protection, making it easier for businesses to protect their brands.

• Meta is expanding the availability of Advantage detailed targeting, meaning Meta will use machine learning to determine who else to show your ad.

• LinkedIn announces it is discontinuing lookalike audiences.

• TikTok is testing 30-minute long video uploads for select users.

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Want to be featured in front of 89,680 founders and marketers? Learn more here–booking into April.

Something fun

From some random 90s nostalgia account on Instagram that probably didn't make this:

What did you think of this week's newsletter?

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Thanks everyone! See you next Tuesday with another fresh batch of tactics.

PS: I will love you if you take 30 seconds to write us a testimonial :)

Neal O'Grady

Justin Setzer