We delivered 4,000 static ads last month for brands like Jones Road, HexClad, VKTRY, and Hollow Socks. Here's how to perform with static ads: 1. Run offers Running offers doesn't mean neglecting your margins. You can actually increase them. BOGO, % OFF, Subscribe & Save. Be creative, optimize for contribution margins, and deploy an offer. Offers are powerful because they let you educate at TOF with videos, then convert at BOF with statics. All our clients using this funnel are crushing it. They don't hurt your brand. Customers love great deals, and you can still create high-quality offer statics. 2. Be creative Evergreen statics largely aren't working because you're doing what everyone else does. You open Foreplay, pick a concept, then think how to apply it to your brand. You're thinking backwards. Instead, start with your brand. Think of a creative concept that works for YOU. Most high-performing static ads follow this simple formula: highly creative scene headline offer. You won't find highly creative concepts on Foreplay. You find them on Pinterest by playing with keywords. 3. Test new audiences Statics are cheap to produce, get cheap clicks, and can scale decently. They're perfect for testing new audiences/angles. Let's say you're a coffee substitute brand unsure which demo to target next. Try different angles: gut pain vs low energy, paired with specific demos: women 30 health enthusiasts vs men 30 workout enthusiasts. Here's how it looks in Figma: 5 different ad concepts, each with 2 design variations targeting different demos. Pair copy with each variant to match your audience. Variant 1: "Take it easy on your gut" pink background Variant 2: "Bring intensity to your workouts" blue background Bonus point: click bait visual controversial headlines

The amount of shit you need to eat to take your agency to $1M/mo is unprecedented.

In case you're wondering why my background looks so orange-ish it is because I live in Mexico

Got our first Reel on IG to scale past 100K views. Our strategists are briefing these. We're not yet offering videos to our clients, but we will eventually. Looks like we already know what we're doing. go follow at:adswithsimon

Once, I had my marketing team do an IG carousel for my account. It said “my mom doesn’t know what I’m doing lol”. She called me 15min later saying she knows we make ads lmao. Had to edit the post obviously, apologize and explain it’s a trend. Fiou

New client. Less than 20 days in. These are 2 ads we made for these guys. This is what I mean when I talk about creative diversity. First one. $5K in spend in under 20 days. - Highly creative, almost editorial. Headline riffs on the old "you're not yourself when you're hungry" line but pulls it into intimacy territory. - No product explanation, no offer, no CTA. The image does the work: hands, an eye mask, a hotel room implied in the background. We're not selling the product yet, we're selling the world the product lives in. Second one. $1K in spend so far. Built to look exactly like a Reddit post, inside a very specific niche where women go to talk anonymously about problems they wouldn't bring up anywhere else. - The hook alone is doing so much work: It's funny, it's specific, it sounds like a real human typed it at 1am. - The targeting is happening entirely through the creative itself: the format filters out anyone who doesn't recognize the platform, the language filters by age and persona, the problem filters by exactly who the brand wants to reach. - Technically BOF, but the format hides it so well you don't realize it's an ad until you're already at the bottom. One sells the feeling, the other sells the fix. Most accounts take a year to get here. The diversity is the strategy, not the consequence of running ads for a long time.

Our brand clients scaling the fastest aren't profitable on 1st purchase. They hit 0.3 ROAS and $100 CPAs at scale. They're spending as much as they can (volume) not as efficiently as possible (profitability). If the numbers don't work simply fix the unit economics or don't spend on paid media.

5 Meta ad angles we see crushing across accounts

The thing is the highest level answer to give when it comes to media buying is to just fix your unit economics and send it

I don’t know about you but this is mostly how I use AI and it’s awesome

Would love to know about your whitelisting process, especially how you structure deals with influencers? Is it a retainer for account access payment per creative? Is it something else?

Really cool episode with @9operators and @zachmstuck. So much sauce in it - we actually have a Heart Health client they’re crushing without trying. Also Zach says static ads are awesome so great episode.

If I had to start my agency, Statiq, over I would sign 15 clients instead of 250. In Q1 the number stopped moving. Yeah we grew faster than most agencies, but then just got stuck. Q2 was about figuring out why. With Jules, my homie and co-founder, we built Statiq like a software company: no contracts, month to month, get as many clients as fast as possible. Got us here. But the biggest software companies don't just sell licenses, they sell implementation, services, relationships. They grow on commitments. We weren't doing any of that. So we were producing at volume for clients who could walk the next month. Fix is owning all the work. Strategy, copy, design, performance. Fewer clients, longer contracts, higher AOV. Same revenue we started the year at. But the vision has never been clearer. Two years in. Finally know what we're building.

Mexico City right now, The Angel is getting busyyy - Mexicanos about to have some fun 🌮

France will win the World Cup

Ask any successful entrepreneur about their childhood. They'll either say they don't remember (they do) or joke about the worst thing that happened and move on. Making millions in your 20s/30s is abnormal. You need to have seen hell to be that hungry that young. But that energy doesn't last. Anger and shame only take you so far. You might grow the numbers YoY but life catches up brother: health, isolation, burnout. I used to think the pain was the reason for my success. This year I had to accept I could've gotten here through intelligence and creativity alone. Didn't need it. It doesn't define me. New ceilings unveil themselves through acceptance.

We built a 2-agent Claude setup to write copy for $100k/month Meta ad accounts. Most people open Claude as a chatbot: they just type what they need, and get a copy back. If the model doesn't know the brand, it writes generic copy. Generic copy makes generic performance. The fix is a dedicated Claude project per client, with two agents inside. Here's how each one works: Research agent: - Runs automatically. No input needed. - Mines reviews, builds market analysis, tracks new winners as they come in. - Stores everything inside the project so the copy agent always has context before it writes a word. Copy agent: - Takes over once the research is done. - You drop in one inspiration piece and ask for variants. - Knows the brand, the audience, the angles that already worked. Here's what that looks like in practice: We did this for Mail Order Mystery, a mystery game for kids, physical mail, wax seals, ancient maps. We gave the agent one inspo piece. It came back with: - persona (screen-aware mom), - awareness stage (problem-aware), - headline (Why screens lose to mail? Explained like you're five), and body copy about a 300-year-old pirate letter being the kind of fun a kid remembers at 25. That's the angle, the persona, and the hook → decided before anyone wrote a word. The output isn't shippable on its own → A strategist reviews it, adds the judgment of the work only a creative real person has, and that's the last step. That's the whole point: it’s not about replacing the creative process, you're running more of it. The setup is created from Claude Desktop → Customize → skills: one for research, one for direct response copy. That's the whole thing.

I fumbled on meetings for way too long. Used to do everything async: product reviews, strategy docs, client reports. hit major bottlenecks in my business recently and decided to meetingmaxxing - started to meet with everybody for anything. You need my input for anything you book a call with me. You work on something i call a priority you have to meet with me 30min every fucking day. We're shipping stuff 10x faster. Don't sleep on meetings guys.

marketing

We have the Bucket Golf ad to post: We made an ad for a backyard golf brand that looks like it was designed by their 8-year-old. It spent $4K in a few days. -Crayon font. -White background. -No offer and no CTA. The headline: "I hate what this cost." You assume it's expensive before you've seen a price. Then you see everything in the kit, and it seems like a lot for whatever you're about to pay. So it creates tension without an actual resolution. THEN the closing line hits: "But dad has been more active than ever." Same crayon font. Looks like a kid wrote it. Every parent who sees that projects themselves into it immediately. Both lines are in blue. Against that white background your eye just moves through it. Change them to black and that feeling disappears entirely. This sits at the top of the funnel. No offer, no CTA, its only job is to stop the scroll and make you feel something. Ugly ads made with intention are some of the hardest creative to pull off.

I have said this before and I will say it again: I am an ABO guy and that will never change.