the "homerun" ad
Flex
How we created their best performing advertisement to date and generated
$5.4 million dollars in revenue.
Partner
Flex
Product
https://flexfits.com/
alternative period product
Deliverables
One video advertisement,
used on Facebook & YouTube
How do you turn a taboo topic — a person’s period — into an advertisement that is universally watched, shared, and commented on by almost every demographic on Facebook? We did that with the advertisement we created for Flex.
The problem
the start
We’re not a traditional agency. When we started working with Flex, we introduced the idea that you didn’t just need to create an ad that appealed to a specific, niche demographic — instead, you could create an ad that would appeal to everyone.
In their case, that meant every single person that had periods, and every single person that knew someone who had periods.
We also introduced the concept that an ad didn’t have to feel like an ad — you could create something that people found so engaging, not only did they watch it all the way through, but they also actively shared it with their friends as well.
struggling with
Flex’s prior advertisements were niche in nature: they targeted people who were already looking for alternative period products, and as a result, their market size wasn’t very big. They were running out of people to target, and were paying high CPCs for the people they were targeting. Moreover, the ads they currently had were short-form ads, and their shelf life was very short — they would burn out quickly.
the goal
We wanted to open their eyes to how big the market for their product could be — to not just increase their market share in the alternative period product space, but become a brand that transcended the niche, so that they would become a product that everyone talked about as a cultural touchstone.
Most importantly, we wanted their ad to go viral. We wanted to create something entertaining enough to watch the entire way through, but still punch with enough content about Flex’s amazing product that the viewer would be compelled to click through to their website and buy.
Our hypothesis
We approached the advertisement that we were creating for them by coming to the conclusion that we wanted to reframe the discussion completely.
“I love sex….but I hate my period.”
It wasn’t sexy to talk about periods, and the massive inconvenience that women have to go through every month. But it WAS sexy to talk about…sex.
It wasn’t sexy to talk about periods, and the massive inconvenience that someone has to go through every month. But it WAS sexy to talk about…sex.
Over 50% of viewers on an ad will drop off within the first 15 seconds. We wanted to use sex as a hook into the video — it’s so polarizing and different from what other period product ads do, it was sure to get the viewer’s attention and curiosity.
The key here was the sex would only be the HOOK. It was just one benefit of Flex’s product, and talking about that up front would lure people in, make them curious enough to watch the entire ad. Script-wise, there would only be a few lines about sex, and that would be enough. The rest of the script focused on selling the viewer on Flex’s product:
Throughout it all, to keep the viewer watching to the very end, we would do the things that we’ve always done, in every video we’ve created:
Be relatable
Have great jokes
Show eye-catching visuals
The last thing we wanted to do was make sure the content talked about how periods REALLY are, instead of delicately dancing around the topic as if it was something to be embarrassed about. We would tell it like it is…and our viewers would love us for it.
Our process
The way we work with clients is simple: they trust us to do what we do best, and we go out and do it. Here’s how we worked with Flex:
step 1
Flex’s current ads
We analyzed their data and current advertisements. There are cool features in Facebook (and Google) that allow you to see all the advertising that a company is running online. We pored through all of what Flex was currently doing to see which pieces of content had the most engagement and longevity.
step 2
Flex’s competitor’s ads
We analyzed their competitor’s ads. Thankfully, Flex didn’t have much to worry about in this department. There are less groundbreaking female-focused startups than you’d think, and after surveying the lay of the land, we realized that we didn’t have to change our positioning or messaging to accommodate any direct competitors.
step 3
Flex’s users
We talked to Flex’s users -- more than 20 of them total. We asked for video calls with a broad swath of their customers: those who were huge, early champions of their product, to people who had just recently bought it for the first time. We do this because we wanted to write their ad in their target audience’s voice. The specific words that their users used to describe their experiences -- that’s the language we used in the ad, and in general, getting a robust sense of their way of thinking helped us figure out exactly how to frame the script we were writing.
step 4
What’s hot online about alternative period products
We wanted to see what people were saying about alternative period products. We found everything that went viral around the topic on YouTube, Reddit, Instagram, Twitter, and Medium, and did a content deep dive to figure out why these pieces of content went viral. This data helped inform our final hypothesis — it helped us craft something we knew would be entertaining to people.
It was these four steps that helped us come to the hypothesis you read about above, and it led us to believe that we absolutely had to gear the advertisement around sex if we wanted it to have the most viral impact.
Filming
It took us 8 weeks to deliver a video to Flex, from start to finish.
If you’ve worked with other advertising agencies before, you’ll know that 8 weeks is a miraculous timeline. Bigger agencies are slow to move because they need multiple layers of approval up the chain, and usually take at least 4 months to produce an advertisement.
Because we’re a small team that’s been working together for 8 years now, none of that happens in our process. With Flex, it took us 8 weeks, and this is how it broke down.
2 weeks
Writing.
This is when we did the research process with users and online content. It took us a week to write the first version of the script -- what we call the information script -- and we checked in with Flex after that. They gave us the green light, and it took us another week to create the final version -- what we call the creative script.
2 days
Production.
Production took 2 full days for Flex. We have a team in Los Angeles we go to for shoots like this, and we cast actors or use real users depending on what the needs are in the script. (We filmed Flex a few years ago, but these days, we have all staff get their blood tested on production days to make sure our set stays COVID-free.)
2 weeks
Post production.
Once the filming finished, we passed along the footage to our genius editor on staff, and the editing process begins. All the fast cuts, snappy music, animations and text you see gets added here. We showed Flex the final version, they loved it, and we gave them the final video in three different formats: 16:9 for YouTube, 6:19 and 4:5 for Facebook.
Bonus!
Flex also took us up on our advertising management services. At the time, they didn’t have the bandwidth to manage their Facebook and Google advertising campaigns, so we did it for them. That means we worked with their marketing team to create the specific campaigns on the platforms, figured out the right cohort of users to target, and managed ad spend every day to make sure that the CAC was in line with what we historically expect.
Results for Flex
+1500%
rise in social media engagement
+12.4M
video views (mostly organic)
300%
increase in revenue Y/Y
The ad, as you can tell, did amazingly. On Facebook, people were surprised and happy to see the tone of this video for a period product, and thousands of people tagged their friends, came back to rewatch it, even commented on the video and told us that it was the best ad they’ve ever seen.
The best part about this type of home run ad? Typical ads have a burnout rate where they need to be replaced every 3-6 months. This ad ran for Flex for over 2 years.
Impact
See the comments on the live video for yourself!
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