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What I Learned Burning $14k on YouTube Ads for Candy Japan

candyjapan.com

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Re: What I Learned Burning $14k on YouTube Ads for Candy Japan

#111
post #29

The ad was terrible. It explained how Candy Japan works. I don't care how Candy Japan works. I want the why should I buy Candy Japan. It should have focused instead on the candies that you can get. Delicious, weird, unique candies only available through this service.

As a marketer, videographer, and someone with a sweet tooth, I agree that it's a bad ad.

Re: What I Learned Burning $14k on YouTube Ads for Candy Japan

#115
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely - "marketers" these days don't grasp the concept of brand building. I'm not sure that's true. Some people are just working on a different scale. Brand-building is fine if you're Coke or BMW or McDonald's. You have millions to spend, you can saturate channels, and then people might actually think of you in preference to your competition when they're in the market for a drink or a car or a burger. On the othe…

This week’s ramen won’t come unless the ads you ran six months ago generated some form of brand recognition...

That's going to be tough if our hypothetical business has only been running for three months, though, isn't it? Everyone has to start somewhere, and all I'm saying is that in those early days, the need for immediate results will naturally dominate longer-term brand-building -- unless you're already heavily funded and don't have the same priorities, of course.

Re: What I Learned Burning $14k on YouTube Ads for Candy Japan

#116
post #29

The ad was terrible. It explained how Candy Japan works. I don't care how Candy Japan works. I want the why should I buy Candy Japan. It should have focused instead on the candies that you can get. Delicious, weird, unique candies only available through this service.

Spot on. Old talk by Simon Sinek presents it pretty well, start with the why: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp0HIF3SfI4&t=3m20s

Re: What I Learned Burning $14k on YouTube Ads for Candy Japan

#117

As a marketer, videographer, and someone with a sweet tooth, it's not a great ad. Get to the point. Show the actual product. Tease me with things I can expect to receive. Maybe show reaction videos of people opening and trying the candy (and loving it). Also, you'd probably get higher ROI sending $14k worth of Candy Japan to YouTubers in the hopes they'd open it on their vlog and mention the website.

I read some of the comments on that video, many look similar in style talking about a 'scam', or have a negative tone. Is it possible those are planted from a competitor, or do video ads often have feedback like that?

Re: What I Learned Burning $14k on YouTube Ads for Candy Japan

#118
post #29

The ad was terrible. It explained how Candy Japan works. I don't care how Candy Japan works. I want the why should I buy Candy Japan. It should have focused instead on the candies that you can get. Delicious, weird, unique candies only available through this service.

> The ad was terrible.

Agree - I found the voiceover in particular, to be very off-putting.

That said however, a brief view of the comments section on the ad showed that more than one person thought the voice was great.

Which kind of leads through to this statement from the article

> Now you might understand why I want to get people not in my target audience to skip – it's cheaper because you don't pay when people skip your ad!

If I didn't use an ad-blocker, and I was ever shown that ad, I would've skipped it straight away just to get away from the irritating voice.

Re: What I Learned Burning $14k on YouTube Ads for Candy Japan

#119
post #29

The ad was terrible. It explained how Candy Japan works. I don't care how Candy Japan works. I want the why should I buy Candy Japan. It should have focused instead on the candies that you can get. Delicious, weird, unique candies only available through this service.

I thought it was fine

"Fine" is how you go bankrupt. There is way too much competition out there for 'fine' to be enough.

Re: What I Learned Burning $14k on YouTube Ads for Candy Japan

#120
post #29

The ad was terrible. It explained how Candy Japan works. I don't care how Candy Japan works. I want the why should I buy Candy Japan. It should have focused instead on the candies that you can get. Delicious, weird, unique candies only available through this service.

Additionally, just because someone is interested in Japanese candies, doesn't mean they like anime. The high-pitched annoying cartoon voice really turned me off right away, and it's not immediately obvious in the first 10 seconds (which is how long you have to watch before you can skip on YouTube) what it's for (after all, CrunchyRoll is a service for watching anime online, not ordering crunchy rolls.)
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