Franky Shaw
@frankyecom • 34,278 subscribers
12 years in e-com. Once hit $800k in a day. Sold my first company after a Good Morning America feature. Still in love with the game. AI UGC course below.
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i think the best drama ads are the ones where people can actually see themselves in the scenario. you’re essentially letting someone experience a version of themselves they secretly want to become. a lifestyle, a personality trait, or a behavior they wish they had in real life. there’s so much psychology to play with here. you don’t need to copy whatever brand is printing right now to find winners. i’d actually argue that’s usually the worse approach. understand your demographic, what they aspire to do/be, how they want to be perceived, and get creative around that. each age demographic & ethnic background has their own desires and aspirations also. that in itself should provide you with enough creative diversity. also, come up with the concept yourself before you start briefing AI on the script. the idea should come from you. AI should just help you bring it to life. i don’t think i’m the best at any of this, i’ve just spent a lot of time trying to understand what makes people tick and why they buy. and i think that’s a big part of why my creatives have been performing so well for brands. unfortunately I’m unable to post most of them here.
Franky Shaw3,734,410 views • 8 days ago
Drama ads aren’t just for women. That might be one of the dumbest assumptions in advertising right now. Men will watch drama. You just have to give them a reason to care. And one of the easiest ways to get a man emotionally invested is to put him in a situation that hits his ego. He feels himself getting weaker. His hair is disappearing. He can’t keep up with the younger guys anymore. His wife doesn’t look at him the same way. He’s embarrassed by something he would never admit out loud. That’s your hook. But the mistake is revealing the product immediately. Let the story breathe. Let the insecurity build. Let the viewer wonder what happens next. Then, at the end, reveal the bigger picture. Because the story was never really about the product. It was about confidence. Identity. His relationship. Getting older. Feeling like himself again. That’s what makes drama so powerful. Almost any product can become a prop inside a story that actually means something. The product is the mechanism. The story is the reason to watch. And this is where watch time becomes a massive creative advantage. If you can get someone to watch 30, 45, 60+ seconds instead of 2 seconds, you’re creating dramatically more opportunity for Meta to learn who is actually responding to your creative. More watch time. More engagement. More shares. More signals. And potentially more efficient acquisition as the system finds people who respond to that type of content. That’s the part people miss. The goal isn’t just to make an ad people click. The goal is to make an ad people watch, finish, and send to someone else. Because when the story earns the attention, you get something traditional UGC rarely gives you: Time. And time is one of the most valuable things you can get in advertising. You just can’t directly buy it… People can just swipe right past your ad… You have to convince the customer to give it to you.
Franky Shaw6,594,633 views • 1 month ago
Everybody is obsessed with song ads right now. They retain attention. They get cheap clicks. They can absolutely crush CPA. But cheap acquisition and great acquisition are two different things. A catchy song can drag almost anyone through an ad. Repetition, music, absurdity… it hijacks attention extremely well. Drama does it differently. Conflict. Tension. Characters. An unanswered question. You’re still getting insane retention, but now someone is staying because they’re mentally invested in what’s happening. They want to know what happens next. And that gives you something a song ad doesn’t always give you: time to build the problem, introduce the product and make someone actually understand WHY they should care. That’s where I think customer quality starts to separate. One format can be incredible at generating cheap first purchases. The other has the potential to generate customers who actually understand what they bought, why they bought it and why they should keep buying it. That distinction matters when you look past Day 1. I have zero problem going 1:1 CAC to COGS. But here’s the part people are missing: 1:1 isn’t the metric to optimize for. The lifecycle of that customer is. If you’re acquiring customers cheap but they never reorder, never subscribe, never buy another product and disappear after Day 1, you didn’t discover some magical acquisition strategy. You literally just bought revenue. If a company spends $50 acquiring a customer on a $50 product and that customer becomes worth $200, they’ll buy as many of those customers as you can give them. Finding MORE of those people is where creative matters. CPA tells you how efficiently you got someone through the door. LTV tells you whether you got the RIGHT person through the door. So when I see people calling 1:1 CAC/revenue AI song ads “the future,” I think they’re optimizing for the wrong thing. The future isn’t whoever can manufacture attention the cheapest. It’s whoever can turn attention into actual investment in the product and brand. That’s why I’m betting heavily on drama. Songs can make people stay. Drama can make people care. And I think over time, LTV is going to show just how big that difference is.
Franky Shaw1,287,632 views • 1 month ago
5.1 Cheeky viral product placement is going to be one of the easiest ways brands get seen by millions. Not an ad that feels like an ad. A fake reunion example? And your product just happens to be in the hands of the person who has their shit together… Rinse & repeat formula
Franky Shaw2,484,094 views • 5 months ago
kinda crazy how few creative strategists actually study human psychology... once you understand what makes a specific group of people tick, making ads they can’t scroll past becomes a lot easier. spend 10-15 mins a night studying human desire instead of just scrolling ad libraries. you’ll start seeing angles everywhere.
Franky Shaw30,348 views • 5 days ago
Women wanna watch shows. They wanna follow characters, drama, relationships, tension, payoff. They don’t wanna get 8 seconds into their scroll and suddenly feel like they’ve been ambushed by an ad. So give them the show. Build the entertainment first, then slowly work the product into it. That’s the part I think a lot of brands are missing. Entertainment value is basically the currency you use to earn product attention. If the story is good enough, people will happily sit through the product education because you already gave them something worth watching. And when you get that balance right, the ad account usually tells you pretty quickly. Cheap CPMs. Strong CPAs. Way more scale. Stop interrupting the show. Make the ad the show.
Franky Shaw78,232 views • 14 days ago
been having a ridiculous amount of fun with dramady (drama + comedy) ads lately lol millions of views off concepts that are honestly pretty simple. nothing overly complicated. just good casting, believable scenarios, great acting and knowing exactly what makes someone want to keep watching. the funny part is pretty much every brand i’ve been building these concepts for is finding scale with them faster than their traditional formats. i think people underestimate how much consumers just want to be entertained. you don’t need some groundbreaking idea either. sometimes a really simple concept executed incredibly well is all it takes. my framework is getting better every week but understanding what people actually enjoy watching is still the biggest advantage imo. I’ll release this all in v6.
Franky Shaw36,440 views • 6 days ago
Your customer doesn’t want another UGC ad. They want a fucking show. Look at how people actually consume content. They’re sitting on the couch with Netflix playing in the background, scrolling Reels because they’re bored and looking for something interesting enough to steal their attention. Then your ad starts: “Hey guys, so I’ve been using this product for the last…” Swipe. Nobody gives a shit. People have gotten insanely good at recognizing an ad. And traditional UGC isn’t impressive anymore. Another influencer person holding a product. Another testimonial. Another 60-second yap session explaining features and benefits. We keep trying to make UGC look more “authentic” when the bigger problem is that the format itself has become predictable. The future isn’t making UGC look more authentic…. It’s making the ad interesting enough that people forget it’s an ad. Give me a character. Give me a problem. Give me conflict. Give me a reason to find out what happens next. Then put the product inside the story. Because people don’t skip stories. They skip commercials. And I think the brands that understand that first are going to have a massive creative advantage.
Franky Shaw121,708 views • 1 month ago
AI animated ads are about to become a MUCH bigger part of performance marketing. You can now make movie-quality animated ads in ANY length. I packed my entire A-Z framework for this into a free v5 update for existing members. v6 is next… Comment “v5” for the details👇
Franky Shaw217,976 views • 2 months ago
“taste” in AI creative is rare… that’s why a majority of the AI content you see on X is just BS course bait. they may have technical knowledge but they have no real ad experience. you can usually tell within 3 seconds when somebody knows AI tools but has never actually studied good creative… the casting is way off, the script is wack, and everything looks muddy. “taste” is the gap now, and that’s what brands are paying for when they hire you to make creatives.
Franky Shaw43,796 views • 12 days ago
AI UGC is already dominating every major ad platform. And if you still need convincing of that, your brand probably just isn’t scaling hard enough yet. But there’s a much bigger takeaway here for creative strategists: Women consume advertising very differently than men do. They’ll sit through stories. Drama. Characters. Relationships. Tension. Resolution. And we already have decades of data proving this. Now look at what’s happening with micro-dramas. Your mom and aunt are casually watching 7-minute stories engineered around open loops, cliffhangers, emotional tension and subtle product placements they barely even register as ads. That’s where I think this is heading. Ads become entertainment. Entertainment becomes distribution. And the product gets written directly into the story. Meanwhile, the traditional UGC flywheel of: Hook → Problem → Solution → CTA is becoming more predictable by the day. Consumers know what a UGC ad looks like now. They know when the “random girl in her bathroom” is about to reveal the product. They know the pattern. The next creative edge isn’t making that same format 10% better with AI. It’s creating something people would genuinely watch even if there was nothing being sold… Then finding a way to naturally map the product into the entertainment. AI gives us the ability to do this at a scale and speed that simply wasn’t possible before. The smartest creative strategists won’t throw away the formats that have printed money for 20–30+ years. They’ll study why those formats worked… Then rebuild them with the tools we have now. Here’s my example of this at work with a “shopping channel” inspired ad.
Franky Shaw55,867 views • 18 days ago
My 5.3 Animation Framework Showcase. I think brands should look to become mini TV studios. Recurring characters. Ongoing storylines. Products built into the plot. Every ad becomes another episode people recognize. Entertainment earns attention. Education earns the sale.
Franky Shaw137,880 views • 1 month ago
5.2 Framework Update for AI UGC In 5.2 I go over the art of making a good ad. From storytelling to character creation, to hook methods. If you want the “science” behind what makes an ad work and how you can get into the mind of your customer, it’s a must watch. See you inside!
Franky Shaw347,525 views • 5 months ago
Tons of “gurus” on here ripping my methods/ad concepts and calling it their own. Didn’t know Twitter ecom guys were buying from anon accounts lol. V4 update drops tonight. Haven’t seen anyone beat my AI UGC yet… but I’m always down to trade notes with people pushing it.
Franky Shaw446,244 views • 8 months ago
The death of UGC with v5.1 My latest realism engine makes light work of influencer UGC videos. In 30 minutes you can spin up ads like this without paying product costs, influencer fees & waiting weeks for the content… or for revisions… If you’ve hired UGC before, you know 🤣
Franky Shaw285,951 views • 5 months ago
Your brand has benefits people actually need to know, so why are you making them sit through an infomercial to learn them? I think one of the biggest opportunities with drama ads is making educational content actually entertaining. Instead of saying “here are the 5 benefits of our product,” build a story around someone who actually has the problem your product solves. Let the audience watch the problem happen. Let them get invested in the person. Then bring the product into the story naturally and show them why it matters. You’re still educating them. You’re just not making the education feel exhausting… And this is where watch time gets really interesting. If someone watches 45 seconds of your ad because they actually want to know what happens next, you just got 45 seconds to communicate your product without forcing a sales pitch down their throat. Now imagine doing that at scale. People are watching longer. They’re engaging. They’re sharing. Meta gets more signals from the creative and more opportunity to find the people who respond to it. That’s when you can start seeing really cheap CPMs and, in turn, some ridiculously cheap CPAs. Not because you found some secret targeting hack. Because you made something people actually wanted to watch & share with their friends. I think that’s where the future of advertising is going. Make the story interesting enough that people actually want to finish the ad. The education is still there. They just don’t feel like they’re being sold to…
Franky Shaw44,780 views • 28 days ago
One of the most overlooked parts of advertising is getting someone to feel something before you try to sell them anything. Excitement. Tension. Sadness. Empathy. Joy. Nostalgia. If you can trigger an emotion strong enough to break the scrolling pattern, you’ve already won the hardest part. Them watching… They might share it. Think of someone. Comment. Or watch until the end because they actually care what happens next. And your product is sitting inside that experience the entire time. This is where I think brands get too obsessed with explaining their product. Features. Benefits. Ingredients. Specifications. All important, but none of it matters if nobody wants to watch the fucking ad. Give me a story that makes me feel something. Let the product become part of that story. Because when someone connects your brand to an emotion, they’re not just remembering what you sell. They’re remembering how you made them feel. And that’s a much harder thing to scroll past. Comment “emotion” and I’ll send you my DeepSeek framework for emotion based scriptwriting.
Franky Shaw35,399 views • 24 days ago