All right, welcome back guys. We're going to unpack another ad today, and this one's great because it's all about the picture. So if you guys are into photography or you're struggling with imagery for your brand, your website, your advertising, this might help a little bit with some inspiration. So let's get right into it right after this.

Okay? Welcome back guys. We're going to unpack another ad today. So this is the super fun series where we are decoding ads. I've got a great friend of mine in the business, David, who loves to say that this is your chance to learn how to see the matrix of what's going on around us with marketing. So that's my objective with unpacking these ads is that we can start to see the psychology blocking the design layout, the ad objective or campaign objective tactic objectives so that we can start seeing that stuff and applying those things to our businesses so we can do better with our emails, our websites, our advertising, our print, and everything that we're doing to promote ourselves and our businesses. So let's open this one up right here. Okay, boom. First thing we do, just going to let it sink in for a second here.

Clearly, the first thing is just all the blue is just telling everything that right? Just so much blue and a little teeny awesome cruise ship down there in the middle and nothing says beach vacation and unwinding like a bunch of blue ocean and a blue, sunny sky. So they're just killing us with this imagery being so impactful. It almost just says everything about what we we're working for. We just want to take a break. We want to have a vacation. We want to be in this tropical environment for those that are attracted to this type of vacation. This pretty much says it, right? So the imagery is really well done, and that's what I was saying on the intro here, that when we're deciding on photography for programmatic and display type advertising, we want the picture to do the heavy lifting for us. And then we got this other stuff.

We got to deal with the copyright and the button and design, but we want the picture to do the lift. So we want the picture to hit people scrolling. You got a microsecond or whatever it is, fraction of a second. So you want the picture to at least do some work for your brand right away, even if the person doesn't get into the rest of this stuff. So the first thing up top Norwegian cruise lines, we've got this beautiful thing. Bam. I know that if in my life I want this, these guys have it, if I want this experience, Norwegian cruise lines had so minimally, even if I don't get into the rest of all this copy and we, let's see, how would I do that? I don't even know. Cover that up if we covered that up. Okay, maybe I do like this. There we go.

We cover all that up. We still get the main objective of the ad, which is to co-brand, no range and crew lines with this incredible natural setting that we can experience with them. That being said, point of that is be selective in your photos. Be the pictures that you want to build your brand around the imagery that you want your brand to support the experience or the other way to think about it, and one of the things that we don't talk about enough is what transformation are you offering your customer or your client, right? What's transformation? This here is very clear. They're offering me that I can have this experience in this incredibly beautiful place on their nice little boat. So that's the transformation. So that's another way to frame that is if the picture you're going to use in your popup, your ad, your website, your print, your email, does it show your target customer client how they're going to transform by working with you or buying from you?

And if it doesn't, then maybe it's not the right picture. So that's a good way to think about it. Alright, now let's get up into the copyright. This one I pulled because it is a straight up direct offer ad, right? So this one's got the hook, big monster discount right here at the top, 50% off, everybody wants half off. I almost clicked on this. I want to go on this thing. Half off is a huge deal. Now I will let you know there's a reason they went half off. It's not because they can't fill the cruise ship and all these other things we could imagine they're like going out of business. That's not the reason why they go 50%. It's 50% is a gigantic hook. It performs far better than 20% and 30% off. No secret there. But for smaller advertisers and smaller businesses, if you guys are thinking 20% is a super deal, you're probably not going to have a lot of conversions from that.

It's just not motivating enough for the buyer. It doesn't sound that great. And the other thing is, and this is where maybe they could have done better here. Sometimes when we express a deal as a percentage, we also want to say up to $3,000 and call out a big cash number as well because not everybody's mind works the same. Some people can do percentages pretty quick and they go, oh, okay, 20% off on a new Cadillac is $15,000 factory rebate. Oh, that's a great deal. But other people just, that's too much. So you just say $15,000 factory rebate. And people are like, damn, that's a lot of money. So sometimes you want to say the dollar figure, sometimes you want to say the percentages. They may have another sister ad for this that they're cross testing that has a dollar figure there. Save up to $2,500 on your family's vacation.

That sounds awesome too. So play with percentages versus hard dollars and see how they perform within your niche. But 50% always does pretty well, especially on high ticket items like this. So this has got a lot of baked and perceived value right off the top. And you'll notice that they did that we read left to right. So the first thing they wanted you to see is that 50% off. That was very deliberate. The placement and the layout of saying that right there in the normal order that we read. Then we get over to this part over here where it says free unlimited open bar air four and more. Now they went for the kill on this, which is book. Now that probably could have been again tested as learn more, see more again, like a lower ask book now is kind of like if we're not ready to spend the money and we haven't saved up for the cruise or I don't know, then that one is a little bit much because I'm not again going to go zero to a hundred if I can't figure out my plans and stuff.

How much they're relying on this ad to get clicked is debatable. But in a retargeting sequence, I think this ad is incredibly powerful. If you have people that are in and out of your booking engine and they haven't made a commitment and you're able to retarget them with this type of deal, I think you're going to see some significant conversions by playing this game. Of course, if they land on this ad as a retargeting and they do go to book and they click it, you got to send 'em them somewhere where that 50% is going to be something they can capture either through a special checkout page or whatever the backend mechanics of that are. But this one definitely has a lot of firepower just based on that big perceived value piece right there. And then this free thing is in advertising and copywriting. This is kind of like I'm going to sing a big hammer and then I'm going to come with a rocket launcher too.

So we got the big hammers, the 50% off, and then the rocket launcher is just put free anything. I don't give a crap, put a gigantic free thing on there. I don't care if we're giving away free drinking straws, just say free on the ad. So we got this big call out free and it just says unlimited open bar airfare or more. A little vague there, but they got it done because they wanted to use this word free, which again is super powerful. We're going through these ads together this year. We're going to start to see repetitive copywriting tools, learn more book now, buy now free. These words have been established in advertising copywriting for the better part of about six decades, going all the way back to print and the back of magazines and all of that sort of Mad Men stuff freeze always performed very well.

There's a reason that they married it with the 50% on this ad. This thing basically is like two guns blazing. It's like they really want to get some bookings out of this. So they're coming with their best stuff is the way I see it. Okay, so if you feel like you need to hit really hard, this is a great ad to look at what that looks like. This is a hard hitting ad. They're going for the throat on deal making. This is probably very competitive against other cruise lines and going to give people that are shopping for vacation. A moment to pause because this definitely needs to be investigated. Of course, if you're making plans, which is all they want you to do is to get in there and see what kind of deal they have versus the other ideas that you have for vacation with your family or whatever's going on in your life.

A little bit of disclaimer down there, I can't really read that stuff. It says buy an air ticket and the second guess flies for might say, free, I don't know. And then there's a little catch all there, certain conditions of terms and conditions apply, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? So just don't forget if you're going to do something like this and you do have that, get the small print in there. You don't want somebody coming after you and saying, Hey, it was free everything, or something like that. So there's a little bit of catchall on the bottom, so be conscientious of that. But great. Add again. The lesson with this one is if you're going to do direct offer in today's environment, go hard or go home. And if you're looking at pictures and the pictures that you're using for your marketing aren't telling the story that you want your brand associated with the transformational story that you're offering, pick another picture.

This is a great example of great photography, nice centering to brand center line book. Now ship keeps our eye right in the middle here. The whole thing is tapering down to the boat. There's some visual taper to this design and layout. Just really nice little points to notice on this one. Go ahead and smash that like button. Subscribe to the channel because these are quick and you can learn so much from this stuff. If you're doing anything to grow your business, these are not to be ignored. I love ad hacking, decoding, all of these things. Looking into the matrix of marketing, if you will. I can't wait to see you guys on the next one. So subscribe. And I guess there's the bell thing. You can do that too, but we'll see it because we're just going to keep at it.