How To Turn Your Before And After Ads From Good To Great

The Meta team said this in a recent presentation, 56% of all auction outcomes can be attributed to creatives.

So, here’s what you’re going to learn:

• How you sell through your creatives is one of the most important determining factors of a successful campaign.
• How to take a good “before and after” ad and make it great
• An example campaign that struck gold with this technique

How Curtice Brothers Ketchup Turns A Restaurant With Horrible Reviews to a Restaurant With Okay Reviews

Curtice Brothers attempted to change the rating of the worst-ranking restaurant in Berlin by replacing the current restaurant's ketchup with their ketchup to prove that one product can make “not OK food, OK."

Here’s How They Did It:

Step 1: Find Unsatisfied Customers - The Before

Curtice's Brother went to Trip Advisor and found the restaurant in Berlin with the worst ratings and showed the customer reviews at the moment.

A key to the success was finding unsatisfied customers on a public platform, showing the dissatisfaction is real, not a group of users recruited by the brand for a survey.

Step 2: Get In Touch and Send Your Product

Curtice's Brother sent their ketchup to the restaurant for free to replace the existing ketchup on the table, to prove that their ketchup would make a difference.

Step 3: Observe The Change - The After

After the ketchup swap, they monitored Trip Advisor reviews for the restaurant and saw an improvement in rating: “Nice” was used 2.3 times more, and sales increased by 17%.

The Results

• 17% Increase in sales
• “Nice” was used 2.3x more than “worst” in the ratings
• Made “not ok” food, “ok

What To Learn From This “Before and After” Campaign

What makes this “before and after” campaign so successful and compelling lies in its credibility.

This campaign established credibility through these subtle yet significant details:

• Realistic: The reviews didn’t go from 1 star to 5 stars. Most brands would be tempted to engineer for maximum impact. But it’s not realistic. A terrible restaurant wouldn’t go to 5-star rating just because of a Ketchup change. A two-star rating is enough to show the ketchup makes a huge difference.
• Transparent: The campaign transparently showed the process of how they acquired the before & after. This is important to show because that establishes the brand's commitment to unbiased results. Bonus point for picking the real worst restaurant in Berlin.
• Impartial: The reviews are on a third-party platform, not something customers left on the brand’s website, which is further proof that they couldn’t interfere with the before and after results.

How You Can Turn Your “Before and After” Ads From Good To Great

• Go find customers (on TikTok, Reddit, etc.) unhappy with a product that yours would be better for.
• Screenshot their reviews, comments, ratings.
• Reach out to the customers organically, and send your products for free to try.
• Ask users to post new reviews online if they see a difference with your product.
• Take those reviews and use them to influence your website copy, ad scripts, emails, ad creatives.

The best “before and after” campaigns start manufactured and end organically.

I’ll leave you with one note: Your customers should optimize your funnel; it’s our job to implement the changes.