Hey, it's Simon and Simon says (this is the first time I’m coming up with this in case you ask lol)
This one started as a tweet that split my replies in half. Here's the whole story.
Let's get into it.
Okay, so, as I was saying: I tweeted that a few days ago. Half the replies wanted to know how to run it. The other half called it immoral (you can actually check that here). Funny thing is, both sides are right, because they're talking about different ads.
So let me lay out the whole thing.
Here's how easy this is to check: open the Meta Ad Library and type "doctor." White coats everywhere. Scrubs in cars, scrubs in kitchens, scrubs in front of whiteboards. Scroll for five minutes and you'll see more doctors than in an actual hospital.
White Coat Maxxing
The loudest and clearest examples are all aimed at boomers. And I don't mean boomers as one audience inside a bigger plan: boomers are the whole target for some brands, and they don't pretend to be for anyone else because they know who they talk to and who buys their product. They're crushing it right now, and they seriously know Meta advertising.
Two live video Meta ads that caught my attention:
A woman in scrubs, sitting in a doctor's office, holding up a very soft banana: "The SCARIEST warning sign of a heart attack." And the subtitle underneath confirms what’s the scariest warning. Then, behind, male anatomy poster on the wall, framed certificates behind her. And she's talking about something a lot of men deal with, and a lot more men over 40 deal with.
And a woman in front of a whiteboard covered in cholesterol diagrams: "that's what I've been teaching for 15 years."
One plays a doctor, the other plays a teacher. Three things are doing the work here: the authority figure, the hook, and the format: both are yapping videos, one person talking to camera for minutes straight.
And the authority is specific: it's the authority the person watching grew up trusting. A doctor and a teacher are exactly the two figures that generation was raised not to question.
Now compare that with brands like Bloom Nutrition, which are clearly aimed at the Gen Z audience and Millenials, skeptical, allergic to anything that looks like a manufactured ad. Open their Ad Library and there's not a white coat in sight. Their top ads are mostly the founder, talking to camera, yapping.
Same category. Opposite audience. Opposite authority figure. The white coat isn't a cheat code that works on everyone, it's a match with one specific viewer.
The Oldest Trick In Advertising
The white coat works because of something behavioral scientists call the messenger effect: your brain weighs who is talking as much as what they're saying. Sometimes more.
Meta didn't invent any of that. Meta just opened it up to anyone with an ad account.
And it lands on a very specific audience. Older people have the money, they have the health worries, and they take what they see at face value.
Their kids scroll past and smell AI in half a second. Their parents don't. That gap is the whole business.
One more layer, and it's the one most people miss: doctor ads aren't a standalone trend. They're the loudest version of THE angle of 2026, which is borrowed authority:
Huberman partnering with AG1.
Podcast-style ads where two people just talk.
Whitelisted ads running from an expert's own account.
Founder ads.
All of it is the same mechanism: attach a trusted human to the message.
Real Doctor, Actress, Or AI?
Here's the part nobody's mapping. When people argue about doctor ads, they're actually arguing about three completely different things:
1. The real thing. Brands partnering with actual, licensed doctors who actually stand behind the product. We have a client doing exactly this: a real physician, a real partnership, their face on the ads. AG1 with Huberman is the influencer version of the same play. This is a classic endorsement. It's the expensive route, and it's the one that survives everything.
2. The costume. A sharp white blazer, a blue V-neck, an authoritative tone, very careful wording. The ad steals the visual association and lets your brain fill in the credential. This is the gray zone the whole debate should actually be about.
3. The fake. AI-generated avatars with invented specialties, fake diplomas, and health claims nobody ever checked.The New York Times just investigated hundreds of these: one avatar proudly displays a degree from the "University of Degree," and there's a company producing 1,200 of these videos a day, at $10 each.
In the ad, all three look exactly the same. The difference is everything else: the fake doctor is illegal, the white blouse is a gray zone, and the real partnership is just good marketing.
My Bet On How This Ends
The three don't share a future.
The fake end dies on its own. Not because someone bans it, but because it already looks fake, more people notice every month, and the format burns out like every format does. It's a fad with a short lifespan, not a strategy.
The costume keeps working. As long as the figure, the format, and the message make sense together, and they're aimed at the right audience, it will spend. No expiration date in sight.
And the real thing gets more valuable every day. There's so much AI slop on Meta that people are loving anything 100% real: the actual doctor, the founder on camera, the collab nobody saw coming, two worlds teaming up into an authority you can't argue with.
The white coat and authority figures worked for a hundred years before Meta existed. It'll work for a hundred more.
That's it for this one.
Reply to this email and tell me: have you tested authority figures in your own creative: real, costume, or otherwise? I read everything, and the best answers become future editions.
Talk soon,
Simon
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