Hey, it's Simon.
Simon says: "I see us" vs. "I get this"
Here's what you're walking away with today:
1. the one mechanism that decides whether your ad (and any content for that matter) gets sent into a group chat or scrolled past. Spoiler alert: it has nothing to do with how good your product is
2. real winning ads running on that mechanism right now,
3. the twist: one single product that needs two completely different ads: one for how women share, one for how men share
drop a follow!!
Today I want to show you what that mechanism looks like inside real ad accounts, because I'm in 100+ of them from my clients.
And this matters because creative strategy always works the same way: you start from a fact you can see and believe in, and you build from there. My facts come from hours inside the Meta Ad Library and watching what actually performs in my clients' accounts. That tweet up there is what came out of that exercise.
Quick thing before we start: why do I care so much about shares? Because sharing is not really about the content, it's about the sender. Every time someone sends something to a friend, their brain is doing social math: what does forwarding this say about me? If the answer makes them look good: funnier, smarter, more in-the-know, more caring, they hit send. If it doesn't, they scroll past, no matter how good the content is. We share things to build our own image in front of the people we care about. That's the mechanism.
actual footage of me dming a friend
Now the hard part: getting your AD to travel like that. Because let's be honest, nobody wakes up wanting to DM an ad to their best friend. That's the challenge, and it depends MASSIVELY on format: the more scripted and ad-looking your creative is, the more sharing it costs the sender (imagine captioning "this is so us" on something with a discount code in it). The less it looks like an ad, the closer it gets to the memes people already forward all day.
Let's go.
"Look, I see us"
First ad: a postpartum body-care brand is running a video of a new mom talking to other new moms about their bellies: What to actually do, stage by stage, while your body changes through pregnancy and after it.
But here's what makes it print: she spends a big chunk of the video calling out other products. Not competitors by name → the whole category of ridiculous offers and scam products aimed at pregnant women.
And that's where the identification locks in, on three levels at once:
she's talking to women who just became mothers,
women whose bodies are changing in ways nobody prepared them for, and who are carrying everything that means,
and women who are getting scammed right in the middle of it, in the most sensitive window of their lives, when they'd buy anything that promises their body back, and to be relieved.
A bad creative strategist watches this and trims it down into another "them vs. us" ad → our product good, their products bad. And that's missing the whole point: the callout and the identification within a community ARE the ad.
So when she forwards it to the mom group chat, she's not being a sales woman. She's saying: look, I see us. Someone finally said it. We're not doing this alone, we're not getting scammed anymore, AND most importantly, we can go through this together.
The product rides along inside an act of protection. That's why it scales.
"Look, I get this"
There's this brand I've been watching and it's my latest favorite example of this because it's the cleanest side-by-side of the mechanism you'll ever find: one product, one brand, and the two share psychologies running at the same time.
The product: a mouthpiece that helps you breathe better while you sleep, so you actually rest. Sleep doesn't have a gender. The brand advertises like it does, and it's winning on both sides with completely different ads.
The ads for men are built around one anchor: status. A pretty, strong guy at the gym, clearly having the best life. That's the visual doing the heavy lifting. Around it, the brand mixes that UGC format with a harder, scientific, fact-backed discourse: what the device actually does, the claims behind it, and where better sleep takes you on the productivity path.
If you want to see the peak version of that discourse, go check Greg LaVecchia's organic content on IG (Bloom's CEO). Those aren't ads, doesn't matter, same exact playbook: the guy IS the status, the product rides along.
And status has more than one way to show up. Swap the gym for money and the ad works exactly the same: the guy closing deals at 7am, sharp, rested, on top of everything: you wanna be THAT guy. And THAT guy sleeps well.
And the share follows the same logic. He sends it to one friend: look, I get this. That "I get this" is about status: he's showing he understands how the guys one level up operate, the ones he wants to become. He's not sharing a product, he's signaling: I get this, I'm already there (even though he is not.)
Same brand, same product, different group chat
Now, same brand, same product. And the winning ads for women have absolutely nothing to do with all that.
These ads start by addressing girls, sometimes literally: "GIRLS, hear me out…" And when they don't, they open with her day instead: ALL the multitasking a woman gets done in a day, and why she, of all people, needs to actually recover at night. The device comes later.
The product didn't change. The SHARE mechanism did. She sends hers to the group chat: this is so us. One share is status. The other is belonging. Both are the person telling their people something about themselves.
Steal this for your next brief
Stop briefing ads to be watched, brief them to be sent. Before anything goes into production, sit with your team and brainstorm the share first: WHO is forwarding this, to WHOM, and what are they saying about themselves when they hit send? Then, and only then, you build the creative. Run it through this:
A share is your customer vouching for you in front of their people. Nobody vouches for a product → they vouch for what the send says about them.
Girls: "I see us" = belonging. Shared experience, community, calling out the thing everyone feels and nobody says. It travels through group chats.
Men: "I get this" = status. Mechanism, proof, the codes of the level above. It travels one-to-one.
Same product, different share → different ad.
Before anything goes into production, one question: when this gets forwarded, what is the sender saying about themselves? If the answer is nothing, you'll pay full price for every impression that ad ever gets.
That's it for this one.
Talk soon, Simon
Stop guessing what works on Meta. We already know. Book a call with me and my team!