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A
Welcome back to Brain Driven Brands. It's Sarah. Your boy Nate. What's going on? How are you?
B
Actually, I'm doing really well today. It just. It was one of those days. I don't know if you've had these type of days where it's just like, remember, everybody, Twitter is a vacuum, and not everything you hear applies to you. I feel like that I don't. I feel like I shouldn't have to say this after five straight years, but this all happened because. And I didn't give you context for this before we started recording, this happened because sometimes Sarah's an idiot and I get real angsty on a Friday because I'm like, this is the dumbest thing I've ever seen. I hate everything. But, like, I disagree entirely. And so I will pre schedule that angsty post for next Monday, and then I will forget. Forget that I scheduled it. You're in a better mood 100%. I'm in a better mood today. And I'm like, oh, sorry. So, anyways, luckily for me, the post that I scheduled today was not as angsty as I thought it was. I posted a tweet that said, what's the dumbest take you've heard about running ads? And that? I want to give that, like, trophies to the top three stories guy. The freaking responses in here, I'm like, I can't believe people believe this. Like, I'm concerned.
A
I can't wait. Let's dig in.
B
Oh, my God, Number one, you're gonna love this. Worst, worst hot take about ads. Never turn off an ad.
A
Yeah, that's.
B
Are people still believing this as a thing? Yeah, I leave the ads on forever.
A
I just explained this to someone last week, and this is, like, part of my overarching belief that, like, meta is not infallible. It's not perfect. It makes mistakes sometimes.
B
Guys, it's a computer and, like.
A
It. It happened a lot in the last year when I was running ads for OG like, if overall business performance was bad to me, that means our top spending ads aren't doing their job.
B
That would make logical sense.
A
That shouldn't be a hot take. But you wouldn't believe how hard people try to fight me on it.
B
So, like, 26. Yeah.
A
I knew I could come in on Mondays if we had a bad weekend and just turn off our top spending ads and performance would improve immediately.
B
Yep.
A
And, like, those ads sometimes get turned back on at some points. But, like, for whatever reason, Facebook decided to spend 80% of that campaign's budget on one ad. And Overall business performance sucked. It's like, okay, then that's not the.
B
Ad to bet on right now, so turn it off. Well, and I love this. This gives a key takeaway for this specific, like, hot take. Like, bad take, whatever you want to call it. Dumbest take effort.
A
I.
B
All right. Second dumbest take, which I. I heard this, and I was like, is this a thing? People still believe this? Somebody said, gotta season the p. The pixel. Do people still season their pixels?
A
It depends what they mean by seasoning their pixel.
B
I don't know. He didn't give me any context. He was like, dumbest hot take I've ever heard. Gotta season your pixel. I'm like, do people still think this is a thing?
A
Yeah, I'd be super interested in, like, in what they mean. Like, so I started a new brand from zero this year that I haven't really talked about.
B
But, like, we're like, you're working on it.
A
We're, like, getting close to, like, mid five figures in revenue. So, like, watch out.
B
Jesus.
A
And, like, it was a brand new ad account, brand new website, brand new ads. Like, I didn't do anything besides run ads, but, like, I fully expected, like, yeah, the first month is not going to kill it.
B
Yeah.
A
Like, yeah.
B
So maybe that's what he was meaning.
A
Yeah. Like, if you're just saying, like, yeah, brand new account. And a brand new brand needs times to learn and figure it out. Yeah. But, like, if you are doing tactics to, quote, train your pixel better, I think you're doing something wrong.
B
I think that's what he probably meant because I've heard people say this term before that we gotta season the pixel. You gotta, like, teach the. I'm like, you can season that pixel in, like, 48 hours if you want.
A
Yeah. Like, I know that people used to, like, go, like, super heavy on, like, targeting parameters for the first, like, chunk of ad spend to force it to go to, like, who they want and then would pull back to broad targeting. But, like, hope Facebook remembered.
B
Yes.
A
Who went after first? I don't know. There's better things to do in your business than to worry about the saltiness of your pixel.
B
Guys, don't worry about salt.
A
Yeah, that's fine.
B
You're probably fine. All right, number three in here. Oh, my God. Soon as I heard this, it hurts my heart to even hear this, because 100% not true. Dumb mistake ever. Running ads will hurt your organic reach. I have not heard this hot take very often, but this guy was like, I can't tell you how many times I've heard this, like, on a call two hours ago, somebody was like, really?
A
Yeah.
B
I've only heard it maybe twice in my entirety of, like, the seven, eight years that I've been in this business.
A
Let me tell you who said people who say it are, like, brand founders that, like, started like, 10 or more years ago, whose Instagram posts used to get a lot more reach than they do now.
B
So they're like, it's hurting.
A
So, like, that's what they blame. They don't blame that, like, well, in the beginning, one is a different platform 10 years ago. Two, when you had no money to spend on ads, you put more time and thought and effort and strategy into organic and it performed better.
B
Oh, boy.
A
No, this is dumb. There are brands that spend hundreds of millions of a year on ads and have great organic social stats.
B
Yeah. The ecosystems help and support each other. I've never seen anybody who's put effort into ads and effort into organic and seen one of them just tank because the other one's doing well. That doesn't even make any logical sense. Okay. I can't. That one's going to get me too angry.
A
That's like a conspiracy theory. And, you know, like, I'm a conspiracy guy. But that one's just a coping mechanism.
B
Especially, like, as somebody who is, like, pro organic. Like, I'm actually about to just fortify my entire organic, like, structures and systems this year because it's working so incredibly well. Maybe we should do an episode on that on, like.
A
Yeah, we should.
B
Our organic strategies.
A
I. I think I'm doing a fun thing over on the side and hustle. Like, I am fully convinced, like, we're gonna have some seasonality around Father's Day and Christmas. I am, like, fully on board with, like, okay, cool. I'm gonna spend money on ads in Q2 and Q4 and. And I'm going to go hard as on Organic in Q1 and Q3.
B
Yeah. Oh, please do. Organic. I have a system I need to show you because AI Automation for organic. Oh, God, like, get ready for it. About to explode. The whole brand. Okay, what was that number? I think that was number three. This is number four. This one came from Azar. And Azar, I appreciate you immensely because you noticed and get you noticed, like, the funniest things that are so spot on. Let's pause for just a minute. I'm going to tell you something that I have 100% never told anybody before. For years, I 100% thought that ads were just really a creativity thing. They only won if I chose the right hook, the right creator, the right script. I was 100% sure that ads came down to production. And it turns out that's not at all how ads work. We are testing and tweaking and chasing trends, but nobody can tell us what why that ad worked. This is the reason why I built the Tether West. I am so tired as a creative strategist of not having any insight as to what's going to work. The Tether OS is a system, very simple creative strategy system that reads what your customers are saying in real time, finds the emotional patterns that are underneath those trends and then turns them into direction that your creative team can actually act on right this second. Brands that are using this are currently cutting their creative time in half. They are saving thousands of dollars a month on personnel costs and they really are just less stressed because they know exact what to say, how to say it and who to say it to. Anybody can use it from your CMO all the way down to your brand new creative strategy hire. You guys want to test out a creative strategy system this year that's very, very simple. Check us out at tetherinsights IO. And now back to the show. Somebody I guess told him today, just change the format color for Andromeda best practices.
A
Can we just put Andromeda in the bucket of like Andromeda hot takes?
B
Worst hot take I've ever heard in my entire life. Are you kidding me? Just change the format color.
A
Do you know how I know that all the Andromeda takes are because two things. One, I don't know what it is and the ads that I run make a lot of money. So like I don't, I mean I, I, I just don't care that that's.
B
That'S some sauce right there. Like if you're still able to grow brand well into the 789 figures and you don't really keep tabs on Andromeda, it must say something a little bit about like whatever it is you do know. And this is the reason why I hate it when people bring this taken about. Like you gotta meta's best. Meta doesn't even know what they want. They don't even know what's going on. Because I have heard from several different reps. None of you are correlating.
A
Yes, different Meta reps will tell you different things. Hilarious. And then did you see David Herman's tweet this morning that was about like the low, the worse his opportunity score from Meta gets like the lower his cac Is. And he's like, well, okay.
B
Like, that's why I'm like, guys, don't maybe don't worry about it as much as you think you need to. I understand that the algorithm is going to keep changing. Meta is still going to come out with stuff that's like, these are best practices. Guys, don't worry about it. Okay?
A
This is probably, this could probably, like, encapsulate every bad hot take we hear about advertising today. Stop worshiping Meta.
B
Oh.
A
It is not an all knowing, all seeing advertising statue that me. We must, like, commit sacrifices to, like, take Zuck's dick out of your mouth and build a really dope brand.
B
It just, it makes me want to shake people because I'm just like, guys, I understand that you think it's important. Keep tabs on it if it makes you feel better, but overall, the only thing you really need to know is what your customer wants, not what Meta wants what your customer. I can't. And I just. All right, again, I knew this was going to make me super crazy mad, but. All right, we're going to keep going. Here we go. So, Kevin, one of the worst hot takes he ever heard was direct response does not equal brand, which I found really interesting. Direct response does not equal brand.
A
He's saying that's a bad take.
B
Bad take. Yeah.
A
I think you can build brand through the way you advertise.
B
I think you can too. I 100%. And I know somebody's going to come at me and be like, sarah, that's not what you've said for the last three years straight. No. You can build brand into literally anything. And we've talked about this so many times on this podcast. Sarah adds a dinosaur in front of my freaking name on all of my emails that I send out to customers or partners or whoever. Brand.
A
Yeah.
B
People know Sarah is the girl that has the dinosaur in her, like, Twitter bio. Brand. Guys, you can build it into whatever you want. Brand is just a mirror. It's just a way for people to buy pieces of themselves. That's it.
A
Well, and I, I think this is where people get confused because we use the word brand and I don't think we should. I think we should use the word personality. Oh. And like, truth, it, it's, it'd be like someone saying like, oh, like, you can't use your personality at your job. I was like, well, of course you can.
B
You can and you should.
A
Yeah.
B
And it's like, you want to get ahead in life.
A
Yeah, I, I. Brand boils down to, like, what you say how you say it and how consistent you say it.
B
Yep.
A
So, yes, you can incorporate that into advertising and become known as a brand.
B
Yeah.
A
Through direct response ad efforts. If you do them well.
B
100.
A
And you know what? This is like the punchline to it. I think if you don't think your direct response advertising impacts what people think about you, I mean, you're in trouble. And like, people like, you're building brand whether you are thinking about it or not. So if you're not thinking about it, probably not building the brand.
B
And if you. If you don't again. Oh, and this. Oh, we can go deep on this. Rebel. If you don't know who's managing your brand, who's managing that voice, that tone, that intensity, if you don't have somebody in the brand who's managing the personality for the entire team and making sure everyone's communicating the same personality, you're not going to be here next year. Okay.
A
Facts.
B
You're not going to be. Oh, I love these. This makes me so angsty and it makes me feel better. I'm like venting on a Monday. Okay. All right, last one in here. And then I would love to hear some of the ones that, like, you've just, like osmosis. Uh, this was really interesting. Horrible Take. Scale your winners by 15% every day. Yeah, this guy's like, like, feedback on this is. He's like, there's no rule. Right. For him, at least he scales as long as it's holding his KPI. And for some ads, you double the budget every single day. As long as they hold, you double it.
A
Yeah, that feels super aggressive to me. That feels like you're eating into your gross margin without.
B
I'd love to see the data behind what he's saying, but logically speaking, he's not wrong. As long as the ad is holding, you technically don't have to just do 15, I think is what he's trying to say, which I kind of agree with.
A
Yeah, I think, like, don't be greedy.
B
I would agree with that. I have seen caveat.
A
Greediness and impatience. Oh, kill more brands than anything.
B
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
A
And kill more great marketing campaigns and great marketing efforts than macroeconomic headwinds or, like, meta issues or pricing issues. If you get greedy, it's gonna come out someday. So that's all I'd say. Like, 20% a day sounds super aggressive to me. I don't see a reason to do that. The only, like, business examples I could think of is, like, if you sell Fire works like probably on June 25, you're probably doubling your budget and then you're probably doing it the next day. Like, like, yeah. Spirit. Halloween probably goes hard in the paint for October with some crazy budget.
B
They go out of business every year in November.
A
And you might be thinking that BFCM checks that box, but it doesn't because people have been thinking about what they're going to buy themselves for Christmas all year. So if your product does not have a specific two week seasonality to it, I think you can spread out your budget increases over the year and you.
B
Will be much better off if you sell Easter candy. If you're in like some sort of a Mother's Day. Very specifically a Mother's Day centric thing. If you only sell on 4th of July. If your product really just only fits one use case.
A
Yeah.
B
A holiday use case.
A
If you sell the glasses that people wear on New Year's. Yeah. You've got a real short window.
B
Yeah.
A
You, you're gonna have to go with some aggressive budget increases.
B
Yeah.
A
But like, I'll take that.
B
I'll take that.
A
We're going through a new product launch right now. I'm not gonna talk too much about my new job, but we had a 30 day forecast for ad spend and sales on this product. We are beating that forecast because obviously.
B
Because your date goes duh.
A
But I am not scaling budget past the forecast. I'm just going to stick to the the plan.
B
Walk me through why.
A
Because there's no reason to. Because we all agreed if we hit that goal we'd be very happy and we would get enough data to learn how to sell this product the best we can. And on the 31st day, I will scale the budget on it and there are like budget increases built in, but I'm not scaling past the planned in creases because there's no reason to get greedy and lose money on this.
B
Okay, give me your hot take or worst take. Bad take.
A
The worst takes I hear the worst.
B
Takes that you hear.
A
I had someone hit me up this year because the investors of the company weren't happy with the way the ads looked. And the ads were like just photos of the product and they like wanted more out of them. They wanted like more graphic design treatments on it. Of course I let them know that those are the best ads we had. They were doing well. But yeah, so I think like, I don't know, the bad hot take is like founder subjectivity matters in advertising when it shouldn't.
B
Oh, I would agree with this. And this is coming from a founder, like somebody who wants to freaking nitpick the shit out of everything that goes out of this office. I'm like, founders, I love you. Stay out of it, guys. Okay, Please, dear God, even if we're bringing you in to do faux podcasts or UGC or like founder led videos, do, do a good job with those, but please don't try and get into the rest of the account because your team has a strategy that they're trying to follow. And I don't know if you guys have read any sort of like war battle based strategy novels or books in general. Sometimes you can't see the full strategy because you're only looking at one battle.
A
Yeah.
B
And I'm like, guys, please don't go in there and start messing with stuff. So, yeah, that's good.
A
All right. And then I've got one more also found.
B
Okay.
A
Related. I'm like super bearish on like, founder ads for most brands. I've seen a bunch of brands go hard on it that I don't think have really any business going hard on it. Like, for us at adapt, our founders like a. Is a doctor and like, I think that's very relevant to include his clinical background in the supplements we put out. So I think, like, that's a good use of founder ads.
B
Yep.
A
But the founder ads that are like, hey, I experienced this problem, so therefore I like put my life savings into this thing and it's helped a bunch of people and it can help you too. Yeah. We don't realize how foreign of a thought process that is to 99% of Americans.
B
Yeah. And I mean, it's kind of sad if you think about it.
A
It's very sad. But that like, that process of like, working hard, making a bet, taking or a risk to build a business for yourself is something that most Americans will never do or will never think to do. And like, that's why I've always gone hard, you know, on the, like, employee focused marketing. Like the whiskey guy, Nate, at og, like, could say more relatable things than a founder every could. Like, hey guys. Yeah, I ate too, you know, too much turkey and whiskey today. So instead of waking up early to launch the bra, the Black Friday sale tomorrow, I'm just gonna send it to you now.
B
I would love to see some ads from your team. Do you have somebody on your team that like, has experienced the products that you can.
A
We do, and that's on the docket for us. I realized it at the retreat we just had. I was like, you, you should be on camera more.
B
Yes. Bring in your team, guys.
A
Yeah.
B
Take a good hot.
A
Yeah.
B
Bring your team.
A
Share their experiences going back to last episodes. Like Batman's utility belt. So good example is like most brand founders try to make themselves Batman and I think it's easier for employees of the brand to make themselves the tool belt of like, hey, nerd, listen, I'm not the main character here.
B
Yeah.
A
But this thing has helped me. It can help you too.
B
Yes. These are so good. Okay. I might end it at that hot day, honestly, because that was a good one.
A
Thanks for listening to brain driven brands. Sponsored by Tether. I need a. Oh, yeah, and Lego Enterprise.
B
You're in a spot. You're going to sponsor us.
A
Sponsored by Nate Legos on Twitter. How's that?
B
Do I get paid? Are you going to give me some sponsorship? Dang it. You're making so much money now, I thought maybe you want to share. All right, we'll see you next week. Thank you so much for joining us on the show today. Appreciate you guys listening. If you want to follow me, I'm at Sarah Levenger. Anywhere you consume content. He is at Nate Legos. If you like this shoe show and if you like this episode, go ahead and like, subscribe. Share with a friend. Drop us a review when you have a minute. We would appreciate it. Otherwise, have a great week. We'll see you next time.
Host: Sarah Levinger
Guest: Nate
Date: November 18, 2025
In this lively episode, Sarah Levinger and guest Nate break down some of the most persistent and misguided beliefs (“hot takes”) in digital advertising. Pulling from real industry feedback, Twitter posts, and their own extensive experience, they debunk common myths about ad strategy, platform best practices, and the intersection between brand and direct response. Along the way, they share hard-won lessons, memorable one-liners, and actionable takeaways for e-commerce marketers seeking to thrive in a changing ad landscape.
Timestamps: 01:11–02:39
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Timestamps: 16:10–19:19
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Timestamps: 19:23–19:44
Key Takeaway:
Sarah and Nate are informal, irreverent, and passionate. They bring humor, sarcasm, and candor to their myth-busting, backed by real data and experience. The tone is "no-nonsense but approachable," speaking both to experienced advertisers and those new to brand growth.
This episode equips e-commerce and digital marketers with the confidence to challenge recycled wisdom, focus on customer-centric strategies, and use data—not dogma—to drive growth. Above all, Sarah and Nate encourage listeners to stay curious, question the status quo, and keep both creativity and psychology at the core of their work.