Launching TV ads should be way easier. At least, that’s what mntn believes, which is why they offer premium inventory, precise targeting, and real-time results all on one platform. Get connected to TV.
The spirit of a good ad still comes from humans. —Ali Haeri, SVP of marketing, mntn
That gem was dropped during a fireside chat at the Marketing Brew Summit, where Ali Haeri, mntn’s SVP of marketing, sat down with Morning Brew Inc.’s Kristine Wyatt to unpack the ever-evolving world of advertising in today’s content-saturated landscape.
If you missed the live convo, don’t sweat it. We’re here to break down the highlights you might’ve missed.
Grab your coffee and your content calendar. Let’s chat about creative marketing.
Grab attention ASAP
Haeri started the conversation by laying out a simple truth: Today’s marketers are stuck between too much content and not enough eyeballs (short attention spans, we’re lookin’ at you).
That’s because marketing was way simpler back in the day, when everyone watched the same TV shows and listened to the same top pop hits. Ads were way less targeted because, well, they didn’t really need to be.
Now, with tons of content options and all the tech powering modern advertising, marketers face a new problem: Targeting is easier than ever, but breaking through the noise is harder than ever.
“When it’s done well, it really cuts through the noise because again, people are sort of consuming so much content,” Haeri said about this modern-day marketing phenomenon. “A lot of it’s ad-supported. And the stuff that’s memorable is the stuff that is really timely.”
For marketers today, that means you get only one chance (two if you’re lucky) to grab your audience’s attention. Waste that, and you might not get another opportunity to get your brand to make a lasting impression.
Gotta go fast
In case you needed a reminder, mntn actually has a pretty big name in their leadership team, boasting Ryan Reynolds as their chief creative officer. Haeri highlighted the work Reynolds does with his agency, Maximum Effort, as an example of how important speed is for marketing.
“But for me, really, the reaction time to knowing that you need new creative is really important,” Haeri emphasized.
He laid out Maximum Effort’s rapid creative process, including how many of the ideas are iterated over text messages.
“The scripts are simple,” Haeri said. “They’re not formatted in some sort of way that you’d see, like a movie script. It’s just written in a Word document. They’ll come up with an idea and then, like a day or two later, it’s shooting. And a day or two after that, it’s live on air.”
To prove his point, Haeri cited a recent campaign Maximum Effort created. When an infamous CEO at a certain concert was featured on the jumbotron, the agency jumped on the viral moment immediately, creating a campaign and dropping it in just a few days.
That’s because the most impactful ads aren’t necessarily the most expensive. Instead, they’re the ones that feel like they’re part of a big moment. Cultural relevance > perfection. And being able to move quickly goes a long way toward helping you stay relevant.
Get support from AI
Don’t worry, Haeri knows AI isn’t coming for your job. It’s a great tool for marketers, but it can’t come up with great ideas—at least, not like humans can.
Haeri referenced one of mntn’s most successful campaigns to prove his point: an ad featuring Steve-O from Jackass eating the world’s spiciest chili pepper and then doing a demo of their platform. Not really the type of campaign an AI platform could have come up with…
The key is to encourage your team to experiment with AI, especially for time-saving tasks like organizing documents, summarizing content, or taking meeting notes. Basically, AI is best used to “take away all of the BS that I don’t really need to be consuming my time with thinking about,” Haeri said.
Remember, AI is here for support, not to replace you or your team. With that in mind, AI can help free up your time so you can focus on more impactful work.
Are you tired yet?
Never want to go to Utah? Yep, Haeri’s seen those ads too, and he’s right there with you. It does teach us a valuable lesson, though: Ad fatigue is a very real thing, and everyone gets tired of seeing the same ad for the thousandth time.
“I remember watching my UCLA Bruins in March Madness a couple of years ago, and every single ad pod, every ad break was ‘visit Utah,’ like, three times in a row,” Haeri recalled. “It made me never want to visit Utah again. And then my brother moved to Utah. Now it’s complicated things for me.”
Yep, bombarding your audience with the same ad one too many times will hurt you, but so will showing a certain ad to the wrong audience.
Haeri recalled a time when he was served a mntn ad and had this epiphany: “I thought to myself, like, this is obviously great, but if someone already had some exposure to MNTN, how impactful would this ad be? That’s again, sort of introducing MNTN. And this is like advertising 101, like aligning your ads with the marketing funnel.”
His solution? Create a new ad for retargeting so that particular audience segment would see a straightforward demo showcasing their platform’s benefits. The results speak for themselves.
“When we only showed this ad as a retargeting ad to people who had already visited the MNTN website, it outperformed any other retargeting ad that we ever had before,” Haeri said. “Because again, it sort of freed us of having to explain what MNTN is to someone who has never heard of it before, and it allowed us to just focus on benefits.”
$50k and 30 days
Wyatt ended the fireside chat by asking Haeri one big question: “If you had $50,000 in a very small team, what would you do in 30 days?”
Haeri’s response? He plugged Quick Frame, a company that mntn acquired a couple of years ago. He described Quick Frame as “a secret weapon for marketers because it’s a platform made up of video professionals like motion graphics artists, editors, full-blown-TV-shoot commercial directors.”
Quick Frame helps marketers create TV-quality creative fast and affordably, and then it deploys that top-notch creative across your channels ASAP. In just 30 days, you would get results.
At the end of the day, even with AI, ad tech, and celebrity-backed creative, the best ads still need that human touch. Tools can help you move faster and focus on the more important things, but real connection, creativity, and craft? That’s all you.