Solid Starts · B2C · baby feeding app
Run a trendy AI 'fruit babies' ad for a doctor-backed baby feeding brand
Backlash: parents questioned whether to trust the brand
What they did
What happened
- Stage
- scale
In their words
Make Ugly Ads to Grow Your App – Yuliya Lennox (Solid Starts)
David Barnard… about that. So it's good to have that kind of pushback. And then you just have to justify it too. Then you have to like, why does brand matter and how is this going to pay off? And are we sure it's going to pay off? And you have to ask yourself those kind of questions where if you just default to like, "Oh, no, we need to be careful with the brand," then you're having to justify the performance marketing and it should really be the opposite.
Yuliya LennoxI can give you a couple of examples here, but one of the big mistakes that I did regarding the branding in Solid Starts, for example, I came there and I was like, "Nobody cares. Nobody thinking." But for some people when the brand is big enough, and Solid Starts is a very big brand. They care a lot about what it represents. And this is where it is. When you're talking about babies, when you're talking about real doctors, and that was like AI baby, not AI babies as in real babies, but babies made out of fruit. We are about feeding babies. Fruit babies are super popular on Instagram. I should definitely do an ad like that. And then we saw some feedback of, should we trust a company that invented this to feed our babies? And then I'm like, "Okay, yes, we will do brand now because that's just..."
Yuliya LennoxI understand that it's no big deal in the grand scheme of things. The universe wouldn't collapse if you do one ad that isn't in your brand voice, of course. But in the same time, if you are something that is selling trucks, maybe it's not good to sell it with, I don't know, AI strawberries, I don't know, whatever. So basically see what you're selling and if making ugliest applies to it, but also don't assume that it doesn't apply just because you …
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More from this episode
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- Have the founder join every marketing meeting and write the ads himselfApp reached #2 after Duolingo; link to this is loose
- Win your home market first, then add languages one by oneLiked locally, then expanded; later #2 after Duolingo
- Test new ads at $10/day in Indonesia, not $1,000/day in the USSame test signal at ~1% of the cost
- Fully translate and adapt an app for Japan with a Japanese speakerDidn't work at all; harder than expected
- Run paid ads from the start alongside organic growthOrganic-only apps plateau; paid added late often ate into organic
- Share test results across apps and with a weekly peer group
- Make the paywall's continue button blinkRaised conversion, secondhand; no numbers
- Sign a celebrity like Hilary Duff for brand adsBig influx almost at once, secondhand; ROI hard to measure
- Hire people obsessed with the problemCredited for product quality; no numbers
- Have the core team work ~17-hour days, six days a weekSaid to lead the field now; no numbers
- Translate the app into many languages with AI and test nearby marketsHer biggest win of the year; Turkey converts well; no numbers
- Sell a $1 plan after a 60-question quiz, then stack add-ons to ~$350Buyer got half back after demanding a refund; invites regulation
- Run three apps at once with one teamBiggest fail of the year: attention spread too thin
Tags: instagram, creative, ai-generated, brand-safety, trend-jacking