Yes. And Rob The AI Guy is proof.
97.7K subscribers. 592 videos. Thumbnails that, by conventional design standards, are ugly. Surprised man. Big text. Yellow highlighter. Yet they work.
While these thumbnails might not win a design award, they offer an interesting lesson in direct-response copy: how do you communicate enough value in one second to earn the next five minutes?
“ChatGPT” is merely the category. The selling words are NEW, MORE, UPGRADES, FEATURES, and CHANGES.
The promise is: something you knew has changed, and you may now be behind.
The repeated template of a surprised Rob seems lazy, but there may be more to it.
Rather than redesigning an advertisement from scratch every time, preserve 80% of the proven structure and test the 20% most likely to change response: the specific change, the specific benefit, the specific feature name.
Consistency builds recognition. Variation in the promise tests what earns the click.
Notice the language Rob uses on those thumbnails:
-Features
-Upgrades
-Voice Mode
-Email Marketing
-Open Rates
-Click-Through Rates
These are things the audience can mentally grab and picture using.
Compare that with:
“Unlock Your AI Potential”
It could mean anything. It means nothing. “New Voice Mode” creates a mental object. “Transform your AI experience” creates an unexciting fog. That’s one of the problems with just using abstract AI prose.
Ugly thumbnails can absolutely sell the click when they do what good direct-response copy does: make a clear, urgent promise about a specific change in concrete terms.
RW
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