Founder Story, Dream State, Ugly Ad: The 3 Video Formats That Refuse to Die

580 days. That's how long a single video ad I keep an eye on has been running, untouched, still spending. Not 58. Five hundred and eighty.

Sit with that for a second. The average creative in most accounts burns out in two to four weeks. You launch it, it pops, it fatigues, you bin it. That's normal. So when an ad runs for the better part of two years and the brand never pulls it, that's not luck. That's a format doing something structurally right.

I've watched a lot of these long-runners. The ones that survive almost always fall into three buckets. Not three clever ideas, three formats, repeated endlessly across niches by brands that clearly know exactly what they're doing.

Here's my take on each, and the script skeleton I'd brief a creator on for all of them.

The script bones every one of these shares

Before the formats, the structure underneath them, because it's the same three-part spine every time.

Intro. The first three seconds. Who are you, or what's the problem. This is the hook, and it's the only part most of your audience will ever see. Roughly 70 to 80% of people drop off here, so this is where the whole game is won or lost.

Body. Seconds four onward. This is where you spill the beans: why this product, why it's better, what it actually does. It can run twenty seconds or it can run two minutes, depending on how much there is to say. The format barely matters here. Honesty and specifics do.

Hook-close-guarantee. The last five to ten seconds. You tell them to buy (an actual instruction, not a vibe), you tie the close to what they want, and you hand them a guarantee. "Try it, and if you don't love it, send it back." Almost nobody acts on the guarantee. It just quietly removes the last reason not to click.

Intro, body, hook-close-guarantee. Hold that in your head. Now the three formats.

1. The Founder Story

The most durable format I've found, full stop. Someone who represents the brand looks down the barrel of the camera and talks to you directly.

And here's the part founders get wrong: it doesn't have to be the founder. It can be your head of product. Your marketing manager. Whoever can talk about the thing with genuine conviction. I've seen a brand run one where the speaker plainly isn't the CEO, just someone who knows the product cold, and it worked because the eye contact and the certainty were real.

Map it onto the skeleton:

• Intro: "Hi, I'm Sam, I started this company because..." or even cleaner, lead with the problem: "I'm the person who got sick of every cushion going flat after a month." Three seconds, problem named, curiosity open.
• Body: why you built it, what's different, the because. "We do this because the cheap ones all use the same foam, and it collapses."
• Hook-close-guarantee: "Give it a go. If it's not the comfiest thing you own in thirty days, we'll refund you."

The thing I'd stress: stop over-producing these. The best founder ads I see are a person at their desk with a half-decent microphone and good light. No studio, no crew. The polish is the conviction, not the camera. A homewares brand I worked with shot one of these on a phone in an afternoon and it outran three professionally produced spots that cost ten times as much.

2. The Dream State

This one's less a format and more a lens, but it earns its spot because the survivors lean on it so hard.

The idea: don't sell the product, sell the state the customer ends up in. Especially if you're in beauty, fashion, or wellness, the buyer isn't paying for the thing. They're paying for who they get to be after the thing.

So before you write a word, answer one question. What's the dream state my product delivers? For a non-stick pan it's "no more scrubbing burnt eggs at 9pm." For a fragrance it's "smelling expensive without the expensive bottle." For a posture brace it's "getting through the workday without that ache between the shoulders."

On the skeleton:

• Intro: open on the end state, not the product. "Imagine never ironing a shirt again." The promise is the hook.
• Body: now show how the product gets them there. This is where the dream gets earned with proof, not just asserted.
• Hook-close-guarantee: close on the feeling. "Wake up to this tomorrow. Hate it, send it back."

My honest read: most founders write ads about features because features are easy and concrete. But people don't lie awake wanting a feature. They want the after. A skincare brand sitting at a ~$55 average order value reframed its whole hook from ingredients to "the version of your skin you stop apologising for," and that single shift in the opening line was the difference. Write the after first, then back it up with the how.

3. The Ugly Ad

The ad that doesn't look like an ad. The industry calls it the ugly ad, which oversells the ugly. It's really just native: it feels like a clip a real person filmed, not something a brand made.

The trick is in the texture. Slightly off framing. A bit of "wait, are they even allowed to show this," a behind-the-scenes feel, an offhand "you have to go to our site to even get this." It reads as a person sharing something, not a company selling something, and that buys you a few extra seconds of attention because the brain hasn't flagged it as an ad yet.

On the skeleton:

• Intro: disarm them. "Okay this is a bit random but I have to show you this." No logo, no music sting, no polish. That roughness is the hook.
• Body: same job as always, just delivered like a friend would. Casual, specific, a little messy.
• Hook-close-guarantee: keep it low-key. "Anyway, it's on our site if you want it. There's a money-back thing if you hate it."

A word of warning, because this one gets overcooked. The ugly ad shouldn't be your only format. It's one club in the bag, and it works precisely because it's the odd one out among your slicker stuff. If everything you run is "native," none of it is, and the effect dies.

Why these three keep winning

Notice what they have in common. None of them depend on a big budget. None depend on a celebrity or a studio. The Founder Story wins on trust, the Dream State wins on desire, the Ugly Ad wins on disarming you. Three different doors into the same house, and all three are buildable on a Tuesday with a phone.

That's also why they refuse to die. Trends in editing and music and pacing come and go, but a founder looking you in the eye, a clear picture of the life you want, and a clip that feels like a mate showing you something good are not trends. They're how humans have always been persuaded.

So here's what I'd actually do with this. Look at your last ten creatives and label each one: Founder, Dream State, Ugly, or none of the above. If most of them land in "none of the above," that might be the whole problem. Which of the three are you not running, and what's stopping you from shooting one this week?