Read this if you want to make better ads in 2025 🎨

Hey Reader,

Happy new year! It’s belated I know, but forgive me…things have been pretty busy so far this year at Adcrate HQ. We are cooking up a few things that’ll be dropping pretty soon 👀

It feels like our industry has been moving so fast over the past couple of months. And there’s so much conflicting content out there about how to navigate it. I honestly can’t imagine what it’d be like starting out as a strategist in today’s landscape.

So today, instead of sharing some creative inspiration or ad teardowns, I want to point you in the direction of 3 great resources I’ve either come across or created that’ll help you sharpen the knife and become a better strategist this year.

1. Motion Creative Trends Report

I’ll start with this because it blew my mind when it dropped into my inbox earlier this week.

Motion dug into over $100M in ad spend, surveyed 500 DTC advertisers, and interviewed some of the leading experts in our industry to put together this report - and it didn’t disappoint.

It’s got insights from the likes of Dara Denney, Nik Sharma, Sarah Levinger and Aaron Orendorff. It’s a stacked lineup - and many of the people who have contributed to this report, I have actively seen succeed in ad accounts.

If I had to pick one section that stood out, it’d be ‘The Comedy Comeback’ - which was about the impact of humour in direct response advertising. I’ve seen first hand how effective humour can be when executed properly with multiple of our clients. This section really made me think about being more intentional with it in my strategy going forward.

I’ve read the whole report twice over now - this thing is just a golden piece of content for any aspiring creative strategist in 2025.

So do yourself a favor and get your copy of the Motion Creative Trends Report here.

2. Expert Interviews on my YouTube

So far this month I’ve uploaded not one, but TWO killer podcasts on my YouTube channel.

I had the advertising expert Barry Hott and the ad creative OG Mirella Crespi on. The feedback on these so far has been incredible (like, ‘these have been some of your best videos’ incredible). I’m so stoked to chat with other experts on my YouTube and continue to get their takes on where this crazy and ever changing world of advertising is heading.

If you’ve got an hour or two spare, watch the interview with Barry here and the interview with Mirella here.

3. Barry Hott’s Ads Course

And if all of that is STILL not enough learning for you, go and check out my good friend (and business partner) Barry Hott’s ‘Building Ads with Barry’ course, which is launching on February 3rd.

I haven’t been this excited for a course to drop in our industry for a LONG time. So much of what I’ve learned about direct response advertising is directly attributable to Barry. So if you’ve got any value from my content in the last 2 years, I’d highly recommend signing up to Barry’s course. Use the link here to help me out if you do. :)

Let me know which one of these resources is the most valuable to you. Or what you’d like to see more of from me in the newsletter this year.

And I’ll keep popping into your inbox whenever I have something to say…which to be honest with everything going on in the world of AI and advertising, may be pretty often.

In the meantime, happy learning!

Alex