- Startup Spells 🪄
- Posts
- 🪄 FreeWater Marketing
Hey,
The Spells Master is back!
Welcome to the 81st issue.
Today's topics:
FreeWater Marketing
A tool to View Statistics of Top YouTube Channels
One recommended video on Values vs Benefits
FreeWater Marketing
FreeWater is a company which sells water for $0. It literally means free water.
They make money by putting advertising on the bottle instead of charging the bottle.
Free Water Marketing 1
It is currently valued at $10m.
Free Water Marketing 2
The mission is impressive as they give away 10 cents per bottle donated to build water wells in Africa.
Now the most interesting part about this isn't just the concept but the viral video they manufactured on TikTok.
If you Google "freewater tiktok", you'll see its the 2nd hit.
Freewater TikTok Viral Video
The video has 35 million+ organic views on TikTok.
It gets reposted again and again while consistently generating millions of views.
The Marketing Innovation in the TikTok video is staged antagonism.
The strategy is simple: Pay someone to insult your product
The scenario is the founder handing out free water bottles on the street and the actor plays a skeptic who criticizes the business model.
Yes, it looks completely natural but its an actor/comedian who knows how to make ideas go viral on the internet.
The playbook that makes the ad work:
1. Answers Client Objections
The reason the ad works so well is it answers client objections and acts as a living Q&A.
It addresses skeptical questions potential customers might have.
2. Antagonistic Villain
Shaan Puri shared a story in My First Million Podcast about his friend who controlled multiple Twitter accounts. His friend used these accounts to create artificial buzz for products.
Shaan wanted to promote his app Bebo with a postive spin but the friend told him it was a boring strategy that won't ever work. Because what truly grabs attention is negativity, conflict, and antagonism.
Check your news channels. They always spin everything negatively. If positivity would've worked, news channels would be more wholesome.
The negative video of the Crazy European Guy has the most views for that reason.
3. Realistic portrayal
The founder doesn't have all the answers to a question.
The actor even humiliates the founder on his clothes so it makes the ad seem unscripted.
4. Emotional portrayal drives engagement
Viewers watching the video feel bad for the founder about the insults on the clothes and the comments rush to defend him.
This is great for engagement
The founder hasn't claimed that it was an ad as it ruins the narrative. He never accepted that the person he hired was an actor either. It gives him plausible deniability but its a lie by omission.
But the actor Oliver Sotra, a professional comedian, specializes in creating viral videos for brands.
The mission, despite being good, is a massive hyperbole and the economics don't work in their favor but you can't deny the phenomenal advertising they do.
That TikTok Ad is considered one of the best TikTok Ads ever produced.
A tool to View Statistics of Top YouTube Channels
View Stats is a tool made by Mr.Beast. If you don't know who that is, he is the #1 YouTuber in the world with 289 million subscribers.
One recommended video on Values vs Benefits
This video is off the cuff and covers the most important copywriting concept: "People don't care about you. They only care about themselves."
Top Tweets of the day
1/
IG handwritten font meta is probably 3-4 months away from peak
You're welcome
— Zach 🏴 (@zachpogrob)
6:42 PM • Jun 25, 2024
Every opportunity comes with a tiny window. Grab it before it disappears.
2/
One of the biggest consumer durables manufacturers in Shenzhen didn't even have a website. No Alibaba either. They just did a few exhibitions, and the orders never stopped after that.
The margin was so good that downstream buyers were setting up Alibaba to sell the product they… x.com/i/web/status/1…
— sphinx (@protosphinx)
3:43 PM • Jun 25, 2024
Everything is a wrapper all the way down. Most of the APIs you use out there are just wrappers on a lower level API with phenomenal marketing. Just like Vercel, Loops, and Netlify are wrappers around AWS. There are real-world wrappers. The company behind Prime and all these drinks have the same parent company. It is very similar to top brands on Amazon or top chocolate products that use the same damn ingredients.
Rabbit Holes
This post is (probably) safe for work - I didn't know there was a correlation between these 2 activities. Definitely an eye-opener for me.
Copy that converts - Copywriting that works.
Theme Page Mastery - Theme Pages are all the rage. But they were always a rage. Funny how giving something a new name makes it seem like a new thing but its just the old thing with a brandable name.
Until next time,
Your Spells Master!
If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing it with a friend. If a friend sent you this, get the next newsletter by signing up here.
Read all the old case studies here.
Reply