Let's Hear It For Ugly Ads

Somewhere, at this moment, a marketing team is polishing an ad like it’s a Fabergé egg. Perfect gradients. Perfect fonts. Perfect kerning. Perfectly forgettable.

Meanwhile, a crooked, text-only, looks-like-it-was-made-on-a-lunch-break ad is running circles around it.

How could that be?

Simple: Customers don’t want “polished.” They want clear.

The Ugly Lesson

A client once told me: “We can’t run this. It looks unpolished.”

Of course it did. It was 10 words of blunt clarity:

“We fix your broken CRM. Fast. No contracts. Start today.”

Their polished version had:

• A hero video of happy people pointing at screens
• A headline that read, “Elevate Your Workflow Ecosystem” (whatever that means)
• A CTA buried three paragraphs down

We tested anyway.

The “ugly” page beat the pretty one by 131%. That’s not an improvement. That’s a mugging.

Why Did Ugly Beat Pretty?

• Ugly Feels Human

People are becoming less trustful of  ads. Anything too polished screams “We’re trying to sell you something,” while ugly ads feel real. And real feels safe.

• Ugly Breaks the Pattern

Pretty blends in.

Scroll any feed and everything is shiny, sleek, algorithm-friendly… and invisible. Then an ad pops up that looks wrong.

Crooked photo. Too much text. Headline written by someone who’s had enough of everyone’s bullshit.

And suddenly you’re paying attention. That stuff stops the scroll.

• Ugly copy tells the damn truth. Clearly. Directly.

Examples?

Gym page  

Polished: “Unlock Your Optimal Wellness Journey.”

Ugly: “Lose weight. Build muscle. First week free.”

Guess which one fills the classes?

SaaS page

Polished: “Revolutionizing cross-team synergy.”

Ugly: “Your team keeps missing deadlines. We fix that.”

Cue the conversions.

E-commerce

Polished: “Crafted for Modern Lifestyle Expression.”

Ugly: “The hoodie you’ll wear every day. Free returns.”

Boom. Add to cart.

Clarity wins because your customer arrived with a mission … and your mission is not to distract them from their mission.

When Ugly Works (And When It Doesn’t)

Use ugly when:

• You’re in a noisy market
• Your audience is skeptical
• Speed > Aesthetics
• The offer sells itself

Avoid ugly when you’re selling luxury watches, legal services, or anything where credibility is the product

How to Do Ugly Right

• Strip everything down
• Write like a human, not a brochure
• Make it feel native to the platform
• Say the thing plainly
• Test it against the pretty version (brace yourself)

The Final Punchline

Ugly isn’t lazy. Ugly isn’t sloppy. Ugly is efficient. Ugly is honest. Ugly says: “Here’s what it is. Here’s why it matters. Want it?”

Pretty tries to charm you. Ugly gets the job done.

And most of the time, the customer chooses the one that doesn’t pretend.

 ______________________

An example of a very successful ugly ad:

Your Message Is a “Maybe” Without This One Thing

 

If your message hits the right inbox but you don’t have credibility, you’ve just delivered a beautifully wrapped maybe.

“Maybe” doesn’t move people. “Maybe” doesn’t shift behavior. “Maybe” doesn’t get the sale, the signup, the share, or the slightest flicker of actual interest.

Audiences are looking for someone who’s proven they can walk the same muddy trail they walk …same bruises, same blisters, same “well… that sucked” moments.

Because without that, your big idea becomes background noise. Faint. Forgettable. A car alarm in a Costco parking lot everyone assumes someone else will deal with.

At best, people nod politely while scrolling past like you’re a well-meaning stranger at a bus stop. At worst, they don’t even register you exist.

You have to earn their trust first. Then deliver the message.

Here are five ways copywriters actually do that:

1. Show your receipts.

People don’t trust vague promises. They trust screenshots, case studies, numbers, outcomes, and the occasional “holy crap, that actually worked?” moment. Proof is the currency. Pay up.

2. Speak their language, not “marketing-ese.”

If your copy sounds like it was stitched together from a SaaS brochure and a LinkedIn pep talk, you’re done. Use the words your audience uses to describe their problems. When your writing feels like it came from inside their head, credibility skyrockets.

3. Admit what you don’t know.

Perfection is plastic. It cracks under pressure. Credibility grows when you say, “Here’s where I’m strong … and here’s where I’m still figuring it out.” Your honesty makes your expertise believable.

4. Prove you’ve lived their pain.

Tell the stories. Show the scars. Let them see the mud on your boots. People trust the guide who’s walked the path, not the one pointing at it from a clean, air-conditioned distance.

5. Give value before you ask for anything.

Teach something useful. Deliver a small win. Hand them a tool they can actually use. The moment someone benefits from your words, they trust the next ones you say.

Credibility isn’t charisma. It isn’t bravado. It isn’t shouting louder than the feed. It’s reputation earned one honest, valuable, proof-backed step at a time.

Do that, and your message stops being a “maybe.” It becomes a must-listen.

Fragrance

 

I’ve accepted that perfume commercials aren’t made for me.

There’s always a man -- sleek, angular, possibly carved by an Italian Michelangelo wannabe -- rising out of a pool that seems to be fed directly by moonlight. He walks in slow motion, water cascading off him like he’s auditioning to be Poseidon’s intern.

Then we cut to the high society château party. A woman in a designer gown glides through a crowd of hipster guests. She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t smile. She doesn’t even acknowledge the guy offering champagne. She just smolders in slow motion.

I can’t relate. The only thing speaking to me at parties is the buffet table.

And then the brand name … it’s always one floating word, a single, mysterious syllable whispered by a voice that sounds like it’s been trapped in a velvet pouch since the late ’90s. Or possibly just someone clearing their throat in French.

Something like: “Élau” or “Vür.”

No notes about what it smells like. No hint of how much a bottle costs. Not even a suggestion that the scent won’t make me smell like a citrus-forward tire fire.

I guess the assumption is: You already know it smells good.

The ad is just there to assure you that if you spritz this stuff on your wrists, you too can become a mysterious, hydrodynamically perfect being who doesn’t need to speak to anyone at a château party.

But I know better. I’d still be me: moist in all the wrong places, a little lost, and emitting the faint scent of lemon-related insecurity.

 

______________________________

 

Speaking of commercials that bug me, how ‘bout prescription drug ads? The first quarter of the commercial: soft music, golden retriever, someone living their best life. “Ask your doctor if Joyvexxa is right for you.”

Then the rest of the ad is basically a demon reading from the Necronomicon: projectile vomiting, spontaneous orifice bleeding, coma, possible death.

Hard pass, Joyvexxa. I don’t need a medication with a longer threat list than a horror movie.

A Quick Prediction About AI Copy

Let me throw out a prediction: AI copy is going to get worse.

Not slower. Not clumsier. Not less impressive on the surface. Just… less effective.

Yes, AI is going to keep getting faster and smoother. It’ll crank out emails, ads, landing pages, and blog posts in seconds.

But speed has never been the thing that makes copy work. Persuasion isn’t about how quickly words show up on the page. It’s about whether those words actually mean something to the person reading them. And that’s where things start to break down.

AI Is About to Start Eating Its Own Cooking

AI learns by consuming existing content. And more and more of that content is … written by AI.

So now you’ve got AI trained on AI trained on AI. It’s a feedback loop.

The result isn’t garbage. It’s worse than that. It’s perfectly fine, perfectly readable, perfectly forgettable copy. Everything starts to sound the same. Same rhythms. Same claims. Same “helpful” tone. Same safe ideas. Language doesn’t explode ... it slowly flattens.

Smooth Copy That Doesn’t Move Anyone

You’ll see a lot of copy that sounds right. But doesn’t do anything. No tension. No edge. No moment where the reader thinks, “Wait… that’s me.”

Because AI doesn’t know what actually worked. It only knows what resembles what was acceptable in the past. And resemblance doesn’t create conviction.

What AI Will Never Have

Great copy almost always comes from running into reality.

• Talking to customers who don’t say what you expected
• Launching something you were sure would win … and watching it flop
• Hearing objections that mess up your nice, clean positioning
• Living so close to the problem that it annoys you

AI doesn’t have any of that. No embarrassment. No emotional investment. No skin in the game. It can remix language forever, but it can’t generate insight.

The Beige Future of Copy

What’s coming is a flood of “pretty good” copy. Nothing offensive. Nothing bold. Nothing memorable. Copy that checks all the boxes and still doesn’t convert. And the more of that we see, the more valuable actual thinking becomes.

Humans Still Matter

This is the part many miss: Experienced marketing writers don’t lose relevance as AI gets better. They become more important. Not as typing machines, as decision-makers.

AI can give you:

• 30 headlines
• 5 angles
• 10 email drafts

But it can’t tell you:

• Which one to test
• Which idea is too safe
• Which truth will make prospects uncomfortable enough to pay attention

That’s judgment. That’s taste. That’s understanding the market.

The Real Split That’s Coming

The real divide won’t be AI vs humans. It’ll be: People who let AI think for them vs People who bring thinking to the AI

If you outsource your thinking, you’ll sound like everyone else. If you use AI as a tool (not a brain ) you’ll stand out more than ever.

One Last Thought

AI is flooding the world with words. But words were never the scarce thing. Insight is. Clarity is. Belief is.

And as AI copy slowly collapses into sameness, the copy that actually feels human -- specific, opinionated, a little risky -- will become increasingly difficult to ignore.