The Secret Behind Monster Agency's Monstrously Successful Viral Spoof Videos

Zach Johnson

Dylan Carpenter

Andrew Molz

Episode
4
|
Season 1

Andrew Molz

,

Founder, Monster Agency

Monster Agency, self-promo
Apple PodcastsGoogle PodcastsLive on SpotifyLive on Youtube

Before starting Monster Agency in 2019, Andrew Molz served as VP Digital Marketing, Sales and Communications a variety of Dallas-Ft. Worth area companies, including The Reputation Shop,tOnyx Heart, DynaMAXX International, Infrassure and others. An avid researcher self-admitted data freak, he is fanatical about tracking KPIs to create needle-moving A/B tests that result in high-converting, cost effective sales funnels.

Key Takeaways

  • The reason graphics work as well -- and sometimes BETTER than video - that only Facebook insiders know.
  • Why “niching down” isn’t always the smartest agency business model -- and the drop-dead simple mindset that makes it easy to get clients in every category imaginable.
  • The keep-it-simple-stupid reason a “Top Gun” concept got shot down in the marketplace -- hand how it might have been saved.
  • Which comes first,  the copy or the video? -- an eye-opening  peek behind the creative development curtain.
  • The old school marketing vehicle that -- ouch -- delivers long term results at a fraction of the cost of creating and running Facebook ads

The Transcript

Season 1
,
Episode
4
Transcript

Host: Zach Johnson

All right, here we go. Dylan, you ready to rock and roll?


Host: Dylan Carpenter

Let's do it.


Host: Zach Johnson

Today's guest is Andrew Molz, a founder of Monster Agency, who has, clearly and undeniably, the best agency ads on all of Facebook these days. I literally was watching some of them before this, Dylan, and I laughed out loud. Luckily, Andrew wasn't on the call, but I literally rolled off my chair. It was that funny. But if you guys are in online marketing, and you do Facebook ads, you probably have seen Andrew's ads. How would you describe Andrew's video ads, Dylan, that you've seen in the Facebook newsfeed the last couple of weeks?


Host: Dylan Carpenter

Really relatable and hilarious. Everything's going to bring up that nostalgia feeling, whether it's old-school games, Billy Mays, the Texas Hammer. We're in Texas, so that's a big no-brainer for us, but everything is really similar to where it rings a bell, but it's done in its own way, and it just cracks me up. I think it's super thumb-stopping, and it's really catchy to where I bet, shoot, the people who watched the full videos are pretty high up for people who don't dip out, so it's pretty cool there.


Host: Zach Johnson

Yeah, yeah. Well, cool. Without further ado, let's get Andrew on here, and let's talk about which one of these is actually the winning ad that's making him rich and which ad is making him poor. So Andrew, thanks so much for being on the show.


Guest: Andrew Molz

Hey, what's up? Appreciate you all having me, happy to be here and chat with you guys.


Host: Zach Johnson

Yeah, man. So I've seen three of your ads, and I'm going to totally botch trying to describe them, but one is this Adler impression, which is basically like a personal injury attorney style ad, just watched that one. The second ad I've seen is, I don't know, is it like a Nightline style deal, or it's like-


Guest: Andrew Molz

To Catch an Advertiser.


Host: Zach Johnson

Yes. It's so good.

Guest: Andrew Molz

That's what we titled it.


Host: Zach Johnson

Yeah. And then you've got the other one, which is you basically acting as a political candidate, so I would love to dive into those three. My bet is that, and we'll link up these three ads, what I'm talking about, in the show notes, but my bet is those are Rich Ads. 

Like those ads are performing really well for you. And I want to dive into those, but I want to know, man, it seems like you guys are on a total winning streak. I want to know some ads that haven't quite worked out as well as those. But they're absolutely hilarious, so why don't you describe those three ads, Andrew.    I did a really high-level overview, but, break down the concept for us.


Guest: Andrew Molz

Yeah. We'll think of some stuff that makes us laugh. And like myself, I'm 37, and might not be in the demographic of everybody who's watching, but our targeting meshes up well because we target 30 to 54-year-olds. And I think it's a good mix of having some of that nostalgia, and then having stuff a tad bit more current like the To Catch an Advertiser. 

And for the concept of it, it just comes down to what we find as funny. I like to think that we're funny people, and we like to laugh, and crack jokes, and just have fun with what we're doing. And I think it does resonate pretty well with our ads that we're putting out there, especially when we're talking about more so the comedy stuff.


Host: Zach Johnson

Yep. Yeah, so To Catch an Advertiser, that's basically like the To Catch a Predator. It was like that crime watch where he always came out of the kitchen. He was always in the kitchen. I don't know why.


Guest: Andrew Molz

Yeah.


Host: Zach Johnson

You just fully leaned into that, right? And the way you guys, in the video, I don't even know how long the video ad is, but you even lean into pulling up the online chat conversation.


Guest: Andrew Molz

That was pretty clutch. We wanted to have that one and do it in a way that is tasteful, but you still get the idea of what it's spoofing.


Host: Zach Johnson

Yes, yes. Yes, yes, yes.   So, how are these three ads doing? I would love for you to tell everybody, obviously, a little bit about Monster Agency and everything you guys do, but I'd also like to just get right to the good stuff here in terms of how are those three ads doing for you?  What are the results?


Guest: Andrew Molz

It's those in combination with others, there's two other ones. We've got a Dr. Phil one as well, and then we also have a Bob Ross style one where I'm there painting with an easel and almost…


Host: Zach Johnson

Yeah. You describe it so well, but you're throwing out these glorious ads, and you're just calling it the Dr. Phil ad, but these are amazing. So break down the Dr. Phil ad for us.


Guest: Andrew Molz

So the Dr. Phil one, it's basically just every one of them is centered around business owners and their problems and not being profitable with their campaigns. That's that one, the Dr. Phil one. But the Bob Ross one is just about a struggling business that's spending money and wasting money on fruitless ad campaigns that aren't generating anything, and they're just losing their shirt essentially, from the bad ads.


Host: Zach Johnson

That's awesome. That's awesome. So how have these video ads helped you ramp up and scale on Facebook?


Guest: Andrew Molz

Really well, really, really well. So what we do with these videos, and we try and come up with one to two videos. I mean, that's our goal for myself and our creative director, Adam. Our goal this year has been to put out two just amazing video ads that are engaging and really funny, so we try and do two of those a month so we can continue to be pushing that out all year long so that when December comes along, we just look back and we're just like, "Shit, we did so much stuff this year. It's just hilarious, really good, really funny."

We don't want to have any kinds of regrets on, "Oh, we should've done a little bit more of this, or we should have paid attention to it more." We do that on the top of our funnel for our ads, and those are really all of our prospecting campaigns, is those engaging, funny ads because if we run something that's more so like a static graphic or it's just un-engaging, we're not going to stay in people's minds. When you see another ad of ours, and it's funny as well, as a business owner, you might, even if you don't have a need, at least whereas you can be like, "Damn, this stuff is funny." And you remember the name, and we stay in your brain and might as well charge rent for how long we live there.

And so when we run our retargeting stuff, I mean, that's really just all testimonials, and we've been gracious enough to have our awesome clients provide this for us, and we run those out as our retargeting. We did start with a little bit of reach campaigns on those retargeting videos just to completely saturate our users who are watching on the top of the funnel and the ones that we want to target, but those leads came in a bit more costly than we wanted. And that was just a test, ended up shutting those ones off and just strictly going with conversion-based ads for our video testimonials.

And then, later on, we layered in some of these static graphics just because, I mean, I know everybody's like "Video, video video," but when you run graphics as well, provided that they're pretty decent, they do just as good of a job, if not better than video in a lot of cases just because I feel Facebook has more available placements for them and more areas to put them, so it's more areas for impressions where I think Facebook's, for videos, you only have maybe nine placements or something like that, but…


Host: Zach Johnson

Nice. Walk us through like it. What's been the return? I think you mentioned before this, you guys are spending somewhere around 40 grand a month, which is a ton. The last time I talked to an agency that was spending 40 grand a month, they were doing like 40, 50 million a year. So I guess you guys have got to have seen some amount of…


Guest: Andrew Molz

And we just restarted and pivoted before our call, was going through that with our rebrand, but we did just rebrand and hey, surprise, we rebrand and launch our ads. And now, all of a sudden, it's a pandemic, so it was kind of weird, but we just rolled with it and kept going with what we were doing. And I'd say probably around the range of maybe like 30. I haven't broken down the math. I'm more so focused on getting the business in, but 30, maybe to like 35, somewhere around there with a K.

Just FYI, 30 to 35K in new business, and that's recurring revenue. We front loaded up a bit, and we spend a bit. But at this level, we truly are just essentially buying our growth. And provided that we've got good stuff, good support, good ads, good campaigns, and we know what we're doing, we'll retain those customers, and continue to retain them, and build that recurring revenue up month over month.


Host: Zach Johnson

So to recap, you're spending around 40 grand a month. It'll bring in like 30, 35K a month in monthly retainers. Right? So you'll actually do business, you'll retain clients for six, 12, 15 months, right? 


Guest: Andrew Molz

That's why it's on the front-end, and so I haven't broken down the math on that because we've got a sheet where we keep track of all of our new clients and the deals, and that's face value ad businesses coming in. So that doesn't include the percentage of ad spend that we bill out, so it'll more than likely be quite a bit more than that. But since we don't include that, it's not on there.


Host: Zach Johnson

And talk to me about some of the types of revenue, right? Not all revenue is created equal, right? And especially in the agency game, you could get some clients that are more than willing to pay those retainer fees, but they're not the clients you really want to be working with. So talk to us about the type of clients these have attracted for you. And what are some of those trophy or rockstar clients you're pretty proud of that came to your doorstep after seeing these ads?


Guest: Andrew Molz

Yeah. Man, it's like all walks of life because I think something about us that's a little bit unique, I guess, in the agency space is that we're not niched. And so you'll have a lot of people that say, "Oh, we only deal with chiropractors, or plastic surgeons, or dentists, or whatever." We don't niche down, and we operate into the mantra of a funnel is a funnel, a product is a product. And we'll accept the client based on what their budget is, and what their needs are, and if we feel like we can deliver on those.  Because there's no point in onboarding somebody that's just going to be an absolute fucking nightmare of a client to deal with, and take up way too much of your time there in Slack, way too much dinging us on stuff.

So when we do that, and we operate that way, it makes things a bit easier to market. So it's like eating an elephant bite by bite as opposed to doing it all at once. And so, if we are going to be marketing you a microphone, or a pair of shoes, or a personal injury, we treat it like that's the product. How are we going to advertise this and convey the message at the top of our file, and then rely on our retargeting ads to seal the deal and bring those people across the finish line, and generate a purchase or a lead?

That's how we operate, and that's been pretty good for us so that we can absorb more types of clients, and we're not just niche down to only one niche. I think when you do that as well, your CPMs are higher. Your costs are higher because you just keep going to this one singular kind of niche versus being able to market to all business owners who have a need. So that's been really cool, and that's been helpful for us.

I feel like some people don't really get it when they chat with us. Some of our newer hires, it's difficult for them to get that in the beginning because they're used to being niched down. But once they're like, "Man, I get it. We can do this." It makes you a better, sharper marketer as well when you can say, "Okay, I can market your landscaping company. I can market your shutter blind company."

But back to your original question, some of the wins, I'd say, and we just signed Phil Heath Labs, Mr. Olympia, seven times winner, so that was a cool one. We're working on getting a NASCAR driver on board so that we can be the official agency of one of the NASCAR drivers, which there's only like 42 of them, so we'll promote that on our website. Jarvis Green, a two time Super Bowl champ for the Patriots, I believe he's going to be down here in Dallas probably the next week or so. And we're going to fill in some stuff for his shrimp pate’ company. He wanted some funny stuff that he had seen through us.

So, I mean, that's just what's coming to my mind first, but man, all types of walks of life, people, verified brands. It's crazy what you can get out of running really good creative. And I just equate it to pro fishing in the gulf, and you never know. You can catch a marlin, or you can catch a redfish, you never know.


Host: Zach Johnson

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, so talk to me about your break-even period here. I mean, it's awesome that you guys are spending 40K, and you make 30, 35 grand, on the front end. And obviously, in the agency game, you have your setup fees, and you got your fixed retainers, but I mean, if that's anything close to your monthly retainer, you got to be putting a dollar in and getting $10.00 Out over the next 12 months. Right?


Guest: Andrew Molz

Yeah. I haven't broken down the math. I'll self admit that I'm not the best on being on the numbers. I'm more…


Host: Zach Johnson

Well, it's difficult, and the agency game is really difficult, right? It was just back end revenue, and the LTVs on agency clients we know are all there. Right? You don't need to break all the right numbers as long as you break even in month one with top-line revenue. And obviously, you've got your deliverables and your costs in terms of onboarding clients, but yeah, you're probably profitable there within the 30 to 60-day range I'd imagine, for sure.


Guest: Andrew Molz

Yeah, we're doing really, really well. And I think that if we weren't, or if we had periods where we're spending 40K out on ads, and it's not profitable, I'd probably be like, "Shit, my wife's going to kill me. And we need to turn these off and whatever." I'm the one that's doing all the media, buying the accounts, so I know what's what. I feel like, I think …

Who'd I talk with about this? I feel like I talked with either Nick Shackelford or David Shaw, it's one of them, when I was doing an interview with them. And it's like gambling to an extent when you've been doing this so long, and you're confident in your product and your service and whatnot. And you say, "Okay." Most people would probably roll out like, "Let's do like $25.00, 50 dollars a campaign, but we're just like, "Screw it. Let's do like $150, $500, and this is rolled out, see what we can get out."

At the end of the day, for us, I just, I know that that money spent, even if it looks like it's just super egregious, and it's overspending, I know it comes back to us. So I'm not really afraid to spend there, and I know you've got to spend the money to make it in this kind of game, provided that you've got the right data coming back, and those right signals that you've got a good product, and that people are resonating with it.


Host: Zach Johnson

Yeah, yeah. So let's talk about a Poor Ad, man. Let's talk about something that you thought was just totally-


Guest: Andrew Molz

Just bad.


Host: Zach Johnson

Let's talk about a Poor Ad.


Guest: Andrew Molz

You know I'm kidding.


Host: Zach Johnson

Let's talk about one of these ads that you just thought was the greatest idea since sliced bread, and then it just totally bombed.


Guest: Andrew Molz

Yeah. This is one that we're looking at here, this one is ... And we've done these graphics based on our research, and just what we feel like is pop culture in the moment of the demographic that we're trying to hit on. So if I want to hit other people in my demographic of --- ideally, it's 35 to 54-year-old males that are the majority of our clients. It is what it is, and we go to the data. We don't go towards anything else.


Host: Zach Johnson

Yeah.


Guest: Andrew Molz

So with that, we pulled up okay, what's an iconic scene in Top Gun that we could mash up and make our own, and put a spin on it? And so we pulled this one that was, what's his name, Maverick and Goose, and they're walking. It's something about ... I'll be honest. I don't even really remember much of that movie other than them flying around like that volleyball scene where it's like ... And so we pulled this one. It's like, "I have a need for speed," and that's a corny quote from the movie that I feel like people would remember and pick up when they're seeing it. And it's got our monsters on there, and we craft the copy around that.

So the copy here, we're online advertising Mavericks. We love getting our client campaigns up lightning fast. We'll launch your new funnel ad campaign in 14 days. Do you want me to read through all that? Or ..


Host: Zach Johnson

You don't have to read the whole thing.


Host: Dylan Carpenter

It's a long copy there.


Guest: Andrew Molz

Yeah.


Host: Zach Johnson

I see what you're doing with the crater, though. You have these two little monsters with their flattops and sunglasses. And I feel like it was one of those ads that just ended up too abstract, right? Like…


Guest: Andrew Molz

Too much going on.


Host: Zach Johnson

Yeah, too much. The whole idea didn't come together. I think it would have done maybe better if you just didn't go like the monster in the image. Right? Just leaned more into your other winning ads that you went into. Totally worked because it's like you play the character really well, and you bring it to life. And I feel like just relying on this image here, and the monsters made it too obscure for somebody to catch on super quick.


Guest: Andrew Molz

We normally do those videos. We like those. This is one that we were going to do for the graphic side. These are the only kinds of graphics that we'll run, and we want to make them somewhat iconic and recognizable when you see them in your feed. This one just didn't hit the mark, I feel like. So if you're running a 5K, Zach, and I'm at one of the stopping points, instead of holding up a little Dixie cup of lemonade that you can drink, I'm holding up my sign that says, "Have a need for speed?  Get a proposal."

If you're jogging by, and you see that, and I'm screaming your name, you're going to be like, "What the hell is that?" And you just keep on jogging. So if we have other stuff, then I think you can quickly consume it and grasp it, it works out better. There's just too much going on, I think, in this one.


Host: Zach Johnson

Yeah. So how quickly were you able to catch these losing ads in terms of…


Guest: Andrew Molz

I'd say probably about, these ones, like 14 days.


Host: Zach Johnson

Yeah.


Guest: Andrew Molz

We just have to run it, and that's because we have all of our retargeting ads within their each ad set. But they're all ... We've got, I think, six, or seven, or eight different testimonial videos. Plus, we've got the graphics in there, so it was CBO on there. That budget continues to get shoved at the stuff that converts, and then these ads get a little bit of the spend more, and more, and more. But still, we see conversions on some of the other graphics. And if you look at the click-through rates as well, and just see what the numbers are telling us, and the numbers are telling us on this one that it's just not converting well.


Host: Zach Johnson

Yeah. And you also just have a little bit of a longer sales process too, to get feedback on what are some of the non-data points of what people say when they go on, and they do an audit call with you, or they do a demo. What are they saying? They're not talking about the, "Hey, remember that need for speed ad? That really got me excited." Everyone signed with the Dr. Phil ad, or the Catch a Predator, or Catch an Advertiser ad. And that's the stuff that's really driving performance for you guys on the top of the funnel there.


Host: Dylan Carpenter

And it looks like the call to action is pretty consistent across both those static images you sent over where it starts out. Y'all are being a preferred marketing partner. Have you seen that just work pretty well across the board for the most part?


Guest: Andrew Molz

I feel like that's too granular to be able to pull that out and say that that is something. We don't test that hard on the copy and the specific kinds of points. I mean, it could lead to that, but for us, we're kind of running too fast to be able to pick that up, but I like to just have it in there. If they see it, they see it. If they don't, they don't.


Host: Zach Johnson

Yeah, yeah. I remember one time I went to a ... early in my career. I went to this conference. It wasn't even an ad, but I printed out these little postcard style advertisements for our booth there, and it was right when texting and SMS numbers was coming out. And I was surrounded by all these other genius marketers. And my business card was, “text so and so to get a free proposal”, and it was all this fancy artwork around driving somebody to text message.

And this guy who was one of the smartest marketers in the room, he was just like, "Yeah." He was like, "I bet this was a really good idea in the boardroom, right?" And nobody's texting this number. And he was like, "I can guarantee you that." And I was just so embarrassed. I'm like, "Yeah, it sounded so good, and we worked so hard. And then it just totally bombed."


Guest: Andrew Molz

I mean, it happens. You got to try it and see what works and what doesn't.


Host: Dylan Carpenter

Yeah.


Host: Zach Johnson

Yeah, yeah, totally. Alright, so let's dive into this Rich Ad here. Walk me through this. What's working?


Guest: Andrew Molz

This one is, I mean, hopefully, you know that one, the graphic ride from Predator.


Host: Dylan Carpenter

Yep.


Guest: Andrew Molz

Since that scene where they're doing some high five, thumb war, arm flex show-off, or I don't know what it is, but it's a deal where Arnold Schwarzenegger, and I forget the other guy's name. Dylan, that's his name in the movie. And Arnold comes out like, You son of a bitch," and gives him a high five. And yeah, that's the ad. I think it's a meme as well, so I think that helps a little bit. But I don't know, it's like some testosterone, like hell yeah, higher ROAS.

And so you have that, and then a little bit of the copy up on the top is like, "We're the perfect partner to have if you're looking for strong growth online. We partner with many companies to help explode their growth using battle-tested strategies. So again, we're pulling from some Predator-esk kind of stuff like that, and tested it. And we've got some other stuff in there. I don't know where it is, but ... So this one's done pretty well at dealing to your gut, so I think it quickly conveys what it is. It looks cool. It looks different. The graphics are pretty on point. It's different, for sure. Higher ROAS in 14 days.

I mean, that's like, boom. Get a proposal is get a proposal. Cool, that sounds kind of boring, I guess. So higher ROAS in 14 days, let us run your next campaigns. I think that's quickly digestible. There's not as much stuff going on in the background with these little monsters that look like thumbs that are wearing glasses. I don't know. That's my take on it. And as always with this stuff, we run it. We have a good idea on it just like your text marketing thing, and it's all hunches. And it's all based on stuff that it's not just out of the blue. I mean, we have fairly good ideas and hypotheses on stuff. We're kind of like scientists in that we run it, and let the data tell us what to do next.


Host: Dylan Carpenter

Yeah, totally.  Now, with your copy, is it always resonating with the image itself to make it all come to one together? Are y'all kind of doing the image first or the copy first in these scenarios? What's your thought process behind those?


Guest: Andrew Molz

Oh, we'll do the copy where ... I'm sorry. We'll do the graphics and the video, graphic and the video first. And then, I'll just wing it on the copy.


Host: Dylan Carpenter

Hell, yeah.


Guest: Andrew Molz

I'll put up, well, of course, upload the ad, the video. That's not anything difficult, but we all play a hand in putting together that graphic and the video as well, but we're willing to copy. We don't have anything like a copywriter that does it or anything. It's just myself.


Host: Zach Johnson

That makes sense because you have the static images. The copies really just kind of pop a little bit more than those videos, without a doubt.


Guest: Andrew Molz

Yeah, just accentuate and amplify what it is that we're talking about so we can frame it, and ideally, get people to come in that have at least half a brain and understand this is going to cost money. And if you don't have it, then you probably can't be a good match and a fit. But we still get a decent amount of people that have $500.00 On a budget, and their Shopify website isn't up yet, and it's just a bad fit. I like people to come to us when they're ready to grow, not when they're ready to build.


Host: Dylan Carpenter

Yep.


Host: Zach Johnson

Yeah, all so good. I love that. I love that, man. You're like a one trick pony, man. It's like your go-to way- like...] What am I going to spoof today, and what meme am I going to support a copy? And honestly, it's such a great place to start from a creative place, right? Because you're basically iterating off of these legacy memes and humorous comedies that have proven to be memorable over time, and you're making them your own. And, I mean, there's tons of...


Guest: Andrew Molz

And that's not even factoring in the video game stuff that we run. That's kind of what I'm known for. Early on, before we rebranded as Monster Agency, we had a Mike Tyson punch out one that's still running to this day. I haven't touched it. I think it's got like 500. That one's running. The streetfighter ad for our other agency is still running. That's how we started getting out there and known, and being way different with a really good pattern interrupt, pulling that nostalgia, and then getting people to engage.


Host: Zach Johnson

So walk me through what are the elements that go into a spoof ad, right? When you're going to pull out these elements, and let's say I'm sitting in an ad, and I've got to put some new creative, I mean, you just...


Guest: Andrew Molz

I have a list in my phone and my notepad of ad ideas, and one of them was a really nice OxiClean style videos because I thought it would be really funny. And we pulled that off and did it, and that one came off pretty well. We've got a bunch of other random ones like a marketer in the wild, National Geographic style. We could fill in that one in the woods.

A one-man show with other mannequins on a stick, so I saw some sort of commercial where it's like a person's typing. And they've got those plastic rods, and they've got two other dummies and two other dummies on the on right. And we're all typing, and it looks like we're all, you know what I mean, like the same, something like that. A lemonade stand with a competitor kid, my daughter, running that one. Had one that was going to be ... I was 34 when I was first diagnosed with bad ROAS. I was told my business wouldn't make it. A guru talking, one person in the crowd.

There's a lot of people that will be on stage talking, and it's huge events. We were just going to do that, but flip it. And so it starts off looking really good, and it's maybe me or somebody else on stage talking with the earpiece and stuff like that. It looks like, "Whoa, this guy's killing it." And then it does a pan from behind the back, and there's like one person who maybe has an AARP card. They're like 65. And it's like, "Whoa, what is it?" So flip that on its head.

Anyways, I mean, so those are some of the ones. So I know we've wanted to do one that is a play on words in that talk about ... Have somebody in the garden digging for gold for their return on ad spend. They're talking about how they have a dirty hoe. And we'll be talking about a guy who's a photographer. He has his own photography businesses, but nobody's buying his deck pics, he takes pictures of decks.

We wanted to do a Peter Popoff, get your miracle water in the mail. That one would be pretty funny. A bathroom stall, for a good ad, call 5555, and we could go to town on that one. So we get a lot of those things. So they'll come in and into our heads, and we'll write them down. A lot of times, it's just being consumers, watching something that's funny as hell. I watch a lot of 80s stuff, the Goonies all the time, Big Trouble in Little China, The Burbs. So if I can pull on stuff like that and re-craft it, and just take the funny scenes, and the iconic scenes, and stuff like that without necessarily ripping anybody off or anything like that. We just like to have fun and make these funny, really.


Host: Zach Johnson

One thing that I noticed is these don't seem like all that high budget, right? I've seen click funnels as minor creative ads. They went to town. That was an expensive shoe. Right?

Yeah, of course. But I mean, it's still humor. Right? And there's some spoof-ness in there, and that's like a totally different approach, but I love how you're getting the same result. But you have found this balance of where you're pushing out volume on a lot of these, cranking out a couple of these a month.


Guest: Andrew Molz

And we're able to do that when we're not spending an arm on the stuff, which you don't have to because, whether I tell a funny joke, and I'm in Times Square with a bunch of people around, and everybody laughs, or if I tell a funny joke, and I'm in some dive bar, and everybody laughs, the content is universal. And you don't necessarily need to spend an arm and a leg producing it and putting it together. I mean, you've got to have some sort of know-how to orchestrate it, and pull it off, and have the editing and all that stuff correctly, to an extent. But the days of spending an arm and a leg on this stuff, I really feel like they're gone.

That's another part of our agency that we're pushing is our Monster Lab, where we produce this stuff and make it as affordable as possible. And doing videos like that, we bill out those anywhere from starting at $10k to $15,000 to put those kinds of videos together. Some business owners may balk and scoff at the idea of paying that. And it's really hard to not come off salesy when I talk about it because I've seen it firsthand and how it works, but the evergreen-ness of that shit, and how long you can run it for, and how the comments just continue to rack up, and legitimize, and add credibility, you'll save more money by running a really good video, and running that until the cows come home versus every month you're cycling in new ads because you're trying to get what these videos would deliver.


Host: Dylan Carpenter

Right, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you guys are cranking out two of those a month, right, internally?


Guest: Andrew Molz

Yeah.


Host: Dylan Carpenter

That's awesome. But for somebody to drop 10K and do that twice a month, like 20 grand on creative, they've got to be spending at least 100, 200 grand on ads to justify that level of creative spend.


Guest: Andrew Molz

We can usually test it out and run one, and send along our best practices for their media buyer, provided that their media buyer is competent can run it, and knows how to properly test it.


Host: Dylan Carpenter

Yeah.


Guest: Andrew Molz

And I guess you can kind of get a taste of the good life by doing that and seeing like, "Holy shit! This works really well. It cut our lead costs in half. If we're paying half the cost for our leads, that means that our leads will double with the same budget. Why would we not put more money into this?" But it's also one of those things where you just have to see it to believe it. And seeing it costs money.

Host: Zach Johnson

I love it, man. I love it. So tell us more about Monster Agency. And tell us a little bit about your guys' retainers. Where do you guys typically start off to work with clients on a month by month engagement?

Retainers can be kind of all over. They can start as low as 1900 a month plus 5% of ad spend, and go much further than that, just depending on what our scope of work is. Are we handling only paid social? Are we doing paid social plus paid search? Are we doing all that plus email marketing? The complexities of what it is, definitely dictate the price.

And we'll have comments from potential prospects on our posts, "Hey, how much do you charge?" It's like, "Well, I don't know what you do, what you're doing. Every business is as unique as a fingerprint, so we need to be able to assess what you need, and that way, we can architect what it is based on your budget, provided that your budget works for us to be able to put something together." It really just depends on what people are looking at, but, I mean, usually around 1900, at least, to start off with, plus 5% of ad spend.


Host: Zach Johnson

Nice, nice.


Guest: Andrew Molz

And I think that from what I've seen, and just know it from the industry, a lot of agencies charge a bit more than that. And we've ended up around that kind of a price just because we know that it can absorb more clients, and we can still deliver really good value. And that's the name of the game at the end of the day. It's delivering value. But we can drive more business in and deliver services that are needed for that kind of rate, and it makes us much better appearing than a lot of other agencies.

I think 10% to 15% sometimes, is what I hear of what other agencies billing out at for ad spend plus some sort of retainer. I've heard, of course, some people charge just a setup fee and then a maintenance fee or something like that there on after. I mean, there's a million different ways to slice an apple or whatever the hell people say, cut a lemon, whatever.


Host: Zach Johnson

I don't know who came up with that one, but that's off-


Guest: Andrew Molz

I forgot what it is.


Host: Zach Johnson

We were like, "Dude, stop." It's awful.


Guest: Andrew Molz

A million different ways to cut a lemon.


Host: Zach Johnson

Yeah, there you go. There you go. Well, awesome. Well, there you have it. Thank you so much, Andrew. This is awesome. And all your ideas that you came up with in terms ... You rattled off like a dozen different spoof ads that I feel like, anyway, listen, this show would be pretty smart to copy. But I feel like it would not be the same without your brain and your creative behind it, so thanks so much for opening up the kimono here and sharing with us your Rich Ads and your Poor Ads. Tell people what you're up to next, and how they can get in touch.


Guest: Andrew Molz

Business as usual, onboarding clients, making sure they're the right fit. But, I mean, if you want to check out our website, www.monsteragency.com. If you feel like it would be a good fit, and that you are looking to grow like I mentioned earlier, you're not so much in the building phase, but more so, you're ready to hit that growth phase, reach out. Get a proposal, Andy, on our team, will chat with you, assess your needs, get you a proposal, and take it from there.


Host: Zach Johnson

That's awesome, man. Thank you so much, Andrew.


Guest: Andrew Molz

Yep. I appreciate y'all having me.

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About The Podcast

Jason Hornung is the founder and Creative Director at JH Media LLC, the world’s #1 direct response advertising agency focusing exclusively on the Facebook ads platform. Jason’s proprietary methods for ad creation, audience selection and scaling are responsible for producing $20 million + of profitable sales for his clients EVERY YEAR

Zach Johnson

Zach Johnson is Founder of FunnelDash, the Agency Growth and Finance Company, with their legendary Clients Like Clockwork solutions. Under Zach’s leadership, FunnelDash has grown to over 5,000+ agency customers managing over $1 Billion in ad spend across 41,000 ad accounts on. Zach’s private clients have included influencers such as Dr. Axe, Marie Forleo, Dan Kennedy, Dean Graziozi to name a few. Zach is also a noted keynote speaker and industry leader who’s now on a mission to partner with agencies to fund $1 Billion in ad spend over the next 5 years.

Dylan Carpenter

Dylan Carpenter

Dylan Carpenter will be diving into what he and his team are seeing in 200+ accounts on Google and Facebook when it comes to trends, new offerings, and new opportunities. With over $10 million in Facebook/Instagram ad spend, Dylan Carpenter had the pleasure to work with Fortune 500 companies, high investment start-ups, non-profits, and local businesses advertising everything from local services to physical and digital products. Having worked at Facebook as an Account Manager and now with 5+ years of additional Facebook Advertising under my belt, I’ve worked alongside 60+ agencies and over 500+ businesses. I work with a team of Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn experts to continue to help companies and small businesses leverage the power of digital marketing.

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