Job 1: Keep your winners alive
Two situations, same method:
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You've got a winner and it's tiring. You need iterations that keep it alive.
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Someone else has a winner (in your market or a totally different one) and you want that pull for your product.
Why most iterations flop
Someone takes your winner and "makes it better." They change 10 or 20 percent. It reads way better. They'd buy it themselves. It flops… because that 10 or 20 percent was the structure, the part doing the persuasion.
A market responds to the structure more than the words. So we use the Sultanic method:
Same structure + better pieces = a new winner.
Different structure + same pieces = a flop.
New, but not different.
What I do
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Gut reaction first. I watch the ad cold and write down what hit me and where I'd scroll.
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Break it into beats. Every section of the ad gets one job and a name for that job ("Overheard callout", "Test I expect to fail", "Concession"). If a beat is doing two jobs, it's two beats.
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Find what each beat makes the viewer believe. Each beat has to land before the next one works. A drop in your hold rate is usually a beat that didn't land.
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Copy it line for line into your product first. Clunky on purpose. It shows exactly which parts carry over and which don't.
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Rewrite for distance. Same beats, same order, new words, new person, new world. Then make every piece bigger: a sharper problem, a more specific moment, proof you can show instead of tell.
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Stress test. For each beat: what breaks if it's cut or moved? Where would a skeptic stop believing?
Then it goes to the editor as a brief (next tab).
What it looks like
| Beat | Their winner (Lemme Sleep) | My version (men's health) |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Overheard callout | "I have a message for Kourtney Kardashian. If you're not Kourtney Kardashian, just keep scrolling." | "Right. This is my punishment video. Because she was right. And apparently I have to say it on the internet." |
| 5. Test I expect to fail | Takes the gummies four hours early. "It's not gonna do anything." | Takes one pill instead of five for two weeks. "It's not gonna do anything." |
| 8. Concession | "You really pushed the envelope. Sorry." | "…She was right. And I'm sorry. There. Happy?" |
Full breakdown: Example: Five Pills.
My record on controls
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One of my controls held for 10+ years, right up to a $100M+ acquisition.
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A $300M email agency was brought in to beat my welcome flow. Four attempts and 5 months later, they were still losing to it by 51%.
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$100M over 15 years. Other agencies were brought in over the years to beat my ads and landing pages. None of them did. The only one who ever beat my ads and landing pages was me, and the company became the go-to in its market.