I had my phone number and company name on there but I cropped them out due to privacy reasons but that was the gist of the ads
I’m a pest control technician and I’m wondering is there a spray you can use outside for rodents as a repellant? Or some sort of concentrate you mix to make the repellant?
I own a pest control business, and for a while I’d been wanting to shoot an online ad for it. I decided to ask a friend of mine to be in the ad because he genuinely looks like the perfect fit for the role, very masculine, charismatic, and naturally has that “pest control technician” presence I was going for. I offered to pay him for his time, and he seemed excited to help.
The difference between us is that he’s older and barely uses social media, whereas I’m heavily involved in it. I run pages across multiple platforms and spend a lot of time studying how social media ads work and what makes content perform well.
The day of the shoot comes, and after the very first take, I could already tell it wasn’t coming out the way I envisioned. So I started giving some direction — things like where to look, how to deliver certain lines, speaking louder, moving locations for better shots, and adjusting parts of the script.
But almost every suggestion I made got dismissed. He’d say things like:
“Dude, it’s not a big deal if I look away from the camera for a few seconds while saying the script, no one will notice.”
“People won’t care.”
“I think I’m talking loud enough.”
“Why do we need different locations?”
“This part of the script is dumb.”
Whenever he pushed back, I calmly explained why those details mattered and how social media content is more strategic than just filming one take and posting it. I even showed him examples of successful ads and explained how attention spans, delivery, and visuals all play a role in performance. But the entire time, he kept rolling his eyes, chuckling at my feedback, and acting like I was overthinking everything.
By the third take, he was already sighing and asking, “How long is this going to take?” even though the ad was only supposed to be 30-45 seconds long and we’d only been filming for around 45 minutes.(manly because he kept arguing with me on every single I wanted to do with MY ad)
Eventually I got frustrated, stopped the shoot, and started packing up my equipment. On the drive back to drop him off, I barely said a word and he was acting like he doesn’t know why I’m upset.