Hooks are about overcoming psychological resistance
I’ve been thinking about ad creatives differently.
Some people talk about hooks like they’re just copywriting tricks:
- “Use this hook template”
- “This opening gets attention”
- “This format improves CTR”
But I think hooks are actually solving something deeper:
They’re overcoming a specific psychological resistance.
And different products have completely different resistance profiles.
For example:
A skincare product has a trust problem.
People assume:
- fake results
- scammy claims
- edited before/afters
So hooks like:
- founder story
- study-backed
- expert angle
- raw UGC
- scam/debunk style
work naturally.
But a gadget product might not need trust first.
It may need:
- visual curiosity
- dopamine
- instant gratification
So visual hooks outperform narrative hooks.
Then there are products like AI SaaS tools.
Those are interesting because they usually combine:
- high skepticism
- low visual appeal
- high failed-attempt history
- market education problems
Which is why “viral aesthetic ads” often fail for them.
The better angles are usually:
- “I tried everything”
- workflow replacement
- founder POV
- “why nobody told me this”
- comparison against old methods
- frustration-driven narratives
I’ve started thinking about ad systems like this:
Product characteristics
→ psychological resistance
→ marketing strategy
→ angle
→ hook
→ visual language
→ script
Not:
Product
→ random video generation
Which is why I think the real moat in AI advertising won’t be video generation itself.
It’ll be the decision layer:
- how should this product be sold?
- what resistance exists?
- what emotional trigger fits?
- should this ad educate, prove, shock, or build trust?
- should it feel native, authoritative, emotional, or founder-led?
That’s probably the harder problem.