Your creative advantage
How to create for Andromeda
Hello! Welcome to your weekly dose of INSPO ✨
You’ll have heard a lot about how Meta’s Andromeda update is changing the game when it comes to creative, but have you updated your own creative engine to keep up?
Andromeda allows Meta to serve ads that are deeply personalised to each user, matching creative and message to individual behaviours, interests and context. That means your ad creative can’t just be good. It has to feel personal and highly relevant.
Whilst a lot of of brands have been able to scale through volume and iterative testing, that’s going to be a lot harder from now on.
With automation handling most of the technical targeting, your creative storytelling becomes the differentiator, the one thing an algorithm can’t replicate and your competitors can’t copy.
The brands that will win in this new era are the ones that create emotional, story-led ads that feel like they were made for each individual viewer.
Ad breakdown
With these changes in mind, a lot of brands are starting to run more partnership ads to reach specific audiences in a relatable way.
This week’s ad is an organic collaborator post from STIHL that could also work as a paid ad or sponsored post, in my opinion. Either way, there’s a lot to learn from it.
Here’s why I think it works 👇🏼
👉 Piques curiosity: the ad starts with somewhat surprising information about a hedge it’s likely many of us have never heard of and so naturally what to know more about.
👉 Persona-led not product-led: the story focuses on Ian, his role and why the battery powered STIHL tools he’s using are so important because the hedge is in the centre of a town. The beginning of the ad also lets us know the location of the hedge, making it potentially interesting to anyone who might want low noise gardening tools.
👉 Product details naturally weave in: they quickly run through the fact these tools are battery powered which means they’re quieter and don’t produce emissions.
👉 Natural objection handling: the ad then goes onto mention the fact they can get a full day of work done whilst only having to charge the tools at lunch, quickly dealing with potential customer concerns around short battery life.
👉 Documentary style: the filming and editing style feels a bit like a documentary or TV program, it has Grand Designs vibes, which arguably makes it feel more relatable to someone who watches those types of programs over lo-fi TikTok content.
👉 Credibility: the partnership angle adds credibility. Instead of STIHL saying, “We’re the best,” the partnership with Countess Bathurst and The Bathurst Estate and shows why STIHL is important to ‘elite’ gardeners. The social proof feels highly authentic.
👉 Clever framing: the ad is framed as an organic story about a hedge and how its cared for, but ticks all the boxes of a paid social ad.
Thinking beyond this one ad…
You can easily imagine how this creative could scale under Andromeda: snippets about craftsmanship for DIYers, environmental pride for landscapers, legacy and reliability for professional gardeners. The storytelling framework stays the same but the emotional entry point changes for each individual.
How to make this format thinking work for your brand
The next generation of performance creative is personal. Not “name in headline” personal but emotionally, contextually, humanly personal.
🪩 Build ads around characters, not features. Let the product play a supporting role in a story that reflects your customer’s values or ambitions.
🪩 Use partnerships Co-create with real people or brands that embody your message, not just ones that share your demographic. Authenticity scales better than audience size.
🪩 Design for modular storytelling. Film or design with multiple cut-downs in mind so Meta’s AI can mix, match and serve variations that fit each user’s mindset.
🪩 Focus on what others can’t copy. Your tone, your community, your internal culture, those are your defensible creative advantages.
🪩 Use the style of your visuals to aid your persona targeting. Lo-fi UGC won’t work for everyone, be clear about who you’re speaking to and adjust your visual style accordingly.
It’s no longer just about volume and diversity, it’s about personal distinction.
Your job is to make the creative feel too human to ignore.
Give this a go for your brand and let me know how you get on 💪🏼
Thanks for reading,
Katherine 🪩
If you found this useful, don’t forget to pass it onto your team…
P.S. If your brand needs creative strategy but you don’t know where to start, drop me an email and let’s chat.