Recently I was scrolling on the Instagram Feed and came across a naked man with his dick blurred out training with Peloton’s technology and equipment.

It was hilarious, novel, and disruptive. It was posted by the Creative Agency, Maximum Effort founded by Ryan Reynolds.

I started following Maximum Effort because I wanted a pulse on their creative genius.

From what I’ve seen, Ryan’s core strategy is resourceful creation.

Even without an armada of resources, Ryan and his team are able to come up with memorable advertisements.

For example, in 2019 Peloton came out with a Christmas Commercial where a husband bought his wife a Peloton Bike.

In cancel-culture fashion, some people labeled it as dystopian, sexist, misogynist, and classist.

See the original video here.

What’s ingenious is Ryan leveraged this timely internet moment to promote his company Aviation Gin.

Ryan contacted the actress, Monica Ruiz, in the original Peloton advertisement and made a meta video of how the actress needed a drink after the controversial and viral backlash of the Peloton Video.

It’s wholesome that Peloton goes from making a controversial advertisement to teaming up with Ryan and his agency Maximum Effort.

They doubled down on polarizing creative advertisement with the intention of being ridiculously comical and memorable.

They make up for a lack of big production budgets with resourcefulness and high agency.

Resourcefulness that brought out Ingenuity and creativity.
High agency that brought out a persistent will to make it happen.

This makes me reflect on the difference between what I’m exposed to amongst my peers in DTC marketing compared to corporate advertisements.

A DTC marketing colleague recently pointed out why people in paid social advertising want to create ads that don’t look like ads. Wouldn’t it be a better pursuit to create advertisements that people want to watch?

This intention has a minor shift in language but is incredibly potent.

I agree with this sentiment.

Instead of disguising advertisements that “trick” people, make advertisements that people love to watch.

While trend-hopping and arbitrage-chasing from UGC (User-Generated Ads), Snapchat Ads, and TikTok Style ads can be a valuable first-mover advantage, it lacks the benefit of advertisement creativity.

Advertisements that spark enthusiasm and energy are much more defining.  

People are all up to watch an advertisement if it calls out to them where they can go “I love this”, “That’s me”, “They get it.”.

A brand represents values.
A brand stands for something.

And people want to support something they believe in.

This has ignited a fire inside for me to build an Agency that builds off the principle of being courageous enough to truly think and take action on impactful creative.

It’s easier to maintain the status quo go but it’s hard to dedicate mind-share & creative energy to create advertisements that are a cut above the rest.

Creative Potency over creative carbon copies.

Advertisements that hold place in people’s memories weeks, months, and years out.

Generally, this doesn’t require big budgets.

Instead, it takes ingenuity, resourcefulness, and being okay with truly going against the grain.

That means bearing difficulty and being up even when there’s fear, insecurities, or doubts.

Courage is required like anything meaningful in life.