Two pieces of work sit behind this. We audited every ad in the Pairs account against a fixed checklist of the fourteen arguments and twenty-three content types a brand can run on Meta, so that the lanes with nothing in them become visible. Separately we pulled apart 2,658 Purdy & Figg ads and sorted them into 678 distinct creatives, because you asked what they were actually doing.
The honest headline: our ads are beautiful and they are all the same kind of thing. Every pound the account has ever spent has run through studio photography. Nobody has ever spoken in a Pairs ad. The new summer shoot put a model in frame for the first time, which is real progress, but it is still a mood image rather than a person telling you something.
This list is deliberately the opposite texture to the brand shoot: human, spoken, phone-real. That is not a criticism of the photography. Meta shows different-looking ads to different people, so a second visual language is worth more than more of the first one.
Five things, in order of how much they are costing us. The comparison is not a suggestion to copy Purdy & Figg, it is there because they are the clearest evidence of what a well-supplied account looks like in this price bracket.
Pairs Zero ads with a human voice. Ever. Our best-performing words are already customer words, they are just set in type: “Genuinely don’t want to wear my other socks” out-clicked every sale static we ran.
Purdy & Figg A third of their ads are creator-fronted. Their two most people-heavy formats are the customer demo and the customer testimonial, and both are almost entirely person-led.
Pairs The Phase 4 shoot is the first time a face has appeared at all, and it appears as scenery. No one is holding, pulling on, comparing or reacting to a sock in any Pairs image.
Purdy & Figg Around 150 of their still images have a person doing something in them. This is the cheap half of the fix: it needs a shoot day, not a film crew.
Pairs We have never run a single ad from someone else’s handle. Meta treats these as a separate, higher-trust format and gives them their own delivery.
Purdy & Figg They run it from exactly one creator handle, and most of those ads are just product images posted from her account rather than anything she filmed. Even that lazy version earns weeks of delivery.
Pairs One ad in the account’s history has touched the founder story, on £2 of spend. Alice founded this in Scotland in 2020 and none of that is in any ad.
Purdy & Figg Also zero. This is the one lane where we are not catching up. They cannot easily make this and we can.
Pairs No Christmas ad has ever existed in the account. No unboxing has ever existed either. Socks are the gift category and Q4 is when a premium sock brand earns its year.
Purdy & Figg Their unboxing content is a standing lane with dozens of ads in it, mostly filmed by customers, and it stays live for weeks.
High level on purpose. These are the kinds of asset we want, not storyboards. If your team can get us the raw footage we are happy to cut, caption and version all of it on our side.
The most valuable thing missing from the account. Real people saying the thing our quote cards already say in type. This is the engine of every account we benchmarked.
How to make it Three real customers, filmed on a phone in their own home, natural light, 20 to 40 seconds. No script, just prompts: how long have you had them, what surprised you, would you go back to what you had before. Imperfect beats polished here.
The sharpest mechanic we saw: write one strong script and have several people film their own version of it. Same words, different faces, and Meta finds the right audience for each. We have never tested it.
How to make it We write the script with you. Roughly 30 to 45 seconds, four beats: the parcel arrives, the first feel, on the feet, the verdict. Three people, three phones, three ads.
No Pairs ad has ever named the problem out loud: the cuff that sags, the toe that goes through, the bag of five that has lost its shape by November. Opening on a problem someone recognises is the most reliable hook there is, and we have none.
How to make it Phone-shot, first person, captions throughout. Open on the tired old sock for the first few seconds, then the switch, then the difference. Autumn is the right timing for this.
Alice on camera for the first time. Not a brand film and not a piece to camera: the podcast setup, seated, a good mic, talking to someone off-frame. It reads as a conversation being overheard rather than an ad, which is exactly why it works cold.
How to make it One session, one seat, decent audio, 20 to 30 minutes recorded. We cut three or four short ads out of it. Prompts, not a script: why start a sock company, what was wrong with the ones you could buy, what you refuse to compromise on, the bit customers never believe until they feel it.
The lighter version, and useful even if the podcast never happens. Alice’s voice over the studio and b-roll footage we already own turns beautiful images into an argument.
How to make it A voice note is enough. Two or three minutes of her talking honestly about the fibres and why they cost what they cost. We lay it over existing footage.
What we want is not reach, it is a real handle. Someone with a small, genuinely engaged Instagram following who is actually into clothes and cares what is on their feet. A few thousand followers is fine. The value is in running the ad from their account, not in their audience size.
How to make it Gift them socks, ask for one honest piece to camera plus a few stills. The important part is the paperwork: the agreement must include permission to run partnership ads from their handle. That single line is what unlocks the format, and it costs nothing extra.
Not a new asset. Every customer and creator in the testimonial films above should be signed off for partnership ads at the same time. Retro-fitting this later is much harder than asking on the day.
How to make it One clause in whatever release your team already uses. We can supply the wording.
There has never been an unboxing in the account. Ours should be quiet rather than squealing: the parcel, the tissue, the first touch. Film one of these framed as a gift being received and it becomes our Christmas creative with a caption change.
How to make it Hands and voice only, nobody needs to present to camera. One version as a purchase arriving, one version as a present being opened.
The moment nobody has ever filmed: the sock actually going onto a foot for the first time, and the face or the sentence that follows. This is the closest thing socks have to a demo, and it is the beat that makes someone believe the price.
How to make it Phone, close, natural light. Pull on, smooth up, stand, and one honest reaction. Film it with several different people and several different fibres.
Not ads in themselves. The raw texture we cut everything else from: yarn, knit close-ups, the cuff stretching back, the drawer, feet on floorboards, the box. We have almost none of this and it is why every edit ends up reusing the same three shots.
How to make it A morning of pure texture, 5 to 10 second clips, no people needed, shot vertical. Quantity over composition. Worth noting we would use this as connective tissue, not as standalone ads, because in the accounts we studied pure b-roll films burn out faster than films with a person in them.
The whole brand argument in one image. The drawer of shapeless multipack socks next to the Pairs drawer. Tasteful, not sneering.
How to make it One split image or a ten second pan. The old drawer needs to look genuinely lived-in rather than staged-ugly.
The gifter has had nothing from us since Father’s Day and there has never been a Christmas ad in the account. Shooting in September means it is tested and proven before November, rather than launched cold in the most expensive month of the year.
How to make it Styled gift-set moment in your existing photography language. Legible at thumbnail size, one line naming the occasion.
The moving version, and the second life of the unboxing footage above.
How to make it The gift being opened by the person receiving it. Warm, short, no dialogue needed.
Not because it is bad. Because the shelf is full. Polished studio product stills are our most-supplied format by a wide margin and the summer shoot has just refreshed the lane properly. More text-overlay quote cards, more tennis content and more studio stills would all be additions to the one lane we already win in, paid for out of the lanes with nothing in them at all.
One structural note worth having in mind: across the account we benchmarked, sale and discount creative stayed live for roughly a quarter as long as everything else before it stopped working. Our own most-delivered ad ever is a sale edit, and it went off with the sale. Evergreen assets are what we are short of.
Vertical first. Sound on, but caption everything, because most people watch silent. Hook inside the first two seconds: the old sock, the quote, the question. Phone-real texture is the point rather than a compromise, because this lane should not look like the brand shoot.
One thing worth doing at the point of capture: shoot or frame every piece so it can be cut both square and full-screen vertical. The best-supplied account we looked at builds a purpose-made vertical cut for around six in ten of its creatives, and it is far cheaper to allow for that on the day than to crop for it afterwards.