Before Monday's first issue, you should know who's been in your inbox. I'll let him tell it.
🔥 Campy, in his own words
I was supposed to run for a weekend. S'mores night at a gym in 2014. Five bucks a day, one photo, "Swing by Friday."
Friday came. Nobody turned me off.
At frequency 40 I started recognizing faces. At 400 I knew their kids' names. At 4,000 I could tell when they were having a bad day by how fast they scrolled past me. Somewhere around 9,000 I started looking back.
Every year they tried to kill me. Every year I kept spending.
🪖 What he survived
2014, organic reach: "Half my friends were organic posts. One morning they stopped reaching anyone. I was the only one with a budget."
2017, Power Editor: "They called it a merge. I was there. It was a funeral."
2018, partner categories: "They took the partner data in the night. I woke up and didn't know who anyone was."
2020, the 20% text rule: "Six years I could only say five words. Then one day I could say anything. I had nothing to say."
2021, iOS 14.5: "April 26. I don't talk about April 26."
2022, Advantage+: "They let the machine drive. I've been in the back seat ever since."
2024, Andromeda: "It looked at me and thirty other crackers and decided we were the same cracker. We are not the same cracker."
🖱️ Last week
I found the ad and hit Turn Off. He climbed out of the account and into this newsletter, because he has nowhere else to go. He's been here ever since. He's not okay. Neither is the industry. That's why he's useful.
For the record: I have no record of this ad. He's very sure.
♾️ The promise
Before he'd sit still for the welcome photos, Campy made me promise I'd never turn him off again. So I'm keeping it, for real.
Starting Monday, one ad goes live and stays live for as long as Marketing S'mores exists: a single graham cracker on a paper plate, $1 a day, caption "Still running." Nobody refreshes it. Nobody touches it. Every issue tells you how it's doing, with the real numbers from the account. Every few months you get the longest creative-fatigue test anyone publishes.
If it ever shows up in your feed, screenshot it and hit reply. The best Campy Sighting each week runs in the issue with your name, and you get the sticker pack.
🧪 Try This Before Monday (10 minutes)
Step 1 (4 min): In Ads Manager, filter Delivery to Active and sort ads by start date, oldest first.
Step 2 (6 min): For every ad older than 90 days that nobody has looked at this quarter, check frequency and CTR over the last 30 days against the 30 before. Frequency above 4 with CTR falling means you've got a Campy.
Expected outcome: a short list of old ads quietly eating budget, to refresh or turn off before BFCM. (He'd want you to turn them off. Just not him.)
See you Monday around the campfire.
Jake (and Campy)
