B2B Doesn’t Have To Be Boring: 3 Tactics To Make Fun Ads For Boring Products

Dasha here. (Editor’s note: Dasha is VP Marketing at Proton.AI and co-host of the Exit Five podcast.) A lot of you are marketing products that can be a bit dry (to put it mildly). 

That’s perfect, because today’s featured guest is Shlomo Genchin, founder of Unbore – what he calls the unofficial school for B2B ads – and he’s one of the best at making great ads for boring products. He’s created hundreds of ads for SaaS companies like AppsFlyer and HiBob and his work has cut lead costs by 80%. 

His ad creation tactics are useful no matter what industry you’re in and you don’t need a big budget to take something away from today’s newsletter. Let’s get into it.

If a Creative Director’s office isn’t beautiful, can you really trust their advice?

I’ve followed Shlomo’s LinkedIn ad breakdowns for years – he’s one of the first profiles I send new marketers on my team. His stance is that creativity isn’t something you wait around for, it’s a repeatable recipe that starts with research – not whenever inspiration hits.

Shlomo shares his exact playbook – the method behind every ad and his three secret creative tactics that have resulted in his best-performing ads. You can check out the full interview and article on exitfive.com.

Creative Tactic #1: Envision A ‘World Without’ 

Before an ad can be relatable, it has to earn the scroll. The first pillar of Shlomo’s strategy is to be scroll-stopping, and the world without is his technique for it – exaggerate the worst possible version of a world without your product.

• Step 1: Start with the boring, technical claim, the kind every competitor already makes. For his payroll client, that was “your payroll software is outdated.”
• Step 2: Chain “because of that” onto it, again and again, until the claim turns personal and specific instead of generic.
• Step 3: Keep chaining until it’s genuinely absurd – the point where it stops sounding like ad copy and starts sounding like a bit.

Shlomo shared the example of payroll companies. They all run the same line: “Your payroll software is outdated.”

Shlomo’s version using the World Without technique: “And because of that, you keep making payroll errors. And because of that, you end up working on vacation. And because of that, you end up waist-deep in the ocean, fixing payroll errors.”

Result: this hook performed 32% better than his other ads’ average.

Do it on a budget: the “waist-deep in the ocean” ad was made for about $100 using AI, no traditional shoot required. Shlomo says you can create almost any concept this way if you don’t have a huge production budget – you just need a strong concept.

The “because of that” chain, taken literally.

Creative Tactic #2: Say It With an Image

For an ad to stop the scroll, it has to be instantly clear. Software concepts are often too abstract to show in one frame, so Shlomo swaps them for something visual everyone already recognizes.

Step 1: Find the phrase your customers already use to describe the pain, don’t invent anything. Shlomo uses Reddit Answers, a free AI research tool, to surface real language straight from the audience.

Step 2: Look for the phrase that paints a picture. For HiBob, HR managers kept describing the endless approval back-and-forth as “email ping pong.” Ping pong is already a visual – that became the ad.

Step 3: Storyboard it with Problem, Agitation, Solution (PAS): an employee asks for a Friday off, gets stuck in a maddening form-and-approval loop, and HiBob solves it in a few clicks.

The line every HR software ad runs: “Automate time-off requests and approvals.”

Shlomo’s version using a visual analogy: An employee asks for a Friday off. Then you need to complete form B3.2, scroll to Section 4B, finally, the anticlimax: ‘there is no Section 4B on my copy.” And on it goes…

Result: cost per view 53% cheaper than his other ads, hold rate 144% above average – the viewers who stayed, stayed almost to the end.

Do it on a budget: a meme is just a clear visual analogy using a simple template.

Shlomo uses a storyboard where he maps out the Problem, Agitation, Solution framework for a winning ad

Creative Tactic #3: Use Personification & Give Your Product an Enemy

Another technique Shlomo uses, and it’s his favorite, is personification. He says people connect to people, not products. So he turns the product, or its enemy, into a character.

Step 1: Name the enemy. Not a specific competitor, a category everyone already resents. For his client HiBob, that was legacy HR software.

Step 2: Build your characters. Shlomo took the old Mac vs PC playbook and cast legacy HR as the boring guy. HiBob became the one who is beautiful, smart, popular, and unlike the legacy competition – not a time-waster.

Step 3: Drop them into a scenario your audience knows by heart. Shlomo picked a soap-opera breakup, skipping the product screenshots and feature lists that every competitor leads with.

Result: his best-performing HiBob ad ever – 80% cheaper leads, 50% cheaper views.

Borrow techniques that work and apply your unique inputs. No need to reinvent the wheel. 

How To Get Your Boss to Try Something Different

Shlomo admits that it’s not always easy to get a fun idea approved. It starts with thinking about it from the decision-maker’s side before trying to convince them. It’s not that they don’t like the idea (though sometimes they won’t) – but they’re the ones whose budget and job are on the line if it flops, which is exactly why good ideas die in the meeting room.

Shlomo’s tips: start small, add one meme to the ad mix for a week, and let a small win build the case for a bigger yes. Then don’t just pitch the idea, own it end-to-end – cost figured out, the videographer booked, the timeline set – so all the decision-maker has to do is say yes. Make it a low-friction ask: making it as easy as possible to say yes to.

Why Human Creativity Will Always Beat AI

Most B2B ads are built the same way and none of it sticks, because breaking that pattern doesn’t take a bigger budget, it takes a sharper, more human idea. As Shlomo pointed out, even the most AI-native companies out there still cast real people in their own marketing – worth thinking about. Many more great examples and nuggets from Shlomo in the full interview and article on exitfive.com.