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8 ways to create stand-out assets🫵

8 ways to create stand-out assets🫵

May 05, 2025

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8 ways to create stand-out digital assets🫵

It’s Cinco De Mayo and I guess we oughta do something about it.

The Main Thing today? I’ll give you 8 unique ways to make your ads and content stand out from a crowd of digital sameness. Simple tips, easy to implement, not rocket science. However, these things are even easier to skip because of the convenience of “common digital output.”

Let’s get to it. Poll below if you wanna chime in.

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The Main Thing

8 Ways to Make Your Marketing Assets Stand Out

Look around the web.

Sameness has spread like a filthy virus.

🥱Headlines with beat-to-death hooks.

😑YouTube thumbnails with MO-ronic shock and awe plastered on Tubers’ faces.

🙄LinkedIn posts designed to show vulnerability, but show insanity by oversharing.

It’s not hard to make marketing content unique. But convenience gets in the way. Too easy to do things the normal way.

However, the act of making your ads, social media posts, or sales emails appear more (((tangible))) can keep your marketing from looking like EVERYONE else's.

Here are 8 ways to do it — with visual examples peppered throughout the list.

Digital Paper Textures
Add wrinkles, parchment, handmade paper, or cardboard textures as backgrounds for digital copy. This creates a real feel even in digital format.

Handwritten Stuff
Custom handwriting or calligraphy for headlines, annotations, or signatures. Or a pic of you with a pen in your hand below your email signature. This personal touch creates a connection that perfect Google Document text cannot.
Perfect is Forgettable
Use digital rubber stamp textures, ink splats, or “coffee stains” to create an impression of something physical that's been handled and marked. Imperfections add character.

Custom Tear-Outs
Design digital content to look like torn notebook paper, newspaper clippings, or old magazine articles with authentic-looking edges and fold marks.

Polaroid or Film Frame Layouts
Present images in digital frames that mimic physical media like Polaroids, slide film, or vintage photo corners, complete with fingerprints or slight discoloration. Or use your dog as a photo-bomber- your audience will love your dog more than any product you’re pitching, making them open to the product you’re pitching perhaps.
3-D Paper Craft
Create the illusion of pop-up books, origami folds, or paper cutouts in digital designs. Adds depth and gives an unexpected “lift” to flat content.

Authentic Analog Noise
Add subtle film grain, printer dots, photocopy textures, or VHS static to images and backgrounds for a lived-in feel that contrasts with the perfect digital aesthetic. Gen Z seems to love old-school stuff lately, so test analog visuals on the youngsters.

Use Physical Objects
Design content that incorporates physical objects like paper clips, sticky notes, tape, or string. Whatever “tricks” that make digital content feel like a physical desktop or bulletin board.

Onward to Monday Marketing News…