Editor handover · do not invent copy
First batch brief — their words, structured
Source: Sept 2026 editor handover (1 — READ ME FIRST, 2 — SCRIPTS AND COPY, 3 — PRODUCT TRUTH).
Nothing below is invented. Copy, shots, timings, and rules are theirs. This file only groups them so you can work from one place.
They said: You should not have to invent copy, only interpret it.
This round (do these four)
The older ads in the folder (ZEN-AD-01–24, TOF cuts, archive statics) are not this batch. They said: match the caption discipline, but we want new arguments, not new crops of these.
Non-negotiable
Three rules that override everything else
Disqualify early. The first three seconds should make the wrong viewer leave.
The price stays on screen at the close. $197, crossed out $289, about $2.20 a day.
Density over elegance. More argument than feels comfortable for the runtime.
How to use the scripts
- Say the lines as written, then loosen them. If a performer stumbles, let them rephrase. Natural beats accurate. Do not lose the ORDER of the beats.
- Captions are not subtitles. Caption text is often shorter and punchier than the spoken line on purpose. Sound-off reads the caption, sound-on hears the line. Never just auto-caption the audio.
Delivery
Export (theirs)
Video: H.264 MP4, 1080×1920, 30fps, 12–14 Mbps, +faststart. Captions burned in. Must work fully muted. No music baked in (they add it at upload from Meta’s licensed library). No AI voices on anything testimonial shaped.
Statics: 1080×1350, PNG at 2x.
Naming: ZEN-AD-NN_slug_DURs_1080x1920.mp4
Send project files with the delivery so they can iterate without re-briefing.
Context, not a scorecard
Why the scripts are built this way
From $123,882 spend, 1,035 orders, 80 fairly tested creatives:
- Add-to-cart rate is what they pay attention to. Under 5% ATC = $265/sale. Above 13% = $63. Views, hook rate, and CTR had no relationship to revenue. Scripts persuade rather than grab.
- Cheap attention is the trap. Best creatives paid $4.91 per visitor; worst paid $1.80. The expensive ones still halved cost per sale. Job of a ZEN ad: unmissable to the right woman, quietly boring to everyone else. Statements beat questions. Specific beats broad. Question openers anyone can answer yes to ran at 2.3% ATC.
- Put the price on the creative. $197 with $289 struck through, and “about $2.20 a day”. Hiding the price buys more clicks and fewer sales.
- Carry more argument than feels comfortable. Highest ATC creatives are dense first-person text. Elegance that says nothing is the failure mode.
- Make it look like it was not made by an agency. Best statics in their archive: a phone screenshot, a handwritten note propped against the tub, editorial type over a plain product shot. Phone-real beats cinematic. Lowercase beats headline case. Natural light beats a lighting setup. A small imperfection helps. If it looks expensive, it is wrong.
Video and statics performed identically once weak tests were dropped (1.72x each). Format is not a lever.
They said this first batch is not a test you can fail, and ATC numbers are not a scorecard over you. What they want: hook lands on the right person, pacing holds, captions readable at a glance, feels real rather than produced, compliance list respected. When you deliver, two lines on what you were reaching for.
Audience
Who we are talking to (theirs)
Women 35 to 60, Australia and New Zealand, years of digestive discomfort rather than weeks. Already tried probiotics, gluten free, dairy free, low FODMAP and at least one naturopath. A GP told her it was stress.
Trained scam detector. The two biggest gut brands advertising in Australia are actively disliked in her forums for over-emailing, manufactured reviews and $100 bottles that did nothing. Only defensible position: being the visibly honest one.
Her words — use close to verbatim
I look 8 months pregnant.
When I wake up my stomach is flat and by the end of the day I feel and look pregnant.
Can't wear pants, just dresses.
Restaurants are for tasting, home is for eating.
I always scope out the bathroom.
Everything came back normal.
Probiotics made it worse.
It's just stress. That's a doctor!!!
I just miss who I was before.
What she wants, in her order: “feel normal again” first, then “I can eat whatever I want without symptoms”, then “I don't avoid social plans anymore”. It is a restoration, not an upgrade. Never aim the after-state at looking better.
Asset rejected if broken
Hard rules
Australia regulates supplement advertising. An asset that breaks this list cannot run.
Never, in copy or on screen
- cures, treats, heals, fixes, remission
- detox, cleanse, flush
- flat tummy, melts bloat, lose weight, meno belly
- doctor formulated, doctor recommended, clinically proven
- balance your hormones, or any hormone mechanism
- natural Ozempic, or any comparison to weight loss injections
- money back, guarantee, risk free
- countdown timers, “last chance”, any scarcity we cannot prove
- before-and-after body imagery of any kind
- em dashes in on-screen text (use full stops, commas, line breaks)
Use instead
- supports, calms, soothes, rebalances, helps address
- Personal testimony where a promise is not allowed. “It fixed my gut” is fine. “It fixes your gut” is not.
- Name the timing, never the mechanism: “the bloating that showed up in my forties”
- Volunteer the limitation: “it doesn't taste great. worth it.”
- Australian spelling on every overlay. Colour, realise, flavour.
Numbers you MAY use: 90 days, 12 weeks, 3 phases, 6 botanicals, 2 scoops, $197 (was $289), $297 (was $394), free shipping, about $2.20 a day, made and shipped from New Zealand.
Numbers you may NOT use: 92%, 94%, 96%, 97%, 90%. Any review count. Any star rating. “Thousands of customers”. Any statistic we cannot point at. (Some of these are still on their own website. That is not permission.)
Workaround: if a concept needs a number, use a TIME instead of a percentage. “Week 3”.
Placement, non-negotiable: all text between y=320 and y=1600 on a 1080×1920 canvas. Meta crops 9:16 to 4:5 and anything outside that band disappears. Never place text over the product itself (jar, tub, box). Over a person, a torso or a background is fine.
Locked
Brand + packaging
#F05043primary, CTAs, headlines
#672D2Abody text. Never pure black
#FBD8E2backgrounds
#FAF8CDalternating sections
#AFE1F1secondary accents
Type: brand face is Gyst Variable. Quality serif is the sanctioned fallback. For ad captions ignore the brand face and use one of the three caption styles below.
Logo: custom wordmark, leaves carve out the letters. Never recreate it in another font. Never recolour it outside the palette. Never place coral on a warm red background (it ghosts).
Packaging is locked. No changes to label, colour or shape.
- Tub: matte pale pink cylinder, flat lid, coral vertical ZEN mark lower third
- Jar: frosted glass, brown powder visible, white lid, wooden scoop
- Box: pink outside, red inside
- Three tubs make one 90 day protocol. Never show two, never show four.
Photography: natural light, warm, slightly underlit. No clinical, no laboratory, no white seamless product on white (reads as an Amazon listing).
Images they put in BRAND ASSETS
Full studio set (local, not all inlined here because of file size):
clients/zen-eat-free/assets/product/PRODUCT - ready 4x5 crop.pngclients/zen-eat-free/assets/product/PRODUCT 5727 - box hero.pngclients/zen-eat-free/assets/product/PRODUCT 5764 - flat lay tubs and jar.pngclients/zen-eat-free/assets/product/PRODUCT 5771 - repeating tub pattern.pngclients/zen-eat-free/assets/product/PRODUCT 5848 - jar detail.png
Match one of these
Caption specs — do not invent a fourth
Bold pill
Inter Bold, 46 to 54px. Black text on white rounded pills. Each line hugged in its own pill, stacked.
Use for: hooks, six second loops, anything that has to read at a glance.
Instagram natural
Helvetica semibold, 37 to 40px. White story-style pills, tilted about two degrees, lowercase.
Use for: first person and testimonial content, where it should not look produced.
Story block
week 6 - stopped thinking about it
week 12 - ate what i wanted
Inter, 27px white on a black block at 86% opacity, rounded. Five to seven dense lines, with a small white call-to-action pill in the lower right of the block.
Use for: the dense argument formats, where volume of text is the point.
Timing
- Talking head and voiceover: caption pills synced to speech, one line at a time, sitting around y=1430.
- Six second loops: everything visible for the whole six seconds. No staggered reveals, no animation in.
- Never animate the price. It reads as a sales device and undoes the native feel.
Australian spelling on every overlay. No em dashes anywhere on screen.
1 · Video · 40 seconds · 9:16 · 1080×1920
ZEN-AD-25 — Hero film — “It was never the food”
The root cause reframe told as one woman's story with an honest timeline.
Mechanism ads are the longest running ads in this category. Faceless with captions is acceptable and is our cheapest proven format. A real face is better if you have one. No AI voice.
Beats (do not change the order)
The symptom
- Spoken
- “I was flat at eight in the morning and I looked six months pregnant by dinner. Same body. Same day.”
- Delivery
- Flat. No performance. She is describing a fact she is sick of.
- Shot
- Symptom b-roll. Hand resting on a distended stomach at the end of the day, or a jeans waistband check in a mirror. No face needed. Cut on the word “pregnant”.
- Caption
- flat at 8am. / six months pregnant by dinner.
Footage they pointed at for this kind of shot: 02-symptom-pain (stomach holding, couch, bathroom, jeans fit checks).
The failed list
- Spoken
- “So I started cutting things out. Gluten. Dairy. The whole low FODMAP list. Three different probiotics.”
- Delivery
- Speed up here. Each item is one cut.
- Shot
- Four fast cuts, one per item. Bread pushed away, a fridge, a supplement shelf, a bin. One second each. This beat is what earns “she gets it”.
- Caption
- gluten. dairy. fodmap. / three different probiotics.
The dismissal
- Spoken
- “Every test came back normal. My GP told me it was stress. I sat in the car afterwards and just felt stupid.”
- Delivery
- Slow right down. This is the emotional centre of the whole category. Let it breathe.
- Shot
- Hold the longest shot in the film here. Someone still, sitting, not doing anything. Resist the urge to cut. The pause is the point.
- Caption
- every test came back normal. / “it's just stress.”
The reframe
- Spoken
- “Here is what nobody told me. For me it was never the food. The food was just landing on a gut that had been struggling for years.”
- Delivery
- The turn. Voice lifts slightly. This is the only line in the film that must be perfectly clear.
- Shot
- Change everything here. Brighter light, a window, movement after stillness. This is the visual pivot of the film.
- Caption
- it was never the food. / it was the gut underneath it.
The ritual
- Spoken
- “So I did a ninety day reset instead. Six botanicals. Two scoops in warm water, every night, an hour after dinner. That is the whole routine.”
- Delivery
- Matter of fact. Not excited. She is describing a chore she does.
- Shot
- Product appears for the FIRST TIME, 21 seconds in. Scoop into the glass, warm water pour, night kitchen, real hands. Unhurried. No beauty shot, no slow motion hero pour.
- Caption
- two scoops. warm water. / every night. 90 days.
Footage they pointed at: 01-product-ritual (jar, scoop, powder, mixing). That bin is missing from the zips we received. If you need ritual shots, ask them, or cut from what exists in 03-lifestyle-daily.
Honest timeline
- Spoken
- “Week two, something shifted. Week six, I stopped thinking about my stomach. Week twelve, I ate what I wanted and nothing happened.”
- Delivery
- Three beats, three cuts. Do not speed this up, the modesty is what makes it believable.
- Shot
- Three shots, one per milestone. Ordinary life, not celebration. Eating with people, walking, getting dressed. Timeline text stacks on screen and stays.
- Caption
- week 2 - something shifted / week 6 - stopped thinking about it / week 12 - ate what i wanted
Footage they pointed at: 03-lifestyle-daily (kitchen, eating, beach, friends, laptop).
Close
- Spoken
- “Ninety days. Not forever. It's a hundred and ninety seven, down from two eighty nine. Works out about two dollars twenty a day.”
- Delivery
- Say the price out loud. It filters the click, which is the entire point.
- Shot
- End frame. Three tubs, logo, price. Static, clean, hold for the full five seconds. Do NOT animate the price in.
- Caption
- 90 days. not forever. / $197 (with $289 struck through) - about $2.20 a day / zeneatfree.com
- Showing the product before 20 seconds. The reframe has to land before the pitch, or the whole thing becomes an ad in the viewer's head at second three.
- Cutting the doctor beat for time. It is the most emotionally loaded moment in this category and it is the reason she keeps watching. Cut somewhere else.
- Grading it beautifully. If it looks like it cost money, it reads as a brand talking, and this audience has decided brands lie to them. Warm, natural, slightly underlit, phone real.
2 · Static · 1080×1350 · PNG at 2x
ZEN-AD-31 — The Notes screenshot
Nearest precedent in their archive: 18% add-to-cart rate.
Idea being tested: a creative that never looks like an ad gets read rather than skipped, and the reading is what qualifies the click.
Look (theirs)
- A screenshot of an iPhone note, made to look like something a real person wrote and shared
- Native iOS type, dark background
- No brand furniture inside the note itself
- Bottom third carries a hand holding the frosted jar, phone shot, kitchen light
- Nothing centred
- Lowercase throughout
- Ticks as plain characters rather than icons
- A small imperfection, a typo she would plausibly leave in, helps rather than hurts
Copy, exactly
how i know it's working ✓ jeans still fit at 6pm, not just 8am ✓ ate bread on tuesday. nothing happened ✓ stopped planning my day around the bathroom ✓ didn't think about my stomach once yesterday 90 day gut reset. 6 botanicals. $197, was $289. about $2.20 a day
They did not attach a Notes-layout JPEG. The archive static closest to “does not look like an ad / gets read” is the review-stack they already ran (do not copy its “1,266 verified reviews” — review counts are banned):
3 · Static · 1080×1350 · PNG at 2x
ZEN-AD-32 — The disqualifying opener
Idea being tested: naming the exact life stage repels the wrong audience and lifts add-to-cart, even though it will lower click volume. That is the trade we want.
Look (theirs)
- Editorial type over a plain, warm, slightly underlit lifestyle frame
- The headline does the filtering
- No product hero
- The tub sits small in the lower third
Copy, exactly
i'm 47. i eat exactly what i ate at 35. my gut acts like i swapped bodies with someone. nothing in my diet changed. something else did. 90 days. six botanicals. $197, was $289.
NOTE (theirs): name the age and the experience. Never a hormone, never a mechanism, never the phrase “meno belly”. That is the compliance line on this angle.
They did not attach a layout JPEG for this one. Use lifestyle stills from 03-lifestyle-daily / 02-symptom-pain, and the tub from brand assets (small, lower third).
4 · Static · 1080×1350 · PNG at 2x
ZEN-AD-33 — The mechanism explainer
Nearest precedent: 19.4% add-to-cart, the highest they have recorded on an educational static.
Idea being tested: explaining WHY converts the sceptic where asserting WHAT does not, and transparency is the one thing this audience says it trusts.
Look (theirs)
- Calm, editorial, no faces
- Latin names first and common names second
- “Turmeric and black pepper” is the most commoditised phrase in the category and reads like a curry. The Latin reads like a formulation.
Copy, exactly
six botanicals. twelve weeks. three phases. Curcuma longa turmeric Piper nigrum black pepper Cinnamomum verum cinnamon Trigonella foenum-graecum fenugreek Trachyspermum ammi carom seed Centratherum anthelminticum bitter cumin weeks 1-4 calm weeks 5-8 rebalance weeks 9-12 resilience full ingredient list is on the page
KEEP the last line. It stops precision from becoming concealment.
Optional, if there is room and it does not crowd: curcumin is poorly absorbed alone, and a 1998 study in Planta Medica found piperine raised its absorption by up to 2,000%. Same dose, the only difference was what sat next to it. If you use it, it must be attributed to the study and never stated as a claim about ZEN.
They did not attach a mechanism-layout JPEG. The archive educational static they included (do not copy its review count):
Bins
Footage they said to use
| Bin | What | In our zips? |
|---|---|---|
01-product-ritual | 58 clips — jar, scoop, powder, mixing, unboxing, creators | Missing |
02-symptom-pain | 32 clips — stomach holding, couch, bathroom, jeans fit checks | Yes (001) |
03-lifestyle-daily | 31 clips — kitchen, eating, beach, friends, laptop | Split 001 + 002 |
04-ai-generated | 24 clips — gut CGI and food renders. NEVER use for the product itself | Missing |
| Existing ads | 27 files — match caption discipline, new arguments not new crops | Partial |
All clips are full length with no trims. Cut your own segments. Nothing has baked captions or watermarks (except the landmines).
Four clips with real recorded voiceover (most valuable):
- LIFE-01 — CJ’s 76 second story. Includes “it doesn't taste great but it's worth it”. Wine pour at 41–43s (fine only if VO references it).
- LIFE-05 — Bree, “3 signs your bloated belly is actually leaky gut”
- PROD-07 — Creator holding jar, root cause explainer (in the missing 01 bin)
- PROD-20 — Maya, short testimonial (in the missing 01 bin)
Landmines: Chloe Claire LIFE-03/04 watermark · Courtney LIFE-15/16/18/20/21 watermark (13, 17, 22 clean; LIFE-13 use 0–7 only) · PROD-13 ends on “risk free for 30 days” (cut or drop) · PROD-34 jar tilts into top third at 2.5s · PROD-05 needs centre crop to 1080.
Index: clients/zen-eat-free/ads/FOOTAGE_INDEX.md
Only if a script needs a fresh opening
Spare parts
They said these are for when a script needs a fresh opening, or you want an alternative. Every line is verbatim customer language or built from it, compliance checked. The four assets above already have locked copy — do not swap unless you are trying an alternative on purpose.
Opening lines: inflation cycle · failed list · dismissal · forties onset · wardrobe · bathroom map · restaurant dread · probiotics · the price · the sceptic · the 1am search · someone noticed.
End cards: “90 days. not forever.” · “$197, was $289. about $2.20 a day.” · “two scoops. warm water. every night.” · “six botanicals. nothing else in it.” · “it doesn't taste great. worth it.” · “made and shipped from new zealand.”
Every end card should carry the price and the crossed-out anchor somewhere in frame.
Not due now
If this goes well (they included so nothing gets briefed twice): 15s cutdown of the hero (beats 1, 4 and 7) · 6s silent loop · forties 12s · price-comparison 12s · month-three update 15s · a fourth static built on a real customer review.
If the two cutdowns happen to be a quick export off the hero timeline they would happily take them, but say so if that is extra.