BARLOW ADS. Creative brief for the design team

Written: Sat 12 Sep 2026, head daddy for Nathan. Internal, LOVR only. Client: Barlow Building, Gold Coast. Sam and Chelsea Barlow. Job: the Meta lead campaign, first flight. Budget $1,000 to $1,500 a week, live once this set is built. Evidence behind every line: ads/AUDIT-2026-09-12/ (Instagram, Drive, Figma, video pacing, references). Nothing below is taste. Every rule has a number.

1. The decision

The 15 sets in Figma do not go live. Not because the design is ugly. Because the format is the one that loses on Barlow's own account, and the pacing would be priced out by Meta before the first word.

We are rebuilding the flight as founder-led video. Sam and Chels talking, a client talking, named projects, burned captions, 30 to 45 seconds, cut from footage that already exists. Two of the Figma sets survive as a control cell so the test is fair.

2. The numbers that made the decision

• Voice-led reels over 30 seconds do 2.9x the views of short silent b-roll on @barlowbuilding (4,141 vs 1,414 median views, 76 vs 27 engagements). Same pattern on @by_barlow.
• Barlow's median reel is 17.7 seconds, the shortest of every account measured. Short is where their numbers are worst.
• Barlow reaches 0.17 views per follower. Tomkins, with a third of the audience, reaches 2.85. Burleigh 0.65. Mactech 0.68.
• Median reel views fell from 3,397 to 1,190 since June while output tripled, 27 of 38 posts carousels.
• Median shares per reel: Mactech 214, Graya 41, Barlow 4.
• Graya's two biggest talking reels (93k and 87k views) carry burned captions. Barlow's carry none. By_barlow's best reel by reach is the one with burned text.
• The brand film says its first word at 8.7 seconds and runs 30 seconds of silent tail. The Zarma voicemail sits behind 8.3 seconds of black with a rotating logo.
• Zero of 17 delivered files has a burned caption. Six have a digitally empty audio track. None is cut to 15 or 30 seconds.
• In the Figma: zero published styles, 12 of 15 captions over three mobile lines, "luxury" leading nine times, "alterations and additions" still in three captions after Chels objected on 9 Sep.

3. Who we are talking to

A couple about to commission a $3m to $8m canal or beachfront home on the Gold Coast. They have never heard of Barlow. They scroll with sound off. They stop for a face, a place name, a number, or a finished house. They do not stop for a slogan.

What they need in the first second: a person, a project name, a suburb, and BARLOW signed small. The ruled project lockup already in the file does exactly that and is used in zero ads.

4. The test plan

One campaign, campaign budget, three ad sets (cold, IG engagers, Somewhere lookalike when the list lands). Every cell runs 9:16 for Reels and Stories and 4:5 for feed.

Learning phase 14 days. Winners get the second cut round. Losers come out.

5. What is binned, what stays

Bin (do not fix): sets 01, 02, 03, 04 (photo grids: nine to forty two thumbnails in one frame, unreadable on a phone, no mark, two of them carry another client's layer names). Set 06 (3:4 ratio, half the card flat beige). Set 07 (CGI renders sell drawings not houses, copy written to an architect). Sets 08 and 09 (mixed card heights, no mark on six cards, the same two words repeated, the alterations caption Chels objected to).

Keep with fix: set 10 (the template, cut to four cards, right-anchor the tag), set 05 (fix DEVELOPEMENT, fix the triple space, cut the caption to one line plus CTA). Set 11 and 12 (the two videos) get recut per section 7, not run as they are. Sets 13, 14, 15 (the ticker, the centred B., the vertical wordmark) are devices, not ads; they become bumpers per section 7, cut 17.

Fix in the file regardless: rename the CORDONY, LOVR_YSL and Intrametica layers before Barlow opens this file again. Chels asked on 10 April for the loading bar device to be replaced with BARLOW's own logo animation. Still open.

6. The creative system. Numbers, not adjectives.

6.1 Frame

• 9:16 at 1080x1920 for Reels and Stories. 4:5 at 1080x1350 for feed. Nothing else. Delete 1440, 1344, 1349.
• Safe zones on 9:16: nothing in the top 250px (14%) or the bottom 380px (20%). Nothing in the right 160px where the Reels icon rail sits.
• Never scaleMode STRETCH on a photograph. Five instances live today.

6.2 The open

• First spoken word before 1.0 second. Never after 2.0. Culture does it at 0.00. The brand film at 8.74 is why it cannot run as delivered.
• Dead open budget: 1.0 second. No logo card at the head. Ever. The mark lives at the end.
• Open on the place or the face, never on the logo. Barlow's worst reels of the year open on a beige title card and a dark corridor. The winners open on water, sky, a skylight.
• A face on screen at 0.4 seconds, the founder named by 2 seconds, and the opening line about the viewer, not the company. Zero of 23 organic winners open on a logo.
• The first line names something concrete: a project, a suburb, a number, a person, or a question. "The site in Coolangatta is on highly reactive clay" works. "Where ideas become architecture" is their worst post of the year.
• Kill the flash montages. Legacy and Namiya open with ten cuts in 1.6 seconds. Unreadable on a phone. One held frame, first word at 0.3.

6.3 Cut rate

• 4 to 8 shots in the first 10 seconds. Not one shot held for 9 seconds (the Thursday reel). Not 25 shots at 0.4 seconds each (the silent BARLOW_ADS clips).
• A talking head is never held longer than 4 seconds without an insert.

6.4 Captions (burned, every voice file, no exceptions)

Measured off 25 paid creatives and 23 organic reels in AUDIT-2026-09-12/references/REFERENCES.md. The winners share one geometry.

• Size: cap height 2.5% of frame height. That is about 48px Area on a 1920 frame. The paid norm is 3%. Anything under 2% (the 30px cuts from today) is under-sized against every reference measured.
• Position: one slot, centred, block bottom at 25% from the bottom of the 9:16 frame (y 1440). Paid captions sit at 13 to 21% and get eaten by the Reels tray; organic runs at 27%. 24 to 27% serves both placements from one master. On 4:5 the same slot sits at 12% from the bottom (y 1188).
• Width: block no wider than 70% of frame. Two lines maximum. Four to six words a card. Never a caption that outlives its sentence.
• Case and weight: sentence case, Area Normal Semi Bold, white. The brand book sets its type in sentence case; the uppercase in the file is for labels, not speech. Speech reads as speech.
• Background: the card gradient already in the file (black 0 to 68% over the bottom band). No box, no pill, no stroke. Hall & Hart is the only peer with a caption identity and it is a tinted pill; we do not copy it, the gradient is Barlow's.
• The slot never moves and never sits on a face. Frame the talking head so the face sits in the top 55% of the frame.
• Timing: the caption is already on screen when the first word lands. Phrase-broken from the transcript at the words.
• Corrections by hand against the transcript: Reece Keil, Chels, Coolangatta, Namiya.

6.5 Overlays and lockups (only three exist, use only these)

1. The ruled project lockup (Group 13, 793x193). Title Area Black 900 67px, suburb left 20.8px, "by barlow." right. Use on the opening frame of every project reel and on the end card. Project, suburb, builder in one glance.
2. The card lockup (5847:29). Full bleed, gradient, B. mark 211x161 at 60 from left and bottom, tag Area ExtraBold 27.6px uppercase, right-anchored at 1020, baseline 1290. Every still and carousel card.
3. The small Q&A lockup (4795:2082). Wordmark 454 wide at x20, title 25px "ON X / WITH SAM & CHELS". Covers only. Never the 1059-wide wordmark; it dwarfs the photo.

No headline blocks. No centred type over people. No beige type. No flat colour panels. No black and white on a colour set.

6.6 The mark

• Either a small persistent corner wordmark, or a bookend card, never both and never a lower CTA bar. For Barlow: the wordmark on the end card, and the mark on the shirt does the rest.
• The ticker and the vertical wordmark stay out of the top 14% and off any split-screen seam.
• Chels's logo animation request from April replaces the loading bar.

6.7 End card

• 3.0 seconds. Black #080B0A, the wordmark, the ruled lockup with project and suburb where there is one, and the ask: Enquire. Gold Coast. barlowbuilding.com.au. Ten of 17 files today end on nothing.

6.8 Audio

• Every file has an audio track. Six today are digitally empty (-91 dB).
• Level every deliverable to the same target. Today there is 19 dB between the Thursday reel and the brand film.

6.9 Length and cover

• Two lengths, not three: 30 seconds for brand cuts, up to 70 seconds for founder and client cuts. Barlow's own account says 30 to 45 is the sweet spot for reach, the paid bank says founder and testimonial earn their length. Cut both a 30 and a 60 of each founder piece; the 15s versions are retargeting only. Length does not predict reach, the open does.
• Cover frame: bright, wide, depth. A finished house, water, sky. Never the logo, never a dark corridor.

6.10 Copy

• Primary text 300 to 600 characters. Project name in the first two words. Barlow's median is 66 characters, Graya's 627.
• Banned: luxury as a noun stack, alterations and additions, architect-led, dream home, engine, exclamation marks, em and en dashes.
• Meta headline: "Design-led homes on the Gold Coast". CTA: Learn more. Destination: instant form, plus the contact page for the website set.

7. The cut list

Every in and out point below is from the file as it sits in Drive today. Full timecodes and b-roll per second in AUDIT-2026-09-12/video/PACING.md, cuts 1 to 17. Drive file ids in AUDIT-2026-09-12/drive/INVENTORY.md section 3.

Reference bank: 17 reference videos with a contact sheet in AUDIT-2026-09-12/references/bank/. Watch them before cutting.

Sam's eleven SKYE question edits (brand, HQ, future, naming, roles, one word, creativity, inspiration, timeless, Axl and Alchemy, process) are the second flight. The March interview audio (Sam and Chels, Sam and Reece) is voiceover stock for b-roll cuts.

8. What only Barlow can give us

There is no raw take of Sam or Chels anywhere in the Drive. Every founder frame arrives already cut. The September shoot needs, in this order:

1. Sam and Chels to camera, 4K vertical, raw, one question per take, 60 to 90 seconds each. Hooks from the voice bank: the private beach, the gate and the door, same plans three builders, the word we do not use, we do not get everything right, a handful of homes a year.
2. A client on camera at a finished home. Nobody has since 2023.
3. Sam walking a finished exterior, drone over a delivered Gold Coast home. Cali has stills only.
4. Clean site audio. A trade or team member speaking.

9. Rules for the Figma file before the next build

1. Publish styles. Zero exist. Every number is hand-typed, which is why the mark drifts 6 and 24px between sets.
2. One feed ratio, 1080x1350.
3. Every card carries the B. mark.
4. Top safe margin 250px on 9:16.
5. Caption cap 125 characters, two mobile lines.
6. No luxury, no alterations and additions, no dashes.
7. No STRETCH on photography.
8. Rename inherited layers.
9. Resolve the logo animation request.

10. Delivery

• Files named BARLOW_<cell>_<name>_<length>_<ratio>_v1.mp4, H.264, 25fps, AAC, both ratios, plus the cover frame as a JPG and the caption text as a .txt per ad.
• Review: the design team posts to the Figma AD SETS page with the Drive link in a comment, as now. Nathan reviews inside Ads Manager previews, not on a board. Chels approves once, in Figma.
• Head daddy uploads, builds the campaign paused, and it goes live on Nathan's word.