WD-40 Turned AI Ad Production Into A Growth Lever

0:00Eric Siu:You know that feeling when the strategy is done, the brief is written, everyone's aligned, and you realize someone still has to sit down and actually create all the content? That someone is you, and it's due tomorrow. Breeze Assistant can help. It works right inside HubSpot. Drafting campaign copy, blog posts, emails, all in your brand voice. All grounded in your actual customer data. So you don't just create content. You create content that converts. Check out HubSpot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.

0:56Neil Patel:You can use our models. It's way cheaper. And they're getting amazing penetration in the United States. And I don't believe organizations and political people like governments thought that, wait, our citizens and our corporations will want to use Chinese products. But they do because, hey, you want to offer something for one tenth the price that's good enough to get the job done? I hate to say it. Most people are going to sign up for that. including me and Eric.

1:27Eric Siu:I'm going to share it with all new hires or all new prospects to scare them away because that is how I see it. Like if you have the ability or the desire to work on hard problems and you have high cognition, then we want to hire you. If not, I would prefer that you want, this is the problem I've been having. And Neil, I actually did the math yesterday. Let me ask you the question here real quick. And I'm going to come back to the article because we are talking about Singapore too. So when you look at What would you say is the percentage of people that started the year AI native? Like starting, so what percentage would you say that is?

2:01Eric Siu:And what do you think it is today for your organization?

2:05Neil Patel:Yeah, so you're saying what people that are joining a company are AI native?

2:11Eric Siu:Not joining, but let's say beginning of the year, maybe 10 % of your org was AI native, right? What do you think that number would be today? So what was it before and what is it now as of August 2026?

2:22Neil Patel:I would say I honestly don't have the exact percentage on my team. We look at it a little bit differently. AI is evolving so fast. If you felt you were good at the beginning of the year and you didn't keep up, we look at it as you can regress and go quite a bit backwards. OpenAI published a stat. I think it was OpenAI. I think less than 10 % of their users even use agents. It was something small or minuscule like that. And we're seeing the same thing in which people say they're using agents, they're using AI correctly, they're getting the most out of it. But when we dive a little bit deeper and go under the hood, when we interview candidates or talk to candidates, the quality or the results or what we're looking for doesn't match up to what they're saying in most cases.

3:17Neil Patel:so people can say a lot, but the action when we really dig deep is not really there in what they're claiming for most people and most candidates.

3:26Eric Siu:So here's what I'll say. I've talked to a few people yesterday and I've actually even pasted it into this AI group, right? And to Neil's point, this is not an exact science. We're all kind of figuring it out as we go, but I think generally leadership has a sense of how things are, right? So I talked to a mutual friend yesterday and I was like, so what did it start at? He's like, well, the year we started at maybe 5%. I was like, so what is it now? He's like 10%, right? Now, that being said, let's say, you know, headcount is 1 ,000. So going from 50 to 100 is, I would still, that 50 people is still like a good chunk.

3:57Eric Siu:And I talked to someone else, like these are both nine-figure companies, but they went from 2 % to 8%, okay, in terms of, you know, the AI nativeness, right? And then for a lot of these companies, it's kind of the same. Now, I'm looking at our organization, like our headcount is smaller, right? It's much smaller, in fact. And so beginning of the year, Neil, I would say we started at 10%. As of today, I looked through the people yesterday along with my CTO. So we kind of ran through the entire list. I'm like, yeah, it's about 50%. So it went up 5x. But if you were to guess, is it because we did start doing hackathons?

4:33Eric Siu:Is it because we started doing AI office hours? Is it because we started doing training? No. And by the way, I'm not saying training is bad by any means. But what happened is the talent standard went up. So what we look for when we hire, what we look for when we fire, and then also like, what does training look like? What does retention look like with these people? So it all came like, and the CTO said, it's like, it's like, we can talk about all the training we want every day and we should absolutely still do those things. But what matters is, are we just bringing in the right people? Much easier said than done.

5:02Eric Siu:But that also comes down to, okay, what are your standards? What questions are you going to be asking these people when they're coming in? And then are you not afraid to be unapologetic about ending those interviews early if the call isn't working out right? And so that we're going to continue to refine that. But I think most companies need to think about, yes, hackathons, absolutely, AI officers, all that. But at a certain point, you just have to decide, hey, our bar is just going to be this. And that's what it is. And people are, oh, those people are so hard to find out. Trust me, those people are out there because those people are actually trying to leave the companies right now that aren't on top of it.

5:32Eric Siu:Right. So if you if you market yourself the right way with where you're trying to go, you can attract these people. So I think it's possible for everyone.

5:41Neil Patel:dude definitely i i i think it is it goes back to what we were talking about earlier in this mindset and i see that with so many markers you know the most common message that i get when i see markers in person is times are hard you know google's taking away top of funnel chad gpt is taking away top of funnel social media doesn't want to send traffic to your website you can't tell people to click on a link in your bio anymore it just screws up your watch time which just messes up you know, all the metrics. And I really look at everything in which, you know, it's, if you have the right mindset and you want to push hard, you're going to be better off.

6:18Neil Patel:If you want to take the lazy mindset and not push hard, you know, you're screwed and you're doomed. You got to have the mentality that things can get better. You got to keep testing. You got to keep pushing and trying new things. In marketing, Eric and I, I don't think any times in our career, we ever created a business and we're like, this is the exact way to market a business. We're going to do this. And for the next three, four years, we didn't change anything. It doesn't work out that way. There's a lot of uncertainty and a lot of changes that had to

6:48Eric Siu:happen. The biggest losers in marketing are the marketers who are entitled. Okay. Oh, I lost my traffic over here. Oh, screw Google. Screw this. Like it's, it's everything to point the finger outward, but to not look inwards and be like, how do I adjust? How do I adjust? How do When I speak at these SEO conferences, by the way, I'm like, guys, don't even complain about the algorithm. Don't even complain about how the game has changed, right? You guys are SEOs. Like you're supposed to be the most adaptable marketers. You're supposed to, the only thing that's constant is change, right? And so if you have a good relationship with change, that actually means for the most part, like you're generally a higher agency person.

7:22Eric Siu:You're okay with surfing the wave as it comes versus letting the wave hit you. And so my whole thing with marketing in general now, or even this whole debate around cognition and being optimistic about AI is as long as you have high agency, a good relationship change, you like solving tough problems, you're going to be just fine. The ones who complain, and by the way, I look at Neil and I, never once in my 15, 16 years of knowing Neil have I seen him complain about a marketing channel not working. Not once have I seen him complain. And that's not even an exaggeration. We might complain about other things, but not about that.

7:53Neil Patel:We definitely complain about other things, but yes. I also think as marketers and entrepreneurs, we like the chaos because when times are good, we do enjoy them for the first six months, but then things get boring. We kind of like the ups and the downs. Maybe I'm a little crazy. I'll talk about myself. I won't say that about Eric, but maybe that's why I like the ups and downs, but it keeps me going. If things were always just good, I would get bored.

8:20Eric Siu:Neil, I was, I'm pretty crazy too. Remember, so Neil, and we won't go into too much details here, but Neil called me five, six years ago. And as a friend, he said this, right? He's like, he called me and, you know, we're in trouble at the time. He's like, hey, it might be time to just bankrupt this thing, dude. And he's like, he's like, I have an idea. I have an idea. Bankrupted, right? And so, by the way, like that was a situation where I was like, you know what, it's going to be a great story if we're able to turn everything around. And we're talking about, this is millions and millions of dollars, right?

8:48Eric Siu:We're talking about like, I'm just going to leave it at that. But to be able to go through that and be in the position that we're in today, like, man, what a ride. Would I want to do it again? No. But it's through those moments that you learn the most, right? And Bill Gates, a lot of people don't look at him too positively anymore. But I will say he has a good quote, success is a lousy teacher, right? And that's what I would say. So by the way, let's come back to Singapore for a moment, Neil. So they're a very wealthy company, you agree, right? Not company, country. Yes. And they are, you would say they're not an emerging market.

9:25Eric Siu:You would say they're more of a developed market, right? They're developed.

9:29Neil Patel:They're not emerging.

9:30Eric Siu:Yeah. Okay. So what percent of Singaporean respondents are optimistic or negative about AI?

9:39Neil Patel:I would say most of them are optimistic about AI. Is that what the status is? Yeah, you want to know something interesting about Singapore? Did you know all the citizens have to contribute money and that money is used for their retirement? Not like a 401k, but like investment, like the Sovereign Wealth Fund. So when Singapore or Temasek or any of their GIC invests in these AI companies, the citizens benefit from it. So they actually can make money and participate. The reason they do this is so that way when people are older, They have home stability. They have a low population. The government also provides them government housing at a much more affordable rate and dollar amount.

10:24Neil Patel:So then that way no one's left behind and they don't have a homeless problem.

10:28Eric Siu:We should have that. I think we're moving in the right direction with the whole invest in America accounts. But I think everyone should have that. So there's less of this rich against the poor thing. It's more about being productive and building things and working on hard problems. I think this whole, it's very easy to fall into this whole rich versus poor mentality because it's easy to blame. It's easy to point the finger, right? And then when you use language like, again, oh, screw the billionaires, whatever, but you replace the word billionaires with successful people, screw the successful people, you realize it doesn't make any sense.

11:00Eric Siu:So anyway, wanted to share that piece. So I got more here, Neil. You want to see this WD40 ad production center? Uh-huh. If you're building an e-commerce brand, you should check out DTC Pod, hosted by Ramon Berrios and Blaine Bolas on the HubSpot Podcast Network. They speak with founders, marketers, creators, agencies, and platform experts about what it actually takes to grow a direct-to-consumer business, from paid ads and influencer marketing to conversion, email, brand building, and consumer trends. I particularly enjoyed their conversations around scaling a brand without losing what made customers care in the first place.

11:36Neil Patel:Listen to DTC Pod wherever you get your podcasts.

11:40Eric Siu:All right. So I wanted to take a moment to tell you about my podcast co-host Neil's agency called NP Digital. And they work with a whole host of global companies or a global organization. Also, Neil has SEO tools such as Ubersuggest and Answer to Public. All you have to do is go to npdigital.com to learn more. And we'll see you on the other side. Okay.

12:01Neil Patel:When you say WD-40, I think of the spray.

12:04Eric Siu:Exactly. That's exactly here. Let me show you what I got here. So this is how WD-40 used AI video Amazon ads to boost performance. Okay. So let's just look at the numbers here. Okay. So I'm going to crack. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Too many ads. Okay. So anyway, so they use Amazon, uh, and Amazon's DSP. Okay. Look at dude. Stop. Oh my God. All right. So I'm getting hit by all these pop-ups here, but the campaign produced a, I'm just gonna look over here. So this campaign produced a 45 % higher click-through rate than category benchmarks with video completion rates reaching nearly 90%. So Amazon's AI-based video ads lowered the cost to create these assets at a much higher rate.

12:52Eric Siu:It didn't provide details on cost but I think the thing to call out here and screw you media posts for all these pop-ups but I think we're gonna see more of this. I think that you listening to this right now, Now, you shouldn't interpret this as, oh, we're just going to create a lot more ads and we're just going to let AI do it. It's more so you're still going to need someone managing it for you. You're still going to need to hire an agency to do it. Because Neil, I actually talked to a health company, multi-billion dollar, not health company, hospitality company this week, right? And they're like, okay, single brain looks really cool.

13:25Eric Siu:So what's the secret sauce, right? Like if we can build this, like what's the secret sauce? And I just looked at him and I was like, so who's going to maintain it? And he's like, oh. And I'm like, yeah. Because he was complaining about his team the whole time. He talked about how he made, and we're not going to name names, but he was talking about how he built AI agents for each of his team members, or to do tasks that his team was doing. I'm like, the fact that you're doing all this stuff right now means you don't have enough people to actually help you. And so this WD-40 thing, the whole like, hey, we fire your agencies, do this, do that.

14:01Eric Siu:Who's going to manage it for you? right and so we ain't going anywhere neil and i we're still going to be here so when people need

14:08Neil Patel:the help we'll be here don't worry it's like people telling me there will be no need for

14:13Eric Siu:agencies you can just do it all with ai who tells you that by the way i'm curious so uh

14:19Neil Patel:entrepreneur today told me just look at media buying and buying ads online you no longer have to do it, AI can just end up doing it for you. And I was like, have you run ads yourself? They're like, yeah, I've been running ads for, I think they said like six years. I said, okay. So back in the day, there were solutions like Kenshu and Marin, I'm assuming you remember them, that would help you do bid management. Eventually Google and Facebook ended up releasing a lot of the features. It got better and better. There's Pmax, AI Max, the list goes on and on. They can make it easier and easier for you.

14:58Neil Patel:Yet companies still use agencies. And one can say, oh no, there's no need. It's a scam. But what if I told you I have case studies to prove companies doing it on their own and hiring internal people using all this latest and greatest technology and then going through us and then us in many cases for a lot of our bigger spenders. I'm talking about people who are spending five, 10 plus million dollars a month showing them 20 plus percent improvements in revenue while spending less. So the delta is actually much more than 20 % here, right? Because you're getting them 20 % more revenue and you're spending less money.

15:36Neil Patel:And that's after fees. So overall, it's a highly profitable or much more profitable than it was. And the reason I, what I told them is the reason people pay agencies is for expertise. They see a lot of data. They work with so many different accounts in different industries. they can tell you what you should change and adjust and what you should try out. And you can end up trying AI. There's nothing wrong with it. We use AI. A lot of companies use AI. But if the AI just replicates the same strategy for everyone, what is your edge?

16:12Eric Siu:People go to agencies. Why? Because agencies want, they have expertise. They also have the data as well, right? And it's not only that. It's, you have the expertise piece, but you also get a shop that can handle multiple things at once. And ultimately what they're doing is they're delivering outcomes and they're taking a lot off of your plate. And that's something that's worth paying for. That's all. And so as long as humans will be hired, agencies are still going to be around.