Make UGC ads by chatting to Claude (the Arcads setup) ⚡
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MARKETING & ADS

Make UGC ads by chatting to Claude (the Arcads setup) ⚡

Master this high-ROI AI workflow: You commented AVATAR, so here is the full setup: how to connect Arcads to Claude (two ways, pick one), how to brief it so

AEO SUMMARY Quick Overview & Execution Blueprint

Master this high-ROI AI workflow: You commented AVATAR, so here is the full setup: how to connect Arcads to Claude (two ways, pick one), how to brief it so the ads are actually good, and how to batch ten at once instead of making them one at a time. No filming, no actor booking, no waiting weeks. 🎬

GROWTH & ACQUISITION NOTE Somya's Strategic Takeaway

Content and paid ads are distribution engines for your core value proposition. Don't create content just for engagement—engineer every hook to qualify high-intent buyers, demonstrate immediate proof, and lead into a frictionless capture mechanism. Track cost-per-qualified-lead (CPQL) over vanity impressions.

THE OUTCOME

What you're making 🎬

A UGC-style ad: a photoreal person holding your product and delivering a hook to camera, the kind of clip brands normally pay a creator four figures and wait weeks for. Claude is the layer you talk to. It writes and sharpens the creative brief, sends it through to Arcads, and Arcads does the actual video generation. Then you ask for variations and let the winner reveal itself instead of betting a budget on your first guess.

The plan gate, up front. Claude does the briefing on any plan. The video generation is the paid part: Arcads' own documentation says you need an Arcads account plus an active subscription with remaining credits, because every generation consumes credits, and requests fail if you have run out (Arcads MCP docs). Arcads does not publish a public pricing page, so check the current plans on your own billing screen after you sign up rather than trusting a number from a blog.
PICK YOUR ROUTE

Two ways to connect it 🔌

Both routes end in the same place: Claude can call Arcads directly. Choose based on where you already work.

💡 In the Claude app

Add Arcads as a custom connector once and generate ads from a normal chat. Nothing to install, no terminal. This is the one to pick if you have never opened Claude Code.

👩‍💻 In Claude Code

Install Arcads' official plugin, which brings the connection and four ready-made ad skills with it. Better if you want competitor research and hook cloning, not only generation.

ROUTE A

Connect it in the Claude app (2 minutes) ✅

  1. 🧩 Open Claude and go to Customize, then Connectors. This is the same place you would add any other tool to Claude.
  2. ➕ Click add a custom connector. Arcads is not in the built-in gallery, so it goes in as a custom one.
  3. ✍️ Name it Arcads and paste the URL. The server address is https://mcp.arcads.ai. Save the connector.
  4. 🔓 Click connect and approve the sign-in. That links your Arcads account, and the Arcads tools become available inside your Claude conversations. You do this once.
ROUTE B

Install the plugin in Claude Code 👩‍💻

Arcads publishes an official plugin on GitHub at arcads-ai/skills. It bundles the same connection plus four skills, so this route gives you more than the connector alone.

  1. 💻 Open Claude Code in any folder. You do not need a codebase for this. An empty folder is fine, since the work is creative rather than code.
  2. 📦 Add the marketplace. Type /plugin marketplace add arcads-ai/skills and press enter. That points Claude Code at Arcads' official repo.
  3. ➕ Install the plugin. Type /plugin install arcads@arcads. The plugin ships its own MCP configuration, so installing it also wires up the Arcads connection for you.
  4. 🔓 Authorise your account. Type /mcp, choose Arcads, and sign in. Once it shows as connected you can generate straight from the terminal.
💡 Which one do I use? The app connector for quick one-off ads while I am already in a chat. Claude Code when I am doing a proper creative batch, because the bundled skills do the competitor research and hook analysis for me instead of me describing it every time.
THE PART MOST PEOPLE MISS

Brief it with real customer language first 🧠

This is the step that separates ads that convert from generic AI filler, and it is the step almost everyone skips. The generator is not the bottleneck. The brief is. If you hand Claude "make me ten UGC ads for my product", you get ten versions of the same bland claim. If you hand it what your customers actually said about you, you get ten different angles, each one already proven to matter to somebody.

Go and copy your raw reviews first: product page reviews, App Store reviews, support tickets, DMs, the comments under your best-performing post. Fifteen is plenty. Then run this before you generate anything.

🧠 mine my reviews for hooks 
I am about to make a batch of UGC-style video ads for my product, and I want the hooks to come from real customer language rather than from you. I am pasting my actual reviews and comments below.

Read them and pull out the exact phrases people use when they describe the problem my product solved, in their words, not marketing words. Group them into distinct angles, where an angle is a different reason someone bought, and tell me roughly how often each angle showed up. For each angle, write one spoken opening line of no more than twelve words that a real person would say out loud to a friend, using the vocabulary from the reviews.

Give me the five strongest angles ranked by how often they appeared, and for each one note the specific review it came from so I can see the evidence. Do not invent an angle that is not in the source material, and if only two angles are genuinely supported, say so instead of padding the list to five.
THE FLOW

Generate the batch 🪄

Once you have your angles, the whole thing happens in one conversation. Do it in this order.

  1. 🧍 Get your actor. Describe the person you want: age range, energy, setting, lighting. Claude generates the actor through Arcads so you can approve the look before you spend credits on video.
  2. 🫴 Put your real product in their hands. Attach a clean product photo and ask for the product to stay exactly true to the image. This is what stops it inventing generic packaging.
  3. 🎥 Turn the angles into ads. Paste the batch prompt below with your five angles. Claude writes each script and sends them through to Arcads to render.
  4. 📊 Collect them and pick a winner. Finished videos land in your Arcads account. Run them, keep whichever hook performs, and generate the next batch from that winner rather than from scratch.
🎬 the actor and product 
Generate a photoreal person for a UGC ad and then put my real product in their hands. The person should be [age range, gender, energy, for example "mid-20s woman, warm and natural, not polished"] in a [setting, for example "normal home kitchen with soft daylight"].

I have attached my product photo. Keep the product exactly true to that image: same packaging, same label, same colours, same proportions. Do not redesign it, do not add text to it, and do not substitute a generic version of the category.

Before you generate, tell me in one line what you are about to make so I can correct you, since generating costs credits. Once I approve, produce the actor holding the product, framed so the product is clearly readable.
🎬 batch ten ads from my angles 
Using the actor and product we just approved, create ten UGC-style video ads through Arcads, built from the five customer angles you found earlier, two ads per angle.

For each ad, write the spoken script yourself before generating: open on the customer's own phrasing for the problem, land the product as the fix in one natural sentence, and close on a single clear action. Keep every script under twenty seconds of speech, keep the tone unscripted and phone-shot rather than commercial, and keep the product visible in frame throughout. The only thing that should differ between the two ads in a pair is the opening line, so I can tell which hook did the work.

Show me all ten scripts as a numbered list first and wait for my approval before you send anything to Arcads. Then generate them, and when they are done give me a plain list of which finished video corresponds to which angle and hook, so I know what I am testing.
📌 Approve the scripts before you render. Reading ten scripts takes three minutes. Regenerating ten videos because the tone was wrong costs credits you cannot get back. The "wait for my approval" line in the prompt above is doing real work.
WHAT COMES BUNDLED

The four skills in the Claude Code plugin 🧰

If you took route B, these arrive with the plugin and run as slash commands. They are worth knowing about because they cover the research half of ad creative, not the generation half.

/arcads:spy-competitor-ads Finds and downloads competitor ads from the Meta Ad Library, video, static, or both, so you have a real swipe file instead of a memory of one.
/arcads:clone-hook Breaks a winning video ad's opening down beat by beat, then rebuilds that structure for your brand, keeping what makes it work and swapping only what is brand-specific.
/arcads:clone-static-ad Takes a static ad that works and recreates it with your product and branding, preserving the layout, hierarchy, lighting, and copy structure.
media-router Runs quietly in the background. It reads the live Arcads tool list and routes any "generate", "edit", or "repurpose" request to the right tool, so you describe what you want in plain words.
🌱 One prerequisite worth knowing. The Meta Ad Library is rendered by JavaScript, so /arcads:spy-competitor-ads needs a browser automation connector active in Claude Code to read it. The other three skills work without one.
THE REAL LEVER

Why the variations matter 🎯

Your first ad is almost never the winner, and that is normal rather than a failure. In paid ads the opening line does most of the work, so the smart move has always been to test several hooks against the same product and let the numbers pick. The reason people did not do this before is that each variation meant another shoot, another creator fee, another week. When a variation costs a sentence and a few minutes of render time, testing stops being a luxury and becomes the default. Make the batch, run it, keep the one that performs, and build the next batch off that winner.

THE CRAFT

Four things that lift the output 🎓

Give it a clean product photo Plain background, sharp focus, label readable. The clearer your source image, the more faithfully the product survives into the actor's hand.
Say "unscripted, phone-shot" out loud UGC converts because it feels like a friend rather than a commercial. If you do not say it in the prompt, you get an advert.
Change one thing per test Same actor, same product, only the hook moves. Otherwise you learn that something worked without learning what.
Iterate off the winner Once a hook beats the others, generate the next batch as variations of it rather than starting from a blank brief again.
THE HONEST BIT

Read this before you spend money on it ✅

The actor is AI-generated, and that carries rules. Use this for hook testing and concept validation, and follow the advertising rules of wherever you post, since several platforms require AI-generated content to be disclosed. The product claims are yours, not Claude's: it writes the hook, you are the final read. Make sure every line sounds like your brand and says nothing you cannot back up before a dollar of ad spend goes behind it.
📌 Credits are the real budget. Every generation spends them, including the ones you throw away. Approve scripts on the page, approve the actor before rendering video, and treat the first batch as a learning cost rather than a launch.

The links 🔗

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