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You’ve probably noticed a video circling the internet with Mark Zuckerberg wearing an oversized black tee and sitting on a blue couch in his living room.

What appeared to be a harmless, what-you’d-expect video, exploded into a worldwide debate about marketing, public leadership, and of course, competing headset technology.

What happened: On February 14, 2024, Meta’s cofounder and CEO posted an Instagram reel of himself simply speaking into the camera about his thoughts on the new Apple Vision Pro headset, compared to the Meta Quest 3 headset.

What people are missing: There has been no shortage of hot takes and reactions to Zuck’s video, which you’ll see shortly, but the major signpost here is an emerging marketing trend, which is why you’re about to learn how to create a video like this yourself.

The reaction: Most of the internet applauded

It was a risky move; can you imagine if other Fortune 500 CEOs made a casual video like this?

Elon Musk tends to shoot from the hip like this, but as his recent biography showed repeatedly, it rarely went over well.

Fortunately for Meta’s stock price, Zucks did.

Here are some of the reactions.

Did Zuckerberg really just shoot this himself on his couch?

Many people believe Zuckerberg went solo on this, including Shaan Puri, but a closer look at Zuck’s eyes towards the end of the video shows he is clearly reading something off-camera. After the product portions end, you can see he depends on prompts more to land the plane.

There were also b-roll edits added to the video, which obviously require an editor post-production.

Lastly, a closer look at the transcript (which I’ve included at the bottom of this post) shows a perfectly structured persuasive argument from hook to finishing quote. This was a team effort by savvy comms professionals working at or for the largest social media platform in the world — come on, guys, they know what works on their own platform.

What do you think? Fill out the poll:

How to create your own “Zuck ad”

Regardless of how it was made, this video was an amazing example of a “gravity assist maneuver” to counter-market against a competitor’s buzzy launch.

For any entrepreneur or CEO who wants to try making a similar video, bookmark the following handbook guide, which covers tips on scripting, setup, speaking, editing, and ending.

1. Write your script

1. Think about who your most well-known competitor is.

2. Create a list of the features to compare your product against theirs. For Zuck, he chose to touch on physical comfort, display resolution, inputs, content library, and price.

3. Keep the script to 500 words. Zuck’s was 525, not including the ums and informal language to make it seem conversational.

2. Set up your “living room”

1. Dress in unmarked, darker, newer clothes that aren’t too snug on your body. Make sure you had a good night’s rest.

2. Schedule the shoot at a time when you’re at your brightest, such as the post-morning coffee peak. Zuck filmed his at 10:43am.

3. Fit your body into the full frame to your ankles but without your shoes showing. Position your head in the center of the frame, lower than you think.

4. Sit on the edge of a plain-colored, firm couch with a straight back. Act as though you might stand up quickly at any moment.

3. Speaking tips

1. Don’t smile. But offset the seriousness with a casual, conversational tone. Zuck starts the whole video with, “Alright guys.” He’s serious but he isn’t angry. Take the tone of an indifferent, unattached product reviewer.

2. Start each point by acknowledging your competition’s strength, but point out that your product is better at that strength, or at least similar.

3. Repeatedly state the obvious features where you win (e.g., “7x less expensive”).

4. Don’t over edit

1. Demo your product in your video to show nothing fake is going on. Use another person to show that you’re not completely by yourself filming this.

2. Edit in 2-3 b-roll shots to illustrate a few points and break things up. Zuck used b-roll for an over-the-shoulder shot to show his friend filming, an immersive content clip, and a clip of himself gaming.

5. Stick the ending

1. State self-awarely how you know your competitor’s fans will disagree with you, but disarm them by reminding them about other competitive products in history.

2. End by saying your overall business is doing better than you hoped, mention something about how the future is not yet written, and draw on a platitudinal quote that most people will agree with.

I loved seeing this and I hope more CEOs have the guts to compete like this. Zuck is leaning into his strengths and this is probably not the last time he’ll make a video like this.

I hope this was helpful. Feel free to forward this guide to your marketing team or CEO to try it out.

See you next Thursday,

Dave

“Actionable takeaways within 5 minutes” – Dickie Bush

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Full transcript of Mark Zuckerberg’s video reviewing Apple Vision Pro vs. Meta Quest:

Alright, guys.

So I finally tried Apple’s Vision Pro. And, you know, I have to say, before this, I expected that Quest would be the better value for most people since it’s really good and seven times less expensive, uh, but, after using it, I don’t just think that Quest is the better value, I think that Quest is the better product. Period. And you know the different companies made different design decisions for the headsets, they have different strengths, but, overall, Quest is better for the vast majority of things that people use mixed reality for. 

Now, my friend Kenny is actually capturing this video on Quest’s high-resolution mixed reality video passthrough right now. We’re just here in my living room and you can see his browser windows, and you know, whatever else he’s got running up here, um so yeah, Quest 3 does high-quality passthrough with big screens just like Vision Pro. But we also designed it to be great for a lot of other things. Moving around, playing games, hanging out with friends and socializing, working out, um, and more. 

Quest, you know, I think, is a lot more comfortable. Um, you know we designed it to weigh 120 grams less which makes a really big difference on your face. Um, there’s no wires that get in the way when you move around, it’s a big deal. Our field of view is wider and I found our screen to be brighter also. Um, I also noticed that Apple’s headset has this motion blur as you move around which, um, Quest is just a lot crisper.

Now, Apple’s screen does have a higher resolution, and that’s really nice, but I was surprised by how many tradeoffs they had to make to the quality of the device, and the comfort and ergonomics, and other aspects of the display and artifacts in order to get to that. Now for input, Quest supports uh precision controllers that are great for games, both headsets support hand tracking, but you know I found ours to be a little more accurate. 

Apple’s eye-tracking is really nice, um, we actually had those sensors back in Quest Pro. We took them out for Quest 3, we’re going to bring them back in the future. Um, it’s a nice interface, it’s not perfect for everything though, for typing or complex tasks. Um, you’re gonna want uh things like hands or a keyboard, or controllers, or eventually a neural interface for those kind of inputs. 

Quest’s immersive content library is a lot deeper. You know we’ve been working with studios building virtual and mixed reality games and other content for a long time now. And if you want to watch YouTube or play Xbox on a big screen anywhere you go, uh, that’s only available on Quest right now.

So, you know, when I look around, it seems like there are a lot of people who just assumed that Vision Pro would be higher quality because it’s Apple and it costs $3,000 more, but you know honestly, I’m pretty surprised that Quest is so much better for the vast majority of things that people use these headsets for with that price differential.

Now, look, I know that some fanboys get upset whenever anyone dares to question if Apple’s gonna be the leader in a new category, but the reality is every generation of computing has an open and a closed model. And yeah, in mobile, Apple’s closed model won. But it’s not always that way. If you go back to the PC era, Microsoft’s open model was the winner. And in this next generation, Meta is going to be the open model and I really want to make sure that the open model wins out again.

The future is not yet written. So, you know, I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who’s been building with us for more than a decade. Um, that goes for both Quest and the Rayban Meta glasses which are doing way better than I even hoped that they would. Um, as the old saying goes, the best way to predict the future is to invent it so I’ll see you all out there.