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Healthy Metal: the test I lost, and what it taught me

Three statics built from what Healthy Metal's customers were saying, tested in the brand's own weekly creative batch. They missed the target, and the reason why changed how I build statics.

3 angles

taken from what Healthy Metal's customers said on Trustpilot

7 days

live in the brand's weekly test campaign

+50%

cost per acquisition against target, so the ads were paused

The brief

One opening line, on repeat

Healthy Metal makes a magnesium glycinate drink you mix before bed, sold through a five-night free trial with no subscription. In August 2026 I went through their Meta ad library, and nearly every ad opened on a version of the same line: "Did you know 60% of adults are magnesium deficient." The audience, the better-sleep promise and the hook stayed the same, and only the offer changed from ad to ad.

I messaged the founder, Jose Vigo, on LinkedIn and offered to make three statics on angles the account wasn't running, then test them against his best-performing static for a week. He said yes and asked me to explain the reasoning behind each one.

My approach

The customer the ads were missing

Healthy Metal's Trustpilot reviews kept describing the same person, a woman in her 40s who wakes at 3am with a racing mind and legs that won't settle, then drags herself through the next day.

She was all over Trustpilot and nowhere in the ads.

Customers also explained why they stay. Talk of a nightly ritual came up in about a quarter of five-star ratings and under 4% of one-stars. Happy customers had built the drink into their evening, and the unhappy ones had treated it like any other supplement.

Each static took one moment from that research.

The ads

Three angles the account wasn't running

Each static paired a simple image with long primary text that carried the story. All three ran with the headline “Magnesium glycinate drink. 5 nights free.” and the description “No subscription needed”. Open each card to read its primary text.

Static ad: a woman lying awake in bed looking at her phone, with the words It's 3:47. Again.

3:47

The night itself. She's awake again at the same time, and the copy picks up the thoughts that keep her there.

Read the primary text

Not again.

Same as Tuesday. Same as the Thursday before that.

Because it’s never just one bad night.

One night of broken sleep you can bounce back from.

Or at least you could.

But night after night of waking in the early hours wears you down.

It’s a tiredness you feel in your bones that no amount of double espresso will fix.

So you're left with a choice. Spend the next few hours staring at the ceiling, going back over the conversations, the decisions, the trivial events of the day that nobody else remembers.

Or admit you're getting no more sleep until tonight.

Hopefully.

There’s a third option that doesn’t involve downing even more caffeine.

Healthy Metal is a magnesium glycinate drink you have before bed. It supports deeper, more restorative sleep, so you wake when the alarm goes and not a moment sooner.

Claim your 5-night free trial and bring some calm to a racing mind.

No subscription needed.

Static ad: a tired woman at an office desk mid-afternoon, with the words 9 to 5, on less than 5. Coffee can't fix a lack of sleep.

9 to 5

The day after. The morning holds up on coffee, then the afternoon goes, and the copy names the slump she's been putting down to age.

Read the primary text

You didn't have a bad day.

You had a bad night.

The morning was fine. The coffee saw to that.

Emails answered, people dealt with, and it didn't show. Then somewhere after lunch it went.

You read the same paragraph three times and took none of it in. You walked into a room and couldn't think why.

Nobody's said anything. That isn't the same as nobody noticing.

Easier to file it under getting older. Or having a lot on. Or just not being as sharp as before.

It's simpler than that. You were in bed for seven hours and you slept for about four, and this is what four hours looks like at three in the afternoon.

Another coffee gets you to five o'clock. A glass of wine gets you to bedtime.

Both of them cost you tonight, and tomorrow looks exactly like today.

Healthy Metal is a magnesium glycinate drink that helps reduce tiredness and fatigue. One sachet before bed, hot or cold. Nothing borrowed against tomorrow.

Claim your 5-night free trial and see what it does to your afternoons.

No subscription needed.

Static ad: a five-star customer quote saying she won't go back to capsules, above the Healthy Metal 5 Night Trial box and a glass

Capsules

The bottle in the cupboard. A real customer quote sets the drink up as a ritual to look forward to, against capsules that get skipped.

Read the primary text

When did you last look forward to taking a magnesium capsule?

Nobody does.

That's why the bottle you bought six weeks ago is still in your cupboard, three-quarters full.

You swallow a capsule and that's it. Done.

So on a night when you're tired, or late to bed, or just can't be bothered, you skip it.

Just for the one night.

And another.

Days turn into weeks, weeks into months, and the bottle's still sitting there, a guilty reminder of the sleep you were going to fix.

The magnesium that works is the one you actually take.

Healthy Metal is a magnesium glycinate sachet that helps reduce tiredness and fatigue, in a form you look forward to taking. A tart lemon and raspberry drink you make before bed, hot or cold.

A capsule is a chore. This is a ritual with a reward.

Claim your 5-night free trial and see whether it sticks.

No subscription needed.

The 3:47 and 9 to 5 images use AI-generated photography. Capsules uses Healthy Metal's own product shot.

The test

Seven days in their weekly test

Healthy Metal tests new creative in weekly batches of ad sets, each with its own budget of £30 a day. Anything that shows traction gets scaled, and anything that doesn't is switched off after five to seven days. My three statics went into that system and were judged on the same terms as every other new ad.

After seven days they were paused. Cost per acquisition was 50% over target, and the click-through rate and cost per click weren't strong enough to suggest they'd recover.

What I learned

The image has to earn the click

Jose had spotted the problem before a penny was spent. My ads told the story in the primary text, and his team puts everything into the image. On 3:47 and 9 to 5 in particular, the picture set a mood and left the copy to do the persuading.

The soft metrics showed what that costs. In a busy feed the image does most of the stopping, and the primary text only gets read by someone the image has already caught. My best writing sat behind a click that most people never made.

The angles came from the customers. The execution asked the image to do too little.

What I'd do next

Same angles, built the other way

The research still stands, so the next test would keep the three moments and put each message in the image itself. The 3am wake-up, the afternoon slump and the unused bottle of capsules would each make sense to someone who never reads the primary text.

I also bought the 12-day trial myself to see the funnel as a customer. The days between claiming a trial and deciding to buy are when the ritual either forms or fades, and a short email sequence mapped to those days would back up whichever ad wins.

For a test that went the other way, read the Ivy case study.

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