“If you can’t love yourself, how the hell you gonna love somebody else? Can I get an amen?”
Ru Paul’s Drag Race is one of only two shows that I watch live and I am obsessed with it. I follow most of the queens on various platforms, and my wife and I have seen many of the queens perform live. She even got me a Cameo (a personalized video) for Christmas from one of my favorites queens – Thorgy Thor.
Here’s the other thing you should know about me – I love gossip and drama. (I HATE being part of it, but I love when others spill the tea.)
Recently, there’s been a whole lot of drama from a production company that’s been treating some of the queens poorly and while I wouldn’t usually post about it here, it’s actually relevant to Facebook Ads!!!! (Ahhh, can you tell I’m excited?!)
So I thought it would be worthwhile to look at how this production company is running ads now, and what changes I think they should make and how, along with some helpful Facebook Ad tips for for you!
But first, here’s the tea:
(If you don’t care about the drama, just skip down to the Facebook ads part. If you enjoy gossip and drama like I do, enjoy…)
Also, just an aside, all of the queens that I’m mentioning here are some of my absolute favorites. I could go on and on about each of them, but I realize that’s not really the point of the article, so I’ll also link each queen to their Instagram. All of them are worth it to follow.
Murray and Peter is one a few production companies that puts on tours for the queens from Ru Paul’s Drag Race. They have some history of treating queens poorly but things exploded recently when they kicked two queens off the tour and tried to drag them. (By the way, I thought about embedding some of the posts I mention below in here, but honestly, I don’t want to give them any extra traffic.)
We met Ginger Minj after her one woman show. She was lovely and super talented.
First, Ginger Minj (who you can see in the adorable Netflix movie, Dumplin’) got a film offer that meant she would have to step away from 8 of the tour dates, which she could do based on a clause in her contract.
Instead of simply replacing her for those few dates, they kicked her off the whole tour and made a post about it, trying to make her seem unprofessional.
Fans made it pretty clear that Ginger was not the one being unprofessional and the manner in which they shared that she was being replaced was not cool.
Then, Monet X Change had a last minute offer to be part of a music video with Madonna where she would have missed one date. She asked about going and was told no and decided to go anyways. Maybe not the most professionally choice on her part, but understandable.
Murray and Peter also posted about this, letting everyone know that they were kicking Monet off the tour as well.
(We saw Monet perform when we went to New York last September and it was legit the best drag show I’ve ever been to.)
This quickly blew up into lots of Instagram posts and Tweets from the queens but mostly from Murray and Peter saying posting in ways that were the total opposite of professional.
My favorite was when they posted that they have paid the queens a combined amount just over $5 million from all of their tours. Which is cool that they’ve helped drag queens perform in theaters instead of just clubs, but they literally wouldn’t have a business if it wasn’t for the queens of Ru Paul’s Drag Race, so they failed to mention how much they’ve made of the queens.
So, after they treated yet another queen poorly, the drag race community as whole has been pretty up in arms and plenty of folks are asking for their money back from tickets for upcoming shows.
Then another queen who was scheduled later in the tour, Trinity the Tuck, decided to step down from the tour in solidarity.
Honestly, we’ve been to several of their shows (4 with multiple queens and 2 solo shows) and spent a good chunk of money since we have always gotten the VIP meet and greet. After the last show, we had decided we wouldn’t be paying for the ‘meet and greet’ again for a group show because it wasn’t worth it. There was no meeting or greeting. It was a 2 second photo on your phone with the whole group.
Every show we’ve purchased posters of each queen to have them sign it. Each poster is like $15, so 15 times 6-7 queens, but it’s worthwhile because it’s money in their pocket and gives you an extra minute to chat with them.
But the last time we had to stand behind a line 10 feet away while the queens signed our posters, which made it feel really weird and awkward and like a waste of over $100.
Our complaint about the meet and greet is super common amongst fans. And often compared to the other big tours, where you get to do your meet and greet with two queens at a time, so you end up with multiple photos and extra time to meet them.
We’re also big fans of The Walking Dead and have been to way too many nerd conventions to meet and get pics with the cast. In those settings, a professional photo means you get like 2 seconds, but if good lighting (see photo #4), everyone is fully in the photo with you (see photo #1), and you get a printed 8×10 photo, and then when you got to their booths, you can get stuff signed and chat with them for a bit. From that, we’ve had full conversations with some celebrities, making it totally worthwhile.
Okay so here’s how it applies to Facebook Ads:
Murray and Peter are running Facebook Ads showing that queens who are no longer on the tour (Monet X Change and Trinity the Tuck) will be at various cities.
And since (spoiler alert) Monet and Trinity just won All Stars 4, having their faces in the ads, will definitely help sell tickets, but through false advertising.
Bob the Drag Queen asked on Twitter why they are still running these ads.
To which Murray and Peter responded with “The ad was placed before they quit. It expires today. And thanks for stirring drama that has nothing to do with you.” (Super professional response, right?)
So, here’s the thing. Just in case you ever have ads running that are incorrect and need to be changed…
- If you wanna check to see which ads are running from any business (even if it’s not yours), you can easily check.
- It’s super easy to turn off an ad that should no longer be running.
- It’s allllmost just as easy to duplicate and edit the ad so that the correct ad is now running.
And I’ll show you how to do these 3 things below.
1. We can see any active ads that any business is running!
Murray and Peter said the ad expired yesterday. Buuuuut going to their page, I can see that the ad is still running! (Note: Since publishing this the ad is actually turned off now.)
Wanna check on active ads from your peers? Here’s how to do it.
- Go to their Facebook business page. (In this case, I decided to show you the page for Voss Events, which is known for treating the queens well and putting on a show with high production levels. It’s also who we’ll be giving our money to from here on out.)
- On desktop, on the left hand side, scroll down just a bit and select where it says Info and ads. From here, you can see all active ads running to your country, which is a pretty cool feature.
- On mobile, click the little ‘i’ on the side of the cover photo, then select active ads.
2. If you have an ad running that you need to stop, it’s super simple.
Murray and Peter are saying that the ad is about to expire. But it’s just spending (and wasting) money if your ad is running when it shouldn’t.
Here’s how to stop a running ad.
- Go to Ads Manager – www.facebook.com/ads/manage
- Select your account.
- Ads are split up into 3 sections …
-The Campaign (where you set the objective)
-The Ad Set (where you put the audience)
-The Ad (where you put the creative) - You can turn an ad off from any of the 3 sections, but it’s generally best practice to turn off an ad at the Ad Set level. To do so, select the ad at the campaign level, click ad set, find the ad you want to turn off, click the little blue button on the left hand side, so it becomes grey.
That’s it. Super simple. It’s takes about 2 seconds if you have decent wifi. And maaaaaybe a minute if you’re walking through and following these directions.
3. After stopping the ads that are no longer accurate, they would want to run ads featuring the cast who will actually be there.
That is also very simple and quick to do.
You can’t actually change the image without taking away the social proof of the ad, AND the Facebook algorithm gets a little confused when you make a big change like that, so the ad just won’t perform as well. So instead, you’ll want to duplicate the ad you’re already running, and then change out the image before you start the new ad. Here’s how:
- Go to Ads Manager – www.facebook.com/ads/manage
- Select the campaign for the ad that you need to edit.
- Go to the ad set section. Select the ad that you want to duplicate.
- Select Duplicate.
- Give the ad set and ad an updated name.
- Keep everything the same in the ad set
- Edit the ad to have the new graphic
- Select Publish and you’re good to go (just be sure you’ve stopped the old ad and make sure the new ad is active on the ad set level.)
Just like stopping the ad, this only takes a couple minutes as long as you know what you’re doing.
And if you’re wanting to check out someone’s active ads, stop an existing ad, or duplicate and edit an ad and you’ve got questions, ask in my Facebook Group HERE <<
