You can’t fight indifference with boredom
“So tell me a bit about yourself. What’s something that you absolutely love?”
“Adverts.”
“Adverts?!”
“And branding. Adverts and branding.”
“... okayyyy…”
You just read a snippet of conversation from a first date, a first date that never happened. Unfortunately for people in the advertising and branding industries, real people don’t love advertising and branding. They love what they love. Sports, music, fashion, little decorative lampshades from the 17th century.
Unless you’re lucky enough to be one of the world’s very few genuinely loved brands, most of your audience don’t really care.
Until you make them.
Advertisers often ask, “Will people get it?”. But that’s seldom the right question. People are pretty smart when it comes to things they care about.
The real question is, “Will people even notice it?”. And the only acceptable answer is a resounding, emphatic, full-blooded YES.
When we consume ourselves with questions like “Will they get it?”, “How do you think they’ll interpret it?” and “Will they know what this bit represents?” we’re sweating details that don’t matter. We’re down in the weeds with a manicure kit, while the world only cares for the tree-tops.
Every minute we spend costs roughly the same in money. Whether you spend it making the brand famous, or making the ad just a little bit different to the previous iteration.
It can be alluring to think that understanding is the only problem we need to solve. That if people only knew our product, and its functionality, they’d love it. In that world all we need are really simple, direct ads. But that’s a fantasy world. People aren’t misinformed about our brands – they’re disinterested in them. And, unfortunately, you can’t fight indifference with boredom.
Here’s an ad that knew how to trust its audience. Playstation’s iconic, massively-successful, Hall of Fame-winning 1999 ad: ‘Double Life’. Featuring zero shots of games, consoles, controllers or screens, the ad conveys everything that’s possible with Playstation, using humour, honesty, shock and a strangely chilling warmth. This idea would’ve been easy to veto early-on, but it successfully captured the attention of gamers across the globe, and is still revered today, 25 years later.
Creating work that people notice is hard. But it’s much harder when we place additional limits on ourselves. Recognising that consumers are savvier than we wish they were, gives us the license to create work that properly sparks their synapses.
So, next time you're on a first date and you don’t think it’s going too well, remember it’s probably not just because the other person doesn’t understand you.
It’s because you keep talking about adverts and branding.
Who The LR We?
StudioLR is the creative agency that believes in guts. We’ve been grabbing people’s insides and making them interesting since 2004. If you liked this blog, you might like this one which is full of tips on beefing up your wimpy words.
