Due to our increasingly sceptical world, and the advertising industry's shameless past, credibility is hard currency for us advertisers. An effective way to gain credibility, and cut through the clutter, is to (memorably) demonstrate the brand promise you're claiming.
Plus, with the onset of cool technology (2013, year of the Go-pro camera), executing your ideas using this technique has never been easier and more exciting.
Here's an old example to get us warmed up.
As we explored in the previous post Content is dead. Long live content, at the beginning advertising was a sort of canned sales pitch for the masses, which preyed on people's insecurities.
Advertisers have been clawing back credibility ever since. In this post we're going to discuss all the different ways advertisers have attempted to gain credibility, and through a juxtaposition, explore the 'don't just say it, demonstrate it' technique.
If Volvo decided to simply tell you their trucks are precise, would you believe them? And would it have been as memorable as this?
One trick brands have used to gain credibility is to employ an authority figure. You know the ones - nutritionists, dentists, mums like you?
Viewers were changing the channel on these when Russel Howcroft still had hair. Audiences, understandably, don't trust someone that's getting paid to sell a message. Imagine if Volvo paid an engineer instead of demonstrating their 'precise' claim the way they did. It's obvious which execution is better!
How about the classic 'before and after technique'? The Dulux ad below could have easily done this, but instead it takes the audience on the journey with them.
It uses the journey to demonstrate its promise and lets the audience make up their own minds. It uses the gap between before and after as its content - brilliant!
Another way brands have tried to attain credibility is through the use of statistics. You know the ads that are basically Powerpoint presentations on steroids? (Insert Essendon/Cronulla joke here)
The Yellow Pages could have easily used statistics to communicate its effectiveness instead of demonstrating it with a Hidden Pizza Restaurant. But, you can bet it wouldn't have been half as compelling as this.
Presently, your audiences are far too empowered and sceptical to mindlessly sit there and fall for these old tricks.
Conversely, advertising that 'doesn't just say it, but demonstrates it' finds credibility in their audiences, because it allows them to draw their own conclusions.
Ads that demonstrate the brand promise, powerfully tie the brand to the advertisement's narrative (It is the narrative). That's half your job done.
The remaining half is to conceive the unexpected way to show the demonstration. Whether it's a hidden pizza place or an angry gorilla - just make it memorable.
And, if you do it especially well, you're not merely demonstrating anymore, you're simulating. And that will lead you to some serious silverware (See below).