Back in January I wrote a series of tips for prospective commissioners of animated or video content. The last and most important point was to urge the reader to be brave and opt for the quirky option.
Since then, of all the ideas I’ve submitted to prospective or existing clients, only the safest ones have been accepted. I’m not saying that the quirky or unusual ones were all solid gold, but as a trend, it’s frustrating, when so much shareability is predicated on surprising and subverting audience expectation.
Dumb luck
Remember Dumb Ways to Die? Of course you do! This hugely successful campaign had at its heart the gutsy combination of a sweet, catchy tune with blackly comic lyrics over cute cartoon characters meeting a series of grisly deaths.
The traditional trajectory of public service adverts (PSAs) has been to steadily ramp up the shock factor to stay ahead of an increasingly desensitised audience. It doesn’t work - decades of drink-driving PSAs have failed to reduce the number of drink-related traffic accidents.
Instead, agency McCann, with a brief from the Melbourne Metro, took the opposite route - a wry take on the message and a desire to entertain. The payoff was a campaign that received millions of hits and led to a palpable improvement in safety.
Eat the Ice Cream
Blazing across my various feeds earlier this year came this marvelous advert for Halo Top Ice Cream, an American brand launching soon in the UK.
Instead of wearying the viewer with an over-lit young woman enjoying ice cream after yoga in her relentlessly beige loft apartment, they took a gamble and hired an offbeat director whose knowledge of advertising came from parodying it.
The result was a dystopian nightmare. It quickly went viral. The director credits its success to having the complete trust of Halo Top’s boss to create something subversive and attention-grabbing. It’s delightfully risky and paid off.
Shock horror
It’s important to make the distinction between a brave piece of work and one designed to shock. The lasting appeal and impact of shock tactics are negligible.
I think the main distinction between a brave piece of work and a shocking piece of work is that bravery challenges perceptions, whereas shocking is easier, because it exploits our fears and prejudices.
Read the rest of this post on the Sookio blog.