Have you seen the new Perrier commercial?
This is really brilliant stuff, especially when held up next to much of what is being aired these days. If you’ve seen it in context, meaning on TV, it really stands out from the commercials on either side of it. Why? you may ask, what makes it so appealing? Let me suggest three simple elements:
1) It Understands the Medium:
Television is a visual medium. The visuals of all the melting landscape and props are artistic candy. Watch the actors as they interact with their melting surroundings…great stuff. There is a trend in commercials today to be more reliant on audio, the thought being that people are headed to the fridge with their back turned to the tube so we better give them an audio message. This piece is purely visual communication. Walk to the fridge with your back turned and you won’t know what the commercial is about but watch it, and you’re captivated.
2) It Tells a Story:
We’re drawn in early on to the mystery of why stuff is melting. We shown the main character with a look of confusion approaching panic. She moves toward resolution and then the story arc peaks as the bottle falls off the ledge, a moment of high tension. We get it, we know where this is headed because we’ve seen it before but the piece is so artistically done, the story so visually well told, that we follow it anyway.
3) It Resolves on the Product:
The moment we see the “heroine” drink deeply in the pool we think, or at least I thought, “refreshment”. No slogan is spoken, no print on the screen, but the idea is clear, and more importantly, it is centered on the product. Not the funny person in the video, not the comedic climax, not the tag line, the product. We’re given one word “Perrier” and we provide our own tag line, highly personalized, subconsciously.
What are the places in life where you are trying, or have to try, to convince people to do something, or try something, or decide something? Do your “commercials” understand the medium in which you’re presenting your idea? Do you have a story to tell? DO you focus on “the product”? The thing you want them to choose?
It may be trying to get your kids out of bed in the morning. It may be trying to convince a friend to start exercising with you. It may be trying to sell your boss on a new idea. How can you leverage these three elements to convince your audience in a more compelling way?
It seems to me that you are tapping into some powerful realities that are only available to those who truly want to motivate people to take action. You are right, most of our lives we go about the sometimes exasperating enterprise of motivating people to take action. As business people we must create a compelling reason for a client to take action, whether it involves changing their old way of doing things or investing in an opportunity to fulfill their mission with my product or service or both. Parenting demands that we continually get our kids off the dime and move in a positive direction in their actions, attitudes and thinking. Your posting, Curtis, encourages me to think much more creatively about the ways I use various mediums to mobilize my kids and my clients to take action. One specific contemporary example of missing the mark on this is the ways leaders in my personal political persuasion refused to maximize the use of social network media in the last presidential election and lost the privilege of leading the nation.
Good call Lewie!
The default approach for most folks is generally analytical…here’s the features and benefits. Thinking through the strengths of various media allows us to take multiple approaches that go beyond the brain and touch the heart.