Heads Up: _______ makes the heart grow fonder
Heads Up is a weekly creative digest that encourages animal advocates to take inspiration from case studies of creative campaign tactics outside of our movement.
This week we are exploring the Generation Effect; the idea that your audience is more likely to remember a message if they have to generate the answer for themselves.
The Brief: In 1986 Fisher Price wanted to advertise their ‘anti-slip’ roller skates for kids.
The first thing that springs to mind is likely a picture of some stable looking roller skates…
The Campaign: The ad agency let the audience figure this one out for themselves using a smart strap-line. They ask a question and the audience gets to answer it.
Did you get the warm fuzzies when you worked it out?
The genius here is in the absence. The ad is about a new ‘anti-slip’ feature but we can’t see the product. Instead they have demonstrated the benefit of the product really simply through a cheeky, accomplished grin (and the absence of the kids who have fallen).
The ad is compelling because it makes you feel clever, it includes you in its creative process.
In this space we are so often concerned with our audience not ‘getting it’ and not instantly understanding us if we don't speak plainly. We can relax, this tactic shows that it’s okay if our audience don’t ‘get it’ immediately and that actually the reward for the viewer is so much richer when they are asked to meet us halfway.
How can we be more show and less tell?
Why does it stand out?
➡ ️ The question makes you stop and think
➡ ️The child’s expression is warm and cheeky
➡ ️It’s memorable
➡ Uses lots of blank space
➡ It isn’t focussed directly on the product or the brand
➡ It’s centred around an excellent concept
These are the rather clunky looking skates being advertised (which I am sure I owned as a kid).
The ad is smart and vitally, it includes us. It doesn’t spell it out, it doesn’t assume we need to receive all of the information to understand it. Your audience is likely over-stimulated by endless content and so creating something that makes them stop and think could be key.
This doesn’t mean creating an overly complex riddle to solve. It just means leaving a blank for people to fill in that’s easy enough for most people to solve, but hard enough that it’s not initially obvious.
Heads Up Challenge: Think answer generation
(Copy the below into a working document that you can use for the challenge each week)
Identify a brief for your own work.
Write down three ways in which you could allow the audience to generate the answer
The Brief:
Idea 1:
Idea 2:
Idea 3:
Set aside a weekly 15 minute slot to complete these weekly creative tasks and why not schedule a call with others on your team to talk through your thoughts on this topic and share ideas for you to try out?
Heads Up is a weekly creative digest that encourages animal advocates to take inspiration from case studies of creative campaign tactics outside of our movement.
> ~ 5 minutes read-time (but hopefully gets you thinking for longer than that)
> Demonstrates interesting tactics and use of biases that you can test
> Contains a creative challenge for you to explore independently or with your team with results that you can apply for your important campaigning work
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Need some support to implement more creative campaigns or training your staff on creative idea generation? userfriendly.org.uk