This is a brief rant in reply to Rohit Bhargava’s blog post on 5 World Changing Ways to Avoid BS And Be More Believable in marketing.
Here are Rohit’s 5 ideas:
1. Share the truth, not the facts.
2. Let actions speak louder than words.
3. Use real people.
4. Go off script.
5. Be legendary.
1. Personally, I like seeing facts, but like everything, it depends on what is being advertised. In a persuasive advertising strategy, I can see if the product is a new technology or practise it might be wise to be more factual. However, Rohit says that facts aren’t emotional and basically sound manipulated, but I think they can be emotional, and if presented fairly, can provide believable informational appeal. Coke’s recent Coming Together ad demonstrates this.Here are my opinions, focusing on television advertising:
2/3. I’m going to lump these two together and say, yes, if it is a real moment. This is similar to the “are the facts real” scenario above in that the event has to be believable! I really agree with Rohit in that essentially stories tend to “speak much louder than [facts]”, because lets be real, that is how people learn from one another, through sharing experiences. GE Stories sums up my thoughts exactly.
4. PLEASE! This is deadly important, if I see “real” people and its scripted, it drives me nuts, even if it really isn’t, I can’t help but wonder: (Febreze, I don’t like them because I don’t believe it).
5. YES! If it is funny, epic and worth seeing again, obviously a job well done, of course, that depends on the target market and what kind of perception companies want people to have about their brand. The best examples to me include Red Bull and Old Spice.
Images:
Red Bull: http://logoshistory.blogspot.ca/2011/01/all-red-bull-logos.html
GE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:General_Electric_logo.svg
