What falling for my own ads taught me about advertising?
If you’ve been in the ad business for long enough, you know what it feels like.
It may be a fashion brand that has nothing to do with your taste, a specific alcoholic beverage that’s been haunting you since that one night when you were 17 (we’ve all been there), or a product that you find utterly useless. But suddenly, a week into the brief-cracking process, the unimaginable happens.
To your dismay, you start liking it (cue dramatic music😳).
“How could this happen?” you ask yourself in disbelief. If advertising is just a big-ol’ trap, a ruse, how could you fall for the very one you’ve created?
The short answer is: you revealed hidden value✨.
📝 Let’s break it down:
Good advertising does not twist the truth. It reveals a new facet of the product truth.
The creative journey makes us to look at something we’ve seen a million times before—and uncover new ways in which it can benefit people’s lives.
Working on a new product? The creative journey then finds ways in which your product can improve someone’s lives in ways they’ve never considered.
Value can be concrete (like a new use for a product), but softer value, like emotion or inspiration, can be just as meaningful.
Once you’ve found that new value, the creative takes their target audience on that journey of discovery through storytelling.
✅ Key takeaways:
Truth and value are the most powerful and meaningful tools a creative advertiser can have in their arsenal.
Revealing the surprising truth is not enough. It has to be communicated in a compelling way through storytelling.
This takes both strategic knowledge AND creative knowhow.