Direct response advertising has its place, sure. But it isn’t the only form of advertising. Today’s ad breaks lots of the famous “direct response rules”: it has no urgency, no CTA, no ‘reason to buy now’. Yet this ad – and the rest of the campaign – became one of the most successful in modern times. Read on to find out why.
Who made it?
This ad came from one of my D&AD annuals. Here’s the details:
Copywriter: Joan Ellis | Art Directors: Joan Ellis and Nigel Rose | Typographer: Tivy Davies | Agency: TBWA | Client: Absolut UK | Year: 1992
Selling without selling
Over the 80s and 90s, Absolut became a cultural icon. I know that phrase is thrown about a lot, but in this instance, it’s true. How many campaigns can you recall people actively trying to collect all the ads (and not trying to avoid them…)?
TBWA – before their merge with Chiat/Day in 1995 – won the account and was asked to position Absolut as “smart, stylish, contemporary, creative, unexpected, witty and of superior quality”. Absolut also didn’t want their ads to feature people or promote any particular lifestyle. Instead, they simply wanted to display their unique bottle.
One specific brief and 1500+ ads later, the bottle certainly became the global superstar they’d dreamt of. It piqued the interest of artists and designers, including Tom Ford, Stella McCartney and Andy Warhol. In fact, Warhol, according to the Absolut Book, was “enthralled by the artfulness of the Absolut bottle” and sometimes even wore it as perfume. This led to his iconic contribution to the 1986 print campaign (which I shared with newsletter subscribers). And after 20+ years of work, US cases of Absolut rose by almost 45,000% – from 10,000 to 4.5 million.
Without a direct response technique in sight, how did this happen?
Let’s look at today’s ad and see.
Art analysis
The ad is a very simple visual hyperbole. It’s a deliberate exaggeration to emphasise a specific point more vividly: Absolut’s clarity (and thus quality). The bottle is the focal point – as per the brief – and the high contrast makes the bottle stand out, training us to recognise it faster.
Now, other ads weren’t so overt in their communication, but what I really like about this delivery is how it shines a light on a “flaw” or rather a feature of our evolutionary decision-making.
Speed over accuracy
As a species, we’ve evolved to not necessarily make perfectly accurate decisions but fast, “good enough” ones instead.
Because if you really think about the ad, it doesn’t actually show us anything. You wouldn’t expect to see impurities in vodka via an x-ray. They’d have to be some sizeable impurities, right? But when you look at the ad quickly, it makes total sense. And when most viewers will only passively view the ad, quick perceptions are what count.
Clarity
There’s another evolutionary association that rubs off on us: We trust what we see, not what we know. And we’ve survived by not drinking dirty, contaminated liquids.
Side note: I think there’s a hypothesis that water is tasteless so we can better detect any impurities. Anyway…
So, seeing that Absolut Vodka is crystal clear triggers another old brain response: clarity = purity = it’s safe = we can trust it. So, despite the x-ray clarity being flawed, it still creates the “that looks clean” reaction, which is all the brain needs to assign value. You could even say the ad is more effective because it’s unrealistic.
The Generation Effect
Yes it’s obvious, but looking at the art in isolation (which many viewers would), we aren’t told that it’s pure. We’re shown. This means we use the Generation Effect to understand the inference and thus believe it better. When – and if – the reader gets to the subcopy, they’re told and this helps reinforce it.
Copy analysis
We have two components: a headline and subheadline.
The headline
The headline is simple and straight-talking (because the art is doing the heavy lifting). Every ad in this campaign followed the same formula: “Absolut [Concept]”. This consistent phrasing creates processing fluency, making the ad feel familiar and quicker to interpret. There’s also a psychological bias suggesting that the more familiar something becomes, the more we trust it (even if there’s no additional reason to). This is why long-standing campaigns can become so effective – they get better over time.
The subheadline
The subheadline says: “CLEARLY THERE IS NO PURER VODKA THAN ABSOLUT. DO IT JUSTICE DRINK IT NEAT AT 0°C.” Let’s look at it in chunks.
“Clearly” is doing double duty here. It’s a linguistic intensifier and ties into the art. It then subtly disqualifies others with “no purer vodka than Absolut” and relies on the Generation Effect for us to believe it.
The second sentence shifts the focus from the drink onto you. And there’s quite a bit going on.
The cost of justice
First, it invites you to perform an (almost) ritual to drink it – not for the vodka’s sake but to show that you understand what you’re drinking. This leans into the Costly Signalling Theory, which suggests that the value we assign to something increases with the perceived cost of communicating or producing it. In other words, if purity needs to be done justice, it implies a lot of effort and refinement went into achieving it. And because of that effort, you should rise to meet it. So, the vodka signals its quality by requiring something of you in return.
Defending effort
Secondly, if we do follow the conditions, then the ad leverages the Effort Justification (from Cognitive Dissonance Theory) bias. This suggests that if you put effort into something (especially voluntarily), you’ll rationalise that what you’re doing must be valuable because the effort would feel wasted otherwise. It’s a bit like tricking yourself into thinking something is better than it is. And it works as a mental defence mechanism to reduce cognitive dissonance (that state of mental discomfort when beliefs/actions don’t align).
Committing to effort
Finally, the more effort we put into drinking it, the more we commit to the brand. This taps into The Commitment Bias, meaning we’re more likely to act in accordance with these commitments (i.e. keep buying Absolut) in the future.
And the very fact there is a right way to enjoy it makes it sound more premium than others.
Now, let’s tie this into the campaign.
How this ad fits into the campaign
Direct response should tick all the necessary sales boxes so the reader has everything they need to buy immediately. There’s no denying it’s an important part of marketing and sales. But as Eugene Schwartz famously said:
“Copy cannot create desire for a product. It can only take the hopes, dreams, fears and desires that already exist in the hearts of millions of people, and focus those already-existing desires onto a particular product.”
So, sometimes, you’re working against natural forces that simply can’t be overcome. That’s not to say your market won’t be open to your product later. But occasionally, the time isn’t right, and in those instances, you need to make sure they come back. You do that with ‘brandvertising’.
Brandvertising: Explained
This is brand-building advertising that focuses on planting seeds for the future, so you spring to mind before your competitors. Your sales activation advertising (typically advertising that requires action immediately) can – and should – harvest what you’ve sown. The best outcomes arrive when you do.
You see, sales activation advertising is ephemeral and episodic. It works for a small group of people currently in the market (i.e. when they align with larger market desire forces) – and then disappears. There’s very little memory built or long-term shift in perception. And next month, you have to tick all those sales boxes again.
So even when people are ready to buy, they’re not thinking of you. Your brand hasn’t earned that place in their minds.
Brandvertising, on the other hand, creates and reinforces positive emotional associations (stored in long-term memory). It helps build distinctive assets that act like a mental shortcut or emotional trigger to your brand/product. Most importantly, however, it makes your brand feel familiar, reducing scepticism, so it feels “right” when the moment comes.
Now, your sales activation advertising can start closer to the end.
Today’s ad is a great example of how to reinforce these brand-building outcomes.
Distinctive assets
The campaign goal was to make the Absolut bottle the most recognisable in the world. This ad, and every other ad in the campaign, trained us to spot the bottle in different scenarios. For example:
By turning the bottle into the “constant” and changing the background or concept around it, the brand creates and reinforces a fluent mental shortcut. It becomes a trigger for the positive emotional associations it creates – either from the scenario or the act of successfully spotting the bottle.
In How Brands Grow, Byron Sharp shares that distinctive brand assets like shapes, colours and structures are more important than messages for brand recognition. And it’s been absolut-ly nailed in this campaign.
Emotional > rational
Emotionally driven ads are more profitable in the long term than rational, message-based ones. Why? Because emotion is the gateway to memory. “Communications evoking emotional responses have better attention, deeper processing of the content, better memory-encoding and retrieval”, says Phil Barden.
So just because this ad isn’t spitting out features, benefits, and a call to action doesn’t mean it isn’t working.
And then, as Tom Roach reminds us: “…always think about emotion as a consumer response to communication, not an executional input into it.”
Through a surreal image (vodka under an x-ray), the ad elicits a feeling. It’s not accurate in the sense you’d see impurities, as we’ve seen, but it does evoke a feeling of purity – and thus trust.
So the thinking process becomes: see bottle => think Absolut => feel good => choose Absolut
Fluency
The ad and campaign were all incredibly easy to process. One object. Two words. A ‘context’. Done.
Processing fluency (i.e. something easy to understand) increases believability and likability. We trust what feels familiar and clear. So the passive, at-a-glance decision-making we’ve evolved to utilise – and the fact the ad is simple – makes the ad mentally acceptable, allowing it to have an impact on us.
Campaign consistency
The “Absolut [Concept]” structure has endless possibilities. It followed locations (e.g. Absolut London, Absolut New York), art (e.g. Absolut Warhol, Absolut Haring), events (e.g. Absolut Halloween), fashion (e.g. Absolut Versace), conceptual ideas (e.g. Absolut Perfection) and countless others.
It had a lot of life with over 1500 variations, running for 20+ years. Just consider how many times one person might see an Absolut ad over that period. Each passing touch point makes Absolut more familiar, helping solidify the brand in our minds. The repetition builds memory structures, and the variation keeps our attention.
Fame
Fame progressively builds through broad emotional reach and cultural relevancy – it sows more seeds for you to harvest. This open-ended campaign structure created opportunities for Absolut to stay relevant and make them famous, further helping them stay top of mind.
They also got to rub shoulders with big names and other cultural icons, which, in turn, influences our perception of them (thanks to The Halo Effect).
Conclusion
This ad is a prime example of how Absolut didn’t just sell vodka. They built their brand. This reinforces what we discuss in so many breakdowns – that you don’t need to spoon-feed your reader. In this case, you don’t need to ask them to buy for them to buy. Just lay the foundations, create the right environment and let your reader choose to.
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