Despite being canned over 15 years ago, I can still remember a lot of the episodes of Brainiac Science Abuse.
In fact, as I come to think about it, a lot of them seemed to involve swimming pools. They dropped cars into them when they were filled with water, swam across them when they were filled with syrup and even walked across them when they were filled with custard.
Custard swimming pools and persuasion
If you’ve not seen the episode, Jon Tickle explains that because (cornflour-based) custard is considered a non-newtonian liquid, sometimes it acts like a solid and sometimes a liquid.
Now, that might not mean much to you, so let me spell out Tickle’s demonstration.
If you move fast enough, it acts more like a solid – and you can walk on it, but if you don’t… well… you fall in.
Your reader’s mind is also like a swimming pool full of (cornflour-based) custard.
You can’t just throw a load of logical arguments at it and expect your reader to bend to your every wish. No. To persuade them, you have to warm them up first and ease your message into their mind to beat the resistance… like Tickle did when he stopped walking.
And with advertising, the persuasion precursor comes via the hook.
Who made the ad
Before I delve into the hook, let’s look at the ad – and who made it.
Copywriter: David Rollins | Art Director: Rudi Vranken | Agency: The Campaign Palace | Client: Birds Eye | Year: 1993
Curiosity: the hook’s main ingredient
Okay, so to make an effective hook, you need to first get attention and then, second, hold that attention. And the most effective way to hold attention is to create a knowledge gap and evoke curiosity.
But it’s all well and good saying it… heck everyone in advertising knows curiosity is important, so how do you actually go about evoking it?
Of course, there are endless possibilities. But, one way is to take the product and almost reverse engineer it. Because by now, you should be up to speed with your audience and know what appeals to them, so ask yourself, could you remove a part of your product to create a knowledge gap? Or could you maybe leave a part to have the same effect?
Nailing the hook
If we look at today’s ad, how do they hook your attention?
Well, there’s only a corner of the product for starters. In fact, there’s not much to look at all – and the simplicity pulls you in.
By just showing the corner of the packet, you’re invited to question why and look for other dots to connect to close this ‘knowledge gap’.
In terms of holding attention and further feeding this curiosity, the headline uses an antithesis, a rhetorical device that contrasts two opposing ideas (in a balanced way). This juxtaposition between a ‘good cook’ and ‘cutting corners’, which conventional wisdom would suggest they don’t do, provides another dot for you to connect to.
Keep this in mind because I’ll share more on the headline in a bit.
The power of not showing the product
It’s not common for a product ad to not show the product it is advertising. It’s confident. But it does make you think…
Is this actually a product ad?…
Or is it just framed to make us think that it is… when, in reality it’s highlighting the brand instead?
To me, this makes more sense. It’s ‘intentional unspecificity’. And as a result, the reader doesn’t have a specific product to associate ‘cutting corners’ with. Instead, they associate it with the brand.
Completing the message: The Generation Effect
Like a lot of great ads, you have to do a little bit of thinking to get what the ad’s trying to say. Not only is it enjoyable to ‘solve’ the ad, but because we have to apply a bit more mental energy, the message better sticks. This is known as the Generation Effect.
There are endless ways to invite a reader to think about – and solve an ad. But this ad uses a technique we’ve seen in a lot of ads (like this one): a double meaning.
A double meaning
To cut a corner: to take a shortcut… or to literally cut the corner off something.
Because we have to hold (and use) both meanings to solve the ad, we also have to use more of our brain’s right hemisphere. And generally speaking, ads that demand more of the right hemisphere are linked to better ad effectiveness.
The double meaning also invites us to spend more time, elaborating on the connection between what we can see and what’s meant. This dwell time is important – not only for mental availability but also the ‘sacrifice’ for the impending dopamine rush of solving the message.
Talking to the naughty voice inside
Now, conventional wisdom implies that cutting a corner is a ‘bad’ thing – that you’re sacrificing something (e.g. quality) to save time. So, alongside being a tempting forbidden fruit, it’s also a threat to others thinking ‘less’ of you.
But by stating that “good cooks” (authoritative figures) do it, the ad normalises the behaviour (suggesting you won’t be sacrificing quality) and, most importantly, gives the reader the green light to cut corners too.
As you might have figured, the shortcut is the big promise here.
A cut through the art direction
To make the shortcut even more tempting, note the scissors kept in the shot. These reinforce the big promise and symbolise the “ease” of taking the shortcut, only further reducing the barrier to entry and increasing adoption – which, ultimately, is the ad’s objective.
Next steps
That’s all for today, hope you enjoyed it. If you did, you can get them in your inbox here.
And then if you’d like to read some others, here are some others you might like to try:
