Here's a formula you can steal from Pepsi's Super Bowl commercials.
Honesty + Self Awareness + Celebrity + Self deprecating humour + Relatability = Actually REACHING your audience.
PepsiCo's “Great Acting or Great Taste” ads, starring Ben Stiller and Steve Martin did a great job by calling out celebrity endorsements, while using 2 of Hollywood's biggest celebrities (you see the irony here?).
They had all the components of the formula mentioned above.
So why did this self aware ad work?
It’s because the audience knows they are being shamelessly sold stuff in the middle of their favourite sporting event and are evolved enough to know how the advertising machinery works.
So when a cliché ad airs on TV, they get annoyed, roll their eyes and their guards immediately go up. And we all know you can’t communicate with someone who is annoyed and guarded with you (ask your spouse/bestfriend/parent/pet).
However, when an ad chooses to be honest and call out the bullshit in advertising itself, the audience slowly starts let’s it's guards down. This is because they find the ad honest, refreshing and even funny. The brand message actually REACHES the audience.
I hope you learn something from this campaign. How are you going to use this formula for your next campaign?
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