Readers (Don't) Digest

Hello, fellow creative souls!

This week, we’re not diving deep - but staying afloat in the middle of the sea, to break down possibly one of the most ‘WTF?! 😂’ ads ever, from Alka Seltzer, the famous antacid brand.

Today, we’ll break down the mechanism of this ad, understand why it works!

The secret: We are going to explore the 90/10 rule.

Effective advertising rests in selling solutions, not products. “Sell the benefits, not the product” is a modern-day marketing axiom that companies follow to the T.

Another tenet of effective advertising lies in the emotion it evokes— in this case, it’s laughter. Think of 3 of your most favorite ads - my bet would is that one of them is on that list because of how funny it is, it probably cracks you up even today (Sorry, Hari Sadu). Humour is one of the most-effective ways a brand can capture attention and value in the content-era. Rahul Dravid asking me to use a payments app won’t catch my attention. But Rahul Dravid going bonkers in peak Indira Nagar traffic just might.

Here’s how you can crack the code to an ad that will make your audience go ‘WTF?! 🤣’

Pre-requisites: Identify the most common problems your product solves. Pick the most common/painful problem. Make sure it’s an authentic problem that demands attention.

Step 1: ‘What if?’ Consider all the possible, outrageous scenarios. This is called an Exaggeration/Hyperbole. Take the problem as far as you can go. To every possible, outrageous form.

An ad for an antacid can be very straightforward - Man faces indigestion, a learned individual offers the solution in the form of the product, man’s indigestion vanishes. But where’s the fun in that?

What if you exaggerated a little bit more?

Step 2: Think of unconventional situations, unconventional people and unconventional settings to misdirect the audience. Misdirection is one of the fundamental mechanisms under which humour functions. The basic atoms of a joke are a Setup(set an expectation) and the punchline(break the expectation)

In the above ad, the setting of two is something you wouldn’t associate with an ad for an antacid. Two guys on a boat is the only visual here. There are no other clues hinting at a problem, either. This is the hook. Your audience will wait for the solution.

Step 3: Fixate on the problem. The key to humour is timing. While scripting, let the audience ruminate on the problem for a while and make their assumptions.

Show two men in a boat and do this for just long enough to keep the audiences’ attention. Establish the situation and repeat it.

Step 4: ? - This is for the viewers. If you manage to hold them, they’ll be asking what this is about. The last shot with only one man on screen, the audience will collectively go, “Ok - Where did the other man go?”

Step 5: ! - The big reveal! Quick shots of the product and then the sweet punchline: “When you have eaten something, you shouldn’t have”. This is where the audience has their ‘AHA!’ moment.

So in summary: Identify a problem that your product/brand solves —> Let that problem be a universal truth —> Exaggerate your setting as much as possible —> Lock on an outrageous premise —> Let the product / brand save the person from the predicament —> Tie it all up with a humourous punch line. 

While scripting, let the problem dominate the ad, taking up most of the space and time. The ideal proportion is 90% problem and 10% solution.
[A rule borrowed from the stand up comedy discipline where the jokes are structured as — 90% set up and 10% punch line].

And there you have it! Do the same for your brand / product and let us know.

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