âWłó˛â?â&˛Ô˛ú˛őąč;
Itâs a mighty three-letter word that the marketing industry worships.
Why would our customer buy this? Why does our customer consume our product in that way? What is our brand's âwhyâ? Why do they only engage with our product when they are alone? Why did they choose to share our brand with those around them?
Thereâs a plethora of articles online suggesting that âwhy?â is the number one question for strategists, account service people, and brand managers. Itâs powerful. It is a building block for success.
Weâre told to âembrace your inner childâ and question everything. Weâre told that our brands need a âwhyâ because our consumers wanting us without one isnât enough. Weâre told that if you donât ask âwhy?â three times with a cascading effect you wonât find the true reason of why we have any role in our customers' lives.
Why? Well, partly because Simon Sinek wrote a best-selling book on the matter. And I do agree that it can be a great word to guide you to think deeper about your customer. To think deeper about brands. To think deeper about life.
But we need to acknowledge the word has a time and a place. That time and place is not when reviewing creative work.
There is no greater example of the power of not using âwhyâ than advertising history, as Paul Feldwick explores in 'The Anatomy of Humbug'. In the 50s on the shoot for a US shirt manufacturer, Hathway, David Ogilvy randomly presented the talent with a box of eye-patches to wear on the day. âThe Man in the Hathaway Shirtâ became hugely successful, with his unexplained, surprising, eye-patch. This period of intuition-led advertising also brought us the Marlboro Man and Tony the Tiger.
But following the publication of 'Hidden Persuaders' by Vance Packard, a general uneasiness with advertisers stirred as people feared advertisingâs power to manipulate them through ânonrational symbolsâ. And so, after the 60s, the work became less whimsical, and more copy-heavy and rationalised: a pivot that seemed to disregard the success of different and wonderful work that previously worked.
We see a similar randomness in other great, memorable, surprising creative in the past few years: Cadburyâs Gorilla, KFCâs Bucketheads, âShop Aldi Firstâ, Charli XCXâs album cover, and that weird guy in Starburstâs âBerries and Creamâ.
Iâm not a gambler, but Iâd bet you the little money I have that no one sat in those meetings and asked, âSo why is there a gorilla?â They were surprised, and led with something the health industry has glorified, and the advertising industry has forgotten â the gut. I plead for those who touch any aspect of brand building and comms to do the same.
Thanks to the work of Peter Field, Adam Morgan, and System1 we know the extraordinary cost of being dull, and to avoid this, we should use the emotion of surprise. Surprise is not rationalised. Your friend jumping out from behind a door and yelling âbooâ didnât need an explanation. Nor does every element of your creative work.
There doesnât need to be a deep meaning to every element of creative work. The key to making 'surprise' work isnât justifying its existence, itâs repeating it until its existence is an unquestioned memory structure.
So, ask âwhy?â when youâre watching a mother buy home brand cereal but splurging on a premium alternative milk in the supermarket. Ask âwhy?â when your brands sales are decreasing. Ask âwhy?â our customers arenât buying our products at full price. Ask âwhy?â we think this product distribution strategy is right.
But if you have the opportunity to review creative work, and find yourself assessing something that isnât explainable, refrain from that three-letter word. Note your surprise. Recognise that your customer or audience is likely to have the same reaction. Surprise sells.
If we keep asking âwhy?â to anything unexplainable, then eventually weâll end up asking: why are we still doing this?