Marthinus Strydom: Postcard from Singapore
Marthinus Strydom (pictured) is Global Creative Leader for Team GSK at Grey Group Singapore, here he looks at Micro-Philosophy: An article on creative insights.
Micro-philosophy is what creatives and planners spend their time doing, in my opinion. We hunt for small truths. The big ones are covered by much, much smarter people that don’t work in advertising: Aristotle, Adam Smith, Chomsky etc. These people deal with the insights that shape society. We advertising folk work with the much smaller ones, the truth crumbs.
The thing about truth is that even in small quantities it can be very unifying. Millions of people will respond with a nod if you present them with a small truth in the shape of a Snickers commercial for example. ‘You’re not you when you’re hungry.’ A global campaign that works in any market based on 6 words that capture a universal truth. Local market versions (all original executions, not adaptations) exist from the U.S. to Thailand. Millions of production and media dollars, signed off thanks to a tiny truth.
Under Armour’s Michael Phelps commercial that ended with the line ‘It’s what you do in the dark that puts you in the light.’ is another recent example. I have no knowledge regarding the birth of these lines, but I like to imagine that it started with a copywriter and an art director stroking their chins over flat whites and moleskin notepads, micro-philosophising the afternoon away.
In the Snickers example, they found a universal insight regarding hunger. Hunger makes us weak/tired/frustrated/grumpy/diva-ish/etc. In the Under Armour example, they looked at the un-pretty side of being a champion athlete. At what you have to do between the lime lights. It’s true for anyone who achieves something. The prelude to achievement is gritty, not pretty, but necessary.
Incidentally, there’s a video on YouTube of Phelps and his girlfriend being shown the commercial for the first time in the editing suite. His girlfriend spontaneously starts crying. When prompted, she clarifies her tears by saying that she could see his sacrifice, there, on the screen. Even Phelps was choked up. A bunch of advertising creatives had shone a light inside him and captured something personal.
In this way, in my opinion, advertising validates itself, elevating from salesmen’s clamour to pop-culture contributor. The salesmen’s clamour by the way, the commercials that really annoy us, the stuff that feels like, and is, an intrusion, is largely devoid of even the smallest granule of truth.
Think of a haircare commercial, you know the type, where a perfect human with perfect hair talks about the 7 signs of luscious hair. No truth, just wall-to-wall superlatives. There is nothing to believe because it is totally unbelievable, from the unachievable lustre to the miracle ingredients twirling in 3D before our eyes. It tries so hard to be heard but it comes across as, well… lies. Or over promise.
Now look at what Pantene is doing in some of their best work. Strong is beautiful. Female empowerment. The Superbowl commercial, ‘Dad do’s’, was born from the planning insight that girls who spend quality time with their dads grow up to be stronger women. A small, powerful truth that you can again spread around the world.
You do not really need to research this stuff. These truths already exist in all of us. It just takes a micro-philosopher and his/her tiny torch to shine a light on it. You can hear it for the first time and get it, because it’s true. You don’t need to go straight to research to validate it. You need to go straight to your check book and spend. They really are worth their weight, these tiny truth bombs.
Amazing, the amount of money spent ‘validating’ whether or not communications connect with audiences when we all respond exactly the same way to something that is true. If you can’t feel it in your gut in the boardroom, why should the group respond any differently?
A good place to search for these truths is in the popular philosophy section at your local bookstore. I would seriously add Alain De Botton and A.C Grayling to creative marketing sources. La Rochefoucauld’s 16th century maxims are a treasure trove of insights into human nature, some more deeply-cynical than the most jaded copywriter, but oh so very true.
Two examples:
“If we resist our passions, it is more due to their weakness than our strength.”
“A refusal of praise is a desire to be praised twice”
A bit dark he was, but very insightful. A constant pursuit of small truths I find to be a shortcut to great communication. It makes a brief suddenly mean something, it makes heads nod and people grin in creative presentations. To consumers, truth will connect more instantly, more genuinely, and be more widely-applicable cross-culturally than all these constantly repeated, equity-building, templates, logos, and marketing buzzwords combined.
Hence, it is essential for each brand to find its small truth, and explore it. Mine it. Restate it, over and over. Ultimately own it. The old Nike example. ‘Just do it’. The mind-set required for victory, broadly applicable to any sporting or training context. Broadly applicable, to life mind you. Said another way by Yoda: ‘Do or do not. There is no try’.
What’s your brand’s truth?