That’s my mate Sam.
It’s her birthday today, and she’s going to murder me for this.
I’ve known Sam since we were both teenagers. We were prefects, standing in the same corridor in school, ignoring people smoking in the toilets. That was well over 20 years ago.
She was a bridesmaid at my wedding. I nearly set myself on fire reading a poem at hers. She claims her eldest isn’t named after me, but his name and my surname share a suspicious number of letters so I’m leaping to my own conclusion.
I carried her home the first time she got legless. She let me kip on her couch when I turned up hammered at 4am even though my flat was like a twenty five minute walk away. We’ve had cocktails in Barcelona and cans of Heineken on the 19:57 from Euston. She’s always the first to ring if something goes tits up, and always the first person I text when there’s good news to share.
We’re very good mates, is what I’m getting at. Or we were until I shared that badly anonymised picture of her dressed as a cow to a subscriber list of total strangers.
Now imagine how interesting, how powerful, how intriguing your sales pitch would have to be for me to ignore Sam and pay attention to you.
Even if she’s not dressed as a barnyard animal.
If we’re out for a coffee and I’m talking about my wife’s new job and she’s telling me about her husband’s ultramarathon and her kid’s swimming lessons, how downright compelling would you need to be for me to say “hang on a second Sam, this person wants to sell me a pair of boots1?”
Pretty fucking compelling, right?
So why is it, when you pitch to me on social media, you think that milquetoast, tepid, boring nonsense is enough to stop me paying attention to Sam’s family news or my friend Benny’s latest poem, or my mate Jacko’s opinion on how Leeds played last night?
Yes, the chances are that your competition does equally dull, boring, tepid social advertising. But when it comes to social, they’re not your competition.
Not really.
Sam is.
And it’s her birthday. So you need to work harder on your social media messaging to nick her spotlight.
Something mint - this advert I saw on social media that’s 100% more compelling than your mum whinging on Facebook about her gout
Watch this, from the start to the end. It’s only 90 seconds.
Everything about it is brilliant2. The message that your assumptions affect the lives of people around you. The feeling of growing frustration that flips at the half-way point with some very clever mirroring.
The relentless pacing that builds to a crescendo that drags your attention back just as it’s starting to wane… That even worked on Hampson.
I’m wary of swearing in ads (hypocrisy, thy name is Nattan), but that just fucking works.
And that empowering message. It’s not saying people with Down Syndrome need wrapping in cotton wool. Precisely the opposite. Treat them as if they can do everything and they’ll believe they can do anything.
Genuinely stopped me dead in my tracks when I saw it. That’s the sort of power and craft that needs to go into your messaging if you really want to cut through.
“Why boots, Andrew?” Well, because I spent £400 on Lanx boots after being bombarded by their YouTube adverts. Tell you what though, they’re absolutely cracking boots. It also worked on my friend’s wife. She bought a pair after seeing the same ads.
At least, we think it’s brilliant. There are dissenting views, such as the one contained in this well thought out critique from Nick Asbury.
You were a prefect? You?!