In light of our amazing first video ad for Metaverse Mod Squad (in case you missed it, CLICK HERE), I started thinking about what makes an awesome ad.  When I watch commercials (or great digital ads like ours), the ones I remember best are funny and inventive.  After a bit of research, I found two articles that help spell out recipes for success:

1. The 3 Tricks

The website, Marketingforsuccess.com/video/, mentions that the real trick to an excellent ad or commercial is making sure it can accomplish the following three things:

• Grab attention and Keep it!
• Get the message across (ideally how the product or service helps)
• Be memorable – if once the ad is over you can’t instantly recall what product it was promoting it doesn’t matter how entertaining it was.

I am a sucker for comedy and apparently so is most of the world! Here is a brief collection of some commercials a user put together on Youtube: http://goo.gl/a2koK

Now ask yourself, when one commercial was over, did you know what it was selling? Did you remember any of the details? Did you get bored? Many took a humorous approach, but some went with shock, others just pure entertainment. Each one had it’s own flare and each one did a fantastic job!

The real trick to an amazing ad is finding the sort of entertainment your ideal consumer group would enjoy. Of course, not everyone has the same idea of entertainment. If you only aim at one specific group, does another group still know or care about your product? If you make it entertaining, shocking or funny, then chances are pretty high that it will be memorable, and your target group will share by word of mouth, or by linking to the video or ad online. We are in the age of tech after all!

2. The Trigger

This next article I found on LinkedIn, a popular business networking site, http://goo.gl/HFHPh.  Jonah Berger, the author of this post, discusses the important of adding a specific trigger in your ad. That trigger can be almost anything – and if you nail it, your campaign could go viral!

One of the most popular triggers they mention is the phrase “Peanut Butter and…?” The obvious next word to me is “Jelly.”  I am sure you can think of a number of words that make you think of something else that is related. When you hear Dunkin do you think Dunkin Donuts?

Did you ever wonder why you had to write down a word over and over and over in grade school for spelling? It has been scientifically proven that repetition helps lock information into your brain. If you repeat something enough, it becomes natural (the phrase “Practice Makes Perfect” is no joke). If you hear something often enough, it becomes second nature to immediately link something to it.

Repetition & Triggers creating Repetition & Triggers:

There was a skit featured on a popular cartoon I watched as a kid (Fox’s Animaniacs) called The Wheel of Morality.  Essentially at the end of the episode the 3 main characters would spin The Wheel of Morality saying, “Wheel of Morality, turn, turn, turn, tell us the lesson that we should learn.” The wheel would stop on a random phrase, such as, “you should look both ways before crossing the street.”  The phrases were always well known but never had any significance towards the rest of the episode.  In a sense the writing for the cartoon followed the same tricks of the trade for advertising: repetitious content and trigger statements. When I was looking into the tricks of advertising, I realized great ads allowed for a connection between the audience and the product, by either building upon what the viewer already knows (while finding a way to revitalize it), or by sharing a fun consistency (trust and entertainment).

Find what works and do it over and over again – and your audience will be there waiting for you.

Savannah Lewis
Metaverse Mod Squad