#adland

It’s Friday evening. My train pulls up at the station, the side gate where everyone normally funnels through to get to the exit is locked. Everyone is being directed towards the only open gate. On this night it is packed with ticket inspectors doing their rounds to make sure everyone has paid for their travels.

As I queue up to show my valid travel card someone pushes past. They’re walking briskly until one of the inspectors shouts out ‘Stop’. He doesn’t stop. In fact he does the opposite. He runs.

As he does the ticket inspector reaches out to grab him. He’s running with speed and the inspector only manages to snag the man’s hood. Luckily for him it was a click on style one and he got away.

He’s now running down the road.

The inspector calls out.

“You forgot your hood mate”

The man for some reason runs back. He tries to grab his hood back and turn around. Only he’s now surrounded. No running this time. He’s escorted to pay his fine.

Now this isn’t a story about paying your way on trains. You should know that.

Instead let’s talk logic.

The man had got away. He came back. I can only assume he really loves his jacket. That potentially it is his favourite thing in the whole world. Even then, replacing a hood must be a lot cheaper than paying the fine.

Humans as much as we like to think are logical and wonderfully smart creatures are prone to irrational choices. Moments of oddness.

Times when someone advertising that you’ve left your hood compels you to action.

Advertising likes to think of audiences in models. Predictable behaviour, audiences making logical leaps. If someone searches for blinds, let’s keep hitting them with adverts for blinds. Oh, they’ve already got them. That’s clear indication they're blind fans, let’s keep showing them more blinds. They’ll love it.

If someone has indicated they're a parent, let’s target them with adverts about their child’s future. It’s logical that they’ll be worried about their children’s future.

Sure, it’ll work sometimes.

I mean I know am the proud owner of over 150 types of blinds*

But let’s not forget those fuzzy leaps of logic.

We don’t buy, follow or like in completely predictable ways.

There is so much pressure on our industry to justify itself. Prove it works. Show us the results. Tell me that your advert or campaign will result in more sales, sign ups and brand love.

Yes we should factor that into every campaign.

It shouldn’t define every aspect of it through.

Keep space open for just connecting with our audience in other fuzzy ways. We keep talking about creating a ‘relationship’ with our audiences. Well relationships are fuzzy things within themselves. Sometimes you will give your friend a call just because. You’ll go for a coffee not because you want anything but a shared time can be all you need.

So let’s help our brands connect with our audiences with value. Let’s remember some of that value is wonderful and fuzzy.

*Not really. That’d be crazy. I only have 149.

Guest Spot for HYC

Part One by Darren Kimble.

“Just have fun with it” Translation:  “I am hoping I’ll work out what I’m meant to be doing from your work” 

“What’s our social idea on this?” Translation: “Client asked us for an integrated idea, we promised them that we’d make sure it was, however we just blew the budget on a location”

“Our target market is everyone” Translation:  “We really have no idea who uses our product or service”

“Our target market is millennials” Translation:  “We really have no idea who uses our product or service but we know baby boomers makes us sound old and we’re not sure what term comes after millennials.”

“We don’t have a budget in mind” Translation:  “We have a budget in mind but want to see what you’ll do if you think we’ve got unlimited budget”

“We’re the home of the big idea” Translation:  “We make big TV adverts”

“This will be a very social focused campaign” Translation:  “We’re putting the TV advert on Facebook.

“Design experience is a focus for us” Translation:  “Some of our designers have dribbble accounts”

We spoke to a magician about what creatives can learn from the art of magic. 

The Art of Persuasion from a Magician:  5 Things I’ve Learned About Audiences and How Creatives Can Apply it to Their Work

By, Comedian and Magician Zach Waldman

1.     It’s easier to educate when you make it fun – Magic is often an interactive art form.  Audience members volunteer, or more often, are forced to help with tricks.  Magic is a tactile art form.  Cards are chosen, boxes are examined, and the validity of objects are verified.

What does this mean in terms of persuading an audience to buy a product or to stop long enough to hear your message?  The best example is a trade show booth.

I’m sure you’ve been to trade shows and saw the enormous amounts of money companies spend just to host a ghost town.  What you may not know is that some companies solve this problem by using magicians to generate foot traffic to their trade show booths.

It works like this:  The magician stops people with something quick to grab the attention of the passing people.  It’s like a headline in a sales letter, but in the form of a trick.  Once the magician has a crowd, he then performs a short set that incorporates the company’s product or message.  

Because magic is interactive and tactile, people don’t just hear and see the message, they participate physically and emotionally with it.  The result is a trade show booth full of people screaming and clapping. They are ready to let the sales people scan their badges for lead nurturing.

The takeaway:  If you want people to stop in their tracks and take notice of you or your work, you need an engaging headline.  It may be a written headline, but it could also be the banging of a gong. Involve all the senses and get people to interact with your product or message.

Want an example of how magic makes learning fun?  Check out this Magical History of Quarters Video I made.

2.     The Good Kind of Bait and Switch – As a magician, I sometimes get the spectator whose only focus is on trying to catch me.  These are some of the easiest people to fool and the ones who often become my biggest fans.

It’s important to anticipate your audience’s thoughts. This way you can surprise them.  For example, in the classic con-game, the Three Card Monte, there are two black cards and a red card.  The dealer tosses the cards on the table and moves them around.  You bet and guess where the red card is.  Of course, you won’t be correct. It is a con-game after all.

Here’s the set up: The dealer will somehow get “distracted,” and while looking away, somebody else watching the game bends the corner of the red card, giving you what you think is an unfair advantage.  You put all your money down to play again, knowing you can spot the red card with the bend.  When the bent card is turned over, you’re wrong again.

The takeaway: A street hustler doesn’t make his living dealing the Three Card Monte because he’s bad at it. He knew you would try to take advantage of his “distraction.”  Learn to recognize traps.  However, you can use this power for good to stand out and get your message heard.  Think of the construction of a joke.  It’s the same idea.  Your mind is led down a path where it thinks it knows what’s coming, and then, SURPRISE!

3.     Magicians don’t use misdirection the way you think – Misdirection in the minds of most people means making a person look in one place while the magician does something sneaky somewhere else.  That’s true, but it’s not the whole story.

In the real world, professional magicians have a tougher time getting people to watch the magic than they do distracting them from secret stuff.  For instance, magicians are often hired to walk around performing sleight of hand at cocktail parties.  It’s much harder to get a group to pay attention when competing with hors d'oeuvres, free drinks, and friends they haven’t seen in a long time.

As a result, magicians need to be captivating enough to grab attention, keep that attention, and make it worth the people’s time who watched.  Think of a street performer on a promenade who has to get people walking by to stop, stay engaged, and then reach into their wallets to pay for a show they hadn’t planned on seeing.

The takeaway:  People not paying attention to your work is only one hurdle.  Once you have their attention, you must make it worth it to them. The first payment you receive from a new client is his time.  If you can give people back more than they give, that’s value. When you develop your own tribe, you don’t have to persuade them to listen to you in the future. You have gained their trust. It’s also how you get paid.

4.     You can’t go wrong with a classic – When I was a young magician, I studied the classics.  I always thought of them as training wheels. They were tricks everybody had seen and knew the secrets to.  Eventually, I figured I would only be doing modern or original magic. I was wrong.

Now, I love classic pieces of magic. I close my formal close-up show at The Magic Castle with the Cups and Balls, arguably the oldest magic trick in history. It’s what everybody talks about after the show. My very first magic set, when I was a little kid, included a plastic version of this trick.

I’ve been performing comedy and magic my entire life.  When one is immersed in something, it can be easy to assume everybody knows what you consider to be the basics of what you do.  A carpenter may assume driving a nail into a board is easy, or a mechanic may assume everybody knows how to change a tire.  Well, magicians think everybody has seen the Cups and Balls, the Linking Rings, and the Ambitious Card.

The truth is that magic, like all art (which includes carpentry and auto-repair), is impressive when it’s done well.  I’m not a painter, but when I see an artist create, that’s magic to me.  

The takeaway: Sometimes, you don’t have to be original, you just need do something better than everybody else. If you want people to notice your ad, go with a tried and true formula. Do it so well that it fools people into thinking it’s something new.

5.     Confidence, ego, and skill will get you attention – Whether you’re the magician on the trade show floor, the street performer busking, or a fine artist, you can’t be meek.  You must walk and talk with swagger.  Nobody is going to believe in you if you don’t believe in yourself. If you want people to follow you, after you have their attention, self-deprecation is the secret sauce that makes you likeable. Nobody enjoys being fooled. It’s the job of the magician to take something that’s naturally frustrating, and make it fun and enjoyable. When done well, people are having such a good time watching the magician, that how a trick is done becomes the last thing on their minds.  Instead of fighting every moment like a puzzle to be solved, they go with the flow.

Nobody likes to be sold either. It’s the job of creative people to get their messages heard over a cacophony of screaming pitchmen, while at the same time competing with companies that have behemoth budgets. It helps to remember that people will buy from you because of you. Establishing yourself and your product as a solution to your buyers’ needs is what will break through all the noise.

As a comedian and magician, I get paid to fool people and to make fun of everything.  The more of myself that I reveal, the more the punchlines write themselves.  It makes the magic and jokes go down easier.

The takeaway:  Persuading your audience, building your tribe, and getting your work seen, are all tough tasks.  In pursuing those goals, we can start to take ourselves and our work too seriously.  Yes, be a strong character with a voice, but also be willing to show your vulnerability.  When people see you’re human, they’ll bond to you, your brand, or even, your magic trick.

You can find out more about Zach’s work at http://zachwaldman.com/the-shows/close-up-magic/