leaves into a huge pile. A car moves nearby. What happens next? Air currents predictably raise the leaves into the air and scatter them in different directions.
The faster the sports car moves, the sooner leaves scatter and the less time we will witness the racing car in the frame. What happens in an extreme case?
Here is a nice script of the TV commercial.
The same original image. A janitor’s broom gathers a pile of yellow and red maple leaves. We hear the sound of an approaching car. It grows. We hear the roar of a powerful engine. Leaves are winged by a powerful air stream and begin a slow waltz around the roadside trees and shrubs. Because of the diminishing sound, we know that the car has rapidly moved away.
We did not have to see it.
The logo of the advertised brand and the slogan “The incredibly fast car” appears in the final frame of the spot.
In the physical sciences, an efficient and powerful method is often used. That is: go to the consideration of the limiting case. The same method can be successfully applied in advertising.
In print ads, transition to the limit is used even more often. In the next example we face the task of promoting laundry detergent that washes away any kind of dirt. What is the easiest way to detect dirty spots? On white clothes. What associates closest of all with the color white? Let’s take fresh snow. In an ideal case, dazzling clean white linen should not be visible at all on snow.
Perfect. We came to the limit. But with one problem still unsolved. The viewer had to learn somehow that something was there on the snow. What could we do?
Let’s use identification signs. Like leaves and noises in the car commercial. Here’s how it might look in a silent printed version (see Fig. 1.1.).
With kind permission of P&G and Leo Burnett Warsaw, Poland
Fig. 1.1. Print advertising of the washing powder which leaves no chances for contamination.
Rope, clothespins and shadows are our helpers in delivering the advertising message. They put all the elements of the initial idea in their own places. The layout looks very unusual, doesn’t it?
The perfect product is when the product is absent, but its function nevertheless is performed.
Identification signs may be different. For example, Russian pancakes with caviar or Japanese rolls with salmon on plates that merge with a snow-white tablecloth (see Figs. 1.2., 1.3.). Our imagination is turned on at full power and completes the missing boundaries. As a result, we get advertising of dishwasher tablets, which will give your dishes a perfect, unsurpassed cleanliness.
Fig. 1.2. Invisible plate.
With kind permission of BBDO Moscow, Russia
Fig. 1.3. The transition to the limit in the ad for dishwasher detergent.
Very often when you think about advertising ideas it is useful to imagine what a perfect product would look like. Let us ask ourselves: “What can be called the perfect product?” Borrow the answer from TIPS4. The perfect product is when the product is absent, but its function nevertheless is performed.
The ideal product is supposed to be obviously much better than any other products. It costs nothing. It is absolutely reliable in operation. It doesn’t cause any harmful side effects. It does not require any technical support, after-sales service, warranty etc.
Here is an interesting example from history.
During the siege of the city the commander of the papal army Cesare Borgia appealed to Leonardo da Vinci with the request to build a tower which would allow his army to overcome the fortress wall which was 10 meters high.
A siege tower is a large wooden structure, usually rectangular on the ground. Its height should match the height of the wall of the fortress to give an opportunity for archers to shoot from its upper area.
Wood was used as a material for the construction of the tower. It was covered by non-combustible materials to protect it from fire. Usually freshly picked animal skins were used for these purposes. The tower can move on four wheels when hand dragged or pulled by cattle, and the storm team gets quick access to the city wall.
Before the start of construction of the tower, da Vinci advised as soon as possible to spread the rumor that his tower will be as high as 12 meters.
The idea appeared to be simple, as every brilliant idea is. Once besieged people learned about the construction of a taller siege tower, they hastily began to build their walls higher as well. Their foundation could not sustain the additional load, and it only took a few shots to make the walls collapse.
The tower Leonardo suggested did not have to be built at all.
As you can see, we have the perfect tower. It was absent, cost nothing, but it performed its function perfectly!
If you ever happen to visit the Polytechnic Museum in Moscow, take a look at one of its exhibits—an electric candle of Yablochkov. It was first demonstrated as a form of street and theater lighting in 1878 at the World Exhibition in Paris.
This invention was met by the world press with words “Russian Light”, and “Light comes from the Russia”. But Pavel Yablochkov was not the first who proposed to use an electric arc light. Electric candles were invented a bit earlier. But their light was unstable and capricious.
Near each candle, a man was needed to manually shift the horizontally arranged carbon rods as they burnt out. If the distance between the electrodes was bigger than a permissible minimum, the light became uneven, the lamp started blinking and, naturally, died out.
A device that would automatically shift the electrodes was required. And such a device was invented. It was controlled by a clock mechanism. It was quite ingenious, but it had one major drawback: the unit was still fragile.
What was the suggestion of the Russian engineer?
Perfect control is the absent one, yet its function is performed. Yablochkov changed only the geometry of candles. He placed carbon rods not horizontally but vertically. This made the gap between the rods remain constant, along the entire length.
The space between the rods was filled with melting ceramic material to save the voltaic arc from sliding down. Is it simple? Not really. It took more than 30 years to create an ideal mechanism for the convergence of electrodes.
Now let’s get back to advertising.
One day a manufacturer of modular inter-floor stairs came to our agency. The king’s share of the market was occupied by his competitors with their wooden stairs. The basic and fundamental weak side of this product is an annoying creaking sound which inevitably arises when the steps and rails are loosened, and the wood is cracked from drying out.
We decided to attack this “weak point of the enemy.” But how to show the absence of a creak visually? All we had at our disposal was a picture of the stairs and perhaps the image
