A product claim stated in an ad is a promise. The same claim demonstrated through the discount mechanic is proof. The campaigns below don't separate the selling from the showing — the way you interact with the product, the performance you demonstrate, the condition the product was built to solve, the diagnostic it runs on itself — these are the pricing variables. Here are five tactics from the Commerce Engine that make the product do the selling.
- The Product Interaction Discount — the way the customer handles the product is the pricing variable
- The Product Proof Discount — prove the claim; the proof unlocks the price
- The Diagnostic Discount — the product reads its own condition; the discount reflects what it finds
- The Performance Discount — the customer's performance with the product determines the reward
- The Without-You Discount — the harder the world makes the alternative, the better the deal
1. The Product Interaction Discount
Make the physical interaction with the product the pricing mechanism — the more authentically the customer uses it, the better the deal.
KFC Shakin' Shakin' — KFC, Ogilvy & Mather / Gloo@Ogilvy, 2017, South Africa
KFC launched the Shakin' Shakin' Meal — snacks in a bag with flavoured sprinkles, mixed by shaking the bag — and needed a novel way to get a mobile-obsessed audience to trial it. They built a mobile ad that used the phone's accelerometer to mirror the product: the harder the shake, the more flavour was added to the ad visually, replicating the product ritual on screen before the meal had been ordered. At the end of the shake, a voucher was unlocked. The shaking was the ad, the product demo, and the discount entry mechanic simultaneously. Over a million views, more than five million shakes, and one of the most successful mobile ad campaigns ever at the time.
Focus Face Off (Goldfish, Zulu Alpha Kilo, 2021, Canada) launched Kravin' Ketchup Goldfish crackers with a Snapchat lens that required users to fix their attention on a Goldfish cracker on screen for exactly nine seconds — the duration of a goldfish's attention span — without blinking, tapping or looking away. The longer the focus, the higher the score and the better the discount. The product was the challenge, the product was the timer, and the product's own mythology was the mechanic.
