Apologising is one of the most fun things a brand can do, and it has nothing to do with grovelling. Smart brands can pick up the word "sorry" and use it for something else entirely: to expose absurd logic, to give permission, to pre-empt a punchline, to hand the customer a get-out-of-jail card. The apology is a chassis. What you put inside it is the creative decision.
Here are seven tactics from the Creative Tactics Engine that use "sorry" like it means something else.
- Challenge Excuses
- Remove Excuses
- Honest Apologies
- Benefit Apologies
- Fake Apologies
- Stop Apologising
- Create Excuses
1. Challenge Excuses
Surface the excuse people are hiding behind — and make it embarrassing to say out loud.
Ridiculous Excuses — World Down Syndrome Day, 2023
The brief was inclusion: specifically, why people don't employ, befriend, or engage with people with Down syndrome. The campaign took the actual excuses people give and played them back in full, absurd daylight. The logic wasn't challenged with data. It was mocked into irrelevance. When you hear your own excuse performed as comedy, it stops functioning as a reason.
The Danish Road Safety Council's Helmet is Always a Good Idea (2020) took on cyclists resistant to safety messaging by staging a Viking warrior finding reasons not to wear a helmet. The tougher the excuse sounds, the more obviously it crumbles under scrutiny. Pubs Against Drugs (2022) linked the casual rationalisation of party drug use to the full supply chain behind it: gang violence, child labour, environmental destruction. "It's just recreational" met the consequence it was designed to ignore.
