Every category has a truth nobody gets excited about. Printer ink. Sun cream. Price comparison. Tinned fish. The duller the brief, the bigger the creative opportunity — because dull product truths are not the enemy. Dull treatments are. The product didn't change. Everything around it did.
Here are eight creative tactics from the Shift Perception Engine that turned a yawn into something worth watching.
- Turn Commitment Into Spectacle
- Turn Savings Into a Status Move
- Turn Mundane Stakes Into Survival Drama
- Find the Audience Who Delights in Your Target's Discomfort
- Turn Rejection Into a Mission
- Turn an Unwanted Habit Into Play
- Turn a Dream Into a Mechanic
- Borrow the Codes of a More Popular Category
1. Turn Commitment Into Spectacle
Find the unspoken conviction behind your product truth — and act it out to the point of absurdity.
Bear Fight — John West, Leo Burnett, 2000
The brief: prove John West sources the best salmon. A claim that had appeared in category advertising for decades without anyone noticing. The reframe: if the product truth is commitment, dramatise the commitment to the point of myth — and stage a spoof BBC nature documentary in which a fisherman dropkicks a bear to steal salmon from a riverbank. The ad generated 300 million views before viral was even a word and built brand fame in a category that had never had any.
The conviction was always in the product. The spectacle made it impossible to ignore. Commitment taken to its logical extreme stops being a claim and starts being a story.
