Getting to an idea worth fighting for rarely begins from an obvious starting point. Inspired by former Wieden+Kennedy Creative Director Jason Bagley, this series uses provocative questions to mine the Big Ideas That Work Engines for repeatable creative tactics that can help answer them.
This time, we’re asking:
What does it feel like to switch to us—and is there a small drama in that moment worth exaggerating?
Here are six campaigns that probably weren't thought of by asking this question and a few others, but they could have been...
- Make the Alternative Feel Irresistible
- Exaggerate the Emotional Release
- Show the Old Choice Being Abandoned
- Treat Switching as an Act of Betrayal
- Stage the Realisation Inside the Old Experience
- Make Not Switching Feel More Absurd
1. Make the Alternative Feel Irresistible
Instead of explaining why people should switch, dramatise the growing sensation that resistance is becoming impossible.
Join the Flip Side — Samsung, Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam, 2023
Convincing committed iPhone owners to consider a Samsung Galaxy was not simply a product-comparison problem. Apple loyalty was embedded in habits, identity and social belonging. Samsung needed to make crossing over feel more emotionally charged than comparing specifications.
Join the Flip Side turned interest in the Galaxy Z Flip into something resembling a horror-film curse. After encountering the folding phone, an Apple user begins noticing flip-shaped objects everywhere. Books close like it. Sandwiches fold like it. Even people and animals seem to echo its movement. The more she tries to resist, the more completely the idea takes over.
The campaign exaggerates a familiar switching moment: the point at which an alternative enters your imagination and your existing choice no longer feels quite as settled. Samsung does not present switching as a sensible upgrade. It makes desire feel contagious.
The question that could have produced it:
What if trying our product made returning to the old choice almost impossible?
The creative move: Genre as the Proof, from the Metaphor Engine → Dramatise the Benefit
2. Exaggerate the Emotional Release
Find the modest satisfaction people feel after switching or saving, then inflate it into a wildly disproportionate celebration.
Epic Action Man — MoneySuperMarket, Mother, 2018
Comparing insurance and changing providers is useful but emotionally undramatic. It resembles paperwork rather than personal triumph. MoneySuperMarket found the tiny emotional release hidden inside the transaction and gave it the scale of an action blockbuster.
In Epic Action Man, a mild-mannered office worker discovers how much he has saved through MoneySuperMarket. The result transforms him into an absurdly muscular action hero. He bursts through windows, rides a motorbike through an office and revels in the kind of swagger normally reserved for someone who has saved the world rather than money on insurance.
The exaggeration captures something recognisable. Switching can produce a brief flare of self-satisfaction: the feeling that you have finally outsmarted a system that was quietly charging you too much.
MoneySuperMarket turned that flicker of pride into a full-body fantasy. Saving stopped looking like cautious administration and started feeling like victory.
The question that could have produced it:
If we exaggerated the emotional release after switching, what would this tiny victory feel like?
The creative move: Dignified Value—Make Saving Feel Like Swagger, from the Reframe Anything Engine → Reframe Value
3. Show the Old Choice Being Abandoned
Capture the exact moment when discovering the preferred brand makes the product already in someone’s hand feel instantly disposable.
The Moment You Find Heinz — Heinz, Serviceplan Cologne, 2022
Brand switching is often treated as a considered decision. Heinz focused on a much smaller and funnier moment: what happens to the product you were about to buy when you suddenly find the one you actually wanted?
The campaign showed rival mayonnaise abandoned in increasingly implausible places around supermarkets. Jars appeared among frozen foods, household products and other entirely unrelated shelves—as though shoppers had discovered Heinz and immediately dropped their previous choice wherever they happened to be standing.
The discarded jars became physical evidence of changing allegiance. Heinz did not need shoppers to deliver testimonials about superior taste or quality. Their imagined behaviour supplied the verdict.
The campaign dramatised switching not as a careful comparison but as instant rejection. The old choice was acceptable only until Heinz appeared.
The question that could have produced it:
What happens to the old choice at the precise moment someone discovers ours?
The creative move: Turn Abandoned Products into Switching Evidence, from the Creative Commerce Engine → Creative Shelf and Point-of-Sale Interventions
