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’s happening right now in culture that I can satirise or play off?
Here are six campaigns that probably weren't thought of by asking this question and a few others, but they could have been...
1. Puncture the Hype From Inside
Enter the fashionable new world, then satirise the breathless behaviour developing around it.
Metaverrrrrrr — Krungsri First Choice, Leo Burnett Thailand, 2022
In early 2022, seemingly every brand wanted to enter the metaverse. The enthusiasm frequently arrived before any compelling reason to be there. Krungsri First Choice could have joined the rush with another solemn announcement about building the future of finance. Instead, it turned that rush into the joke.
The film follows two celebrities attempting to make the world’s first metaverse credit-card commercial. Their avatars are repeatedly interrupted by marketers demanding increasingly fashionable additions: NFTs, cryptocurrency, gaming and anything else capable of making the idea sound more futuristic.
The extra letters in Metaverrrrrrr capture the strategic point neatly. The longer marketers stretched the word, the less meaning it seemed to contain. Krungsri participated in the trend while signalling that it understood how ridiculous the surrounding hype had become. It earned cultural credibility by being the brand willing to laugh at the culture it was entering. Campaign overview
The question that could have produced it:
What is everyone in our industry pretending to understand because they are afraid of appearing behind?
The creative move: Mock Your Own Industry’s Hype Before Someone Else Does, from the Parody Engine → Satire Everyday Behaviour
2. Turn the Mood Into the Proposition
Find the feeling connecting apparently unrelated cultural events, then position the product as another satisfying expression of it.
Confusing Times — Burger King, DAVID Madrid, 2021
The early 2020s produced no shortage of contradictions. People attended meetings without leaving their bedrooms. Billionaires talked about moving to Mars while much of the world remained indoors. Football matches were played in empty stadiums, watched by enormous audiences at home.
Burger King collected these recognisable absurdities under one observation: we were living through confusing times. It then introduced one more. The Impossible Whopper contained no meat but tasted remarkably like a Whopper.
The campaign did not satirise a single headline. It identified the emotional weather surrounding many of them. That gave the product a natural place in the conversation. In a period when almost everything felt slightly difficult to explain, a plant-based burger that tasted like beef was not an awkward contradiction. It was the most appropriate product imaginable.
The question that could have produced it:
What strange quality do today’s biggest cultural stories have in common with our product?
The creative move: Use the Cultural Mood as the Product Frame, from the Reframe Engine → Reframe the Cultural Moment
3. Follow the Trend to Its Absurd Conclusion
Extend the logic of an emerging behaviour until its ridiculous endpoint reveals what is already wrong with it.
AfterLife Pay — Hell Pizza, Yarn, 2023
Buy now, pay later had made borrowing feel increasingly frictionless. The model had spread from substantial purchases to clothes, entertainment and eventually everyday food. Hell Pizza decided that if payment could be postponed for weeks or months, there was no obvious reason to stop there.
AfterLife Pay allowed selected customers to receive a pizza immediately and settle the bill after they died. This was not merely a comic line. Participants signed legally binding amendments that placed the debt in their wills. Hell Pizza built the stupidest possible version of deferred payment and made it real.
The stunt entered the BNPL conversation by behaving more enthusiastically than the culture it was criticising. It did not lecture people about casual debt or announce a responsible corporate position. It simply followed the fashionable logic one step further than anyone sensible would go. The resulting product made the original behaviour look newly absurd.
The question that could have produced it:
If this behaviour continues in the same direction, what is the most ridiculous service somebody could eventually launch?
The creative move: Follow the Buy Now, Pay Later Logic, from the Parody Engine → Parody as Dumb Logic
