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:
Which fictional character has already spent years demonstrating the qualities our product desires to claim?
Here are six campaigns that probably weren't thought of by asking this question and a few others, but they could have been...
- Borrow the Character's Proven Competence
- Find the Character Who Needs the Product Most
- Borrow the Character’s Lifelong Obsession
- Recruit the Character Who Embodies the Problem
- Set the Most Unforgiving Difficulty Test
- Borrow the Character's Cultural Job
1. Borrow the Character’s Proven Competence
Find a character whose defining ability matches the quality the brand wants to claim, then give them an equivalent role in the campaign.
The Fixer — Direct Line, Saatchi & Saatchi, 2014
Insurance brands regularly promise to be helpful when things go wrong. The claim is reassuring but vague. “We solve problems” sounds persuasive until every competitor says it.
Direct Line recruited someone audiences had already seen solve a problem under considerably greater pressure.
Winston Wolf appears briefly in Pulp Fiction, but the impression lasts. He arrives at a chaotic crime scene, assesses the situation without panic, issues precise instructions and makes the problem disappear. Harvey Keitel reprised the character for Direct Line, applying the same composure and practical authority to everyday insurance emergencies.
The brand did not have to establish why the Wolf was qualified. His fictional history had already supplied the case study. Direct Line simply gave him smaller problems to fix.
This is more than borrowed fame. The character performs exactly the service behaviour the brand wishes to own. His role and the proposition become the same thing.
The question that could have produced it:
Which fictional character is already famous for doing exactly what we promise to do?
The creative move: The Working Hero, from the Perspectives Engine → Powerful Hero
2. Find the Character Who Needs the Product Most
Instead of choosing someone who represents the product quality, find a character whose established limitation, obsession or predicament makes the benefit unusually valuable.
ScissorHandsFree — Cadillac, Leo Burnett, 2021
Hands-free driving is a useful feature for an ordinary motorist. For a member of the Scissorhands family, it is closer to liberation.
Cadillac returned to the world of Edward Scissorhands with Edgar, Edward’s teenage son. Like his father, Edgar has blades where his fingers should be. Everyday life is therefore full of complications. He punctures a football, struggles on public transport and accidentally damages objects around him.
Then he gets behind the wheel of a Cadillac equipped with Super Cruise hands-free driving.
The casting does not simply add affection and nostalgia to a technology demonstration. Edgar’s entire fictional inheritance makes him the person most qualified to appreciate the feature. Hands-free driving allows him to experience something other drivers take for granted: control without the danger created by his hands.
Cadillac found a character whose problem had been established decades earlier and allowed the product to solve it. The extremity of his need made the feature easier for everyone else to understand.
The question that could have produced it:
Which fictional character’s defining limitation would make our feature feel indispensable?
The creative move: Borrow a Ready-Made Character, from the Perspectives Engine → Most In Need POV
