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:
Who could prove our point more convincingly than we ever could?
Here are seven campaigns that probably weren't thought of by asking this question and a few others, but they could have been...
- Find the People Who Cannot Fake Their Reaction
- Ask the Audience the Buyer Trusts Most
- Turn What Fans Do Into the Claim
- Let Sceptics Judge Before They See the Label
- Put the Product Before a Harder Jury
- Let Customers Produce the Evidence
- Let the Product Testify for Itself
1. Find the People Who Cannot Fake Their Reaction
Remove the witness’s ability to perform and turn their involuntary response into the review.
Sleep Talk Reviews — IKEA, Rethink, 2026
Mattress advertising has no shortage of people lying down and declaring that something feels comfortable. The trouble is that they are awake, conscious of the camera and perfectly capable of saying what the brand wants to hear.
IKEA Canada found reviewers who were considerably less guarded: customers talking in their sleep.
Participants spent the night on IKEA mattresses while specialist recording equipment captured their unconscious speech. The resulting fragments were interpreted with help from a sleep-talking expert and turned into product reviews drawn from a state in which the customers could neither flatter IKEA nor edit themselves.
The campaign made the lack of a polished verdict the source of its credibility. These were not articulate testimonials about firmness, support or value. They were strange, unfiltered nonsense from people in deep blissful sleep. And there's no better review for sleeping than that.
The question that could have produced it:
Whose reaction would become more believable if they could not consciously control it?
The creative move: Find an Involuntary Reviewer, from the Creative Engine → Creative Use of Reviews
2. Ask the Audience the Buyer Trusts Most
Find the user whose response matters more to the decision-maker than any expert recommendation.
Laugh Tracker — Tennessee Tourism, VMLY&R, 2021
Parents planning a family holiday are surrounded by rankings, reviews and carefully composed photographs. But the opinion that ultimately matters is often sitting in the back seat.
Tennessee Tourism equipped children with wearable technology that measured laughter, excitement and other physical responses as they visited attractions across the state. The resulting reactions created personalised recommendations based not on what travel writers considered impressive, but on what children demonstrably enjoyed.
The children were credible because they were both the real audience and poor candidates for polite promotional enthusiasm. A bored child is unlikely to conceal the verdict for long. A laughing one provides evidence that parents understand immediately.
The question that could have produced it:
Whose response does our customer trust more than their own?
The creative move: Use the Most Authentic Expert, from the Perspectives Engine → Authentic Experts
3. Turn What Fans Do Into the Claim
Find the most excessive examples of customer devotion and let their behaviour write the proposition.
It Has to Be Heinz — Heinz, Wieden+Kennedy, 2023
Heinz could have claimed to inspire unusual loyalty. Its customers had already found more persuasive ways to demonstrate it.
The global platform drew on real stories of people carrying Heinz into restaurants, taking bottles on holiday, choosing the brand despite the inconvenience and even tattooing it onto their bodies. These were not conventional endorsements appended to an advertising idea. Their excessive behaviour was the idea.
Each story dramatised the same product truth: for some people, an alternative ketchup is not really an alternative. The inconvenience fans were willing to tolerate supplied stronger evidence than a preference survey ever could.
Crucially, Heinz did not attempt to make the behaviour appear normal. It celebrated the unreasonable lengths people went to. The irrationality was what made the affection credible. A brand saying “people love us” is a claim. Someone smuggling the product into a restaurant that serves another ketchup is proof.
The question that could have produced it:
What are our most devoted customers already doing that proves more than our advertising could claim?
The creative move: Reflect the Fandom Back to Itself, from the Fandom Engine
