Growth Newsletter #206

Every copywriter will tell you to be as clear as possible.

Today, I’m telling you to be the opposite.

Being cryptic can be powerful.

For example:

The beauty and hilarity of this ad/public service announcement is in its lack of clarity.

It’s not saying: “Don’t drink and drive or else you’ll be arrested, go to the hospital, or maybe even die.”

If it did, it would have elicited an eyeroll.

Instead, the unusual sight of the 4 cars and 4 people hooks and intrigues you.

You read the line. 

You look at them again. 

A light bulb goes off. 

You get it. 

Dopamine surges through your brain. 

You chuckle.

All because they didn’t tell you everything you needed to know. Instead, they presented all the information, left some key things unsaid, and let you bridge the gap.

Some examples of this done well

This is one of my favorite ads from The Economist:

This ad cleverly nods to the horrors of smartphones/watches:

This ad leverages the familiar image of the Hulk’s hand to shortcut understanding:

And lastly, this ad makes you put two and two together to explain the weird scene:

Don’t always be crystal clear

As Charlie Munger said in his 1996 Stanford commencement speech about a lesson his father taught him:

Instead of just pounding it in, he told it to me in a way that required a slight mental reach. I had to make the reach myself in order to get the idea that I should behave like Grant McFayden. And because I had to reach for it, he figured I’d hold it better. And, indeed, I’ve held it all the way through until today, through all of these decades.

These types of ads are intriguing, memorable, and funny. 

Which is hard to say about 99+% of ads.

But hopefully, now, I'll be able to say it about yours 😉