Head First: The Power of Diving Into Creative Risks

The Essence of Persuasion and the Need to Take Risks

It’s Saturday morning in early September, and you turn on Hulu Live TV to watch the early college football games as you wait for Arizona State to play. During a commercial break, a diver comes on the screen. He walks up a diving board as the voiceover talks about Republicans’ extremism. Then, the diver jumps off the high dive into an empty pool. While the diver makes that deadly leap, the voiceover announces “Don’t let Blake Masters take Arizona off the deep end.” This image sticks with you for the rest of the day.

That’s exactly our goal at Change Media Group—in a world bombarded with content, ads, and information, standing out is not just an advantage—it's a necessity. Central to this effort is strong creative that’s not only aesthetically beautiful but also compelling, persuasive, and memorable.

The Risk-Reward Paradigm

Achieving standout creative is not just about following a set formula. It requires taking risks. Here's why:

• Breaking Through the Noise: In a saturated media landscape, playing it safe often means blending in. Risk-taking can propel your content above the noise, giving it the spotlight it deserves.

• Setting Trends: While following conventional wisdom might feel safe and guarantee some level of relevance, setting new trends establishes authority. And setting trends requires venturing into new creative territory. In his book “Hit Makers” Derek Thompson says that balancing the familiar and the new or novel is what creates hits and helps set trends.

• Engaging the Audience: Safe content can be predictable. Predictable content can be boring. To engage an audience, surprise them or challenge their expectations.

The Safety Net

So how do we know these risks will pay off and not just disturb our audience?

By conducting comprehensive creative tests or randomized controlled trials (RCTs), juxtaposing conventional ads against their "risky" counterparts, we're able to provide our clients with reassurance when they may feel a video is too “out there.” Our data-driven approach demonstrates that our non-traditional creative often resonates more powerfully with our target audience than standard political ads.

The Benefit of “Risky” Creative in Persuasion

• Evokes Emotion: Strong creative has the power to evoke a spectrum of emotions – like joy, surprise, sadness, and even anger. When we feel, we connect. That connection is what brands and marketers are after, as it paves the way for persuasion.

• Boosts Recall: Think about the most iconic ads or campaigns you can remember. They're probably deeply creative, aren't they? Remember the Truth campaign ad where they put body bags outside a tobacco company headquarters? Remember the Budweiser “Wassup?” ad? Remember Apple’s iconic 1984 ad? Creativity, by its nature, makes content more memorable. When we see something unique, it sticks.

• Builds Trust: Quality creative signals effort, investment, and care. When a brand is willing to put forward polished and thoughtful creative work, it communicates a certain level of dedication and trustworthiness.

The Balancing act

Taking risks in creative endeavors doesn't mean being reckless. It means pushing boundaries while still being rooted in strategy, understanding your audience, and staying true to the brand or campaign’s essence.

Here are some examples of where our team took a risk and it paid off:

“Stroller Moms,” was an ad that we produced for a Prosperity Michigan campaign. It broke through the noise in the final weeks leading up to the election due to its cartoon aesthetic. It had a viral life on Reddit, proving it broke through with a younger audience.

Our ad “Coach,” produced for the United Way’s Vaccine Hesitancy campaign, was a change in tone compared to other COVID-19 content we’d seen on the internet. But when up against a handful of different videos in a creative test, including devastating stories of personal loss due to Covid-19, this out-of-the-box approach to vaccine communication proved effective with our targets.

In 2022, “The Deep End” ran in Arizona for an independent expenditure program. This creative effort moved the needle in RCTs and was shown to have measurably moved voters as compared to a control group!

However, it's worth noting that for every successful risk, there are others that didn't pay off. This is where the value of iteration, feedback, rigorous testing, and continuous learning comes in.

Strong creative is the backbone of persuasive content. It makes audiences feel, remember, and trust. But to truly stand out, to be unforgettable, we have to take risks. In the vast sea of content that is the modern world, only those willing to sail uncharted waters will find lasting success.