Truth over nice creates marketing that Australians talk about

Nice advertising is dull and should be avoided by businesses seeking growth, argues Clemenger BBDO’s Simon Wassef. He says truthful communications can be transformative.

Simon Wassef is the chief strategy & experience officer at Clemenger BBDO Australia

We’re too nice in the marketing industry.

Yes, nice. In marketing? The bastion of creativity in the boardroom? The industry of CMOs and CCOs who made legendary work by being bloody-minded? The industry blessed with everyone from an MBA graduate to a misfit who snuck past recruiters with not much more than a questionable CVs and good chat?

Yes, that marketing industry.

You know I’m right. Just look at all the dull communications out there. Look at all the things you skip. The talking animals were fun. Apart from that, it’s too nice.

We’re avoiding hard conversations and acquiescing to stuff that isn’t that good because, let’s face it, business is tough, and we don’t want to take as many risks.

Last month in The Australian, ad effectiveness guru Peter Field said the smart people at The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising and System1 proved that dull advertising cost more (like, millions more) because you had to literally pay more for people to give it the time of day.

So, not only is being nice bad for the work, it’s bad for business.

Here’s my call to the marketing industry: instead of being nice and dull, tell the truth. Tell. The. Truth.

What do I mean? There’s a scene in the movie Jerry Maguire where Jerry, played by Tom Cruise, storms out of the locker room and Rod Tidwell, played by Cuba Gooding Jr, says: “That’s the problem, Jerry, you think we’re fighting, and I think we’re finally talking!”

That’s the moment they connect.

That’s the power of truth. It can be hard to hear but it moves creativity forward. It reframes categories and behaviour.

It leads to work that Australians talk about. At Clems we know a little bit about that.

But don’t just take it from me. This year we heard a brand you might know, called Nike say, “Winning isn’t for everyone”. That’s a hard truth. We’re not all going to get a trophy. There are no awards for participation. It presented winners as mean. Because they are. And it was the most impactful work of the Olympics.

“Winning isn’t for everyone”. Ouch. Hard truth. Powerful message. Picture: Getty Images

A few years ago, Domino’s told the truth about their lacklustre pizzas and very publicly brought us all on their journey to being better. Their stock price went up 6000 per cent in eight years.

At Clems we saw this in our work for HCF. The idea was simply to tell people the truth: that every single thing HCF does is in service of delivering value to its members. They take this seriously. So instead of spending money on offers to attract customers, we literally gave away useless things we found around the HCF offices. Awareness went up, consideration went up and HCF had its best year ever.

Moral of the story: nice is dull. When it comes to the work, tell the truth. It works.

Simon Wassef is the chief strategy & experience officer at Clemenger BBDO Australia.