One of the golden rules of creative writing is to show, never tell. When you think about actors in movies, the good ones manage to always convey a message through their emotions. You’ll never see an actor audibly say “I’m sad”. Instead, they’ll show it through their emotions, actions and body language. That’s what it means to show instead of tell, it should evoke feelings from you, instead of you being told what’s happening.
This can also apply to marketing. Instead of telling someone that your latest electronic device has a 3.5Ghz processor, 16GB of RAM and so forth, you should tell them something they want to hear and leave those technical details for later. For example, you can tell them the things they can do with your products. If you call your electronic device the “fastest available on the market” then your consumers will probably get a good idea that the components inside are pretty darn good. This is what it means to show.
Sell a Vision
When you sell a product, you have to sell it in a way that your audience visualises something. With the previous example, you could tell someone that you produce the fastest available electronic device on the market, but it doesn’t help if you just say these things—they need some assistance. Video production for business is a great way to compress your marketing vision into a video to show to the world. Cinematic angles, examples of how to use your device and showcasing what it can do are just some of the things to add to a video advertisement. In addition to just advertising, you can use video to create exciting promotions and guides for your products.
But that’s not all when it comes to selling a vision. You want to make your audience imagine them using your device, which is why many websites give example situations where you can use something. Are you selling a pair of arthritis gloves? Your audience isn’t going to care what plastic it’s made out of or the grade—they want to know the uses. Tell them it can reduce pain in their hands during tasks, tell them it’s a create way to prevent arthritis pains, and let them know how it can change their lives. In other words, sell them not just the product, but a vision of how they will be using it.
Create a Narrative
The easiest way to sell a vision and market a memorable product is to create a narrative. Thai advertisements are masters of this. Thai insurance advertisements are the perfect blend of fiction, real-case scenarios and narrative. In many of these life insurance advertisements, the story follows a humble main character that sacrifices their own money and time for the betterment of others. Eventually, the story concludes and they receive a lot of love and affection from those they helped, with the morale of the story being to focus on the good things in life, not material things.
If someone told you this story, it’s memorable and touches the heart. However, what you don’t expect is that it’s not just a random good-feeling video—it’s advertising life insurance. By creating a narrative and linking it with your chosen products, you can make it more memorable so that it sticks in the minds of people and resonates with them on a deep and personal level. These Thai adverts have gathered millions of views from people all across the world and touched the hearts of many, but most importantly (for the company), their brand name has stuck.
If you chose to make an advert that solely focuses on presenting facts, trying to win over the audience and promoting your products and services, it won’t be nearly as captivating and interesting as something with a narrative. Hire some writers, get them involved with your advertising campaigns, and try to make something memorable and special for the viewers to remember your product by.
Final Words
Creating a memorable advertising is easy when you have the power of creative writing on your side. A well-trained and experienced fictional writer isn’t the most likely person you’d hire to put on a marketing team, but if it worked for the millions of people around the world that watched those Thai life insurance commercials, then it’s definitely something to consider and a new form of advertisement that is rarely used, making it a prime opportunity to use narrative building to your advantage and create wonderful and memorable advertisements.
