How to grab an unfair share of attention using an anti-hero perspective.
Most advertising is dull and doesn’t change consumer behaviour because it has been shaped around a familiar perspective that is easy to ignore.
But one way to definitely stand out, provoke and get remembered is to find an anti-hero perspective that stands out, provokes, and gets remembered.
Anti-Heroes often don’t care about what your brand or customer wants. They have different backgrounds and outlooks on life, and this creates an opportunity.
However, they can be on your brand’s side. The key thing to note is they’re (nearly) always anti-heroes to your target audience. They can thus be used to shock, shame, or provoke them into taking up your call to action. The four main types of anti-hero can be framed by asking these four questions:
1. What behaviour from people like your target audience would shock or provoke them into acting differently?
2. What behaviour from people different to your target audience would shock or shame them into acting differently?
3. What behaviour from people your target audience doesn’t like will reassure them about the choice your brand puts to them?
4. What benefits to people your target audience doesn’t like will piss them off and provoke a reaction?
Now let’s bring this to life with some classic examples for each framing question.
1] People like your target audience — #ItCanWait campaign, Western Cape Government’s Safely Home initiative.
Problem: Drivers text and drive and don’t believe there is anything wrong with that. They don’t feel they’re distracted so are reluctant to change their behaviour.
Solution: Identify behaviour from people just like them that shocks drivers who text and provokes them into acting differently.
Behaviour: Pedestrians who bump into things when they text while walking.
Twist: A car crash finale and the crushing sign off: You can’t even text and walk. So why do you text and drive?
Target Audience Reaction: The strapline says it all. The campaign frames the issue in a way that is hard for drivers who text to ignore. The trojan horse shift in tone from ‘slapstick funny’ to ‘deeply disturbing’ is also a fantastic way to entice engagement from the target audience before delivering the powerful closing message.
Impact: In the first week, the campaign video received over 800 000 views locally and millions worldwide. It was soon picked up by the international press and the upload to the Daily Mail Online site was viewed over 23 million times.
READ MORE: ADWEEK
2] People different to your target audience — Smoking Kid, Thai Health Promotion Foundation
Problem: Adults know that smoking is bad for them, but they don’t remind themselves of this fact and carry on regardless.
Solution: Identify behaviour from people different to adult smokers that would shock or shame them into acting differently?
Behaviour: Young kids asking for a cigarette.
Twist: As expected, all the adult smokers refused the request and instead lectured the kids on the dangers of smoking. But the kids reply: ‘If it’s so bad, why are you smoking?’ before handing them a leaflet which read: ‘You worry about me, but why not about yourself?
Target Audience Reaction: This entire experience is designed in such a way that the ‘self-awakening’ moment occurs at the most critical juncture — during the act of smoking — with a personal message that powerfully compels the smokers to reflect on their own behaviour. There is also a powerful mirroring effect on smokers who viewed this campaign online.
Impact: The number of completed calls to the quit call line provided rose 62%, outperforming all of THPF’s previous anti-smoking campaigns over the past 20 years.
READ MORE: WPP Case Study
3] People your target audience dislike — OVO, Renewable Energy Is Unstoppable
Problem: To get people in the UK to start powering their lives without ruining the planet, by switching to OVO’s 100% renewable tariff.
Solution: Identify behaviour from people your target audience doesn’t like to reassure them about the choice OVO gives them.
Behaviour: Donald Trump is a symbol for everything renewable energy is not. Trump absolutely hates solar energy. And a lot of people dislike Donald Trump.
Twist: Show Donald Trump (lookalike) trying to destroy solar panels with his golf club. This is not so much a twist rather than a hilarious spoof and very clever positioning.
Target Audience Reaction: If you don’t like Donald Trump and you believe in climate change, then this advert is engagement dynamite. OVO have just made it easy for you to become part of ‘the movement’. You can like, share, and comment on this ad and play your small part in the rally cry that renewable energy is indeed unstoppable. Campaigns don’t go viral. They go tribal. And this campaign has a big tribe of people to fire up!
Impact: Unknown
READ MORE: WARC editorial
I chose the above example because it’s fairly recent and topical. However, for those of you who are older than 40, the definitive anti-hero campaign of this genre is Audi’s City Boy.
4] People who don’t deserve to be benefiting — UNPAID TOBACCO SPOKESPERSON
Problem: Smoking is in decline but paradoxically, the fashion and entertainment industries seem stubbornly and dangerously stuck in the past as they continue to fall back on old stereotypes and portray smoking positively — as something glamorous and edgy.
Solution: Identify benefits to people your target audience doesn’t like which pisses them off and provokes a reaction.
Behaviour: Celebrities who smoke are the new face of Big Tobacco and they don’t even know it. Tobacco is benefiting from their free advertising.
Twist: Well, I’ve sort of given it away. The twist here is that the celebrities don’t even know they’re tobacco’s best advertising.
Target Audience Reaction: For people who can’t stand Big Tobacco companies (who does?) this is a disturbing revelation and is likely to provoke a response. They don’t want Big Tobacco benefiting from celebrities showcasing smoking as cool, albeit unwittingly. On the flip side, I can imagine many of you reading this post might feel slamming popular celebrities in this way isn’t great form. I can see that, but the point is, this is a great example of this type of anti-hero campaign.
Impact: Unknown
READ MORE: 72andSunny Case Study
Another recent 2021 example of this is ‘No Nasty Surprises’ made by Lucky Generals on behalf of non for profit charity: Make My Money Matter
This campaign uses an anti-hero who is happy with the status quo in order to provoke people to consider where their pension money is invested. The charming — yet thoroughly dislikable — anti-hero is the CEO of a fake business called FFS who uses the ad to thank people for investing their pensions with FFS as they have enabled the business to “destroy more national habitat than [they] ever thought possible.” The ad ends with an image of deforestation in action, prompting the tagline: “Do you know where your pension is going?”
Finally, let’s end with surely the best anti-hero campaign of all time.
Drum roll please…
The World’s Biggest Asshole
Problem: Young millennial males are vital to the organ donor registry program, but they don’t think about death much and they tune out easily to conventional campaigns featuring rosy images of organ donors saving lives.
Solution: Coleman F. Sweeney, The World’s Biggest Asshole — fulfils criteria for question one and two.
Behaviour: He acts like a complete jerk to everyone throughout his entire life.
Twist: He’s a hero in death because he donates all his organs to the organ donor registry.
Target Audience Reaction: A double whammy! Many young millennial men saw themselves as ‘assholes’ too and so were provoked into action. Others saw the campaign and realised this dirtbag did something decent that they haven’t, so this triggered a reaction.
Impact: The campaign generated 50 million views in its first week and more than 100 million to date. More importantly, online donor registrations rose dramatically. Before the campaign, they averaged 149 people a day, in the first week that spiked up to an average of 1,080 a day.
READ MORE: Media Post editorial
Want to see more examples?
No problem. At www.bigideasthatwork.com you can find over fifty anti-hero and counter-cultural campaigns which you can further classify by category or results, should you wish.
This is my first article on Medium, so I hope you enjoyed it. The good news is, if you did, there’s plenty more like this in the pipeline.
