Total Conversion Through Advertising: An Examination (Pt. 1)

At the risk of sounding like an industry hipster, great creative is sooo underrated.

At the basic level, it informs, educates or entertains its audience.
At the next level, it persuades, influences, provokes or titillates.
One to one thousand levels higher, great creative advertising captivates, spellbinds, transforms and converts.

Conversion transcends selling because it changes preference.
If an ad, site, spot or “experience”* sells us, it does so only when there is lack of preference.
A sell gets us one time and one unit at a time and may achieve nothing more but conversion gets us for good (until we, the fickle consumers are converted by another).

I hate to admit it, but the new Wal-Mart spot nearly converted me.



Blink test: It’s simple, funny and universally accessible.

Further study: It’s well cast, well paced and its use of kids doesn’t feel cheap or exploitative.

It also comes along at a time when Target, the store’s main competitor has suffered a PR black eye with progressives for their questionable campaign contributions (Know your customers, Target!) and Wal-Mart hasn’t given us a reason to remember their long history of international human rights violations in quite some time (the rebrand certainly helped too).

I was nearly converted though – just nearly. It’s harder for us in the industry to be converted. We’re immune to most of the tricks and our bullshit detectors are permanently set in the ON position.

Conversion does happen though and it happens to everyone.

In part 2 of this examination of total conversion, I’ll ask a few friends who aren’t in the biz (yeah, I know) and colleagues who are, about their experience and find out what it was about the brand message and image that hijacked their good senses and made them loyal for life.

Stay tuned…
- Casey

[BTW, Can we kill this usage of the neverwas buzzword, already? ]