Written by: Nicolas Pandolfi McLaughlin
(5 Minute Read)
Welcome to the worlds most beloved dating show, “Bad Ads”. Let’s see which one the customer will choose to commit with! Who’s behind door number one? Power, success, and oh so much hair gel, please welcome the “hey I’m casually leaning on a Lamborghini”, (place crowd applause here).
Behind door number two we’ve got a beautiful woman laughing at a salad in high quality 4K. This ad says “YOU will love the way you look so much, you’ll practically laugh at a bundle of dirty leaves. And behind door number 3 we’ve got a classic vanilla bland boring awkwardly shy photo of a business owner who seemingly has never been on camera and wants you to know it. Oh, and don’t forget all the paragraphs of words all around them that you definitely won’t read!
So which will the customer click on, purchase, or watch? ABSOLUTELY NONE! If this is you, PLEASE, for the sake of humanity, stop TRYING to be authentic! You can not TRY to be authentic and in fact, it defeats the purpose of the entire definition. If you have to try, you’re trying too hard and nobody, not even you, likes desperation. It’s like a chef owning a restaurant where the owner has never tasted their own cooking. You know we’re all waiting for Chef Ramsey to walk in and chew them out.
You have to know what it’s like as the person on the other side, and this goes for so many areas of your life. It works in dating, job interviews, and especially advertising. Here’s the secret, redefine how you think of advertising. It’s not about getting money by manipulating a stranger to hand over their wallet, even though plenty of big companies do this, but trust me, it costs them in so many ways you couldn’t afford at this point and it ruins your soul.
Advertising is about communication and giving people what they want in a way you know you can deliver. Remember, people are creatures of feeling and with a boring, unnatural and distasteful ad, you’re only hurting your wallet and your name. And if you’re wondering, “well how do I do that?”, stop thinking about how to do anything. Advertising and selling has been going on far before the internet or even before paper. Think back to the basics at a primal level because what is primal in installed in us all and will never change. What’s engrained in us stays the same in us. You ever wonder why all human beings have the same natural reactions to fear? We all go into a state of heart pumping, adrenaline rushing, freak-out sessions because doing so makes blood flow quicker to the brain, causing us to make faster split decisions for our protection.
There are countless behaviors just like this in all of us and it can’t be changed, so before you try to reinvent the wheel ask, “how did people do this at a primal level?”. Before people traded money, they sold horses and advertised what was lurking in the forest so the village could stay away. Successful advertising is authenticity with a powerful intention to help the person you’re advertising to, in a way of either necessity or desire. Any of us can say we like someone’s cooking only to spit it out when that person leaves the room, but is that going to help that person become a better chef? In the market, nobody is buying your cooking just to spit it out. They spit on it and walk away to the next one. So think, “how can I get people to like my cooking even though I don’t know how to cook?”.
But here’s where it really all comes down to it. You have to change your stance. People don’t like fake people and I’m sure you don’t either. You can’t trust them and you can’t be attracted to them because they’re just giving you negative vibes that your primal instincts tell your brain to stay away in order to protect you. But when you’re authentic and choose vulnerability, you always win. You may not be a fit for every single person, no matter what the product is, but with authenticity you offer a primal serving of relatability.
People love others they can see themselves in. They just naturally understand them and they know they will be understood back. Who would you rather have teaching you in school? A teacher who crams books into your backpack and orders you to study, or a teacher who sits at eye level with you, asks you genuinely if you understand and looks you in the eye when you answer? No brainer! And the only difference is that one teacher actually cares about the student and the other cares about getting through the day to snag a quick paycheck. Be the cool teacher! You don’t have to know how to be a master of your craft or be perfect but remember the cool kid in school never calls themselves cool. And guess what! You are the cool kid in school because you are a natural authenticity machine.
You don’t have to try or figure out how to be authentic because it’s not about doing more but less. It’s like asking, “how can I come off like I’m not busy? Do I pretend to put the phone down and hum in my head?”. No! You just put the phone down and relax. Can you fake relax and get the same nourishing benefits after? That is impossible! So if you are aiming to pretend to be authentic and try way too hard on your ads, just remember that people can tell what you were thinking when you made it. What you do speaks louder than you think when it comes from a scarcity mindset or when you pretend to know what people want.
Nobody notices if you gained an extra pound or you’re having a bad hair day, but people always notice when you try to convince them you’re confident when you’re not. When you make it about you, you’re practically yelling everywhere you go, “hey I’m unconfident and I’m compensating for it by wearing my sunglasses in this Walmart!”. And I’m not saying this to sound judgmental but listen, you can make people stop saying what you don’t want to hear but you can’t make them think it. Let them! It’s a gift to be free to have one place where you can be honest 100% of the time in your mind. But you’re not doing all this to gain anything from them and that’s my point. You’re advertising because you WANT to give to them, but of course you’re deserving of a great value of income because you worked hard on your product & guess what the best part is. They will gladly give you their money!
If you give to give, you always receive quality higher than you gave. If you’re acting like you are a big shot in life, people won’t say anything, but trust me, they’ll know you probably don’t feel like you come off. But if you owned how you felt and accepted you don’t need to act any way to feel big and you decided to take big actions to help others, guess what. They will perceive you as big and you will feel tall, worthy and in charge. Power can be manipulated or earned. If it’s anything but earned, it will die out at some point and leave you high and dry, plus the quality will never be what you want it to be. You’ll constantly be in this whirlpool of dissatisfaction no matter what you do because it will look like you have power but you won’t actually have any. You know those moments your girlfriend wants you to do something for her? She doesn’t care if you do what she says, but she cares that you WANT to do these things that are important to her. People don’t want to hypnotize you, they want you to want to give to them because all anyone cares about nowadays is taking. “Look at my selfie”, “buy my product”, “look at my car“, bleh! Do you really want to be that person?!
So if you stand in your power and decide to give them what they want in the first place, you will stand out and be far ahead of your competition. Give and you will receive. When you advertise, don’t make it about you or try to manipulate how they should feel or think. Give them what they want & speak to them in a way that you know your market will say, “I love this ad. They just get me.” And the end result is you actually end up “getting them” to buy from you. So do less, be you, and give like a nice person because while Mr. “stand against a Lamborghini” over there thinks he’s got power while he’s constantly struggling to find fulfillment, spending tons of money on quantities of crappy ads, authentic people are winning with quality, and people are spreading the word for them.
So go out there, bring your inner authenticity everybody is looking for and you will find a much higher quality in your advertising. You’re already enough and there is no reason to “fake it until you make it” because your competition still doesn’t realize that “real gets the meal”.