PLEASANT v UNPLEASANT ADVERTISING

 

 

Paul Bainsfair always used a simple story to illustrate how to get people to do what you want them to do.

The sun and the wind were having an argument about who was more influential.

The wind saw a man walking along in an overcoat and said, “I bet I can blow that coat right off him”.

So the wind blew and blew, but the more it blew the more the man wrapped the coat tightly round himself.

Eventually the wind said, “I give up, I can’t make him take his coat off.”

The sun said, “Let me try”.

And the sun smiled and beamed until the man got so hot he was sweating and had to take the coat off.

Paul used that simple story to illustrate his view that charm was more persuasive than force, that high-pressure salesmanship could actually be a turnoff.

Although that story seems simplistic it’s actually backed up by science and it’s actually the way the entire world works.

It’s called Bernoulli’s principle and it defines the way things will move away from a high pressure state towards a low pressure state.

That is how aeroplane wings work, also sailboats, drinking straws, carburettors, flutes, golf balls, even Beckham’s curving kick.

An aeroplane wing (in cross section) is curved so that the air has to travel further over the top of the wing than the bottom.

This causes a lower pressure above the wing and the plane is sucked upward.

The air passes over a carburettor nozzle, sucking the fuel out as it does.

Golf balls are dimpled so that, when they spin, the air pressure underneath is greater and they are sucked up into lower pressure air.

Footballers, cricketers, baseball players, all spin the ball the way they want it to curve, this condenses the air on the opposite side and the ball spins towards the lower pressure side.

So the principle of nature and science is that an object moves away from high pressure and is attracted towards low pressure.

Paul Bainsfair’s point was that it’s also a good analogy for the way people behave.

People move away from high pressure salesmanship towards less pressure.

We used to be able to make advertising that didn’t depend on constantly pressuring people.

Advertising that, believe-it-or-not, people actually enjoyed.

The start-point was that we knew we weren’t invited into people’s homes, no one turned on their TV set to watch the adverts.

We were intruding and we needed to behave accordingly.

Martin Boase used to say “When you are an uninvited guest in someone’s home the least you can do is not be aggressive and rude.”

In advertising terms it’s the difference between being pleasant versus being unpleasant, being interesting versus being boring, nagging someone versus charming someone, being original versus non-stop repetition.

Of course, boring, nagging, unpleasant ads will work if you repeat them often enough, and that’s become the justification for the constant repetition of bad ads: they work.

Well of course they work in a crude, primitive way, anything will work if you do it often enough.

Before Bernoulli, ships were old-fashioned square-rigged galleons that depended on the wind pushing them along.

But with the Bernoulli principle, the sail on a modern sailboat is curved so that the air has to pass further over the front of the sail than the back, this means the sail is actually being sucked forwards.

That’s why today, sailing boats can actually go faster than the speed of the wind.

Because attraction really is more powerful than constant pressure, enjoyment is preferable to misery, pleasure is better than pain, liking is better than disliking, fun is better than nagging.

High pressure repels, low pressure attracts.

If only advertising could rediscover the Bernoulli principle.