How To Be An Advertising Tease

Have you seen Channel 4’s advert for new TV show ‘Eden’? The ad features a landscape with phrases fading in and out on the screen: “No extremism. No pollution. Absolutely no selfie sticks. What if we could start again?” It finishes by telling us ‘Eden’ starts in July, and that’s it. You can watch the whole thing on YouTube. It will only take twenty seconds of your time.

Are you curious? I am. And it’s not the first time Channel 4 has released an advert like this – remember the advert for Humans last year? That played out like an actual advert for synthetic humans, and the internet was a little freaked out about it.

It seems like Channel 4 is getting pretty good at teasing us – first by tricking some of us into thinking artificial intelligence is walking among us, and now by posing a question designed to make us think, without actually telling us what is coming. “What if we could start again?” Well I don’t know. Who is starting again, and where are they going? What’s going to happen to them? And are selfie sticks really that bad?

It’s a great way to launch something new, and it reminds me of the slow release of information surrounding Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Perhaps Channel 4’s tactics could also be applied to digital marketing.

There’s no reason why online businesses can’t try this themselves the next time they launch a new product. With social media, everything is easy to share and businesses may even find themselves going viral if they get lucky and can produce something really exciting.

But what format could it take? Well, you could consider making a short video like Channel 4 have, or an ominous landing page with captivating graphics and a few words could also work well – it depends where your skill set lies, what you want to advertise, and what you’d like to say. An email could also work, however as this would only be seen by those on your mailing list initially, you may want to use this simply to spread your video or landing page. You could distribute it to your mailing list first so they are the first to see it and belong to a special club of people who have been let into a secret and aren’t sure what’s going on but are still pretty excited about it.

The question is, how much information is enough? You want to give enough information so that people are interested and excited, but not so much that there’s nothing left to be curious about. So where do you draw the line?

You could consider asking a thought-provoking question that speaks to your target audience. Or hint at solving a problem but don’t yet say how that problem will be solved. Reinforce your message regularly through social media so people ask “what do they keep going on about?” There are so many ways you could go about creating an air of mystery around yourself. So next time you advertise a brand new product or service, think gentle hints – not sledgehammers.