How It Affects The Believability Of The Message

It's been some time since I've had a chance to sit down at my computer and write a quick thought about experiential marketing.  So pardon the cobwebs in advance - much appreciated.

Let me first clearly state that I am not a full time ad critic, but when I am in a room full of three people that say the same negative thing about an ad - something clearly went wrong experientially.

There's a new TV spot running for a financial services company.  It's running here on the left coast, and I'm uncertain if it's a national campaign.

The commercial starts with a man that's in a suit more than a few sizes too large for him.  Large enough that the minute the spot started the folks in the room said something about it. Once the man started talking it became clear that the commercial was about a financial growth fund - errrrrrr.  So, thinking that I was clever, I stated that they were going to wait until the end of the commercial - then the man would grow into his suit.  Thus, driving home the point that this financial services company could really make your money grow - I was let down.

Unfortunately, there was no growth of the man at the end - there was just a man telling us about the company's amazing growth fund while he stood there in his oversized suit.

I'm simply pointing this out because it is a great example of how important it is to have audio and visual coherence - and how dissonance of one or the other can just be a distraction from the message.  This is a very simple example, but I'm sure there are many more

Think about it.  Remember, we were being told about how our money would grow by someone that looked like he needed to grow himself.

What can we learn from this?  In experiential marketing, everything matters - Everything.

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