DESIGNING

DESIRE
 CREATED BY

MELISSA PEPERS JULIAN COLE DAVIS BALLARD

is a strategy consultant and is a strategy consultant who is a freelance strategist who
futurist that helps businesses works with brands and agencies worked his magic on the deck
grow through the development of to create world class integrated design.
competitive business models and campaigns.
trend based activations.
 OVERVIEW
OVERVIEW
It’s hard to find recent examples of behavioral economics in advertising. We
took five key concepts and showed how they are coming to life in campaigns
from the last 18 months.

Enjoy,
Julian Cole

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MORE DECKS
MORE DECKS
AVAILABILITY
CASCADE
 AVAILABILITY CASCADE
Repetition creates momentum, momentum creates social proof, social proof amplifies
momentum; it becomes a self-reinforcing process.

Surge into cult-like status by shining a light on your successes as they occur. Make
buying your product the buy-in to contagion.

EXAMPLES:
Spin-Offs, ‘Unofficial’ Accounts, Release Rumours,
Grassroots Promo, Challenges
FESTIVAL SHIRT
COTTON ON

Releasing the aptly named “Festival Shirt” shortly before

Australian Music Festival FOMO led to an unexpectedly
high number of festival goers all wearing the same shirt.

Seizing the opportunity to amplify the hype, Cotton On

partnered with Deliveroo to help more people get in on the
action causing the media hype to last for longer than it
otherwise would have.

LINK
#INMYDENIM
GUESS

Kicking off the first paid sponsorship TikTok challenge,

Guess recruited top TikTokers to reveal their instant
transformation from average wardrobe to outfit of the day,
feat. Guess denim.

Challenges are movements and TikTok is a platform that

allows brands to easily tap into the momentum benefits of a
movement with an availability cascade.

LINK
TIME CAPSULE COLLAB
CHAMPION

The trend growth of heavily branded streetwear and of the

nostalgia of heritage brands meant Champion experienced a
sudden surge in popularity. To nurture the swell, Champion
released two highly successful “time capsule” collabs with
Clothsurgeon, revitalising older cuts and styles from the
Champion archive.

Brands that are naturally at the intersection of colliding

trends often notice a sudden uptake in their popularity. This
swell of momentum can turn into an availability cascade
when brands nurture the hype by tapping into these trends.

LINK
STRENGTH TO BE
LULULEMON

With very few brands truly championing new ways to

define masculinity, Lululemon were able to tap into this
space with an authentic voice that also enabled the growth
of their men’s category.

Redirect the demand around an emerging trend (redefined

masculinity) into your brand to grow self-fulfilling
momentum.

LINK
JURASSIC WORLD DELIVERY
AMAZON

Amazon “delivered” a giant parcel with air holes to the

centre of a Los Angeles shopping mall to promote Jurassic
World.

Repetition can also be created by putting a single initiative

in an important location that has regular foot traffic and can
create repetition through shareability and media exposure.
The critical location creates an automatic social proof which
can trigger an Availability Cascade.

LINK
NBA ON ESPN
ESPN

Targeting locations where people weren’t watching NBA on

ESPN (such as park benches), iOS users were sent a custom
message via AirDrop encouraging them to watch the NBA
finals instead.

Connecting personally with lots of people across multiple

geographic locations creates a shareable momentum.

LINK
VON RESTORFF
EFFECT
 VON RESTORFF EFFECT
The out-of-place captures our attention, then earns a place in our memory.
Memorability increases liking and liking increases purchasability.

The Von Restorff Effect is an opportunity to get weird with your brand and explore
one-offs that could even become annual events.

EXAMPLES:
Gamified Ads, Experiential Marketing, Pop-Ups In Unexpected Locations
APRIL FOOLS
THINKGEEK

On April Fools ThinkGeek sent out an eDM of new

products that were entirely fictional. They became such a
hit that the joke is now an annual event with the most
popular products getting made for real.

The unexpected stunt stands out in subscriber inboxes,

capturing customer attention.

LINK
XTRA TAMPON
PLAYTEX

Creating an extreme fake product that is a hyperbolic

parody of their real tampon, Playtex appeals to the
contrasted minimalism of their actual product.

The Salience is the message – by going over the top a

comparison is drawn that heroes the simplicity of their
product.

LINK
PEE ON THIS AD
IKEA

The strip on this ad is a pregnancy test, allowing expecting

mothers to get a heavy discount on IKEA cribs, making that
blue line a ticket to discount.

Bold stunts that get people talking work to generate both

awareness and sales.

LINK
NOT EVERYTHING
MAKES THE CUT
AMAZON

Amazon imagines unusual and hilariously ineffective

applications for its Alexa voice assistant.

The unusual applications reinforce memory through both

their weirdness and humour with the added benefit of
revealing the “under the hood” creativity behind product
design.

LINK
CAN’T SLEEP?
CASPER

Casper launched a TV series of lofi late night ads and

directing insomniac viewers to a hotline to help make them
sleepy.

When ideas are grounded in insights that understand your

brand’s potential community, unusual ideas can gain the
benefits of gimmick without the drawbacks.

LINK
DTF…
OKCUPID

OkCupid used the DTF acronym to capture the attention of

a younger demographic, followed by repositioning
themselves as being about long term love instead of one
night stand culture, attempting to attract new people to their
online dating platform who are like-minded.

Cheeky ideas cut-through, helping ensure more people

properly attend to an advert.

LINK
 ILLUSORY
CORRELATION
ILLUSORY CORRELATION
We love to find meaningful relationships where they may not exist.

Reveal a pattern that gets people talking or create a new one.

EXAMPLES:
Outlier Product Behaviours, Weird Pairings, Visual Puns,
Agenda Setting, Off-Seasonal Stunts
2018 GOALS
SPOTIFY

Spotify digs up data for a multi-country billboard campaign

that suggests hilarious correlations to explain unusual
patterns in data that may not have any meaning.

Using data to delight instead of to creep out.

LINK
WORK FROM HAWAII
HAWAII VISITORS & CONVENTION BUREAU

WFH is an appeal to New Yorkers to work from Hawaii

instead of travelling there on holidays. Based on the insight
that many from the US city are workaholics, Hawaii was
instead pitched as a better work destination, creating a
unique and ownable territory.

When the existing pattern isn’t working, create a new one.

LINK
WHOPPER NEUTRALITY
BURGER KING

Burger King taught customers about net neutrality by letting

them experiencing the drawbacks with their Whopper
instead. By rehashing their pricing structure to become a
metaphor that contributed to the public debate.

Weighing in on heated public debates isn’t for every brand,

for those that it is, turning your product into a metaphor is a
strong way to achieve the benefits of illusory correlation.

LINK
DESTROY FROZEN BEEF
WENDY’S

Wendy’s jumped on Fortnite and over a 10 hour period live-

streamed themselves on Twitch destroying every Durr
Burger store and the fridges that store their frozen beef.

By pretending they’re a competitor to a fictional brand,

Wendy’s could create a story with huge engagement and
little overhead at the same time as communicating their
brand benefit of only using fresh beef.

LINK
A VERY MERRY MISTAKE
AIR NEW ZEALAND

Santa misunderstands the New Zealand accent, making

incorrect versions of kiwi nice kids Christmas requests. The
day is saved by Air New Zealand staff acting as interpreters.

An illusory correlation also applies to accidental patterns

that already exist, like how a New Zealander accent makes
words sound like other words.

LINK
WHAT IF?
PINTEREST

Pinterest ran a series of ad spots encouraging people to dare

to try something new and something creative.

Agenda setting is often a type of deliberate illusory

correlation, where brands establish a connection between a
desirable concept and their product that didn’t exist
previously.

LINK
NARRATIVE
TRANSPORT
 NARRATIVE TRANSPORT
When we are absorbed in a story, our attitudes change to reflect that story, as though we
had experienced the event ourselves.

Storytelling is not enough, immersively bring about a paradigm shift.

EXAMPLES:
Behind The Scenes, Moral Of The Story, Unpopular Opinion,
Taboos, Walk A Mile In My Shoes
CLOUDS OVER SIDRA
UNITED NATIONS

Clouds over Sidra is a VR short film that explores the

experiences, fears and hopes of a young Syrian girl in a
refugee camp in Jordan. Taking viewers in to the realities of
being displaced has a transformative impact.

VR is automatically immersive lending itself well to

effective Narrative Transport Theory. Additionally the POV
angle enables us to almost literally walk a mile in our
storytellers shoes.

LINK
OUR SIGNATURE OF STYLE
R.M. WILLIAMS

A behind the scenes exploration into the many different

hands that go into making a pair of R.M. Williams signature
boots.

Starting from the POV of the boots, viewers are immersed

into a story of undeniable craftsmanship, where attention to
detail sets the bootmaker apart.

LINK
SAD ADS
CHICAGO COMEDY FILM FESTIVAL

CCFF made really, really sad ads to the point that they were
so absurdly sad, they were funny. Each story ends in the
opportunity to cheer up from the sad story by heading to the
Chicago Comedy Film Festival.

Deliberately immersing people in the extreme of one

emotion allows the opportunity to create a dramatic
emotional shift to its opposite, creating a narrative transport
effect.

LINK
ENGLISH FOR BEGINNERS
ALLEGRO

Upon delivery of his learn English audio set from the

marketplace website Allegro, we see the dedicated journey
of an elderly Polish man learning a new language. He then
makes his way to what is revealed to be his children’s
house, where he greets his new granddaughter in English in
a heart-melting finale.

People loved to be moved by heartwarming stories, the

more invested they are in the journey, the more moved they
will be at the end.

LINK
LET’S BE REAL
HINGE

Hinge is a dating app for people who want to be real and in

doing so give love a real chance. This series of story based
ads shows how real conversations can lead to unforgettable
dates with their unique icebreaker app questions.

Relatability is a crucial feature of immersive storytelling

and a way this can be achieved is by referencing what is
nostalgic for a group of people.

LINK
WE’RE HERE TO HELP
WESTPAC

We see raw moments of love and heartbreak that is finally

revealed to be the struggles of a separating family with the
news that Westpac can help remove one of the uncertainties
of the separation experience.

Narrative transport is a way brands can empathise with their

audience through stories that demonstrate how your brand
“gets” their experience.

LINK
SPOTLIGHT
EFFECT
 SPOTLIGHT EFFECT
People overestimate how much others notice their appearance or behavior. We naturally
covet an opportunity to make ourselves look good to others.

How does your product make your consumers cool?

EXAMPLES:
Secret Menu, Hero Fans, Roasting Competitors, Exclusivity
FORGET STONER
MEDMEN

Moving away from the stoner stigma by sharing stories

of cannabis consumers that break the mould in a highly
shareable campaign.

MedMen champions its customers by rebranding them

and growing their own brand in the process.

LINK
OVERHEARD
LE LABO

This overheard spin-off instagram account from luxury

fragrance brand Le Labo created a customer cult by putting
on a pedestal those patrons who hinge their identities off the
luxe element of the brand and its products.

The quotes and page hero the most diehard customers and
became a quintessential part of Le Labo customer identity,
making the product synonymous with an ego boost.

LINK
BUILD BACK
LEGO X MINECRAFT

Online bullying on Minecraft takes the form of people who ruin

the complex designs and hours hard work of other Minecrafters,
by destroying their structures with explosives. Stepping in as a
vigilante, Lego saves the day by using videos and stills captured
of influencer Minecrafters work to reproduce their detailed
craftsmanship in Lego with an encouraging personalised
message to keep building, whilst highlighting the crossover
product range of these two building games.

Putting their builders on a pedestal by honouring their work in

this way turns the story around, turning the builders from the
losers to the heroes.

LINK
SECRET MENU
KFC

Announcing the secret menu on their website with a riddle,

Australian KFC customers can find limited edition menu
items that are remixes of popular products fused with other
food trends.

Customers love to be “in the know” so give them the

opportunity with a secret menu or secret hack for your
product that’s easy to find and feels exclusive even when it
really isn’t.

LINK
WELCOME TO
LIFE AFTER 50
SUNLIFE

SunLife insurance explores the reality of how life doesn’t

end at 50 by showing off the many different adventurous
lives their customers live. Pointing a finger at the
absurdity of the stereotype with good humour that
celebrates the diversity of their audience.

Highlighting stereotypes by making them laughable

exaggerations or highlighting the reality behind the
assumption is a strong way to celebrate your audience by
sharing their truth.

LINK
END
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