Just before the Second World War, Leni Riefenstahl made “Triumph Of The Will”.
It was a brilliant piece of propaganda.
And a visually stunning film.
It begins with Hitler coming to a rally in Munich.
The camera shows the shadow of his plane moving over the ground like a giant cross.
The symbolism reads like the arrival of The Saviour.
She features overhead shots of massed Nazi parades, with long shadows.
Every shadow moving in perfect unison.
Graphically powerful enough to be virtually abstract.
Massive blocks of soldiers marching in faultless precision.
Like an army of robots.
Capable of trampling anything in their path.
This is a military tsunami.
This film is a master class in cinematography.
It’s not just propaganda, it’s art.
So how did the British propaganda ministry respond?
Just like most advertising experts.
They said, “The public are worried about these Nazis.
They’ve conquered Poland, Holland, Norway, Belgium, Denmark, and France.
Now there’s only the English Channel between them and us.
It’s having a bad effect on morale.
They look unstoppable, we need to change that view.”
So they did what most clients and agencies would do.
They tried to find something positive to say about their product or brand.
But unfortunately there wasn’t a lot positive to say.
The British Army had left most of its equipment at Dunkirk.
Just about the only thing they had left was motorbikes.
So they showed that.
Dozens of soldiers driving through fields in motorbike-and-sidecar outfits.
Covered in branches for disguise.
With a jolly, Mr Cholmondeley-Walker type VO.
“These chaps will ready to give Adolf a warm welcome, when he drops in for a cup of tea and a cream bun.”
(I’m not kidding.)
As you can imagine, this didn’t do much to convince the public that the British Army could stand up to Nazi supermen.
So it didn’t do much for morale.
In fact it had the opposite effect.
Everywhere it was shown it lowered morale.
Cinema audiences booed and threw apple-cores at the screen.
This film just showed how weak we were.
And that was really scary.
Meanwhile.
There was a new dance craze in England at that time called “The Lambeth Walk”.
A film editor was just playing about on his own one evening.
He took Leni Riefenstahl’s film and gradually recut it, frame by frame.
In those days there was no video editing.
Everything had to be done by hand, with scissors and glue.
He recut every frame until he had the Nazi soldiers walking backwards and forwards in exact time to the tune “Doing The Lambeth Walk”.
They looked like they were dancing.
He’d made them look silly.
Which meant they weren’t so scary anymore.
He showed it to a few friends and they loved it.
Eventually, he managed to get it shown at a cinema.
And it was such a hit that it was shown at every cinema in the country.
And it continued right through the war.
Because it actually lifted morale.
People began laughing at the Nazis.
And when they laughed they weren’t scared.
What was brilliant was the understanding of how people’s minds work.
We don’t have to prove we can beat the Nazis.
We just have to prove they can be beaten.
And we can do that in the way that the British have always done best.
Taking the piss.
Making them a laughing stock.
It breaks the spell.
That editor understood what the propaganda ministry didn’t.
That the answer isn’t always about the left brain: logic.
Sometimes it’s about the right brain: emotion.
But the experts didn’t understand that.
They were restricted by logic.
And when that didn’t work, they had nowhere to go.
Luckily the editor didn’t have experts to tell him what he could and couldn’t do.
He was free to make an intuitive leap.
So he did what felt right.
He took the piss.
The editor took an intuitive leap and it worked.
Because the editor didn’t have to listen to experts.
Because experts wouldn’t have understood taking the piss.
Because experts have learned not to think like ordinary people.
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Advertising, marketing, in fact any form of work can only achieve greatness when done using both sides of the brain. Sometimes more of one side than the other, sometimes with more than one person providing the different sides, but never just one side in isolation.
Dave
Would you say that there is a predilection for denigrating the opposition in advertising for that very reason? Impartiality is as rare as hen’s teeth.
Hi John,
I think the problem is that when people get into advertising they get “into advertising”.
And away from ordinary people.
But ordinary people are our medium.
So we’re getting away from the medium we work in, with, and for.
How can that possibly work?
No wonder most of it doesn’t.
So piss-take videos can make a difference, where straight-faced top down messages failed. A lesson for viral video makers?
The head/heart thing is a debate I’m interested in… didn’t Paul Feldwick do some work on that sort of thing? How PG Tips monkeys could never be explained with the head… same with Rowan Atkinson’s work for Barclaycard?
He said “We know brand preferences usually aren’t rational, and yet we still persist in trying to put rational messages into our advertising.”
And yet some of the best ads are rational ones… ‘think small’, ‘we try harder’ etc.
I suppose it depends on the product, the target market.
If beer is beer is beer, say, then going for the heart makes sense.
That said, what do you make of Stella’s latest effort to sell beer to our heads? ‘Recyclage de luxe’ and all that malarkey?
Too true Dave…and very depressing.
Hi Tom,
I think left brain can be right brain.
If you’ve got something to say and say it convincingly or amusingly, the way you say it becomes the emotional appeal.
Like Volkswagen or Avis, as you say.
For instance, women who didn’t understand the mechanical logic of VW’s argument were still persuaded by the way they made it.
My wife was one.
Funny how we always forget the simple stuff.
One thing though - army tsunami would’ve rhymed.
Thanks for all the blogs Dave, and have a great Christmas/New Year thingy.
Och Aye frae Scotland.
Hope this most recent blog is in your book, Dave
By the way, any idea was there an ad agency that did the motor-bike film? Just curious.
There’s this mad trend in Asia not to include shop addresses in the ads. This so it doesn’t look like it’s selling anything. Resulting madness is shops in malls DON’T display their unit numbers, since the ads don’t show the addresses. I remember trying to find WHSMith in a big mall. The directory said it was Shop Number 60 on Level 3. What made things really hard was, no shop displayed their Number. So it took almost an hour. Shops aren’t always numbered consecutively so it was all a nightmare caused by the experrs.
When a true emotional reaction can be elicited, it is unusually powerful.
What made The Lambeth Walk film work so beautifully was that the idea was derived from and perfectly relevant to the task.
It made the powerful look silly, and who doesn’t love that?
On the other hand, what makes emotion in advertising so often infuriating is that it is emotionalism, not emotion. The visual cliches of the mother with the newborn, the handicapped runner, etc. usually have no relevance to the task and represent nothing other than a crass desire to elicit an emotional reaction.
This type of faux emotion is represented ad nauseum in “branding” campaigns and is one of the least effective types of advertising.
Unfortunately, it gives emotion in advertising a bad name.
Emotion is powerful. And like all powerful tools, in the hands of oafs it is dangerous.
I once saw a presentation when Neil French put a Heigh Ho Dwarf song from Snow White under marching Nazis.
he also claimed it was his idea.
hmmmm…
on topic.
I agree with Bob. emotional relevance is one the most powerful tools in advertising. it’s also very rare. sometimes it’s the only thing that separates brands within category (cars, food etc.)
but the ability to spot emotional relevance has nothing to do with being an expert or not. it’s a gut feeling. and a courage to follow it.
Bob,
Of course I agree with you.
The problem with advertising ‘experts’ is they’re usually lazy, formulaic thinkers.
They think showing an emotion is the same as evoking one.
Because it’s less work.
So they’ve ticked that box.
But seeing a picture of something isn’t the same as feeling it.
Which is why all those branding campaigns don’t work.
“Don’t just show it, be it” takes a too much effort for them.
Brilliant story.
Brilliantly told.
A lesson in the weakness of logic.
Unfortunately, if we cant explain it logically
it’s hard to sell.
‘Emotion is powerful…’ Was the recent campaign for the Hovis loaf in the hands of oafs?
Does it pander to the client rather than the prospect?
Dave, a niiiiice example of cerebral judo at play: take your opponents formidable military strength and turn it against them using the wit of an imaginative/creative [same thing] leap.
Equally, Leni Riefenstahl’s “Triumph Of The Will” was and is a triumph of film-making and propaganda and has a strange and powerful beauty about it - notwithstanding the context of its use.
“Loaf carried for 122 years bound to be stale on arrival”
Wasn’t that one of the Confucius guy’s?
If you like XMAS and advertising watch this… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMQOOJZtLtM
http://ex-blank-page.blogspot.com/2009/12/in-reply-to-daves-great-posts-103-104.html
Happy New Year. And keep us happy with lots of great thinking and critique 2010.
Rub your office tea pot and like a genie, Grilla will appear with bandaged head and arms folded and grant you his three wishes for Dave’s 2010.
1. Good health
2. Personal fulfillment
3. Further wisdom