Wild Dose’s on-brand retargeting ad

We're big fans of Wild Dose's brand voice. It's funny. It's self-aware. It's empowering.

It's like if the Spice Girls, Fleabag and your mates' WhatsApp group chat were all mushed together to help support you through bloating and IBS. It's just so good.

So when we got hit with this retargeting ad, it went straight in our swipe file.

Maybe more brands are doing this and we're not seeing them, but this is one of the few ads we've seen that openly acknowledges that they're retargeting you and somehow manages to not feel creepy.

Love it. No notes.

Look, we all know how ads work, millennials and Gen-Z especially.

They've grown up with TikTok's For You Page, "why am I seeing this?" labels and cookie banners on every site.

They're not naive about their data being tracked and used to sell them stuff.

But most brands don't talk about that. It's like a weird, uncomfortable elephant in the room.

Wild Dose's brand voice is built on talking about the things most brands don't. IBS, poo, farts... so talking about data tracking is on-brand for them.

And that's why it doesn't feel weird when they openly acknowledge that they're digitally stalking you. (Although, they say "your algorithm" so it doesn't feel too weird.)

It's really clever stuff.

First of all, it's charming as hell. Their voice does a lot of work to get it to land just right.

The self-aware take on marketing helps too. (Especially as studies on self-aware advertising find "a significant positive correlation between self-referential ads, brand perception, and consumers’ brand attitude".)

It also defuses the creepiness (because it's hard to feel tricked by an ad that's openly joking about surveilling you), puts Wild Dose on the same side as the shopper (with a kind of "hey, we both know how this game is played" tone), and makes the offer feel personalised ("hey, you've seen us loads, here's something you'll like") all at the same time.

SMART.

But our favourite bit is the the "you won't see this again" final line.

That's doing two jobs. It's saying we're not going to hammer you with this first and foremost. Empathetic and sensitive to the customer being bombarded, love that.

But it also creates some FOMO, too. The offer feels personal to them and if they don't take it now, it's gone forever.

Really, really smart. Love it.

Nick this for your brand: a little radical transparency about the mechanics of marketing goes a long way (and is way less creepy than pretending they don't exist). So try an ad that name the elephant in the room. Turn it into a joke too. Then hit them with a limited time offer.