Wype’s attention-grabbing campaign

The line between ads like this and Bart Simpson's "SEX! Now I have your attention..." poster is absolutely paper thin, which is why we love it when brands nail it.

To do something that grabs attention, gets across your USP and creates enough curiosity (not to mention free PR) that people discover your brand? That's wicked smart.

(Plus, it's rare you get an ad that's really clever and fun to sing to the tune of Katie Melua.)

Now, using shock to grab people's attention is nothing new at all. (In fact, the earliest example we found dated back to 1919 with an ad of a pig butchering itself.)

And most of the time, it's not all that clever either. Lots of mid-2010s challenger brands *cough Brewdog cough* used to love doing controversial stuff just for the sake of attention.

But Wype don't fall into that category.

This ad works where other designed-to-shock ads fail because it's congruent.

Those shock-vertising ads fall flat because they’re designed to make noise, not build anything long-term. They’re basically a firework: a big bang, a quick “ooh”, then nada.

In other words, people remember the stunt and forget what you were actually trying to say.

(This is sometimes called the vampire effect, where the way the message is delivered overshadows the message completely, leading to lower recall.)

With the Wype ad, you can't remember the joke without remembering exactly what they sell. The punchline and the product are the same thing. (It's called congruence, if you want to be fancy.)

And that's the big thing to remember if you're going to try shock-first advertising: research shows that these ads only really work when the shock is related to the payoff.

So make sure your shock tactics work on a meta level too.

Going for offensive, bold copy? Tie it back to the idea of offence somehow.

Going for a big, bold joke? Make the punchline related to your brand's USPs or value props somehow.

(Check out the Thinx entry in the swipe file for another brand nailing this from another angle.)

In other words, make sure that the initial shock and offence are there drive home your point and bring customers into your worldview not just to grab eyeballs.