Advertising is getting increasingly clever. Or perhaps cunning is a better word. AI can now create almost anything imaginable, including adverts for a miracle lotion that'll give you a full head of hair, an ab toner that'll produce a six-pack in a week, and a tiny plug-in heater that'll warm your entire house for pennies.
Really?
If that were true, we'd all have mullets, look like Hugh Jackman and be wandering around the house in the nude.
But making something look convincing and getting people to believe it are two very different kettles of fish.
Over the years, we've produced a lot of TV commercials featuring real customers. And one thing we've learnt is that audiences are pretty good at spotting someone delivering a rehearsed line.
Actors are brilliant at what they do. But however convincingly they deliver their lines, there's often that nagging thought in the back of your mind: is this a real customer, or just an actor saying what they've been told to say?
Real customers aren't always quite so polished. They might fluff a sentence, pause in completely the wrong place or come out with something no copywriter would ever dream of writing. And oddly enough, it's often those little imperfections that make them so believable.
For Vanarama, we produced a series of DRTV adverts featuring genuine customers talking about vehicle leasing, alongside real members of staff explaining the service. For Jane Plan, customers shared their own experiences of losing weight on the programme.
There's a genuine difference between somebody describing something they've experienced and somebody being paid to say they have.
But before we start patting ourselves on the back about the virtues of real customers, there's a slight problem. They aren't always the answer.
We produced two commercials for Look Fabulous Forever, one brand-led and one testimonial-led. Both featured real customers. The brand advert performed better.
Why? We think it was simply the stronger creative.
And that's the point. Different products need different approaches. Someone considering a financial service may want reassurance. Someone buying make-up might simply want to feel good about themselves.
There's no silver bullet. We've made adverts that have exceeded expectations and others that haven't set the world alight. We'd love to say otherwise, but we'd be lying. Which defeats the whole point of this article.
Experience has taught us at Dancing Aardvarks to question the obvious approach and find an idea that feels right for the client, the product and, most importantly, the customer.
Because however clever the advertising, earning the customer’s trust is still what matters.