A Strategist's Instruction: Stop Asking 'Why' When Reviewing Creative Work

‘Why?’ 

It’s a mighty three-letter word that the marketing industry worships. 

Why would our customer buy this? Why does our customer consume our product in that way? What is our brand's ‘why’?  Why do they only engage with our product when they are alone? Why did they choose to share our brand with those around them?

There’s a plethora of articles online suggesting that ‘why?’ is the number one question for strategists, account service people, and brand managers. It’s powerful. It is a building block for success. 

We’re told to ‘embrace your inner child’ and question everything. We’re told that our brands need a ‘why’ because our consumers wanting us without one isn’t enough. We’re told that if you don’t ask ‘why?’ three times with a cascading effect you won’t find the true reason of why we have any role in our customers' lives.

Why? Well, partly because Simon Sinek wrote a best-selling book on the matter. And I do agree that it can be a great word to guide you to think deeper about your customer. To think deeper about brands. To think deeper about life. 

But we need to acknowledge the word has a time and a place. That time and place is not when reviewing creative work. 

There is no greater example of the power of not using ‘why’ than advertising history, as Paul Feldwick explores in 'The Anatomy of Humbug'. In the 50s on the shoot for a US shirt manufacturer, Hathway, David Ogilvy randomly presented the talent with a box of eye-patches to wear on the day. ‘The Man in the Hathaway Shirt’ became hugely successful, with his unexplained, surprising, eye-patch. This period of intuition-led advertising also brought us the Marlboro Man and Tony the Tiger.

But following the publication of 'Hidden Persuaders' by Vance Packard, a general uneasiness with advertisers stirred as people feared advertising’s power to manipulate them through ‘nonrational symbols’. And so, after the 60s, the work became less whimsical, and more copy-heavy and rationalised: a pivot that seemed to disregard the success of different and wonderful work that previously worked.

We see a similar randomness in other great, memorable, surprising creative in the past few years: Cadbury’s Gorilla, KFC’s Bucketheads, ‘Shop Aldi First’, Charli XCX’s album cover, and that weird guy in Starburst’s ‘Berries and Cream’. 

I’m not a gambler, but I’d bet you the little money I have that no one sat in those meetings and asked, “So why is there a gorilla?” They were surprised, and led with something the health industry has glorified, and the advertising industry has forgotten – the gut. I plead for those who touch any aspect of brand building and comms to do the same. 

Thanks to the work of Peter Field, Adam Morgan, and System1 we know the extraordinary cost of being dull, and to avoid this, we should use the emotion of surprise. Surprise is not rationalised. Your friend jumping out from behind a door and yelling ‘boo’ didn’t need an explanation. Nor does every element of your creative work.

There doesn’t need to be a deep meaning to every element of creative work. The key to making 'surprise' work isn’t justifying its existence, it’s repeating it until its existence is an unquestioned memory structure.

So, ask ‘why?’ when you’re watching a mother buy home brand cereal but splurging on a premium alternative milk in the supermarket. Ask ‘why?’ when your brands sales are decreasing. Ask ‘why?’ our customers aren’t buying our products at full price. Ask ‘why?’ we think this product distribution strategy is right.

But if you have the opportunity to review creative work, and find yourself assessing something that isn’t explainable, refrain from that three-letter word. Note your surprise. Recognise that your customer or audience is likely to have the same reaction. Surprise sells.

If we keep asking ‘why?’ to anything unexplainable, then eventually we’ll end up asking: why are we still doing this?