Products Are People Too
Video: Night Driving for VW
We tell stories about the experience hooks.
When you think about it like this, it’s true. If someone here were to ask me about my cats, I wouldn’t tell you what they look like or how old they are. I would tell you stories. I would talk about the time one of them buried raw lamb mince in the dirty laundry, or that the other one lived in the back of a dresser drawer for 6 months before we got her, and that she was rarely touched by people. I would tell anecdotes at you.
Likewise, designers and advertisers design for the experience hooks.
My current favourite advert is Night Driving for Volkswagen (ad with credits). It’s about the experience of driving at night. It’s beautiful! It’s poetry! When I next see a VW, I’ll see the possibility of me having a meaningful experience in that car. It’s not just talking about the night-driving experience, it’s using cultural references of cinema and glamour to give me something to aspire to. It cancels out the misery of my everyday life of traffic and delays.
Let’s take a minute.
[pause]
And I don’t just love the advert because the music is one of the few top-rated tracks I have in iTunes. [It’s ‘Don’t Blow It’ by Cliff Martinez, from his score of the modern version of Solaris. The entire soundtrack is of this quality.]