How to make something hot even hotter?

We are talking about a Lamborghini here. Does it need a pitch? Who does not want to own a Lamborghini? Those who can afford an Enzo or those who already own the last two I guess! Why would you need to make a TV ad for a Lamborghini? Probably the same reason why I am writing this blog. Do something so great and awesome that people end up talking about it. Probably that’s why.

I have seen a lot of TV Commercials. The memorable ones usually make a good thing really great. This is one of them. What makes it great? The key insight. If I were to imagine the brief for this ad I believe the insight would have read something like this – “What makes something great depends on what it is being compared to”. It is all about the ‘power of the relative’. You put something in a different context and suddenly it looks different. I have seen a number of behavioral economists talk about this concept. Allow me to illustrate:

You want a buy a pen that costs $20. You learn there is a place 30 minutes away that is selling the same pen for $10. What do you do? Most people would go for the $10 pen. Similarly there is a suit that you like and it costs $1000. Again you learn that about 30 minutes away another branch of the same store sells the suit for $990. What do you do? Like most rational people you would go for the $1000 suit. This is the power of context. The same $10 would be saved for the same effort of driving 30 minutes away but because of the difference in context a completely different decision is made.

This is what the creative team has done here. They have used this power of context to their advantage. It’s not about comparing a Lamborghini to a Ferrari or a Porsche. No sir! It is about comparing the opportunity to own a Lamborghini to something rarer than giving birth to a Nobel Prize winner or being able to successfully climb Mount Everest!

And therefore as a result, they have managed to make something hot even hotter. This is the power of context. An extremely valuable tool for great advertising I think.

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