Challenge Conventional Wisdom
Just because you’ve always done it that way it doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t make it wrong either, though. Sometimes the tried and true methods are still the best, or at the very least, they make great foundations for building something new.
But sometimes, just sometimes, you have to completely challenge the conventional wisdom. This was true for TCM Creative as we continued to work with one of our favorite clients, Shriners Hospitals for Children.
There’s no crying in fundraising
The conventional wisdom of DRTV fundraising was “tell a story from one person’s point of view and make the viewer cry and feel guilty.” As we mentioned before, sometimes the conventional wisdom works, but we wanted to see if, perhaps, there was a better way for this client.
What was it about them that connected to the audience? It’s quite simple really: the kids.
Filming with the stars
So how do we do a better job of connecting the kids to the Shriners Hospitals for Children audience? Make them the stars of the commercials and inspire viewers with the amazing things these kids can do… and they can do some amazing things.
We took the focus off the story and let the kids star in spots that were more concept-oriented. We couldn’t abandon the key story structures, scientifically-validated influence factors or other important aspects of making successful spots, but we could change the message.
Fingers crossed
So what happened? It worked. It worked really well. Side note, not all risks like this work. We’ve had our share of flops, but without being willing to risk failure, you won’t ever truly achieve success. So risk on!
The new kid-centric spots outperformed the previous story style spots 2 – 1 and, in some instances, 3 – 1.
Risk, it’s more than just a board game
So wherever you find yourself as you read this, we bet there is some conventional wisdom you can use to build something new from or better yet, completely challenge in the work you do.
It is our hope that you challenge it bravely and make the world a better place in the process as you do something that matters.
Enjoy the day!
P.S. You can see the new spots we made from the risk we took here:
We hope you like them too 🙂