Misdirection and how to pass like Magic.

Growing up in the 90s, everyone loved Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. (Even on other side of the planet, in Australia.) Not me though. I dunno if it was due to the fact that I always wanted to do something different from the crowd (I also had purple hair and made industrial music at 14), but my favourite player was Magic Johnson.

Proof attached.

There was just something enchanting about the way he played. His entire game was based around misdirection. If he was going left, he’d make you think right. If he was going to pass, he’d make you think shoot. Up was down. Night was day. It didn’t matter who he was playing against - he was completely uncontainable due to having a, quite literally, magic way of disarming everyone around him.

People don’t naturally like advertising. And they don’t like being sold to. A big part of our job is to lower people’s guard. To disarm them, so as to slip through the defences and deliver a message. It’s a core part of our craft that’s been sadly forgotten, and if you’re only motivated by money - it’s costing us a fortune in wasted media spend.

“You can’t bore people into buying your product, you can only interest them.” - David Ogilvy

It doesn’t matter how aggressively ‘targeted’ your media is or how ‘clear and direct’ your messaging is, because if it looks like an ad, talks like an ad, and walks like an ad - you can’t disarm anyone. You can only be skipped and adblocked. So one of the most powerful tools at our disposal is to take a leaf from the book of Magic Johnson, and use a little misdirection.

What do I mean by misdirection? Simply put, make people think you’re going one way then go the other.

As you can see, there are varying levels of misdirection at play here, and some sticklers might even argue that some of these could be classified as different ‘techniques’, but they all contain a certain degree of swerving one way and then the other. The one thing they all do the same though, is work. In the same way that Magic used to carve through a sea of defenders by looking one way and passing the other, so can advertising. There’s something enchanting about stepping one way, opening your guard, and having the ball sail straight past you. It makes you smile. It makes you more endeared to the message once it lands. It has some kind of ‘ok, you got me, I’ll allow it’ to it.

And misdirection can exist in many guises. From misdirecting your audience for an entire 30 seconds.

To misdirecting people into thinking an ad for one thing is actually an ad for something else. (Including the aforementioned ad.)

To misdirecting a live audience.

To quite literally misdirecting people in real life.

We hear a lot of ‘we don’t want to be negative’, ‘we don’t want to make people think’, ‘we want people to know it’s our brand immediately’ these days, which can seem logical when just looking at one piece of creative in isolation. But the truth of it is, that’s not how anyone consumes advertising or media or any kind of entertainment.

We are the attackers having to navigate through a sea of defences.

We are the interruption.

And, sometimes, what you actually need is a little misdirection to break through the guard.

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^{DON’T CHAIN YOURSELF TO A WHEEL}

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^{READ YOUR SHIT OUT LOUD}

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^{WRITERS DON’T NEED TO READ} 

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^{MANIFESTOS MAKE MILLIONS} 

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^{STRAIGHT HEADLINE, TWISTED VISUAL ISN’T JUST FOR PRINT}

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^{PUT SOME ORDER AROUND YOUR CHAOS}

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^{BECOME THE BEST PRESENTER IN THE AGENCY}

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^{CRAFT YOUR SCRIPTS AS YOU WOULD SHARPEN A BLADE}

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^{CAN YOU BE MORE SPECIFIC?}

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^{15 SECONDS IS STILL 15 SECONDS}

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^{NEVER BE CONTENT}

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^{THINK THE OPPOSITE}

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^{SEE YOUR SCRIPTS FIRST, THEN WRITE}