Published on
May 20, 2024
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Welcome to the Breakdown, a weekly roundup of the best real-life marketing examples, created for marketers and agency folk that want to create work that actually works.
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In this Breakdown, we're looking at ✨ hyperbole ✨ - possibly the most tempting of all marketing trends. Money and mayo are actually a bit boring - so let’s exaggerate anything and everything about them to land our proposition more powerfully.
A simple ad that whisks you through ‘before Monzo’ and ‘after Monzo’.
Monzo have always had a cool factor, and it’s not lost in this campaign - their return to TV after 5 years off the channel. In the TV ad and in the OOH dotted around the UK, Monzo and Uncommon explore the benefits of banking with Monzo with some direct ‘before and after’ style comparisons.
Exploding toilet → Luxurious fountain.
Spider on the head → Head massager.
Sandpaper loo roll → Cuddly bunny toy?
They’re insane and funny comparisons, tied together with the idea that “Money never felt like Monzo.”
Do these comparisons really have anything to do with money? No.
Does it feel similar to CashApp’s “That’s money. That’s CashApp” line? A bit.
Does anyone care? No.
This is funny work, definitely distinctive for the category, and appropriately Monzo. But there is something that feels odd watching a banking ad and not hearing about interest rates or building a future or buying a house or paying for a coffee with a contactless card. Maybe the times they are a-changin’, but ditching all of these (tired) category codes in favour of somewhat intuitive but bizarre ‘emotive’ comparisons is just so Monzo. Distinctiveness has always been a big part of the brand, from coral cards to campaigns like this. We hope it continues to pay off.
Heinz rely on your hyperbole, not theirs, in this latest campaign.
Heinz have built a campaign around its Seriously Good Mayonnaise - and the claims its superfans make on X / Twitter.
“If there’s one bottle of Heinz mayo left in the world… it’s mine”, reads one tweet. Cue a zombie apocalypse where there is literally only one bottle left.
“Heinz mayo is da best, willing to die on that hill” - bet. A medieval knight dies on a hill, using his last ounce of energy to dip a chip in some Heinz mayo.
More funny stuff. When you want to avoid completely lying about your hyperbolic messaging, it’s easy to see how your megafans’ exaggerated passion can be useful for your own mayo-selling purposes. Kraft leaned on a similar insight with a campaign back in 2022, all about letting your mayo freak flag fly. The hyperbole works because it’s actually reflecting real life - for whatever reason, people actually have strong feelings about mayo.
A new brand identity and new summer campaign get Asda summer-ready.
Asda have kicked off the first work under a new brand identity with a set of summer ads, focusing on “unique takes on staple summer experiences.”
Those unique takes, at least from the first ad of the campaign, seem to be exaggerating some of the familiar behaviours Brits find themselves doing as soon as the sun comes out.
In that first ad, a family lugs all their beach accoutrements down a sandy shoreline, while The Dad looks for the perfect spot to set up camp. He has all the gear and a very good idea of where he wants to pitch his family on the beach to enjoy BBQ favourites taste matched to M&S – so much so he has them traipsing through the sand for miles in the morning sun.
We’ve talked about Asda’s Taste Match before, and how M&S leadership didn’t look too fondly on it. I think it’s proving to be a great little device for the brand. It’s easy to communicate (even if the phrase Taste Match sounds a little strange, personally), and handles “value” messaging succinctly and pretty memorably. I haven’t shopped at Asda recently since there isn’t one near me, but I’m assuming that Taste Match badge appears frequently in-store too.
David Hills, Chief Customer Officer at Asda, said:
“Our Summer campaign is light-hearted, fun and highlights the uncompromising value promise we make to our customers whenever they shop with us, so we believe it’s the perfect platform to launch our new brand.”
That new brand features darker greens than before, an “and not or” mindset, and a friendlier, more conversational personality. I’m hardly qualified to comment on design work like this, so I’ll just say I think it looks very good.
Yet more funny work! God we need a laugh, don’t we! Tamer humour here, doing the classic “British people are a bit weird, let’s take it to the extreme and have a giggle about it”. It’s been the basis of hundreds of British comics’ stand-up sets, and it works for Asda as it does for them. Warm, un-divisive, family-friendly humour. None of that is meant as an insult - Asda is a supermarket, not a canned water brand after all.