Want
What do you want? From making a decision about where to eat to being asked to share our true feelings with our partner, we have a tendency to diminish our feelings when we’re asked this simple question. So what would happen if someone answered honestly?
That was the thesis behind “Want”. Therapy is, if nothing else, a space for deep emotional honesty. It provides space for a kind of honesty that we all crave but are afraid to reveal to the people around us. Our main character in “Want” finds out what happens when you express how you really feel to the wrong audience. The execution in this spot is comedic, but the underlying reality is powerful.
The Test Variant
With Want, we wanted to create version that would allow us to test the importance of dialogue in our digital spots. We knew that 80% of Facebook users consumed video without sound, so I wanted to see if we could generate some additional engagement by taking advantage of that behavior.
The idea was to test a version in which the main character’s monologue happens entirely in his own head. My theory was that people would be curious about the spot if they saw captions on-screen without seeing the character move his lips. The hope was that users would click on the ad unit to unmute the audio, thus generating more engagement.
* Test variant not featured.
The Results
We won an award! And got some press.
But more importantly, the response in the comments of our ad units was overwhelmingly positive and we were able to scale the spot to over seven figures in media spend.
The theory that we could get viewers to unmute the video by making the dialogue internal didn’t prove successful. But with all of our productions, we commissioned cutdowns in addition to our main spot. We found that on YouTube, viewers strongly preferred the 0:60 second versions. That ran counter to what we had seen historically with viewers largely preferring shorter content on YouTube (30 seconds or less).
The results of that test lead to more video-length testing on YouTube via influencer content. We saw the same results and within a couple of months, almost all of our influencer content on YouTube was longer than 60 seconds. Turns out attention spans haven’t been totally ruined…yet.
The Comment Section
“It’s been a while since I saw such a great commercial. Whoever wrote this is brilliant. The acting is excellent, too. Congrats!
@minhha01
“This was written like a skit from Key & Peele - KUDOS to both actors. That opening line had to be delivered PERFECTLY.”
@koraanjamar
“This ad gives me hope that I’m not alone with my issues. And made me go to a random club to meet new people. Thank you! I needed this.”