(Adver)tisement + Edi(torial) = Advertorial
I like to compare advertorials to the Penguin Great Ideas Series booklets because they both provide a long-form, yet approachable medium to communicate abstract, taboo, and often intimidating ideas.
Why are advertorials important in advertising? Advertorials are the ultimate soft sell. They are the type of change of pace that advertisers need to compete in a saturated promotional marketplace. When the time is right, long-form advertising, like an advertorial, can be more effective than your run-of-the mill promotional ad. It’s a great way to zig when everyone else is zagging.
How do they work? Advertorials bridge the gap between a sales pitch and short story. They live in the grey area where they do not directly advertise a promotion or price point. Instead, advertorials rely on storytelling to provide insight into the subject matter and allows the audience to connect the dots and create their own interpretation of what they just read. Where a typical ad is brief, an advertorial takes time. Where a typical ad is direct, an advertorial is interpretive.
Why do they work? Advertorials combine hard data and soft data. Hard data is a conclusive variable that cannot be interpreted (e.g. statistics, facts, and measurable outcomes). Soft data is a qualitative variable that can be interpreted in multiple ways (e.g. art, editorials, comedy, poetry, and other emotion-driven mediums). The combination of hard data and soft data create a symbiotic relationship within the advertorial. Numbers feel less cold when combined with a plot and characters who have the capacity to display traits such as humility, honesty, bravery, and vulnerability. Characters and plots feel more real and relatable when accentuated by hard data that is familiar to the audience. All of a sudden, we have a yin and yang scenario, where hard data and soft data complement each other and are in perfect balance with one another.
These are the ideal ingredients to create honest content. Honest content is the stuff that tries to show the full spectrum of human emotions, even the weak ones. It contradicts the predictable content and formulaic delivery that’s been beaten into the zeitgeist.
Celebrity endorsement to hock product is nothing new, but Wealthsimple and their bullpen of spokespeople did something I didn’t expect — they were relatable. They provided honest content. It was genius. Wealthsimple tapped into the insight that money is a source of pride for a wide margin of their audience and is often a taboo topic of conversation. That kind of talk is private and opens us up to becoming all sorts of vulnerable. So how did Wealthsimple bypass the ‘pride factor’ and make the money subject more approachable? They built trust, one story at a time.
Wealthsimple found leaders and empowered them to be honest about their financial past. Some stories were gritty with drug use and crime, where others were nostalgic with lemonade stands and paper routes. Through all the stories, there was a unifying theme — “money is not everything”. In comparison to your health, family, happiness, future, passion or spirituality, it’s not the be-all and end-all. If you read between the lines of each advertorial in the series, it becomes quite clear what message they’re implying, “taking care of your finances is important, but there are way more important things in life to focus on than money.”
What is Wealthsimple doing? They’re building trust with their audience. They understand that finance can be intimidating and complex, so they provide relatable stories by seemingly unrelatable people.
How is Wealthsimple doing it? They’re telling stories and not giving a sales pitch. Nobody wants to live alone on an island. That’s also how many people feel about their finances. The purpose of each story is to let the audience know that they’re not alone and that there’s hope for them.