The Gruen Transfer

The power of advertising is its ability to provide convincing arguments for products we may not think we need – a skill Christians could do well to learn.

Have you seen any of the ads for the new iPhone? A slim, glass-smooth shell incorporating touch-sensitive icons instead of buttons, 3G mobile services and all the advantages of a video iPod gone wide-screen. Currently my jacket bulges with a PDA, a Nokia web-phone and an iPod crammed with the 900+ podcasts I listen to each week. So naturally I’m drawn to the idea of a device that could combine all three and give me back two pockets. But what am I really responding to? The technical truth the iPhone ad tells, or the temptation to be instantly raised to the cutting edge of cool?

Now I’ll agree that for many people this first paragraph represents no real dilemma, merely a revelation of just how much of a tech-junkie the author is. But the question I face, we all face in a different form up to 3,000 times a day. It is the dilemma at the heart of advertising. Do advertisements present us with the greatest good a product has to offer, or create needs where there were none before? It’s a question that has to be answered ad by ad, and one that The Gruen Transfer may hold the answer to.

The latest offering from the producers of Enough Rope is a half-hour show dedicated to understanding the black art of advertising and the effects it produces on today’s consumers. As a program The Gruen Transfer is not ground breaking – a merging of Enough Rope’s laid-back interviews with the quirky activity-based humour of The Glasshouse. But the topic is original enough to compensate. Advertising managers and copy-writers explain the techniques they employ to capture our attention, including the reasons behind the success of some of the most memorable campaigns.

The Gruen Transfer analyses the advertising world through a number of amusing segments. ‘The Pitch’ for example asks advertising companies to do their best to sell improbable products like holidays to Baghdad and celibacy. Will Anderson is the perfect choice for this form of entertainment, but paradoxically also the greatest barrier to the show achieving its stated goal. “Our mission,” he tells viewers, “is to understand how advertising works and how it works on you.” Will’s limitation is that he can’t seem to resist the easy laugh, or even the moderately difficult one. Just when it seems like the advertising gurus are moving to a crucial point Anderson makes a school-yard quip that draws the audience back to his only safe suit, sex. The experts often have to quickly dismiss Will’s gaffs in order to make the more serious points, but the information that emerges in between the guffaws is well worth the patience of any Christian communicator.

Before going on it is worth noting that connecting Christianity in any way with advertising is a vexed issue for many believers. The objection is that the Gospel isn’t a product like hair-spray or 4WDs. Its significance is unparalleled and so its content is a truth that should be accepted rather than sold, or so the argument goes. And doesn’t the use of worldly techniques somehow devalue the work of the Spirit whose role it is to convict people of the necessity of repentance? For some the Gospel message, in sermon or evangelism, approaches its purest form the further it travels from any form of enticing or disturbing promotion or illustration. The problem with this line of reasoning is that it ignores the Word it claims to support. We forget at our peril that Jesus frequently opted to use dramatic examples, testimonies and imagery to fix Gospel truths in his listeners’ minds. In fact one analysis of Luke’s Gospel concludes that 50% of Jesus’ recorded words qualify as vivid, illustrative material. 

The real value of The Gruen Transfer is as a primer for people hoping to provide the best possible delivery for the greatest story ever told. Here are five tips from top advertisers well worth noting:

1. It’s important to engage - The Gospel is essentially a vast viral campaign. Its spread fundamentally rests on people passing on the truth, person to person. Freelance copy-writer Jane Caro says of such processes, “If you’re going to get people to be the distribution network for your campaign you have to make [your message] so engaging, so involving … that they’ll want to pass it around the world.” The Gospel, presented as an after-thought or with the finesse of blunt force trauma, is unlikely to engage anyone.

2. Who’s listening? – Todd Sampson, CEO of Leo Burnett shares how easy it is to manufacture a message that makes more sense to its creators than the audience it’s intended for. He shares how a campaign for Skii Yoghurt centred on a character called Larry badly missed the intended market of mothers in suburbs. “We made it for ourselves,” he says. “They didn’t see what we saw. We saw a quirky character with a spoon; they saw stalker.” Ultimately it’s the non-believer we’re seeking to convince, not ourselves.

3. The value of risk – The truism ‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained’ still holds true.  “The truth is it’s our job to persuade clients to take risks,” says Ms Caro. Timid and business-as-usual campaigns are safe, but unlikely to stir interest. “In a competitive environment, ‘big risk, big possibility of a big pay out’,” she explains. Gospel events have to cut through a swathe of competing philosophies as well as a growing tendency towards stay-at-home lifestyles.

4. Take it on the chin – How brands deal with criticism will say as much as any official message. American car manufacturer Chevy put up a web site encouraging users to interact with their new products, then pulled it down the moment critical messages started to appear. Russell Howcroft from George Patterson Y&R suggests clients that aim to interact have demonstrate resilience. “If people are going to get involved, let them get involved,” he says. “Even if you don’t like it, by saying ‘I don’t like it’ and pulling it off actually makes you look more foolish.” If we believe the Gospel is the answer to the world’s problems, we have to be prepared to answer its criticisms.

5. The centrality of truth – Many think advertising is a strange place to find truth, but every executive agrees it is sacred to successfully conveying a message. You not only have to find the core truth of your ‘product’, you have to show that it holds up in all of life’s circumstances. “The problem with doing faked-up stuff is that after awhile we’ll get wise to it,” says Jane Caro, reflecting on how audiences respond to manufactured stories. “Once you find out that it’s a fake, my feeling of being impressed goes down, not up.” Her comments can easily apply to suspect testimonies and Gospel messages that promise what they can’t deliver.

I can almost hear some Christians groan under the load of these observations. Does it sound like too much work on top of the preparation you already do? But how does five minutes of effective communication measure up against 50 minutes of unconvincing platitude or fine-but-dry theology? Read one of the parables, then answer the question. When challenged by the dry religious types of his day, Jesus gave a startling status to his methodology: “For I did not speak of my own accord, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it.” If God is as much concerned with how his message is presented as the message itself, we would do well to learn as much about effective communication as possible.

Talking Point

The Gruen Transfer refers to the technique employed by designers to deliberately disorientate consumers by the use of the reflective surfaces and architectural ‘bling’. The goal is to induce a glazed state of mind that makes people more open to impulse buying. It’s named after Victor Gruen, an Austrian architect credited with the creation of the very first shopping mall. Insights like this into the world of visual communication, as well as past episodes are well worth checking out at The Gruen Transfer web site.

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