Watch the video above or read below. 

Matthew Burns:
Sticky Sales Stories is why we’re here. And Steve, oh man, I just found this one. This one’s been running for a while. And I just found it and I wanted to jump into it because I saw one ad, one really interesting ad that I was like, man, it’s too bad this isn’t a thing. I hadn’t seen the campaign and it’s a thing.

Stephen Semple:
It’s a thing that’s been going for a decade.

Matthew Burns:
It’s a thing that’s been going for way longer than I thought. So yeah. So let’s play this and then we’ll talk about it. So here’s an ad from Allstate.

 

Allstate Mayhem Character: I’m a bee and I bumbled my way into your car, but this hive isn’t big enough for the both of us. *Buzzzzz* *Crash* Oh, wow. What a buzz kill. And if you don’t have the right auto insurance coverage paid for, this could really sting. So get Allstate, save money and be protected from mayhem, like me.

Matthew Burns:
I love the personification of Mayhem and the Bumblebee going “boo,” which is not what bumblebees say, which is hilarious. So yeah, so I watched this, man, I’m going to say a couple of days ago. It wasn’t very long, and then I kind of dismissed it and then I was like, oh man, I wish it was a thing. So I went and looked for Allstate, and they’ve been uploading, actually, they only started uploading these to their YouTube channel recently, which is weird. I’ve found them all in the last year or so.

Stephen Semple:
Yeah, it’s amazing how many companies just don’t do that, which to me is always like, why are you not doing it? But anyway…

Matthew Burns:
Right? And I got all excited, this is a fairly new campaign. And then you were like, no, no, no, no, it’s been on since 2016. And I’m like, damn it. And there’s a campaign of these, which has made me really, really happy. But let’s talk a little bit about it.

Because we’re working on an ad campaign right now. We just started where we’re personifying a roof. So the personification of a thing is a powerful tool that we can use in writing. And so let’s talk about the personification of Mayhem, which is not a thing. It’s abstract, which is kind of neat. It can be anything at once.

Stephen Semple:
One of the things we’ve often talked about, because when you personify something, it means you’ve turned it into a character. When you make something, a character, it can vamp things. It can do weird things, especially when you make it a character like a personification of Mayhem. Everyone knows it’s not a person, which means you can be outrageous.

Matthew Burns:
Exactly.

Stephen Semple:
There is no limit to what you can do, which creates that entertaining factor, which captures eyeballs, but it really opens up the world. You can do anything with it.

Matthew Burns:
Absolutely. Well, and I mean, this is a good example. It’s a bee that what you weren’t expecting, so Mayhem in the form of an insect that gets caught in a place where it’s not comfortable with. So it’s going to do whatever it can to try and get out, so it’s going to get in your way. We freak out and then we make poor decisions like swatting at it and looking different directions, and all of a sudden we crash the car, now we have insurance problems. So it’s smart of Allstate to pick on Mayhem because Mayhem is unknown and it’s not expected and it’s random. And so they’re saying, be prepared. That’s all it means. It’s a great way of saying be prepared. And what I love that you said was the fact that you can be outrageous.

You wrap the personification with some rules. So we talk about character diamonds a lot, where we say, this is what the top of it is, the north star. This is exactly what you see about this character, the counter star…I think we should do a whole episode on character diamonds. They’re amazing when they’re done, but this character wouldn’t be really good if he couldn’t continue the story somewhere else. That’s why I said I was excited, and then all of a sudden I realized it was a campaign, and it’s because I saw this ad…

 

Allstate Mayhem Character: I’m a parking gate and I’m all out of whack. Please insert your parking ticket. It’s going to take a lot more than a little ticket to get out of here. And if you have cut rate car insurance, this could leave you all bent out of shape. No! So get Allstate and be better protected from mayhem, like me.
Driver: Someone!
Allstate Mayhem Character: That’s broken too, pal.

Matthew Burns:
So I love the teasing. The thing, it’s coming down, it’s a gate and he teases the first car and he drives by and the next guy thinks he’s going to get away from it. Nope. Smash. And again, it’s a completely different embodiment, same character, little bit of a jerk. He knows who he is, he’s owning the role. Listen, I’m doing damage. You don’t like it. And he goes in at it and I was like, okay, this is to me a campaign that has… I mean, remember the Snickers campaign with the different ways of showing hunger? It’s the same idea where they decided, hey, listen, we’re going to lean into all the different random things. I’m not going to show this one, but there was one where they talked about a teenage girl with a cell phone.

Stephen Semple:
But I think strategically, one of the things that they’ve done that’s really clever here is they’ve highlighted the importance of insurance, but they’ve also made the accident kind of not your fault. So the bee thing is not your fault. No one would really fault you for it. We could all see it doing the gate thing. That can happen. In other words, they’ve created situations where it’s like, this is real life and this could happen.

Matthew Burns:
Exactly.

Stephen Semple:
This is not your fault. The problem is Mayhem, and we’re going to take care of you when Mayhem strikes. I think it’s really interesting because what we know is if you blame the consumer, it would be easy for consumer to go, well, I wouldn’t do that. It’d be easy to the consumer to go, don’t blame me. Where it’s like, well, it’s not my fault. There’s this thing Mayhem that happens, and I think that’s really clever.

Matthew Burns:
Yeah. Well be protected for the things that you don’t know you don’t know.

Stephen Semple:
Right. And they’re all situations that we’ve all experienced. The bug in the car, maybe not the accident, but all of a sudden when you look up and suddenly realize, holy crap, I’ve actually been looking down for 10 seconds. That moment where you go, geez, I shouldn’t have done that.

Matthew Burns:
Oh, you’re making bad decisions in that moment. No, dude. Absolutely. I’m going to be honest, I’ve never been hit by the gate coming down, but I’ve seen it happen. I’ve seen it happen.

Stephen Semple:
Right. It’s not outside of the world of possibilities.

Matthew Burns:
Exactly.

Stephen Semple:
We’ve all seen it. We’ve seen it happen. We’ve had it almost happen. We can easily imagine it happening.

Matthew Burns:
It’s funny, we’ve talked about fear and now you and me and Wizard of Ad partners and the use of fear versus the use of comedy for entertainment and fear is not the stronger of the two. It’s usually much more powerful in the moment, but you don’t want to stay in living in fear. But all of these actually are from fear, and then they put the crazy ass personification to it, which allows it to be comedy. So you can deal with your fear in a very easy and safe place, which I thought was a really well done technique because all of them are from fear. Mayhem is a fear. We are afraid of what we don’t know. Let’s look at one more because this is one where you potentially could prevent this.

 

Allstate Mayhem Character: I’m a rusty old boat hitch and I am barely hanging on. And while we’re still miles from the lake, I’m going to launch this boat right here. See ya! *crash* Get Allstate, save money on auto insurance and be protected from Mayhem. Yeah, like me.

Matthew Burns:
Oh my gosh. I thought for sure his feet were on the ground dragging, but they weren’t. They were just above the ground as the trailer hitch is going, and we’re not at the lake yet, but we’re going to set this thing a trip.

Stephen Semple:
We’re going to launch this boat now.

Matthew Burns:
Launch this boat. That was the words. We’re going to launch this right now and it’s flying down the highway and then somebody else has an accident. It wasn’t even the guy towing that had the accident. It was two other people where this boat almost took them out. So they needed insurance, and I’m sure they were going to come flying after that guy. I mean, he goes to collect his boat. Potentially, you could be protecting yourself by going and looking at your trailer hitch.

And I think it’s actually a really smart one to bring up because then before I even call Allstate, I’m going to go and check, make sure that it’s not that rusted out. And then I’m going to call Allstate and say, thank you for that, and here I’ll give you my money. But a campaign run on fear told in a way where I’m not criticized and yet I get to feel good about it and then take care of it and know that I’m protected. And I think they did a fantastic job.

Stephen Semple:
And the reason why you have to be really careful using fear in advertising and marketing is that when people are in a state of fear, they have a very hard time making a decision. They’re not in buying mode, and it’s hard to bring them in the buying mode when they’re feeling that way, which is the reason why it’s an emotion. You got to be careful how you play with it because you can even make person fear the thing you want them to fear. But if you don’t bring them out of that, it’s very hard. It’s very, very hard people, to make buying decisions in that state.

Matthew Burns:
Personification is a really powerful tool you can use in writing to have something embody the traits that we either want or we don’t want. So depending on which side of the story we’re on, and the idea of being careful when using fear, and I think they did a really good job of allowing me to feel okay making the purchasing decision, even though they were coming to us from a place of fear and mayhem, specifically embodying Mayhem. Like I said, I was like, oh man, this would be a great campaign. And I had never seen it before. And then it ended up being a campaign.

Stephen Semple:
And I just figured out when it was launched. Their first one was done in 2014.

Matthew Burns:
Oh, that is a while.

Stephen Semple:
Now here’s the interesting thing is they crowdsourced the first bunch. They were crowdsourcing ideas.

Matthew Burns:
Oh, that’s neat.

Stephen Semple:
Sorry, 2013 is when they started the crowdsource ideas, and then in 2015 is where is when they ran the first ad.

Matthew Burns:
Oh, fantastic. So they looked to their consumer to try and get some data.

Stephen Semple:
Yeah. What are situations that happen to you? That’s why they feel so real.

Matthew Burns:
Yes. They’re coming from the public. The public are talking to them.

Stephen Semple:
That’s cool.

Matthew Burns:
And then the creative team did a great job putting it together from being in the creative side of things. I love seeing really unique angles. It’s interesting, Daniel Whittington, when he was building out his distillery at the academy, he did everything crowdsourced.

Stephen Semple:
Well, they actually crowdfunded it.

Matthew Burns:
Crowdfunded. Oh my gosh. Exactly right. It’s powerful. Oh my gosh. Too many tools in this one. We’ll have to put them in the comments or something. So I hope you guys like this one. Steve, I hope this one was good. I know I only spring it on you right before we launched here.

Guys, if you have any questions about this, you want to talk about any of these techniques, we’d love to help you. If you’re a small business, we’d love to help you and let us know if there’s an ad campaign that you liked that we haven’t talked about yet, because we love to do that.

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