Watch above or read below.

Stephen Semple:
If I was to say to you, something’s coming. I just can’t tell you what.

Stephen Semple:
Okay. With some people that we know, they would never leave you alone at that to be like, well, what is it? Well, what is it? Well, what is it? Well, what is it? What is it? You could tell. I won’t tell anyone.

Matthew Burns:
And that was the only way I could think of to start this episode because you can’t. Listen, we’re starting to pick on brands now. I mean, I’m just saying we’re becoming the guys who pick on brands because they don’t quite hit the mark with some of their advertising. And it’s not even that the advertising’s bad. It just means they really could level up.

Stephen Semple:
Yeah, but there’s also a truth here. It’s way easier to find that than to find good ads.

Matthew Burns:
So I was trying to give you a hint that something was coming up in this episode.

Stephen Semple:
Oh, I see where you’re going now.

Matthew Burns:
And I gave you a hint that you were like, some people were like, “Tell me more. Tell me more.” Well, Hint Water, you brought this one up. Yo said, Hint Water, asked a question on a billboard and you love doing this. You love using questions in static advertising.

Stephen Semple:
Questions… So here’s the part that they got right. Questions are unbelievably powerful. It creates a curiosity. It gets people involved. It stimulates the brain. Questions are crazy powerful.

Matthew Burns:
Hint did a bus billboard, a bus poster, and it said, “Did you just lick your lips at water?” Okay? That’s what they ask. Why is that bad, Stephen?

Stephen Semple:
Well, so there’s a couple of things. So I saw this billboard when I was in Chicago. So questions are unbelievably powerful, but there’s two things we have to understand. There’s two mistakes this question, this billboard did, is there’s what’s called open questions and there’s closed questions. Open questions are very powerful. Closed questions are questions that you can answer with a yes, no, or in other words, the answer is implied in the question and they’re not as powerful because a brain can go, “Yep, move on. The brain can move on.”

Matthew Burns:
They’re great for lawyers.

Stephen Semple:
Yeah. But there’s this thing happening. What is it? I can’t answer that. So the brain keeps noodling at it. Now, here’s the other problem with this billboard. Guess how I answered the question?

Matthew Burns:
No.

Stephen Semple:
So if I’m now answering the question, no, I’ve now completely dismissed you. Are you interested in what I’m selling? Nope. Nope. Bye. See you. Done. Moving on.

Matthew Burns:
Exactly. No, you’re quite right. And it’s funny because you did this with. I know you have another one to talk about, but I really want to cover. One of the first things that ever happened in our life together, Stephen, this life that we’ve taken on with each other is you helped me create a trade show campaign, a booth. And it was a question and it said, “What’s wrong with this shingle?”

There’s no yes or no. There’s this curiosity that gets picked up of, “Well, what is wrong with this shingle?” And then you instructed put the shingle in their hands, let them figure it out. It was for a roofing company, roofing manufacturer, but it was a brilliant way to create intrigue about what the thing is. And at the very least, even if they’re not interested, the dying need of wanting to know, is there something wrong with that shingle?

Stephen Semple:
Right. They’ve now had an interaction, a conversation, all that other stuff with you and the company. Questions, unbelievably powerful. You want to have them being open questions. And if it’s a closed question and you’re promoting your product, you don’t want the answer to be no.

Matthew Burns:
Exactly. No, 100%. You recently did a billboard campaign or created a billboard for one of your clients.

Stephen Semple:
Yes.

Matthew Burns:
Talk to me about that one because that was a brilliant use of question.

Stephen Semple:
Okay. So we’re talking about the one for Handyside for the electricals? Yeah. So we have a client, Handyside, heating, air conditioning, plumbing, electrical. So there’s always the challenge of promoting all four. And so we wanted to do a billboard for promoting electrical. And promoting electrical is harder than AC because AC is about, is the AC broken? Let’s get it fixed. Plumbing is the thing clogged, let’s get it fixed.

Electrical’s different because there’s not a lot of pressing electrical things. It tends to be more nagging problems, like the ceiling fan isn’t working, I can live without it, but I should get it fixed because it would make the room a little more comfortable. So one of the common things that they do, one of the big jobs. I shouldn’t say big jobs. One of the common jobs they do is giving people extra electrical outlets because all of a sudden the treadmill is sitting in this corner of the basement and there’s no electrical outlet in that corner.

And so what do you have?

Matthew Burns:
It’s in the wrong spot.

Stephen Semple:
It’s in the wrong spot. You’ve got the 50-foot electrical cord like the one I have in my garage.

Matthew Burns:
Actually, I just set one up in my garage yesterday while I was cleaning it out and I tripped over it. I’ve got to say 12, 13 times.

Stephen Semple:
We asked a question, what is better than a 50-foot long electrical cord? We chose to help people out a little bit and we have just a picture of an outlet, but not prominent. It’s a white billboard, white outlet. So it’s sort of there in the corner. But the question is what’s better than a 50-foot electric cord?

Matthew Burns:
And here’s the thing, you want them to get to the answer of an outlet. You want them to get there and you guys did a little bit to help them. But if at the very least, every time they went by that billboard, they were like, I don’t know, a milkshake. I don’t know, a four-foot ladder. If they came up with any weird, even for them, random thing, you’re challenging them every time they see the billboard, it hits them differently. They can’t just go yes or no. Do you need a 50-foot electrical cord? No. Okay. Well then end of story.

Stephen Semple:
And the important thing that you’ve also hit here with a billboard, what we know is people travel habitually. They drive the same way to work. They walk the same way to their dog, all this other stuff, right? So even if they don’t answer it on the first go, we know that they’re going to see it multiple times. So they don’t have to answer it on the first one. But we really worked hard on what’s a question that we could ask that they can answer that’s not like this obvious yes / no, what’s better than a 50-foot electrical cord?

Matthew Burns:
Yeah, no, and I even like what you said too is there’s ways that you could reuse the same question and the same idea of the cord, but using different imagery, you actually could spark different feelings within people.

Stephen Semple: Sure you could.

Matthew Burns:
It’s wrapped around your ankle or it’s going underneath a ladder. There’s a whole bunch of dangers that could come up with having these 50-foot long electrical cords, so you could use other problems and issues. But again, really good use of a question. It’s not a closed ended question. You can’t just go yes, no. You have to think about it at least for a second. Even if you dismiss it, maybe listen, it didn’t hit you at the right time and you do dismiss it. That’s okay because you’re not going to hit everybody right, but it allows people then to rethink, think, think, think.

So I had an idea. I thought since you came up with this awesomely bad question for a billboard, I though, well, what if we just took, I don’t know their brand, I did the tiniest bit of research on the brand so I tried to do them some justice because I don’t want to offend them.

And guys, this is not sanctioned by the company or the billboard company, which was Out Front Media. I didn’t talk to the city of Chicago to ask permission. I’m telling you right now, I just did this to try and give some love to the billboard and see if we could do it. So I came up with this. “Where will your first sip take you?” Assume the fact that it’s awesome because it’s probably really, really good. Never tasted it, but I’m sure it’s really good. You’ve got that nice bottle, you got the blue, you got the cherries, water.

“Where will that first sip take you?” What does cherry flavored anything mean to you? Maybe it brings you back to your childhood. Maybe it’s Christmas. Oh, maybe it’s a whiskey sour with the cherry in it. I have no idea what it’s going to do, but that’s a question. I also did this one. “What if hydration felt like a kiss?” Went to the more provocative? They actually have a whole provocative side of their campaign, which I think was really, really good. So water, first kiss. I’m just saying, I don’t know. It’s up to you. What did that feel like to you? Steve, I’ve got a couple more. I’ll throw them around.

Stephen Semple:
Well, the interesting thing is if I was working on that campaign, especially given its Hint Water, I think I would probably lean a little bit into hint and I might even just do riddles where the answer could be found on their website.

In other words, we’re giving you hints. Plant that thought of hint in their brains. There’s a bunch of things you could do on that. And strategically, that might not even be the right thing.

Matthew Burns:
I was going to say, we don’t know what they were trying to accomplish.

Stephen Semple:
We don’t, but all we’re saying is if you’re going to use questions, which are powerful in a billboard, make those questions build a little bit of curiosity and let the person think through an answer.

Matthew Burns:
Now, the one thing that this has done for me is I’m going to the United States next week down into Memphis, Tennessee, and I’m going to go look and see, because I’m Canadian, and I’m going to go see if I can find a bottle of Hint water. I want to try it now because you know what? I want to give them some love. We get up on them a little bit. Thank you guys. We appreciate it. Come back and see us next time on Sticky Sales Stories.

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