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Matthew Burns:
All right, Steve, you’ve got all these things in your head, and you brought it up last time. I had another list of things I wanted to talk about, but you struck a chord with me because you brought up the Levi’s stonewash jeans commercial.

Stephen Semple:
Oh yeah, the laundry, the laundromat one.

Matthew Burns:
Right.

Stephen Semple:
Yeah. So good.

Matthew Burns:
So I went back and I watched it again and again and a couple more times and just talking to you about the story. Because that’s what we talked about last time. We just talked about the story. And this is a cool story. Anyway, here let’s watch it first.

 

Sex appeal, man.

Stephen Semple:
Look, girls all want that guy. We all want to be that guy. We want to have that confidence to walk in and do it.

Matthew Burns:
Right?

Stephen Semple:
I mean, it’s an age-old story, isn’t it?

Matthew Burns:
And did you see that all the characters, every character of the time were there? The two little kids peeking over the top of the washer. The mom’s going, “Get over here, your little brats.” The grumpy old man doing this thing. The two girls go, “Oh, is he going to take off the underwear too?” Every character was a full story.

Stephen Semple:
This campaign had a challenge. When Levi’s launched the button-up 501 blue jeans, they were at a high price point. I cannot remember what the price point was, but retailers basically said, “We’re not carrying this thing. It is not going to sell.

Matthew Burns:
Wow.

Stephen Semple:
So they launched this into a marketplace that was not excited and did not have lots of distribution, and they ran this ad, and it blew the doors off.

Matthew Burns:
And this was in the ’80s, right?

Stephen Semple:
Yeah. It was the mid-’80s when this ran, yeah.

Matthew Burns:
And “Heard It Through The Grapevine”. So a nostalgic song.

Stephen Semple:
Oh, and the other part that happened is just like in our previous one where we were talking about Cadbury, where the song in Cadbury went back onto the charts. The same thing happened with Heard It Through The Grapevine. It got back onto charts. The ad was popular enough and it struck a chord with enough people that the song by Marvin Gaye got back onto the charts.

Matthew Burns:
Unlike the last example with Phil Collins, this one, there was much more time when this song was not heard on popular radio.

Stephen Semple:
Oh, yes. You’re right, a much further gap. So what we know is this was a really creative campaign, had lots of sex appeal, and worked. But what are some of the other reasons why you think it worked?

Matthew Burns:
A lot of the ads that I like, it’s because they start with mystery. You have no idea what’s going on. This starts off with just some dude walking into a laundromat. And I don’t think you really even understand anything until the belt comes off.

You don’t know where this is going.

Stephen Semple:
Right. You have no idea.

Matthew Burns:
Until the belt comes off. None. Because he dumps rocks into the stupid thing.

Stephen Semple:
Well, but you see, that’s the other thing that they did is they added other little things to create further mystery. So he’s walking into a laundromat and then he dumps these rocks into it, like “What are you doing, dude?”

Matthew Burns:
He throws his shirt in, then he takes off the pants. And then you go, okay, “Wait a second. He’s throwing jeans in there.” Come on, back in the ’80s, jeans were everything.

Stephen Semple:
Yep.

Matthew Burns:
’70s and ’80s, that was the big thing. So you know what you’ve got. But you have no idea till there, and you still don’t actually know, except they had their product placement finally when the belt comes off and you expose the label.

Stephen Semple:
Right.

Matthew Burns:
Still not bold, but there.

Stephen Semple:
And I think there was an extra little bit of intrigue because he was not being ignored. And yes, he was a good-looking guy. If you walk into a room, human psychology, you walk into a room and if every single person in that room was looking to the left, you would look. They’ve done this experiment on elevators.

Matthew Burns:
That’s right.

Stephen Semple:
Where they’ve done the whole thing where the people are facing the wrong way in the elevator. And you walk in and what do you immediately do? Even if it’s an elevator you get in all the time, you know that another door isn’t going to open you end up looking in that direction.

Matthew Burns:
Right.

Stephen Semple:
So the fact that everybody looked at him in sort of this, “What’s he up to?” sort of way made us also look at him and go, “What’s he up to?” And then the rocks go in and this goes in and you’re like, “Holy crap, what’s going on here?” And then off comes to the belt and you’re like, “Oh, this is going to be like-”

Matthew Burns:
Yeah. Everybody was drawn into what was happening there. The focus was brought in by the supporting characters.

Stephen Semple:
In terms of that men want to be him and women want to be with him?

Matthew Burns:
Right.

Stephen Semple:
I think the interesting deep psychology in this is also how you sell confidence. This dude exuded confidence without a word. He just strutted in there and did his thing, and also rebellion. Didn’t give a crap about what anybody had to say.

Matthew Burns:
Nope.

Stephen Semple:
Think, all eyes are on him and he was like, “I’m doing my thing.”

Matthew Burns:
Sitting in his underwear, arms crossed. Oh no, reading the paper. It wasn’t arms crossed.

Stephen Semple:
Reading the paper.

Matthew Burns:
Like it was no big thing. This is just common. This is Sunday for me.

Stephen Semple:
Yeah, I was going to say this is just a Sunday.

Matthew Burns:
Right? Confidence for days.

Stephen Semple:
When you think about selling jeans, a lot of times people want, they want ones that fit well and they feel good in and they’re confident in. So they used mystery to draw us in.

Matthew Burns:
Yeah.

Stephen Semple:
And they told this little vignette story of the guy coming in. And it was a story because there’s a beginning. What’s he doing? Oh. At the end, okay, he’s washing his jeans. I get it. But I think the really powerful emotion that was sitting in behind here was, yes, it was that we want to be him, but specifically we want to have his confidence.

Matthew Burns:
That’s right.

Stephen Semple:
That’s really what we want. We want his confidence. Wow, am I going to feel that confident when I’m wearing those jeans? Yes, I am. Bring it on, baby.

Matthew Burns:
That’s right.

Stephen Semple:
Bring it on.

Matthew Burns:
Yeah, and jeans at the time were casual work wear. So you wanted to have that feeling of confidence like these aren’t going to fall apart, you can wash them with stones, they’re still going to survive.

Stephen Semple:
Yes. Actually, that’s really interesting. Hadn’t thought about that. Talk about another subtle message in terms of durability.

Matthew Burns:
Right? Because he has to walk out with those still. He still has to put those back on and get out.

Stephen Semple:
Put them in the dryer and put them back on.

Matthew Burns:
Go out and they can’t fall off. So, no, and I didn’t see the confidence play so much as the sex appeal and surprise. But yeah, the confidence play. And then the addition of, yeah, just throw them in there and wash. Now they’re pre-stone washed. That’s what thought the whole commercial was about. We’re going to pre-do that for you because now, you guys have spoken, yes, you want them pre-stone washed because it’s hard to do it because you’re wrecking machines with stones.

Stephen Semple:
Yeah. And I wonder if laundromats, wouldn’t that be interesting to research that laundromats have a problem with people bringing in stones that they have to start putting up signs, “Do not put stones in the washing machine.”

Matthew Burns:
Right?

Stephen Semple:
That’d be interesting because I bet you that went on.

Matthew Burns:
Oh, man.

Stephen Semple:
But what we forget about these things is when we buy products, it’s that whole self-identification.

Matthew Burns:
Right.

Stephen Semple:
And yeah, on a conscious level, we don’t go, “I want to have his confidence and I’m going to feel like and look like him when I put these jeans on.” But it does happen on a subconscious level.

Matthew Burns:
Right.

Stephen Semple:
That’s the reason why these ads work. And I think I know why you like mystery so much, and we’ve experienced this with our customers.

Matthew Burns:
Sure.

Stephen Semple:
It takes a very bold advertiser to employ mystery because the traditional thing that advertisers and agencies and everybody want to do is get the product up there right away. And the fear is this, if I don’t get the product right away at the beginning of the commercial, when the person tunes out on the commercial, I’ve got no opportunity to sell my product.

Matthew Burns:
That’s right.

Stephen Semple:
So when I wait until the very end, I actually have got to get the guts to believe that the person’s going to watch through to the end.

Matthew Burns:
That’s right.

Stephen Semple:
But the funny thing is mystery is one of those things that actually makes that happen because our brain wants to answer the question of what the hell’s going on here? We know it’s an ad. What is it advertising?

Matthew Burns:
Right.

Stephen Semple:
What the heck is it? I need to check back to see what the heck it’s advertising. But mystery is hard to do. And it’s not technically hard to do. It’s emotionally hard to do.

Matthew Burns:
Right.

Stephen Semple:
Because you’re basically sitting there saying, “Okay, I’m spending all this money on an ad, and I’m only getting my name in right at the tail, at the very, very, it’s the last hair on the end of the tail of the dog.”

Matthew Burns:
Right.

Stephen Semple:
Where traditional is, “I’ll get it up in the front and I’ll get it in the middle and I’ll throw it in the end. I get multiple impressions. I do it a whole bunch of times. Therefore it’s remembered and ignored.” It’s hard to do.

Matthew Burns:
It’s hard to do, and any of the ads that we’ve shown so far, and especially this one, the committee wasn’t letting this happen easily.

Stephen Semple:
Right.

Matthew Burns:
When this went internally to the board they said, “Hey guys, we’ve got this new ad and want you to take a look at it. And it’s really cool because we’ve got this story and a little bit of mystery and blah blah blah.” “And where does it say our name?” Right?

Stephen Semple:
Right.

Matthew Burns:
And it’s in the last four seconds. And they’re like, “No, no, we can’t run that ad.” Because that’s a story that in any of our conversations you brought up many times, if the committee just gets their hands on it, they go, “I don’t know.” And somebody has to be strong enough and say, “Guys. I’m writing the check.”

Stephen Semple:
We’re doing this.

Stephen Semple:
“Yeah, we’re doing this.”

Matthew Burns:
“This has to happen.”

Stephen Semple:
It really requires a champion to say, “We’re doing this.” But here’s the takeaway. The takeaway is mystery. And look, we’ve done two now on mystery, there are other emotions that can be used.

Matthew Burns:
Yes, 100%.

Stephen Semple:
But mystery is a really powerful one for drawing people in. But the challenge with mystery is you actually have to keep it mysterious. If you drop a single clue in through it, the mystery is lost. And that’s what makes it challenging to do.

Matthew Burns:
Yeah, 100%. Thanks for mentioning this last time. And I’m so glad we got to talk about it because man, when you said it, I went, “Oh my God, yes.” And then I’d forgotten the ad and I played it and this is a good one.

Stephen Semple:
Well, you heard it through the grapevine, that’s for sure.

Matthew Burns:
That’s literally what happened this time. Awesome. Well, listen, as always, thank you, my friend.

Stephen Semple:
All right.

Matthew Burns:
And we’ll hit you on the next one.

Stephen Semple:
All right. Thanks, buddy.

Matthew Burns:
See you, man.

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