You car’s service plan is about to expire, and a simple white mailing box lands on your doorstep. It includes a medium-size jigsaw puzzle and a brief letter inviting you to complete the picture. Intrigued, you start to put the pieces together without realising a surprise ending awaits.
Engaging a car or bike owner’s mind with the benefits of genuine parts can be like free-climbing El Capitan in a thunder storm. Challenging.
It’s the reason the FCAI’s Genuine Is Best initiative exists, and others all over the world are on the same important mission.
The Cape Town, South Africa office of advertising giant Ogilvy & Mather has recently been focused on engaging hearts and minds with the safety, performance and durability benefits delivered by genuine replacement parts.
And based on the insight that one incorrect piece, no matter how small, can compromise the bigger picture, its creative team developed the jigsaw puzzle idea as a piece of direct communication, underpinned by that undeniable truth.
The surprise ending is that one crucially located piece fits the puzzle, but is entirely inappropriate, dramatically changing the meaning of the image the puzzle ultimately depicts.
Where a contact lens should be on a fingertip close to a woman’s eye, the ‘final’ piece in fact shows a drawing pin; a volleyball player is about to spike a cactus rather than a ball; a goalkeeper shapes to drive a person’s head instead of a football down the soccer field; a girl is tossing a spider rather than a piece of popcorn into her mouth; and a frisbee player is unexpectedly throwing a snake to his girlfriend.
Personal engagement in completing the puzzle perfectly positions the tagline – Just because it fits, doesn’t mean it’ll work – with a high pass-on factor improving the campaign’s reach and effectiveness.
It’s a genius idea that’s beautifully executed in an effective, award-winning campaign.
