Shortly after the 1969 moon landing, Volkswagen published a magazine ad.
The ad was just a simple tabletop photo of a model of the Lunar Landing Vehicle, which had just landed Armstrong and Aldrin onto the lunar surface. Besides that, all their ad contained was a simple VW logo and a simple, seven-word headline: “It’s ugly, but it gets you there.”
Which was what also could be said for their main car model at the time, the Volkswagen Beetle.
They didn’t show the car, they didn’t talk about the car. They didn’t need to.
It’s what goes unsaid that’s interesting. It’s what the reader creates in their mind, the gaps they fill in by themselves that make a message powerful.
Music does this masterfully. Singer, Anna Nalick, sang about this twenty years ago highlighting that once you put your words out there, people will use them however they want to. It’s not a flaw that not everyone interprets it the way you intended, it’s the entire point.
The same song can mean heartbreak to one person, hope to another, and resistance to a third. All simultaneously. All correctly.
Taylor Swift just proved this again not with her lyrics but her latest album cover. On a podcast appearance, she showed an orange, distinct and blurred cover before it officially dropped. Then watched as every brand’s social media team raced to create memes with it. The cover was vague enough that anything could fit – pet companies, coffee, fried chicken, police departments, airlines, Elmo, alcohol, even orthopedic centers – as long as it was orange.
Memes are essentially templates for others to add their own creativity to. The simpler the template, the easier it is to remix. As long as it’s meaningful enough that people want to.
Think of the slogans of both Obama and Trump’s campaigns.
Obama: “Yes, we can.”
Yes, we can… what? When? How? That’s not defined. And it allows everyone to fill in their own interpretations, their own definitions of what exactly it is that we can do. The message is hope. That’s it. There are no details that can blur its clarity.
Trump: “Make America Great Again.”
Greatness is an amorphous, vague concept but an enticing one. Everyone may disagree about what greatness looks like, or how to achieve it. Very few would disagree that it’s desirable.
There’s a time and a place for detail, for policy. There’s also a time and a place for emotion, artistry, and simplicity. That’s what burrows into people’s brains. That’s what sticks.
Why? Because everyone can make it their own.
If you’ve ever seen the movie Jaws, you know its gravitas comes not from showing terrifying footage of the shark thrashing about in the water, but from what you imagine lurking beneath the surface.
Everybody knows what’s already “there.”
It’s what’s “not there” that fascinates us.
