See the art in the message

—Part 4 of 4

Advertising campaigns conceived and executed with “innuendo intendo” provide versatile and expansive communication “legs.”

“Hinting,” allows companies to simultaneously become more nimble and more precise.  Innuendo allows expressing, expanding, recreating, and suggesting brand personality in ongoing advertising campaigns.  You’ll find that intentional overtones and implications can be expressed in any number of ways as long as their “hint” remains “loyal to the brand personality and core values” is realized in the consumer’s experience.

Do not pretend to be what you are not; but yes, use the mighty innuendo for all it’s worth.

Who does it well???

An obvious example of my point is Guess Jeans’ branding campaigns. Their sultry personality has  “rolled out of the sheets” (innuendo intended) over at least the last decade expressed in countless ways and untold innuendos over the years.

It’s not enough that the name GUESS more or less “says it all” by way of implication, but their bodacious campaigns are replete with visual cues that keep the viewer fixated on the message, the visual—guessing about “what’s going on.”  I, personally, am not the target audience and yet, viewed through my marketing spyglass, I “get” what they’re doing.  Hinting accomplished!

Like it or not, Guess has intentionally developed its sensuous “brand-personality overtones” in print that effectively radiate its attributes, style and product: naughty, sexy, promiscuous, hungry, reckless and youthful, wealthy, (to name a few).  Guess delivers poignant, visceral imagery to its target audience that “vibrates” its message, in my humble estimation, very effectively.  In fact, the ads are so effective in their explosive “hinting” that, for many, may trigger the need to go to confession after simply perusing an issue of “Vanity Fair.”  The models change, the mood changes, the scenes change, the props change—but the overtones don’t change, and neither does the suggestion, the innuendo
.

Don’t take my word for it.  Just look around. Start paying attention to innuendo.  You’ll see subtle manipulations pushing buttons all day long, in all sorts of ways.  It’s pretty interesting, actually.  Shakespeare’s Juliet said it best:

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”

Innuendo, by any other name, means hinting, alluding, suggestion, and insinuation.

Isn’t it time to get your brand management innuendo intendo on?

END