How Quiet Advertising Stands Out in a Noisy World

In Praise of the Quiet TV Ad

For my money, some of the best advertising around is run by a brand that markets to a captive customer audience.

Maybe that’s why its advertising doesn’t feel a need to shout.

Then again, perhaps it’s just smart money to go quiet in your advertising.

Creating Content for Your Owned Media

ESPN is the advertiser. What’s notable about its advertising—beyond the fact its ads are produced for an “owned” audience of cable subscribers who are already customers—is the exceptional quality of its creativity: always humorous and often understated. 

I’m guessing ESPN develops its own advertising content as a brand-building activity, to enhance customer loyalty and to create premium, owned content it can spread around its network of properties, both online and off, to earn shares and viral views on social media.

There’s only one way to earn those shares and viral views, and that’s through creative excellence. 

A recent example I consider to be a near-perfect commercial is a spot featuring the National Basketball Association’s reigning MVP, Stephen Curry.

A Work of Quiet Beauty

It’s a work of beauty, a quiet TV ad that relies on nuance and passages of silence to stand out, not feeling a need to fill the airtime with unnecessary dialogue. This strategy, too little seen in TV advertising, is the equivalent of a graphic designer using white space in printed media or a composer inserting a rest in a piece of music, all meant to draw attention to “what’s there” by emphasizing what’s “not there.”

It’s a hard one to pull off, but well worth the effort when you succeed. And this commercial succeeds brilliantly.

The spot features three NBA players, all in the dynamic Curry family. Father Dell, who played 16 seasons in the NBA; younger sibling Seth, a guard for the Sacramento Kings; and Stephen, who plays for the NBA champion Golden State Warriors and is considered by many to be the greatest shooter in NBA history. 

Thematically, perhaps it’s not so surprising this is a quiet commercial given that it features a player who generally lets his playing speak for itself. In all, only Stephen Curry and his father Dell speak, uttering just 17 words in three sentences, softly spoken, throughout the 30 seconds. By my count, that’s just four, maybe five seconds of the entire commercial, which leaves the rest of the time as free space for fun to unfold

Here’s the spoken dialogue, first from son Stephen:

“My bad. I’m sorry.”

“Let me, ah, I’ll just sit over here. It’s all right.”

And a simple rejoinder from father Dell:

“Win one MVP.”

Not a script that bowls you over on words alone, but that’s not the point—it’s what goes unsaid that is the big deal here.

What Makes This TV Commercial Work

The commercial’s setup revolves around the conceit that someone might be a big shot in the world outside their own household, but when it comes to family it’s an entirely different pecking order altogether.

Perhaps the best performance is the nonspeaking role by Seth Curry who, in his role as “little brother,” doesn’t say a single word. He just opportunistically does what any little brother might do given the chance—you’ll have to see the spot for yourself.

Its genius centers on a formula that combines a commonly understood construct (family dynamics), adding believability by using real people as actors (even if they all are NBA players), and then letting the idea and action dictate the momentum rather than a bunch of chit chat. It’s a commercial that breaks from the noise by simply being quiet.