🧑‍🔬 The Secret To Credible Ads

Use this psychology hack.

Author

Josh Viner
May 14, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

In partnership with

Brand: Hopper

Psychology Concept: The Messenger Effect

Days Running: 512 Days
(This gives an indication of how it’s performing)

🧪 The Messenger Effect

The Messenger Effect is a cognitive bias that causes us to judge the validity or relevance of information based on the person delivering the message.

🤳 How Hopper Uses The Messenger Effect

Hopper takes a regular UGC ad but puts some overlays on it that makes it look like a news outlet and puts it on a TV to make it even more believable.

🧠 How You Can Use The Messenger Effect

The key to the Messenger Effect is using or creating a sense of influence in how the ad is delivered.

There are several ways you can do this.

For example:

Matt & Bow here created an ad that looks like a magazine cover:

Or this from Obvi which makes it look like their ad looks like a breaking news article (clicking the Obvi ad does lead to an actual blog post about it):

The Messenger Effect partially explains why influencers can work so well compared to ads from a brand – people trust the messenger. In fact, 82% of people are likely to follow a recommendation from a micro-influencer.

So if your message isn’t converting, try changing how the message is delivered.

Try styling your ads as press, leveraging influencers or an authoritative expert.

How will you use the Messenger Effect?

Let me know how it goes!

Until next time,

Josh