Truly’s “Believe” Ad Saves Its Best for Last

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The World Cup has ended but there’s still a little bit of added time for us to celebrate one more ad from a tournament that’s seen a lot of great creative work. Hard seltzer brand Truly has put a lot of effort into creating an entertaining campaign around the theme “Believe” mixing multi-channel executions and PR events, with this ad from agency KDSP sitting at the center.

One of the big conversations at this World Cup has been how much the US now is truly a soccer-loving nation. And if the USMNT’s passionate fans and run to the last 16 didn’t convince you, Truly’s commercial just might. It’s the kind of delicate balance of sincere belief with tongue-in-cheek silliness that you might see from a Scottish or English brand, embracing the culture of fandom and having some fun with it too.

The ad is set in a sports bar, with a crowd of fans watching the match and breaking into the “Soccer Anthem”, an earnest song cheering on the team and stating their belief. Everyone in the bar sings along, and even the player on screen joins in. Finally, Abraham Lincoln and a bald eagle appear to take up the song, and crack open a Truly hard seltzer too.

The ad walks the tightrope between corny and knowing, and that helps it spark emotional response. From the Test Your Ad report we can see that Truly’s commercial beats the category norm on almost every metric, with Exceptional results in short-term Spike Rating and in emotional intensity (a big driver of that short-term sales potential).

“Believe” is also a long-term winner, with its 3.4-Star Rating pushing it into the top 20% of the Cold Drinks category for long-term growth potential. And it’s well-branded too, with norm-beating results on Fast Fluency (accurate recognition in the first two seconds).

What makes the ad work so well? Let’s look at the Happiness moment-by-moment chart in the Test Your Ad report, which tracks the level of Happiness across the ad. What we see here is an ad with steadily rising levels of positive emotion, as the situation gets more tongue-in-cheek and surreal, peaking with that bald eagle appearance.

That rising Happiness is a powerful creative asset for an ad, as it means the commercial obeys the behavioral science principle of the “peak-end rule”, which tells us that the emotion you take away from an experience is the average of the peak and the end. So if you make sure the emotional peak is at the end – which Truly does – you’re maximising your chances of making your ad effective.

Like a great tournament soccer team, Truly’s ad is able to improve throughout its performance and leave its best for last. It’s one of a few World Cup ads to have truly taken advantage of the opportunities this great sports event offered.