A good idea for a brand like 4WD Supacentre.
A Big Brother–style social series, almost like The Office, either using real customers or a small cast.
A Big Brother–style social series, almost like The Office, either using real customers or a small cast.
I keep thinking a brand like 4WD Supacentre should make a Big Brother style social series, almost like The Office. Either real customers or a small cast, and the whole thing built around the behind-the-scenes moments. The funny bits, the awkward bits, and the real emotions that come with building a setup, heading off on a trip, dealing with things going wrong, and those small wins along the way. Not overly produced. More of a mini daily Aussie comedy than a polished ad.
I say this as someone who has spent more than 15 years behind a camera building content around businesses, and who actually ran a 4WD tour company with Mitch. We built the website, we made the content, and we lived the exact kind of days a series like this would film. The flat moments, the thing that breaks an hour from anywhere, the fix that somehow works, the view at the end that makes the whole mess worth it. None of that was ever really about the gear. People were paying for the adventure, the confidence that it would all come together, the connection, and a story they could tell afterwards.
That is the part most brands skip. They keep producing content about product specs, and when specs stopped landing they moved to UGC, and now even UGC is starting to feel like another ad with a different filter on it. A campaign like the one I am describing wouldn't just sell gear. It would build familiarity and trust over time, because people wouldn't be watching for the products. They would be watching for the storylines. They would want to know what happens to the characters next, and the gear would just be sitting there in the background of a life they recognise.
When I ran the tour business, the thing that built our reputation wasn't a clean photo of a vehicle. It was whether the trip actually felt like the thing we promised, and whether we solved the problems that came up along the way. That is the same reason a series would work. You are not advertising the setup, you are showing the setup being used by people the audience sees themselves in.
This isn't only a 4WD thing. A trades business could run the same idea around the real days on a job rather than the finished before-and-after. A product founder could let people follow the awkward, funny reality of getting something made and out the door instead of only posting the hero shot. A service business could show the actual work behind the result their clients never see. In every case the content stops being about the thing you sell and starts being about the life around it, and that life is what people stay for.
Content that lasts is content where the product is almost incidental. The storyline is the reason anyone keeps watching, and the familiarity that builds is worth more over time than any single spec sheet ever was.
If you want to repurpose your content into web articles, get inside the culo village , this is my way of helping founders market their business for less effort.