Testimonial lead

The pattern

This still is filed under Testimonial lead.

Define

The first voice on the page is a customer's. Proof arrives before the company's claim.

Mechanism

Borrowed voice. The lead sentence is already someone else's verdict. The seller speaks second.

Verdict

The result is easier to believe from a peer

Why it works

The drawing fills the frame with local faces, veiled women and a man with his jaw bound for toothache, so a German tablet is shown inside an Egyptian street, not a foreign pharmacy. The headline claims that everywhere Arabic is spoken people are talking about aspirin, which makes buying it feel like joining what everyone already does. The copy then lists the pains it treats and the two pack sizes, so the reader knows exactly what to ask for.

The big idea

Wherever Arabic is spoken, people are talking about aspirin, so the Bayer tablet is shown as something the whole Arab street already uses.

The offer

Bayer Aspirin, sold in a tube of 20 tablets of 0.5 g or a capsule holding one tablet, for headaches, toothache, earache, nerve and rheumatic pain and fever.

The proof

The Bayer cross on every tablet and pack, and the claim that its effect against pain has shown no equal. No named user or figure.

Lines from the ad

في كل مكان

Everywhere

حيث يتكلمون اللغة العربية يدور الحديث أيضا على ذكر الأسبيرين!

Wherever Arabic is spoken, the talk also turns to aspirin

يباع الأسبيرين في أنبوبة داخلها ٢٠ قرصا

Aspirin is sold in a tube holding 20 tablets

Steal this when

A foreign brand needs to feel local and widely used in a market that trusts what its neighbours use.

The emotion

Written to Belonging. It makes the Say move.

Veiled women and a man with his jaw bound for toothache fill an Egyptian street, and the line that the talk turns to aspirin wherever Arabic is spoken puts the tablet inside that community's pains.