We’ve all seen Super Bowl commercials with amazing productions that cost millions to make. The actors, set design, props, locations, and a thousand other things can get very expensive very fast, but many big name marketers have forked over that money in the hopes that their spot will break through the clutter and interrupt their audience enough so they get noticed. There is another path. Having a simple, beautiful idea means you can strip away the artifice and tell your story intimately. A couple recent cases of this  – one emotional and one comedic – demonstrate just how far an approach can go.

The Always #Like a Girl video from Procter & Gamble has stacked up over 20 million views on YouTube. Watch it and you’ll see why. It’s all shot on one set, and the people are real. They’re asked, if you were throwing a ball ‘like a girl’ what would you do? Each person (men, women, girls) acts out throwing a ball in an overly affected and stereotypical girlish fashion.  We learn that women’s self-confidence plummets during puberty as these stereotypes chip away at their perceptions of themselves. The video builds as we see a new, confident image of women emerge, until doing anything ‘like a girl’ is a badge of honor. Simple.

And then there’s Stephen Merchant for Newcastle Brown Ale. All the actor does is sit down and talk to the camera, and riff on how great America would be if England had won the Revolutionary War. Merchant channels a bit of John Cleese here and it’s great fun.

No stunt work, car crashes or special effects could improve on these beautifully simple ideas. They cost money to make, but not Super Bowl spot money, and they’re getting seen by lots of people – without the ridiculous cost of the media buy. For marketers, the lesson is as simple as this new brand of video. Invest in your creative ideas first and foremost. If more extensive production is required to tell the story, then you can go there. But if you can tell a great story without moving the camera, you’ll move your audience instead.