Remember those days when we used to watch a bunch of Wale Adenuga Production drama?

From Superstory, Odd World, and Papa Ajasco, to This Life, Binta & Friends and so on….

Good ol’ days shey?!

Although Superstory was the rave, I still remember a line in the This Life intro:

“...The more you look the less you see …. This Life Ooh, This Liife, Is meeaan [or something like that]

Yep. Sometimes Marketers and a whole bunch of others do this Abacadabra. You think you know what is going on, but friend, you have absolutely no idea!

One of such Abacadabra is what I like to call ‘Misdirection’. A term, I first learnt in the Crime Mystery movie - Now You See Me.

Somewhere in that movie, Thaddeus Bradley be like �

When a magician waves his hand and says, "This is where the magic is happening." The real trick is happening somewhere else. Misdirection.

To understand this concept well, let me give you a snapshot of my Naija experience with Misdirection.

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On a fine Friday morning, I was on my way to Gbagada. I boarded one of those signature yellow and black buses at Mile Two and this one had about 5 passengers.

4 behind the driver and 1 beside him.

I was about to sit where the bulk of passengers were but the conductor motioned me to seat in front.

I noticed he stared at my pockets for a few seconds just before he asked me to take a front seat but I didn’t think much of that.

We had probably moved a few seconds when drama began.

Jam! I was startled. But the conductor was only slamming the door to my right. No worries or so I thought.

The conductor asked to me move closer to the guy beside me. Turns out the door doesn’t lock well and thus continued the door-slamming ritual.

Jam! Jam!!

As he was slamming the door he kept asking me to shift even closer to the guy beside me.

I was convinced that at some point, I will enter the guy on my left so I stopped shifting.

Jam Jam Jam!!!

“Oga abeg shift” : Conductor man said to me, again.

“No worry, the door no go touch me”: I responded, quite pleased at my safe distance.

He must have jammed that door 3 more times. And because I was only human, my attention was focused solely on the conductor’s love story with the door.

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So many interesting things happened afterwards but let’s fast forward to get to the point =>

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A warm tribute to all Lagos Danfos
*4 mins later*

I had to leave the bus, the conductor and driver’s excuse was there was no N200 change.

I agree, we haven’t even travelled far sef, I could easily get another bus. Then the driver says Road Safety was gonna hold the bus if I don’t drop down fast.

He stopped briskly for me. Driver and Conductor in unison,"Oya oya come down fast fast!”

As I was about to get off, I realized something. My phone wasn’t in my left trouser pocket.

And I was 5000% sure it was there before boarding that bus.

Long story short, the guy beside me took my phone and left it under his lap. He tried to make it seem like I dropped it there.

I came down from the bus, phone in hand, with a huge hiss. Plenty Alhamdulillah followed and slowly, I began to realize what was actually going on in that bus.



That bus and everything about it was optimized for one purpose: Steal my phone.

Let me explain. =>

My phone sketched a nice rectangle when in my trouser pocket. So anyone could discern what was there.

The conductor had spotted this. My left pocket was loaded. So he sort of guided me to sit with the guy in front.

The guy in front was shabby, had a Nokia 3310 or something which he consistently used to call a supposed client.

He also had a Bagco sack on his legs. Which I suspect was filled with valuable proceeds from other unsuspecting passengers that entered that bus.

That door wasn’t faulty. The whole door-jamming parade was a gimmick to do two things.

Get me to seat close enough to the guy who was to take my phone.

Capture my attention so I don’t notice when the stealing was going on.

And this my friend is Misdirection. The real trick was happening in my left pocket but they successfully took my attention to the door on my right.

The driver repeated the same trick with his Road Safety story and was almost successful. The guy beside me used the same trick calling an imaginary client.

It was a haven of Misdirections


Now that you have a good grasp of what Misdirection is,

Here is an example I found, of how Marketers use this idea to generate awareness, leads and even conversions [ i.e: make sales]


They knew many people would;

See the wrong team first, attempt to correct the brand and make fun of the mistake.

And others would

Notice the right team was also congratulated, realize it was a joke and attempt to correct others who got it wrong.

And in the process, these two groups of people would create loads of engagement and eyeballs to the brand.

Notice they also snuck in what they do in the image, because they rightly guessed it would get some attention and generate some leads.



So where was this Misdirection?

It was the deliberate mistake in the image to generate multiple tweets. Some calling out the mistake, and others correcting them while pointing out the joke.

The real trick?

Getting more publicity for the brand, that will gift Monster more leads and more customers for free.

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So could you use this strategy to market something you care about?

Well, it’s pretty dicey.

Some celebrities understand and use this technique to remain relevant. Which is why they pull off something controversial.

So that while stans and beefers are having a tweet-fest about some face-palm-able issue ��‍♂️…

The real trick is they are helping their faves and virtual enemies increase their net worth quite literally.

Because remaining in the news = relevance. Relevance = Bankable.

I mean, take a cue from the infamous Donald Trump in The Art of the Deal;

“…good publicity is preferable to bad, but from a bottom-line perspective, bad publicity is sometimes better than no publicity at all. Controversy, in short, sells.”

But besides sales, Misdirection could also lead to a loss of credibility.

And a loss of credibility could mean loosing a business or tarnishing an image. Because you know, no one wants to feel used.

So the koko is, thread carefully friend. You don’t want to miss it when utilizing misdirection.

And that friend, is the end of my stoooory

Wow... I am impressed by this writeup... Lalasticlala