Since my last blog several weeks ago, I ran across an interview online with Noelle Hancock, author of a new book called My Year With Eleanor. Following a sudden layoff from her steady writing job, Hancock read an inspirational quote from First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt:
Do one thing every day that scares you.
This quote served as inspiration and motivation for Hancock to reinvent herself, and as the genesis of the book. As she notes in the interview:
Avoidance only reinforces fear when we should really expose ourselves to scary situations to prove to ourselves that we can handle it. Courage is a muscle that I had stopped exercising.
So she embarked on a journey doing just what Eleanor Roosevelt advised: Noelle Hancock did something really scary every day for one year. (And at this point in the interview, I’m thinking to myself “I really gotta get this book.”) Some of these fear-inducing tasks included looking up old boyfriends, literally swimming with sharks, and the classic skydiving. Naturally, the author was asked what she found to be the absolute “scariest thing” she did that year. Her answer?
Stand-up comedy more than everything else combined!
Winning with Humor
Fast forward about two weeks, and a few of us Marketing Partners (and many other busy PR/Advertising professional types here in Burlington) attended a Social Media luncheon featuring two authors of another type of book entirely, Content Rules.
These two authors, Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman, were fun, engaging, and knowledgeable speakers. Their book delineates guidelines to develop effective, winning online communications in many media, including social media. They also described relevant examples of businesses and consultants who followed a particular guideline especially well.
So at one point, C.C. Chapman was discussing one of the “rules” to developing awesome content (and I paraphrase here): Surprise Your Reader/Client/Audience — Do Something Unexpected. And he recounted a direct email blast from one of his favorite beer brands (and coincidentally local to Vermont), Magic Hat Brewery. It was off-beat — quirky — and humorous. This e-mail really got to him: it made him laugh — it was clever and different — it grabbed his attention, and reinforced his positive feelings for the brand.
So these authors got me thinking about how hard it is to “surprise” a client — and to weave humor into a marketing campaign (in addition to thinking once again, “I gotta get this book…). Humor is such a tricky — and scary — thing. After all, as marketers, the very last thing we want to do is offend someone. And for some reason, humor seems to pose this risk. As “serious” business people, humor also seems to be unwanted — indeed it is inappropriate in some situations, and often it is unexpected. But who hasn’t had a moment in a tense meeting, when someone lightens the mood with a well-timed, harmless, and funny quip? Who hasn’t been grateful for a little comic relief?
Fear of Funny
But it is a scary tightrope for us marketers. Just as Noelle Hancock said that stand up comedy was by far the scariest thing she ever did, employing humor in a positive and effective way in a marketing campaign is so very difficult and scary. When I think of ad campaigns that effectively use humor, I think of the series of commercials for Allstate Insurance featuring the great character, “Mayhem”.
That particular campaign is effective because I remembered the brand — Allstate — it ties directly back to their line of products, and it is so very funny. Another favorite is an old one from Staples, when it’s time to go “Back to School.” The marketers who developed these campaigns have earned my laughter, respect, and admiration, because from behind the marketing curtain, I can relate to how scary it is to pitch something unexpected and humorous. That said, the payoff can be so very, very sweet, successful, and long-lasting.
I would love to hear from others about particular campaigns that have been both funny and successful. I know that coming up with, and executing them all, was really, really scary.
