Guidelines
Funny is subjective. What is funny to a teenager is on a completely different astral plane than what is funny to a middle-aged professional, but both are equally valid. Arguably the teenager is the more desirable audience, and so the guidelines become crystallized, if not oversimplified:
- People in pain are funny.
- People who fail are funny.
- Average guys who can't score with the ladies are funny.
- Impotence is also funny.
- Extreme discomfort is hilariously funny.
- Parody is funny, and "Star Wars" parody is even funnier.
- The '80s are funny. The '90s are just now starting to be funny.
- The '70s are kind of funny, but in that scary way that clowns are funny.
- Drunk people are especially funny (especially in conjunction with any of the first five guidelines).
When funny falls flat
Nothing is less funny than something that tries to be hilarious and falls short of the mark. We have all seen and participated in things that didn't go as planned. When a serious endeavor flops, one can try to pass it off as a joke (see "Battlefield Earth") but when something intended to be funny falls short, it's time to drink Eliot Spitzer under the table.
For example, I once worked on a campaign that was for a comedy film, and I was asked to write a series of one-liners that would be sight gags distributed around an environment. I wrote what I thought to be pretty funny stuff, but the execution -- which was, incidentally, produced by another company -- sucked the funny out of my material faster than, well, Dracula after swilling a case of Red Bull.
My company does a lot of entertainment-based features, so we have a hard, fast rule that we try to adhere to: "Make the joke over easy." Besides being an unforgivably bad pun, it means, get to the punchline fast. Don't make the audience think too hard or have to work too hard to get the joke.
Rule #4 - Jokes don't kill people (people kill people). But fear kills ideas.
Recently, we created a comedy piece that became a true viral hit. In support of Fox's "Meet the Spartans," the feature, CarmenHasACrushOnYou, was extremely effective not only because it leveraged the incredible popularity of Carmen Electra, but because it was created as an original, stand-alone piece of entertainment that used "Spartans" as the background for what is essentially a flirtatious prank that the user could play on his or her friends. During the course of a mock interview, Carmen pulls her pants down to reveal the user's name tattooed on her well-documented posterior, holds up a photo of the user and actually calls the user at the end of the interview ("Let's make a date to see 'Meet the Spartans'. You bring the popcorn… and I'll bring the butter.")
The very forward-thinking team at Fox took a chance, and it worked better than anticipated. Read that one more time: They said, "YES. Let's take a chance." And remember this -- it was a spoof-type feature, in support of a satirical film…and trust us; it is a very delicate dance indeed to parody a parody.
There have been countless situations where I have gone too far out for a client, who fearfully reels me back in. But I have to go there as part of the process (and I enjoy the look of terror on their faces). Sometimes it's a reflexive move not to want to rock the boat; sometimes it's the knowledge that the ultimate decision maker will say "no." But a lot of times, the hesitancy is purely due to fear… until there is a proven example in the marketplace, at which point it is a day late and a dollar short to pull off something innovatively funny. Fear is the absolute worst thing a brand can bring to the table.
Part of innovation is the ability to be fearless. Another part is to be adaptive.
Online campaigns can be always modified, retrofitted, reinvented. The best campaigns are those that evolve with the audience in ways previously thought impossible. The relationship between brand and audience is now a dialogue.
The time has never been better for experimentation. I say, fear not, brand dudes. We're here to make you laugh. Now let's make Gramps do the Macarena.
Russell Scott is CEO and creative director at Jetset Studios.