”It’s funny, because it’s true”

How observational humour can help account planning

observational humour gives planners an additional tool to collect breadth and depth of insight as part of the strategy process without losing speed of overall process.

Why observational humour ?

Hertz Introduces Short-Term Rental For Just Driving Around To Clear Head

PARK RIDGE, NJ—Hoping to win the business of those who just need to get out of the house for a while and clear their heads, the Hertz Corporation unveiled a new service that allows customers to rent a car for as briefly as five minutes.

Hertz Introduces Short-Term Rental For Just Driving Around To Clear Head

PARK RIDGE, NJ—Hoping to win the business of those who just need to get out of the house for a while and clear their heads, the Hertz Corporation unveiled a new service that allows customers to rent a car for as briefly as five minutes.

Source: The Onion

“A few years back, I started realising just how strange American politics was becoming when I would pick up a copy of the satirical New York paper the Onion and find myself thinking the bizarr-o headlines were actually as plausible as the real life news stories one could read in the serious press.”

Sasha Abramsky, senior fellow think-tank Demos, op-ed guardian.co.uk

Still...Observational humour?

“Carson remains a singular figure because he served as a cultural touchstone during his three decades on the air"

“When any motion picture or documentary wants to put something in historical perspective, they often want to have a Johnny Carson joke from that era."

Rick Ludwin, NBC executive vice president in charge of late-night series.

Steve Martin, comedian

“In a college psychology class, I had read a treatise on comedy explaining that a laugh was formed when the storyteller created tension, then, with the punch line, released it."

Source: smithsonianmag.com

Rob Campbell, W+K regional head of planning

“The whole ethos of the agency is to find the tension point between category and audience and then create an idea that will exploit that in favour of their clients brand.”

Source: musings of an opinionated sod

Red Spider brand consultancy

“ Insights aren’t miraculously found, but are created through asking fresh provocative questions ”

Source: redspiderglobal.com

George Carlin, comedian

“I try to come in from a direction they’re not expecting, to see something in a different way. A lot of things are lying around waiting to be discovered and that's our job, to notice them and bring them to life.”

source: psychologytoday.com

Ah.. brothers from another mother

But why now…

Changes in culture and commerce

Culture

The most famous person nobody's heard of *

“Though his most frequent targets are fellow Indians, Peters aims at such overlooked nationalities as, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans, Vietnamese, Filipinos, Trinidadians, Jamaicans, Arabs, Chinese and Persians.

These are millions of people who hail from these countries but do not see themselves represented in Western media.

Clips of his act have been downloaded tens of millions of times, marking him as the one of the greatest comic phenomena of the Internet era"

Source: The man who put Indian comedy on the map - The Atlantic *Quote by Chris Rock on Indian comedian Russell Peters

“Actor Kelsey Grammer is investor and public face, supporting a new network with entertainment designed to appeal to political conservatives.

RightNetwork, whose first series, "Running" follows the fortunes of a couple of Tea Party-backed candidates for public office, is trying a new model to establish itself.

It is initially making programming available through video-on-demand services, the Internet and through mobile phones, bypassing the route of traditional TV networks.”

Source: abcnews.com

“Much recent research suggests that social networks reflect other kinds of segregation in our culture: people tend to gather online with people they know in their everyday lives rather than exploit the full capacity of a networked culture;

they tend to seek out people like themselves rather than use the technology to build "bridging" relationships.”

source: Henry Jenkins, Professor MIT

“The Daily Show resonates not only because it is wickedly funny, but also because its keen sense of the absurd is perfectly attuned to an era in which cognitive dissonance has become a national epidemic.”

Source: NY Times

And not just State side

“Stand-up comedy is taking off in the Middle East because it allows Arabs to “hold up a mirror to their society”, crack jokes about the idiosyncrasies of life inside smothering Arab families and make jibes about neighbouring countries.”

Source: Dean Obeidallah, Palestinian-Italian-American comic and organiser of the

New York festival

“In the past comedians would say good things about politicians, but now comedians are closer to the people, their audiences.” Zhou Libo, Chinese comedian on changes in Chinese entertainment

source: cnn.com

Commerce

Cultural latency

The lag between cause and effect, between the moment when something is initiated and the moment of effect.

“Cultural latency is nearing zero, at least in the more connected parts of the world. It is in this quick fire culture that the commercial meaning makers -brands and their agents- must operate.

In line with the increasing cultural decay rates, the speed of advertising must increase in step, more things must be created more often, to maintain the salience of even a few years ago.”

source: Faris Yakob, MDC Partners

Speed strategy

“ The most important skill that strategists need to learn in this era is speed. The quality of a strategic answer is now partly determined by the time taken to create it. Slow-baked strategy, no matter how good, can never be great.”

Source: Guy Murphy, Worldwide Planning Director JWT

Consequences?

Source: Planner survey 2010, courtesy of Heather Lefevre

The value of observational humour to the planning process

“Laughter often acts as a hard-to-fake signal of the somewhat unconscious beliefs we all hold, whatever those beliefs are”

source: Robert Lynch, Rutgers University

Value: Scalable Voyeurism

“Comedy is frequently presented, transmitted in various formats such as strips, cartoons, television shows, and live stand up. These various comedies and their formats arguably reflect diverse private and public taste or values, as well as increasingly multicultural and diverse cultures within many present-day societies.”

Source: Davy, K. (1994) Female Impersonation: The Discourse of Camp.

In Meyer, M. (ed.) The Politics and Poetics of Camp.

The breadth of material at disposal allows agencies to gain readymade insight into or understanding of issues in society, without losing speed of process or depth of thought.

The nature of the material offers an advantage, because people find themselves in surroundings where they feel safe to let guards down while being confronted by mirrors of behaviour and beliefs.

Examples of surroundings*

*a few to paint a picture of possibilities

Value: the whole truth...

“Comics in the Middle east point to the red lines around ‘politics, religion and explicit sexual content’ that can land them in trouble.” James Reini source: the national.ae

“It’s about knowing what the rules are. The safest thing is, don’t be too political.” Kumar, Singapore stand-up comic and Drag queen Source: abcnews.com

“I respect the three B’s (blue material, beliefs and "bolitics” )and all is well “ Jamil Abu Wardeh, Arab stand up comic Source: TED

Comedians ‘holding back’ is another way for brands and planners to gain more depth of insight into issues, previously not covered.

Get to know them, talk to them and through their material (and more important, through the material that they don’t perform) get a sense of what is bubbling under the surface.

So why observational humour ?

Comedians observe and challenge conventional thinking and hold up mirrors to society. They present thoughts in accessible and fresh ways without necessarily being simplistic or pandering to the lowest denominator.

Their role as “maker of sense” seems to be growing in these fragmented, distorted and ‘interesting’ times.

Observational humour can thus help (in combination with other research methods) detect (hidden) beliefs, moods and/or changes in society.

‘Comedy clubs are places to watch culture ‘in the works’ Grant McCracken

Source: Chief Cultural Officer, how to create a living, breathing corporation

Thank you.

@NikoHerzeg