Make Them Laugh

My friend Russell Scott who runs an amazing web design and marketing agency called, Jetset Studios was just featured in the latest iMedia Connection newsletter. Russell is brilliant and funny as heck. He and his company have created some of the best movie websites ever, including my favorite, the website for Superbad.

Hanging out with Russell will find you spinning off into conversational tangents that will take you light years away from whatever the original topic was that began the discussion. In fact, if you put me and Russell in a room together to talk business, two hours will pass by and nothing will have gotten done that will make us more money. But all of the troubles in the world will have disappeared for a good chunk of time.

The article he wrote called How To Be Funny Online is fantastic.

Here are a few of my favorite points that Russell makes about how to use humor to promote your products online:

Rule #1: Be as funny as you need to be
Something memorable that makes people laugh and want to share it with their friends is about as good as it gets.

Rule #2: Don't be a fool
The online world is much more forgiving, not to mention starved for distracting entertainment. Here, a new car can be a toy, an insurance premium can become impenetrable video game "armor" and even the once staid world of banking is now cheerfully irreverent. Why? Because online, brands can take more chances and experiment like a curious college student who suddenly finds himself alone for the weekend with his girlfriend's hot older sister, a fully stocked wet bar, dad's credit card and Timothy Leary's chemistry set. In this brave new world, the only real fools are those who remain dry.

Rule #3: Even serious topics can use humor
So, the only real guideline for an online comedy campaign is how far is too far? Can you have fun with anything?

Personal hygiene? Certainly. Axe leads the way. Household products? Yep. Brawny reinvented itself with its now legendary Brawny Academy. Food and beverage? Burger King is edgier than ever online and the efforts have given it a level of street cred that few brands in its category have ever enjoyed. Insurance? Absolutely. Remember, at one point, Geico even had its own sitcom based on its funny hit campaign (ok, so the execution of the sitcom wasn't very funny, but Geico can't be blamed for that).

How about if your brand is a funeral home? Can that be funny? Probably, if handled correctly. It could look something like this:

When Gramps passed on, we were faced with a choice we couldn't make. So, much like a reality show, we decided to let YOU, the American people, decide.

To inter Gramps, press 1.
To cremate Gramps, press 2.
To make Gramps dance madly to "Dance Dance Revolution", press 3.

Everyone would press 3 first. Everyone. Even Gramps, if he could, would want to see himself dance like a mad skeleton just one last time before the big sendoff.

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).

Rule #4 - Jokes don't kill people (people kill people). But fear kills ideas.

Read the whole article, you'll be glad you did.