In this panel, David Weinstock, Jim Beiderman,Tony Mennuto discuss the art of using humor in advertisements and the best practices for doing so.
Tony Mennuto kicked of the panel with a discussion of radio advertisements and keeping listeners engaged with humor. Mennuto is the creative director of Radioface which specializes in the field. He noted that today you have to, “create content that cuts through clutter.”
In the following interview, Mennuto discusses the importance ensuring that the humor of the ad campaign has a chance to evolve through each ad.
David Weinstock, the creative director behind “The Most Interest Man” ad campaign of Dos XX’s went over the “sciency” elements of humor. Weinstock points out that, “funny is a need” and that there is value in a laugh. He then discusses the need states of a funny ad and how that pertains to social media.
Need States for Funny Ads (The five-version of a trifecta)
Need to be relatable,
Shared sensibility
Desire to be the first post
Desire to be the funny one
Ability to share easily
Jim Beiderman, Exec Producer of JimCo, The Whitest Kids U’Know, and The Onion News Network among others commented that the most important take away from what audiences watch is that they understand it. Whether or not they take offense to a sketch or ad is not as important as the fact that they actually get the jokes.
Posted by: Katie Pengra January 24, 2012 at 6:11 pm
Attention all tech nerds: save your current game of WoW, adjust your glasses and make sure your pocket protectors are secured because it is time to step out of your mother’s dimly list basement and talk to some real, live, people.
Alright, this stereotype is not exactly in place anymore, however author Susan Weinschenkknows that there is still a gap between the creators of web content and the people that they are trying to reach.
Weinschenk is actually Dr. Weinschenk, with a Ph.D. in Psychology she has been slinging her consultant expertise about human behavior and neuro-patterning around Fortune 500 companies for 30 years.
“I’ve been studying the psychology of technology for 35 years. I wanted to share all the great knowledge in this field in a way that was informative but also fun and engaging…[People need to know that if a website] doesn’t work for the people that have to use it then it will be very hard for it to succeed.”
The book doesn’t lie. It is literally 100 items detailing how our aesthetic brains work, highlighting everything from the fact that (font) size does matter, memory chunking, habit formation, our inherent laziness, and so on. Basically, you can create a bangin’ website, but if it doesn’t fit the flow of how we pattern our behavior, then your site is going to be as valuable as a pog set. Remember pogs? No? Well then, you get my point.
Dr. Susan Weinschenk
Dr.Weinschenk exemplifies the excellence with which technical practicality and the necessity to remember the human-ness of marketing, go hand in hand. Art is a science, science is an art and somewhere in between these things lies a business practice that can heartily exist online not just today, but to infinity- and beyond. All that is asked of you it to learn about the brains of the people for which you are honing your mad skills.
Tuesday afternoon Helen Klein Ross of Supporting Characters, Michael Bissell president ofConquent and Carri Bugbee president ofBig Deal PR, had a confession to make- they have not exactly been completely honest with everyone. In particular, Betty Drapper is not Betty Drapper, she is Helen Ross. Roger Sterling is not Roger Sterling, he is Michael Bissell. And Peggy Olson is not Peggy Olson, she is Carri Bugbee. Twitter-ly speaking, that is.
The panelists plus a few others, have been participating in a term Ross coined as, “brand fiction.”
Mad Men on Twitter
How did it begin?
“Man Men on Twitter came about completely by happenstance,” said Bugbee. She said she saw Don Drapper was Tweeting and loved the idea and immediately started Tweeting as @PeggOlson. She called up Bissell and he quickly grabbed @Roger_Sterling.
“Within a couple of hours I had about 160 folowers, and I thought ‘wow people really seem to be into this’ and I thought, ’OK I should take this very seriously, it could be a very interesting case study,’ so I should treat it like a job,” Bugbee said.
“It was really kind of blowing up in the Twittersphere,” Bugbee said, and she decided to keep her project a secret.
About 6 days later, she found her account had been suspended for suspicious activity. There was a digital media copywright infringement. The next day tons of blogs and news stories were published about the characters being taken down, and several of the remaining characters were being contacted by the press. Then the next day they let the characters go back up.
Ross started by being followed by Peggy and Don.
“I was as shocked as anyone else when the blogs went down,” said Ross. She said when they went back up she got on and looked for any remaining characters. She began as Francine and tweeted Betty and when Betty let her know she wasn’t playing, she became @bettydraper, and then picked up a few of the other neighborhood characters in order to organize drama and events within Twitter.
Why did it work?
Ross explained, “We revealed their mundane daily activities” exactly what Twitter is for.
“The takedown was phenomenal press,” said Bissell.
“All of us have strived to remain parallel to Matt Wiener’s universe,” said Ross. ”I have a whole 1960′s library full of cook books and Betty crocker.”
Bissell said he has truly enjoyed playing @Roger_Sterling. “He gets to make all the little quips that fit beautifully in 140 characters,” he said.
Bissell confessed he had to create a split reality to embrace the “maleness” of Roger Sterling and remarked at how lucky it is that Twitter is so transitory and how quickly people forget when you slip up. Bissell learned quickly that Long Island Ice Tea wasn’t created until the 1970s.
A large part of the success is the continuation of the story and characters between episodes and seasons. Ross pointed out that that is only the half of it.
“The other half, and more important half, are tweets from fans,” she said. “It’s really interesting to engage with others following us.”
Ross said, they are not being paid by AMC, but are hoping to use this to pioneer a new type of interactive advertising within Twitter. Bissell and Bugbee were mum on the subject of payment. [See Bugbee's comment- CT]
Why does this matter?
Traditionally, people want to be entertained and it has been a “I create content, you watch them” contract.
Ross claims that things have changed.
“Not only do we watch a show, we expect to have some kind of active participation in it,” she said. “Entertainment is changing, advertising has to acknowledge this.”
Ross said that advertising should be measuring “Not only impressions, but expressions” and defines this as fan interaction with the show.
“Advertisers are being forced to work for an invitation into peoples homes,” she said and this is a way of ”extending the brand across platforms.”
They like to think that Mad Men on Twitter is pushing beyond advertising.
“It’s not just fan fiction, it’s brand fiction,” said Ross.
Bissell focused on the tracking side of the project.
“Traditional advertising is built on trackable statistics,” and its hard to do that with Twitter said Bissell.
Posted by: Lewis Knight February 17, 2009 at 3:02 pm
The “inner geek” is beside himself.
I will be covering SXSWi activities on Sunday, March 15 and Monday, March 16. With the plethora of offerings, my head is swirling with indecision at the thought of missing one topic while at another.
The 2–3 p.m. Toss-up: Keynote interview or CSS3; I need CSS3 information for practical purposes, but I am intrigued by the genius of Nate Silver from fivethirtyeight.com. He should offer some great insight to the use of database farming for the insightful predictions he made during the past presidential election.
Monday’s 10–11 a.m. discussion, Grokking Bloggers: It’s about Love and Underpants, is interesting for only two real reasons: What is Grokking and what underpants have to do with it? Granted there may be other more informative offering at this time, but that title is a winner.
I need to take in the Trade Show, so I want to catch a bite to eat miss out on some info and walk the floor from 11 a.m.–2 p.m.
2–3 p.m. It looks like a keynote that I can’t miss. The reality is I don’t have a job to quit or business relations in China, so I learn the Gospel of Open Source.
Join us as we cover SXSWi 2012. Use this site to follow all the action. We've been posting panel previews, and we'll be updating the site during the event. Your comments and participation are appreciated! Thanks for checking in.
