You were an advocate for humour in advertising at Cannes last year and now Lions has created a new award category for it. Do you feel you landed the punchline?
So is humour already making a comeback in ads after years of decline?
To what extent has the rise of purpose influenced the decline of humour?
But we do see a battle between purpose-minded woke culture and stand up comedy, for instance. Will it remain hard for the jokers and the earnest-minded to get along?
But is there still the risk of humour backfiring if it unknowingly alienates a certain group?
One reason why stand up comedy works is because jokes are conceived by the comics who then know exactly how to deliver them. Some advertisements intended to be funny may have had brilliant creative teams in conception, but on execution fall flat.
Another issue is when media agencies overbuy, and suddenly the frequency of that once-great initially funny campaign quickly turns stale and annoying. How important are execution and media use as factors in using humour?
It’s extremely hard to be funny. Taking your standup reference – just try to write five minutes of really funny material, never mind a Netflix special. It’s incredibly hard to do. The people who do great comedy throw away 100 jokes for every one that lands. They actually do empirical research. They will go to venues, crack a joke and if it works, they will include it in their next routine.
One suspects humour will remain one of generative AI’s biggest challenges, but since you mentioned the empirical side to good comedy, might it too become something easier for AI to do with time?
How important is humour and levity to building a creative culture?
‘Building a Creative Culture’ is in fact one of the key themes of Spikes Asia. Many brand clients also ask agencies about how to do this. What advice do you give them?
Spikes will also focus on the rise of the creator economy as more brands are looking to have direct relationships with creators.
Some marketers feel agencies are slower to break out of traditional messaging formats and want to own the process more than embrace more creator-led marketing. What should be the role of the agency in a creator economy?
Part of the problem is when issues like these are presented as binary options. Obviously if consumers are spending as much time as they are consuming creator content, then this should be one of the places where we look to create relationships with brands, build businesses and build sales. I don’t see [creators and agencies] as an ‘either/or’ but as an ‘and’.What is the role of an agency in the process?
What do you look for when attending Spikes?
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