Ingredient n°5 Humour for brands (and not just in advertisement)
1. « I hear Patricia talk about the content of this
book and I feel like she does the research I
don’t have the time to do. »
Alexandra Dimiziani, director of Content Excellence,
The Coca-Cola Company
People tend to favour using the least amount of energy, such as taking the escalator
rather than going up the staircase right next to it, yet sometimes they can be observed
exhibiting bizarre behaviour such as queuing all night just to buy a pair of shoes, or 11year- olds who never liked reading are seen devouring books bigger than their heads...
This naturally led me to wonder: why is that? What is it that creates fans? And why do we
become devoted fans of something while our neighbour couldn’t care less? So I looked
in the common factors shared among products, books, films, restaurants, websites
and companies, all which have elicited an unconditional fan base, which led me to
determine that they share six essential ingredients. Maybe sharing these ingredients
with the world will help us create even more fantastic things.
You now hold in your hands the fifth ingredient to that wonderful emotion that turns
normal people into screaming fans, that wonderful emotion of J’adooore.
This book is for :
• Motivated entrepreneurs,
• Designers of all kinds,
• eople in charge of product development, the ones that want to make a difference,
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• arketing teams who know that word of mouth and true genuine emotions are the
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best,
• ommunity managers who strive to be part of the conversation, and don’t always hold
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all the strings,
About the author
Patricia Gallot-Lavallée is an
Experience Designer.
She participates to the
conception of products,
services and communication
strategies in order to help
brands provoke “positive”
emotions in their audience.
Through this book she shares
her research on emotional
design.
• y little sister used the six ingredients to create her baby boy’s very first party, so it
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seems that this book is for anyone eager to create great products and experiences for
their target audience.
J ADOOOR E
Patricia is also a mobilized
teacher, at the Institute of
Internet and Multimedia.
She has a 10 year
background in user
experience and web strategy.
If you are power seeking, malevolent or plain-evil, please step away from this book.
,
She lives in hectic Paris with
her ever-so-cute family.
• eachers who are very much aware of the potential sitting in front of them,
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Six ingredients
that create fans
05 humour
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PDF version 9 Eur - Print 21 Eur
Cover design by Ronald Texier
Updates about this book : www.experiencedesigners.net/LittleBookStore
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5. Ingredient No.5 of J’adooore
Table of Contents
Introduction to the J’adooore series
08
11 strategies to create humour when you are a brand
85
J’adooore fifth ingredient
21
17 types of humour for brands and products
28
Incongruity
Weird and particularly enthusiastic movements
Wordplays and puns
Laughter through recognition
Complicity
Consistency with ones character
Metaphors, comparisons and analogies
References
[Interview] Charlotte Garin, Innocent Drinks
Repetitions
Sarcasm, irony, cynicism
Simplified truth
Relief through laughter
Over exaggerated or unflattering truth
Slapstick or over-exaggerated physical violence
[Case Study] Lego video game of licensed material
Outrecuidance, self-assurance
Superiority
Stereotypes strike back
Ridicule
34
38
40
47
48
52
54
56
58
62
64
66
69
70
72
74
76
78
80
82
86
87
88
89
90
92
94
96
98
99
100
Create a mascot
Personify objects
Be silly
Have silly goals
Give names
Embrace the tension
Surf the news
Hop on the context
State the obvious
Know your audience
Be shocking... in a benign manner
Three strategies to make people smile
Make the connection
Be whimsical
[Interview] Penny Anderson, TreacleMoon
Use drawings and movement
103
104
106
110
How NGOs can raise awareness
113
Conclusion
119
Frequently asked questions
126
Check-list for laughter (120). Interviews : Innocent Drinks (58), TreacleMoon (106).
J’ADOOORE SIX INGREDIENTS THAT CREATE FANS
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6. It was the beginning of November and I was finally taking my 3-day
retreat to Brussels. I stayed at the Bloom Hotel. My days were filled with walks in the city and stopping at cafés
or restaurants to enjoy my book... or books, I should say. At some point, as I was savouring my dinner at a nice
restaurant, the waitress asked me what I was reading. As I gave her the title of my book, she replied that she would
have the kitchen hold the next dish for a while. With a beaming smile, she added: “I understand now”. She knew
what it felt like to read the Twilight saga.
I was at a point in my career where I didn’t have much motivation to
carry on being a website expert. I would spend all of my energy helping users that I rarely met face to face, leaving
me feeling lonely and disconnected. I spent endless days protecting them from a horde of technical glitches and
marketing professionals in order to just keep the website simple. It’s not that this vocation was bad, but it wasn’t
providing any new challenges.
As I was walking through the city, I realized that I was looking for
Why this book?
something. Perhaps every time I walk in a city, no matter which city, no matter which country, I am always looking
for the same thing. My blog had a specific section just for this. The one containing the most posts, actually. As I was
walking through Brussels, I was looking for shops, restaurants, activities...with a look, a concept... an experience.
Lush, the fancy soap company, wasn’t satisfying for me any longer; I had seen them in New York, London and
Paris. I guess that I’m always looking for the same thing whether I am in Helsinki, Stockholm, Montreal, Porto, or
Barcelona. I’m looking for places with a signature experience. When I discovered the Mr. Potato-Head-all-you-canfit-in-the-box-challenge in New York, I was satisfied. The concept is as follows: no matter how many pieces of the
Mr. Potato Head collection (ears, hats, shoes, bag,...) you manage to put in the box, as long as it closes, you pay
a flat rate of $18. When I discovered that a youth hostel in Stockholm had rooms on a river boat, I was satisfied.
As I was walking in the streets of Brussels, thinking about my great book, my great hotel room, this great little café by
the Parliament; I was thinking that there should be more great books that you don’t want to put down, more great
restaurants that people are willing to queue to get into, more hotels where you are just delighted to open your hotel
room’s door.And this is what was missing from my profession. I was working hard on taking away elements of negative
emotions, frustration, anger, misunderstanding, and complexity instead of doing what the entertainment companies do:
generate positive emotions... on purpose. I would spend all my energy making websites easy to use, instead of making
them great to use.
That was it... I finally had gotten it. I wanted to become an experiential
designer, a designer whose purpose was to generate emotions. I wanted more of those great products on Earth.
I wanted to make our everyday life more fun, delightful, even –dare I say– fulfilling. Once I was back in Paris,
I decided that I needed to increase my technical skills. Throughout the last 10 years, my hobby has been personal
development: I acquired some knowledge about the flow as described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the languages
of love... but I needed more. I’m a technical gal; I need data, I need patterns, I need analysis. Checking out the
psychology curriculum in several universities made me pass on that option. I didn’t want to have my brain focused
on diseases and pathologies. As I couldn’t find a university curriculum that would teach me and certify me as an
expert on positive emotions, I decided to write a book. From my previous experience writing a book, I had realized
that it was a great way to simultaneously collect information, get interviews, reflect on topics from a distance as well
as provide focus.
J’ADOOORE SIX INGREDIENTS THAT CREATE FANS INTRODUCTION TO THE J’ADOOORE SERIES
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7. I was going to look into
emotions, one at a time.
I had ideas for several
“Pride: what is it that makes
us proud to work for a
company?’’
“Passion: what produces the
spark that lights the fire?’’
And “J’adooore: what is it that
creates fans?’’
books:
What made me write this book
Have you noticed how some people are willing to queue all night long, on a chilly November night, just to be able
to get a pair of €130 Jimmy Choo shoes? Have you noticed how some people are willing to wait in line, in freezing
December, in order to get the new iPhone, the same one that will be available in all the shops the very next day? Have
you noticed how some teenagers, although averse to English lessons, are willing to break the law and download
episodes of their favourite American TV shows in its original versions as soon as they air an episode in the US? Have
you noticed how “I-show-no-interest-in-books” 9-year-old children are happy to pick up a 700-page book and can’t
wait for the next one? Have you noticed, how the “I-never-read” teenager reads the same book 3 times in a row?
J’ADOOORE SIX INGREDIENTS THAT CREATE FANS INTRODUCTION TO THE J’ADOOORE SERIES
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9. As a web strategist, an expert in user experience and a teacher, I have
come to realize that human beings do not always opt for the best solutions; they merely pick the option that hurts
the least. Give them the option of using an escalator when they have but a few stairs to climb, and they will pick the
escalator. But then, if human beings tend to choose the solution that requires they exert the least amount of energy
possible, how can we explain the energy they -quite contently- expend on acquiring things such as the newest
iGadget, the latest Harry Potter book, a seat in the movie theatre for the newly released episode from Star Wars or the
new Sonia Rykiel HM collection?
If emotions put people in motion, one has to wonder what triggers this
desire, this very energy that sets them in action. What makes them ever so happy to be at a certain place, doing a
certain thing? And why? Why is it that, in some cases, we expend way more energy and time than we normally would
for these things? What makes people become fans of a product or service? What makes us say “I looove it”? What
makes us behave like J’adooore?
Three weeks
A few months had gone by. It was the beginning
of April and I was at my office. There were no ongoing
contracts that were giving me the opportunity to
procrastinate. I had three weeks to go before my next
class. I was worried; I had been telling everyone that I
was an experiential designer. I didn’t see what I could do
to get new business. Usually, business opportunities find
me. Perhaps my professional network was a bit confused
by this new field of expertise. I knew I was stuck. The
J’adooore project hadn’t moved an inch. I had no leads.
My research hadn’t progressed at all.
I could feel the stress stirring up inside of me.
Have I made a mistake? Is my company ever going to
survive this rough patch? Will I go bankrupt? Will I have
to shut down and go back to a 9-to-5 job making web
applications for banks and insurance companies?
I remembered my quest; I recalled the feeling of
addiction that the Twilight saga brought upon me. I could
visualize my brother and my students bragging over the
utter greatness of their iGadgets, pushing them on others,
again and again. I knew my creativity was going to shut
down if I kept on stressing out like that. I recalled that
establishing a deadline could trigger help from the right
side of my brain. But I was still all wired up. So I got up
from my desk and poured myself a glass of water. I think
it all happened as I was walking back to my chair. At that
precise moment, I made a decision: I chose to go down
the road that led me to all this..
I reasoned with myself that it wouldn’t be the first
time that my bank would call me if I overdrew my
account. I reasoned that I could always find work if I
needed to, that the concept of J’adooore and the whole
experience design idea deserved it: it deserved the risk.
And there it was... I chose to give up control and
dedicate a full three weeks to it.
Pattern
recognition
What happened next is kind of a blur. I think that
I started looking at lists of blockbuster films, then I
printed out images. Earlier on I had bought a few big, fat
sketchbooks, because I liked the look of them, without
even knowing exactly what I was going to do with them.
I think that at some point I went back to rereading
a Twilight book, just because I felt like it.... I started to
collect images of great products in films and TV series;
all extracts that have been the source of the emotion
of J’adooore. As I was cutting them out from magazines
and the like, ideas would come to me. Then somehow I
started gluing them on the sketchbook, which became
more of a scrapbook. Sometimes even ripping them out
and gluing them somewhere else. I would leave lots of
blank pages in between each composition, which was
starting to look like the sections of chapters in this
eclectic scrapbook.
I remember the excitement I felt as I saw it for the
first time... the pattern, the thing that kept us all from
putting down a page turner. The image was very clear
in my head. I drew it, cut it out and glued it into the
scrapbook. As I was doing that, I noticed a pattern in
Apple’s marketing techniques (see Ingredient 3). One
thing led to another. During that period, each morning I
worked out my creative muscle by applying Tim Burton’s
advice, which was given through Alice’s character:
“Every morning, have seven impossible ideas”. Each
morning, as I was enjoying my morning coffee, I thought
of my seven impossible ideas. They were all filled with
incongruity, and seemed quite impossible... apart from
one. One seemed not so impossible! I thought this as
soon as the idea crossed my mind, and bang! I had
another chapter. I have a confession to make: further on
during the process, as I was writing out these ideas in
order to print them out, I had many slips of the tongue or of the keyboard. And instead of just correcting them, I
tried to take a deeper look: Was there something to hear?
To see? And yes, sometimes there was.
The humour chapter made me feel that I had a great
job: can you imagine having to read and classify jokes as
part of your job?
My confidence in J’adooore and in the whole
concept of experiential design was growing. I was
acquiring the data, I was getting down to the technical
bits, the engineering of emotions. And while so many
companies wanted to conquer social media, I had the
know-how and I could help them join the momentum.
Yes in, No out
Since it was just me in my home office putting
all this together, I needed guidelines. I conducted a
J’adooore study, but it wasn’t good enough for me. I
needed accurate measurements, a test that I could rely
on. A test to analyse an element as a reason for the
J’adooore feeling. So I chose my emotions. If I felt the
emotion, then the example could be put in the book.
Of course, things that make me laugh don’t necessarily
make others laugh. Things that I J’adooore, others don’t
necessarily J’adooore.
J’ADOOORE SIX INGREDIENTS THAT CREATE FANS INTRODUCTION TO THE J’ADOOORE SERIES
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11. From my examples, I identified certain patterns, then I tested out
these patterns with people around me. It’s interesting to observe how people behave whenever you tell them about
a pattern. They test it out internally with their own examples and when it works they say: “Yes it’s true”, and if it
doesn’t work with their examples, they come up with arguments and say:“it depends”. And so, I kept the patterns that
obtained a lot of “Yes, it’s true” as replies, and I incorporated those concepts into the book. My already big scrapbook
was fattening up and my gluing supplies ran out twice. It was all beginning to come together.
Who is
this book for?
One particular day I recall that I was doing my write-750-words-a-day-
challenge (750words.com, a type of writing exercise, private, unfiltered, spontaneous and done on a daily basis)
going on about my experience with the Twilight saga and my looove of the Friends TV show, my open question still
wandering from my mind... and bang! It all came to me. I must have stood in my bed for 30 to 45 minutes, looking
up, down, sideways: the last chapter, the key ingredient, the base of it all, had come to me. I could hardly believe it.
It was now so obvious. So I wrote J’a-d-o-o-o-r-e in big letters right on the red cover of my scrapbook, and decided
that six chapters were enough. Three weeks had gone by.
User testing
Like Martha Kauffman and David Crane, the creators
of Friends, I test out my products with end users over
and over. I fight the fear of having my ideas stolen and I
give them up to the judgement of others.
I showed, and sometimes even lent, my precious
scrapbook to friends in marketing positions at
multinational organizations, to entrepreneurs, to people
in charge of product development. Some of them are
very much like squirrels when it comes to gathering
information about branding and experiential marketing;
others have big shot agencies pitching ideas to them all
the time. To my surprise, people still wanted to hold on
to my product.
Sometimes, they had questions, so I finished the
chapters with answers to their questions.
Some other times, they said that the examples where
too repetitive, so I tried to diversify them. In picking my
examples, I made sure that they were about products
that people went crazy for (queuing in the rain, buying
the same DVD three times). You might not like those
specific brands, books, movies or TV shows, but a sizable
market does. And I believe that that’s something worth
paying attention to. The funny part about this whole
adventure is the end users all adored the scrapbook. It
now looks stained and scruffy, like a well-loved teddybear. A creativity consultant, who lives in France but
used to work at MIT, seemed the most interested in
the scrapbook, particularly in the method I used. So I
thought I should share all this with a wider readership,
which includes you.
When I started this project, I was single and childless.
This allowed me to work on J’adooore between 14 to 16
hours per day. As a 30-something female, I struggle to
be neat and pretty but I have to admit that I’m happiest
when I’m working on a fascinating project with pieces of
scotch tape in my hair.
Almost 3 years have gone by for you to finally hold
this book in your hands. It is the time it took me to have a
baby, sharpen my understanding of J’adooore, gather all
the interviews and tranform my scrapbook into a faithful
rendition of my original project.
Entrepreneurs
Marketing groups
Product developers
Teachers
Artists
And anyone who wants to create engaging experiences with
products, branding, educational courses, art pieces...
I hope you will enjoy what my right and left hemisphere have
managed to put together. And that you will join me on my now
established mission of having more J’adooore in the world.
J’ADOOORE SIX INGREDIENTS THAT CREATE FANS INTRODUCTION TO THE J’ADOOORE SERIES
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13. You’re reading
Harry Potter?
But it’s for
children?!
I know
but it’s funny.
J’ADOOORE SIX INGREDIENTS THAT CREATE FANS INGREDIENT N°05 HUMOUR WHAT IS THE SOURCE OF J’ADOOORE
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14. It’s 1998, and J. K. Rowling is being interviewed in a local pub. She
has sold 30,000 copies of the Harry Potter books. To her, this is
already a phenomenal success.
The journalist asks her to sum up the plot, as if fishing for
something that would encourage an adult to buy her novels, to
which she retorts:
“Hum... I think it is funny. I’ve been told by kids in
their letters and so on, that they find it funny. It is
also frightening. I wanted it to be both, judging by
letters and judging by the reactions of people that
I have met, I’d say I have succeeded in both.”
She follows up with a
smirk,and coyly puffs up,
as if she still can’t believe,
she actually has managed
her mischief.
Soon after, in 2011, the BBC reported that
J.K Rowling had sold 450 million books. The
saga has been translated into 67 languages.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn7nlfoMcwQ
J’ADOOORE SIX INGREDIENTS THAT CREATE FANS INGREDIENT N°05 HUMOUR WHAT IS THE SOURCE OF J’ADOOORE
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15. When the French best-selling author Bernard Werber was asked
for his opinion on the reasons behind J.K. Rowling’s unprecedented
success, he replied:
1997 - FRANCE 3
NATIONAL FRENCH TV
HTTP://WWW.INA.FR/
VIDEO/3396491001009/
BERNARD-WERBER-A-PROPOSDE-SON-SUCCES-VIDEO.HTML
“
I think she has found a simple language to
talk about something that we already knew. There had
been The Lord of the Rings, The NeverEnding Story.
She managed to present it with a little bit of humour.”
J’ADOOORE SIX INGREDIENTS THAT CREATE FANS INGREDIENT N°05 HUMOUR WHAT IS THE SOURCE OF J’ADOOORE
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17. But what makes people laugh?
J’ADOOORE SIX INGREDIENTS THAT CREATE FANS INGREDIENT N°05 HUMOUR WHAT MAKES PEOPLE LAUGH?
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18. And when you
represent a brand,
what kind of humour
can you use?
J’ADOOORE SIX INGREDIENTS THAT CREATE FANS INGREDIENT N°05 HUMOUR WHAT KIND OF HUMOUR FOR BRANDS
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19. Incongruity, or the art of mixing
seemingly unrelated things together
Musée Grévin,
French wax museum
Xxxxxxx
Xxxxxxx x x xxx
Xxxxxxx
uses incongruity when they mix Queen
Elizabeth and football player Zinédine
Zidane to advertise their new exhibit.
Xxxxxxx
Xxxxxxx x x xxx
Xxxxxxx x x xxx
Innocent Drinks’ product packaging
Friends, TV Show
Phoebe Buffay, a character in this
show, is the queen of incongruity.
The brand has long understood that customers
who are in the process of waking up, tend
to read and reread the packaging of their
morning drinks. Instead of boring them with
traditional messages, they rewrite their list of
ingredients using plenty of incongruity.
This harmless humour is particularly apt for brands that target
people of all ages and nationalities.
The Harry Potter series
gets a lot of its humour from incongruity. A school with a
name that read backwards stands for “Warts of Hog”, a world
in which the postal services are run by owls and where the
school gatekeeper wants a dragon for pet.
During a lecture
Yale Professor, Paul Bloom, tells a story in
class: ‘‘So, the other day, I wake up, dress, go
downstairs, greet the servants, kiss the kids [...]’’
Chuckles are heard coming from the audience as
he mentions having servants.
British brands such as Innocent Drinks are among those that set
the example when it comes to using this type of humour.
J’ADOOORE SIX INGREDIENTS THAT CREATE FANS INGREDIENT N°5 HUMOUR TYPES OF HUMOUR INCONGRUITY
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20. And for the rest of the book, it will be
available on February 5th, 2014 at
www.experiencedesigners.net/LittleBookShop/
J’ADOOORE SIX INGREDIENTS THAT CREATE FANS
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