Assumption #1: All businesses are in the business of making money.

Assumption #2: If a business is in the business of making money, then everything it does must serve the goal of making money.

Ergo:

1. Everything any business invests in must serve the goal of making money.
2. Marketing -  a business investment - must help a business make more money than it would otherwise.
3. If marketing (or any other investment) is good at making money, the people responsible for it will preach this fact to the high heavens, because it makes it easier for them to make more money for themselves as well.

Which tells us that:

1. If something seem to resist attempts to measure its ability to make money, it’s probably not very good at it. (Examples: social media, online display ads, sock puppets.)
2. If something is really complicated, it’s probably B.S. There’s nothing simpler than the question, “Does it make more money than it costs?”
3. If something is making you money, keep doing that. Consider doing it more. (Examples: direct response TV, email marketing, simply having a great product, being polite…)
4. If you don’t know if something will make you money, there’s no shame in giving it a shot. But limit your risk, and make sure to track the results. The only thing worse than failure is not knowing you failed, and not learning anything from it.

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Our friends and fellow T-CAANistas at Copeland just wrapped up what may be the most entertaining Intern contest of all time.

People went all out for this position. Is it something about interns? Or the zombie theme? Or the two put together? In any event, it’s rare to see people work so passionately for high-pay positions at mega-agencies. The amount of energy that went into winning this unpaid internship at a relatively small and independent shop is truly impressive.

Clearly, the good folks at Copeland know a thing or two about making a place fun to work at.

Check out the finalists to see what the competition was like.

Congrats to Drew, not only for winning, but also for allowing his new slave masters to rename him. I’m sorry about your lost foot.

Mario

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It’s a pretty cool thing when you find ads that you remember years later, or can find some fun in watching (sometimes repeatedly). I’ve actually got a number of these on my mp3 player and I watch them from time to time.

AMERIQUEST
This one is hilarious. As it turns out, they’re no longer accepting mortgage applications, so who knows how much longer the company will even be around (as the poster of the second video noted, probably should have judged their customers a little more quickly), but these hilarious and clever ads will live on in infamy. Or at least on the internet.

As are the rest of these:

AFLAC
Here are a couple classic AFLAC ads that are always fun to watch.

GEICO
In a world… ahh the king of movie trailer clichés, put to good effect here.

Anyone remember… Police Academy? It’s okay to say yes.

Cingular
Classic.

The follow-up repeats the formula, demonstrating that sometimes a formula needs a bit more of a tweak, but the original’s classic.

FORD
Finally, here’s a classic Mustang commercial, aimed at anyone with a need… for speed!

A few years back 50c rented a theatre at the Rainbow cinema for The World’s Best Commercials. Perhaps it’s time to do it again…

Geoff

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Okay, it took real ba–, er, nerves, to air a commercial like this. Especially from a bigger company like IKEA, who you really would expect to be more conservative. (on the other hand, it probably only aired in Europe)

Why does it work? Really, juxtaposing a child playing with his mother’s vibrator would be exceedingly creepy if it weren’t so clear that the kid was entirely innocent about what it was making that funny buzzing noise.

But again, why does it work? Why do we respond to it? Why do we laugh? Why do we groan, and maybe cover our eyes or slap our forehead, feeling real embarrassment on behalf of the kid’s fictional mother?

It really comes down to empathy. And projection. So that we, as an audience can picture that kid’s poor mother, having her little secret exposed for our amusement, and can picture ourselves in her situation too. Well, perhaps not that situation, but the archetypal situation wherein something personal we’d just as soon keep private is trotted out for the world to see.

In the context of advertising, it works to not only humanize the company a little bit, but also serves to make us laugh, which also gives us positive associations towards the IKEA brand. (building up a brand is a discussion for someone other than myself… ask Tony). But, yes, the technique, engaging us, making us laugh, letting us empathize with a fictional character is very reminscent of another medium…

Storytelling. Or, in my specific case, screenwriting.

One of the keys to writing a quality (or at least successful, they don’t necessarily line up together) story is to have a character we can root for. And to root for him, we have to empathize with him, to put ourselves in his shoes through the story and care for his fate. Sounds dire, but not all stories are life and death.

In the best comedies, you will be embarrassed for the characters (like the fictional IKEA mother), because you’ll identify with them in some way. You’ll put yourself in their shoes, recall times in your life when you reacted as badly as they are now, maybe worse, and can now laugh at yourself.

“Comedy is tragedy plus time”
Carol Burnett

“Tragedy is when I get a hangnail. Comedy is when you fall in a sewer and die.”
Mel Brooks

“Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in longshot.”
Charlie Chaplin

In all these little aphorisms, you’re finding comedy in things you can relate to, yet have some distance from.

In both storytelling and this style of advertising, comedy begets empathy, empathy begets connection, and connection begets success, be it in filling the seats of the cineplex or building on the foundation of a brand to sell organizers for the toys that don’t exactly belong in junior’s toybox.

FADE OUT

Geoff

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“Human interactions involving kindness, care and empathy are an essential part of the job.” - Barry Schwartz

“Practical wisdom is the combination of moral will and moral skill.” - Aristotle

- Nico

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