Polish joke –

Comedian: TIMING!

Of course, these days, making fun of Poles – or any other national group – just isn’t funny, which goes to show that getting a laugh is a very delicate thing. And while advertising experts will tell you that salesmanship does not equate with humour, there are at least two very good reasons why laughter should be an important part of the creative guy’s arsenal:

Brand character is important, and I don’t think anybody ever wrote a creative brief saying, ‘We will set out to convince the prospect that our brand is a sourpuss.’

In this modern world, if you don’t entertain, you’re going to lose your audience to the PlayStation.

And yet, there are a whole lot of humorous commercials out there that don’t quite work because the TIMING! is off.

Somewhere, somebody in the process said, well, we gotta make sure the joke is REAL CLEAR…and of course, making it REAL CLEAR eliminates the audience involvement and steps on the spark.

For instance, there’s a Fed Ex spot that has a nice premise. They’re selling their simple delivery software, and they’ve got a new guy in the office being shown the computer that hooks up with Fed Ex. The nice old-timer woman tells him how easy it is to learn, and is about to leave him with it, when he pipes up smugly, ‘But you don’t understand, I’m an MBA.’

He, of course, means that due to his exalted status, handling package delivery is beneath him. She takes it differently. She says, ‘Oh, then I’d better show you.’ Nice little putdown, little people win over big people, good commercial.

But somewhere, somebody said, that’s not enough. So they explain the joke. The announcer comes rolling in with ‘Fed Ex. So easy even an MBA can do it.’ And suddenly, they’ve flattened it. They’ve taken control of the spot away from the nice old-timer woman and inserted the client personality (there’s a difference between a fictional office manager insulting MBAs and Fed Ex insulting MBAs, there really is). They’ve overplayed their hand. TIMING! Bad.

There’s a Toronto radio campaign for lawn equipment that does pretty much the same thing. It also has a nice premise, even if it’s borrowed from Bud Light – doofy, unthinking men trying to manipulate women.

The announcer plays it straight, suggesting that Joe Sixpack should buy his wife a snowblower or a lawn mower. In some of the spots – the better ones – they leave the joke there. But in others, they bring in the woman, saying angry things like, ‘Yeah, if I’m still here,’ thereby ruining the whole idea. If you spell out the joke, it goes away. The woman has to remain blissfully smitten, like the Bud Light wife given the card, ‘I’m sorry I missed your cousin’s wedding.’

Overexplaining the joke seems to be everywhere. In a new TV spot for cheese, a guy baits a mousetrap, then decides he wants the cheese more than the mouse does. So far, so good. But did they have to play the whole thing through: cheese grab, cry of pain, grimace, etc.? Wouldn’t it have worked better if they just concentrated on his dilemma – the positive power of cheese versus the negative power of pain – and left his decision unresolved? No, somebody decided if they did it that way, we wouldn’t get it.

Some of my best friends are researchers, but I think they may be at the bottom of this. If you put something funny – a good storyboard – in a context that isn’t funny – one-way glass and a roomful of instant experts – you get literal answers that have potential to screw up humour.

As a wise creative colleague has said, ‘I respect research and I will listen to it. But it’s still my job to make the communication. This is not a democracy, and we’re not going to put in something for everyone who has a comment.’

He’s right. Too much literal, left-brained thinking can ruin your message’s TIMING!

John Burghardt has been president of a $35-million advertising agency, written films for the Shah of Iran, brought home a Cannes Gold Lion, and godfathered the Cookie Monster with Jim Henson. Not considering himself a Type A personality but acting like one, he is currently involved in two New York State theatre projects, a children’s multimedia concept, and a new tourism communications firm known as Geo*dentity. He also returns phone calls and e-mails, at 416-693-5072 and burgwarp@rogers.com, respectively.