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Having three laughs with... Orlando Wood

Who doesn't need laughter? Paul van Kuilenburg asks people in marketing and advertising about their three favourite funny campaigns.
Orlando Wood
Orlando Wood

Laughter is one of life’s greatest joys. Yet, in an increasingly serious advertising industry, it sometimes feels as though we’ve forgotten about it. To reinvigorate our love for laughter, Paul van Kuilenburg asks people in marketing and advertising about their three favourite funny campaigns of all time. What truly makes them tick, and why? On this occasion, the spotlight is on Orlando Wood, CIO of System1 Group. Orlando is a leading expert on the emotional impact of advertising. His extensive research and publications, Lemon and, particularly, Look Out, highlight the decline of humor in modern advertising and its negative effects on effectiveness.

NB: While Adformatie is a Dutch platform, this article has been written in English to best capture the eloquence of Orlando.

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Hamlet – Photo Booth

Agency: CDP

Two of Orlando’s picks stem from what is often known as the ‘golden age of advertising’ – the decades following the 1960s creative revolution. As he explains, the work made then offers enduring lessons that remain invaluable today. The first ad, Photo Booth, is from one of the best-loved UK campaigns of all time. It’s part of the series ‘Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet’ which ran from 1964 to 1991. Orlando begins by praising the skilful display of non-verbal communication by actor Gregor Fisher. ‘This man conveys so much without saying a word. It’s all in the face, the eyes, the hair, the upright posture... it all reveals an inner human motivation. We can understand what he’s thinking just from his face and body, and we can feel his frustration: he misses the shot the first time, then the second, then the third... Often, it’s repetition and a sense of inevitability that lies at the heart of humour – that the events that are unfolding are beyond our control, as if we’re on a conveyer belt and can’t get off. It reminds me of when I was having a picnic once, and the wind picked up my crisp packet and blew it down the beach. I walked over and tried to pick it up, but the wind caught it again before I could get to it. Then again, and again, and again. I must have run about half a mile along the beach, but each time I got close the wind got there first. After about 20 attempts, I still hadn’t caught it. Utterly ridiculous! It’s moments like this, we look and feel like a puppet on a string. In this ad we’re looking at a man who’s going through something similar - it’s very relatable.’

Orlando explains that this is crucial for the ad’s success. ‘In this man, we see ourselves. The ad pokes fun at vanity. At some point, we’ve all checked our hair or looked in the mirror, and deep down, we all recognise what we’re seeing here. The ad celebrates and understands human foibles and so draws us into the story.’

Eventually, consolation comes in the form of a Hamlet cigar. Orlando: ‘Again, it’s the facial expression and the bodily actions that reveal an emotional turning point — the moment where our hero’s luck changes. That’s what you see in this ad, and it’s all done through the body and the face. Great advertising gives the audience something to do, something for us to fill in for ourselves. And it rewards us in some way, because we’ve worked out what’s going on. And as research shows, if you can get your audience to connect the dots, it is much more likely to go into memory.’

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Heineken - The Water in Majorca

Agency: Lowe Howard - Spink

Orlando’s second choice involves another long-running advertising campaign: Heineken Refreshes the Parts Other Beers Cannot Reach. And here too, the ad suggests a psychological transformation. Orlando: ‘This campaign shows the unexpected ways that Heineken refreshes the parts that other beers cannot reach, and we witness a different transformation in every ad. In this one, it’s all about the voice. This is an elocution (welsprekendheid) lesson in reverse - our character has gone to the School of Street Credibility to learn how to speak without a posh accent. The woman speaks all prim and proper: ‘The water in Mallorca doesn’t taste … quite how it should?’ And then suddenly, on drinking the beer: <mimics accent> ‘The wo-ah in Major-ca’... Originally, the creators told me they were going to dub the actress. But she did it so brilliantly, that they decided to use her original voice.’

The story parodies a famous scene from the British classic ‘My Fair Lady’, in which a professor gives an elocution lesson to a flower girl with a Cockney accent. He teaches her to speak with an upper-class accent, by repeatedly rehearsing the phrase ‘The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain’. Orlando: ‘The humour in this ad lies in inversion (omdraaiing). At the time this ad aired, in the mid-eighties, people were talking about the ‘Sloane Ranger’ – a posh and aspirational social class in society. The woman in this ad is a perfect example. We’re watching a very well-spoken and well-dressed woman being taught how to speak in a Cockney accent. It’s a wonderful inversion of the expected and was very culturally relevant.’

Behind the creation of this ad lies an interesting story about creative constraint, as Orlando explains. ‘The creative, Adrian Holmes, told me how he was inspired by My Fair Lady and thought it would be funny to invert it. His creative partner observed: ‘That would make a great story for the Heineken campaign’, because the scene from the movie is about psychological transformation, just like the campaign. So initially, they started writing an ad that was basically that scene, including the original movie quote: ‘The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain’. The client loved it and they were ready to start filming, but then they heard there was a problem. Sir Bernhard Shaw (author of Pygmalion, the story My Fair Lady was based on) had been teetotal (abstained from alcohol) and his estate wouldn’t want his work to be used for beer advertising. So initially, Adrian was in despair… But his boss at the time told him to keep working on the idea. And eventually they wrote this line, ‘The water in Majorca don’t taste like what it ought to’. This also referenced a commonly held belief at the time about the tap water in Spain. And so, of course, the constraint made the whole ad much better. Adrian uses this example often to demonstrate how sometimes, instead of thinking outside the box, it pays to think inside the box. That creative constraint sometimes is extremely helpful. Because it makes you think about how we could we do this differently within certain limitations.’

Geico - Crushed Pottery

Agency: The Martin Agency

Unlike the more classic picks above, Orlando’s final favourite comes from the pre-roll era: a series of short form ads by Geico. Orlando: ‘What I find great about this campaign is it shows an understanding of the audience. People want to skip the ads and get to their video as quickly as possible. So, they actually built these sets in a 16:9 format and created a wonderful set of ads that play with the constraints of the medium. In each of them there’s a scene happening - this one is the pottery scene. And there’s a serious conversation going on, which continues to go on, as if nothing’s happening, as the wall moves across, destroying everything in its path. And we rather enjoy the chaos, the silliness, the conceit. So, as the viewer, you’re understanding something on two levels. On one level, you’re aware that this is an ad, and it’s messing with the ad format. Yet on another level, it lets you entertain the thought that what you’re watching could be real.

Henri Bergson, one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century, said: ‘Humour is often the tension between rigidity and movement’. This is exactly what we see happening here: the people are turned into dolls, unresponsive to their surroundings. Just like in Geico’s other series ‘you can’t skip this Geico ad ‘cause it’s already over’. Turning human bodies into dolls, as life goes on, can tickle our sense of humour.’ This short form ad also displays humour’s ability to condense a message. Orlando: ‘Humour is really about reduction. It’s expressing something explosively with great economy, as in: you’re saying an awful lot with very few words. So, it’s very economical and powerful.’

A plea for humour in advertising

After reflecting on his three favourite funny campaigns, Orlando continues to emphasize why humour and advertising make such a great couple. ‘In my view, humour does three important things. One, it presents an incongruity, something that doesn’t look quite right, or withholds something. And therefore, you’re trying to work out ‘what’s happening here?’, which causes us to pay attention. Two, it makes us join the dots ourselves, and when we do that, we’re more likely to remember it. This is called the ‘generation effect’. And thirdly, it makes us feel clever, because we work it out. So we get some reward, we get some positive feeling, associated with the brand. These are three truly important principles - timeless and independent of the channel. For instance: if you look at any great poster or billboard ad from VW in the 1960’s, they used very few words. The VW camper van, with its many windows and elevated driving position, is shown beneath the words Room with a view. Or the one for the Volkswagen Beatle: Relieves gas pains - referring to the fuel economy. It works on two levels. You’ve got the juxtaposition between the headline and the image. And it works really quickly – it HAS to work really quickly, because you just have a second or two, just like modern social media and newsfeeds. That’s what humour brings you. That’s why humour is so important. And why we mustn’t forget it. This is why we can’t let it go. It shows an intelligence, a ‘knowingness’ of the world. It displays a sophistication of thought. It’s a way of building trust, a way of bringing people towards you. It defuses difficult situations. And it brings about a psychological transformation. And in the end, that is what advertising is all about.’

Orlando Wood is a thought leader on advertising effectiveness. As the founder of Advertising Principles Explained (a.p.e.), he runs a series of masterclasses alongside Sir John Hegarty. As the Chief Innovation Officer at System1 Group, he’s been the visionary academic and innovation lead behind System1’s testing methodologies. Furthermore, he’s a conference and podcast speaker, and the author of reference works Lemon (IPA, 2019), Look Out (IPA, 2021), and System1, Unlocking Profitable Growth (co-author 2017).

Paul van Kuilenburg is strategy director at Alfred and an advocate for humor in advertising. Previously, he published 'That was funny, but what was the brand again?' - a study on brand linkage in humorous advertising, in the International Journal of Advertising.

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