Wit and wisdom

They let me out of the Library last week. As you know, it’s where I live at the Marketing Society. So it’s a virtual library, but quiet and bookish as you would expect.

On Wednesday morning I was sent on a flight to Edinburgh (straight off the Red-Eye from JFK as it happens) to talk to the members of Marketing Society Scotland about briefing. With two excellent fellow speakers we addressed the best way of briefing both retained agencies and ones pitching for business.

What a pleasure the evening was. A full house of enthusiastic client and agency people. The warmest of welcomes. Great questions. A universal understanding of just how important briefing and feedback are in the creative process.

We talked about brevity. We talked about the opportunity to inspire and ‘being creative before the creatives’. We agreed about the power of storytelling. We discussed how more pictures and less words can often do the trick. We also explored the massive potential of using synaesthesia in briefing – the use of sound, smell and touch, as well as words and pictures.

And interestingly we concurred that wisdom is all very well, but a healthy of dollop of wit does no harm either. This is one of my core beliefs. When Reader’s Digest was a must-read, one of its most popular monthly features was a pot pourri of humour and jokes under the banner: ‘Laughter the best medicine’.

How sad that so many people, so many companies, so many agencies seem to believe that to be taken seriously you have to be relentlessly serious. It simply isn’t true. The judicious – and indeed natural – use of wit and humour can break down barriers and open doors. Just a few reasons:

• Humour puts people at ease
• It makes them want to work with you. And buy from you!
• It relaxes, which often helps creative thinking
• It makes you approachable, which builds trust
• It makes people smile, which itself makes the conference room a happier place

But there’s another powerful reason in the world of advertising and communications – it makes you likeable and gives you stand out and differentiation, all at the same time.

Just look at award winning commercials and campaigns. How many of them make you smile, and appeal to your sense of humour? A lot. A disproportionate number.

So if wit makes the end product stand out and work better – and it often does – why not use wit alongside wisdom in the briefing process?

It’s funny how well funny works.

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