From Hamlet to Haribo: the serious case for humour - Trevor Robinson

0:28Welcome back everybody to Uncensored CMO. ads of all time, including Tango from the 1990s. And I caught up with Trevor to find out more about what makes advertising funny. How do you do it? And what are the funniest ads of all time? This is a really entertaining episode. I know you'll love it. Trevor, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. I do like talking about ads. Good. Well, let's talk about ads. And let's talk about funny ads as well. Because you've made some funny ads in your time. But before we get into funny ads, tell us how you got your big break into advertising. How did you get into this industry well um it was quite difficult al al young is my creative partner we spent a lot of time on the dole and lots of time um in interviews and we couldn't even get a placement actually no one even wanted to give us a placement but we worked on our portfolio and worked on it quite extensively and i think it was that time out of advertising i think we got good because i was at college did did the usual but i didn't think i was that good and i thought i was but when when you really start showing your work to people i think it was graham think we went to see him at college dickinson pierce with our portfolio and um i remember it was in a very darkened room and he had this massive office and um he was sat there and he groaned as he was looking at our work and each time he turned the page over he kind of groaned and then he turned to us and he said look your work's good you know it's advertising it's good ads anybody in this company can do this but i don't see any of you guys look like interesting guys and just i could see the banter between you two i don't see any evidence of that in your portfolio so me and al it really hit home and me and Al said, right, um, let's just do stuff that makes us laugh and makes us think and makes us, you know, and it sounds like an obvious thing, but I think that was a switch with us.

2:26And then we showed the work to Hal Henry and, um, we had some crazy stuff in our portfolio and we got a job and, and, but the terrifying thing was Hal Henry at the time was like the best agency, agency of the year, agency of the decade. It was, uh, killer and steven axe were i worshiped them i loved their work they had done and me and al was just like couldn't believe we'd managed to land hal henry um but it was intimidating because they had people like tim and nash and they had just done the maxill tapes stuff and it was like hilarious very funny and clever as hell yeah and steven axe were geniuses anyway and dave bonaguidi was there who's now an artist but him and stevie so it's quite intimidating when we first got there and we but we were determined not to end up on the dole again yeah and make our that's a good motivation yeah it was it was i mean we were pretty scared for the first year and we were used to working overnight on our briefs and working the weekends and trying to push it at every stage and we we knew we had to be we did well at highland we'd won some business but we knew we had to make the industry and the outside world talk about our work so when we was given the opportunity on brick vic that was our you know it's a tv ad that's going to get money behind it and i always remember the client came in and the only time i i don't even know why because we never really met clients you know the craters were kept under the stairs with um harry potter and you would never meet the clients but for some reason we met the client early and i remember him throwing the gauntlet down and him being quite had a bit of a swagger about him and he said i want you guys to give me something that's going to make me famous make my career you know i want you to do something that's going to get talked about so that was like music to our ears with me now because that's what we wanted as well and steven axe were very kind of maverick individuals as well and they were really they always wanted to do edgy stuff they always they they they were drawn to funny like we were and we used to go into steven axe's office and just laugh for ages about nothing really people must have thought it was insane but they had a really great sense of humor and they seemed to enjoy the kind of warped sense of humor me and al had so when we did tango i always remember the first week because we got gil scott heron to um dude you know you've been tangled and he did the voiceover and um i remember showing it we showed it to him i can't remember what it was but he laughed and i was really nervous and he was like going you guys are crazy and i remember just before the weekend before it launched i said to al you know when you get that kind of stand back epiphany kind of out of body sort of thing where i could see this is either going to really make us was going to destroy us and um because we knew we had something that was different and and it was difficult because you couldn't compare it to anything yeah so you're in that sort of stage this is going to be hated or loved i mean this is really interesting because as it happens by chance i was at britvik working in the brand team not on tango but i was i was actually working on another brand in britvik so i kind of experienced what you're talking about from the other side but very very very close to it and the thing thing that was amazing about tango was just like the way it excited the entire company you know and everyone got really excited by it and our customers were talking about it to us and and the anticipation and it was really unlike any soft drink advertising ever you know i mean you had like r whites which is a little bit funny you know secret lemonade drinker you know you know there were a few hits like that but it was much more like beer advertising it had that it had that irreverence and that kind of adult humor to it that that i guess was very untypical category which made it made it stand out but the other thing i noticed and it's interesting you talked about the client there because the debate we had at britvik was whether it's okay to be banned or not that was the debate we used to have you know inside was you know we're pushing the boundaries here so far that there's a risk that each campaign may get banned and you know is that going to be a problem for us or not because we're going to invest all this media money we may have to pull the ad kind of thing but that must have created some kind of tension presumably or decision making on your side because how far do you push the idea well naively me and al when we were coming up with the idea which it made us laugh a lot and we like the perversion of instead of having a good sensation happen to you when you have a drink it was that somebody comes up and smacks you and does something unpleasant to you sorry to interrupt we're worth explaining how the ad works for anyone who's younger or listening in another country that might not be familiar with tango just explain the premise of the advert as well and what happened to the ad well the idea was somebody has a drink as a drink of the can and it's having a conversation with their friend on the street and then you have these two male commentary like we based it on kind of american football originally because they always over analyze things and funny enough the football's gone that way now where the commentators are like little characters in themselves and anyway we took took these two guys who would over analyze something that you haven't seen and it just happened at the moment of taste sensation so when you uh rewind the film you saw this weird character come orange character who runs up and slaps the person who just had to drink and that was meant to be the hit of real oranges and um and and then but no one else would have seen this and it and even a person who experiences it doesn't really see it all so it was a it was just a very odd idea and and these guys would talk enthusiastically about what what they've just seen oh it's the hit of real oranges and stuff like that so that was the idea and believe it or not our creative directors liked it and everybody else did because it was a very odd way to go about doing um talking about the attributes of your brand and your product and yes you're right it was the kind of things that you normally associate with, um, with beer advertising.

9:03But I was pretty conscious that no one had done something like this. And I guess that's, like I said, it was quite difficult to realize if it was any good or not because, um, um, and it wasn't, it wasn't actually until I was, I was on a train going up to see my, my son and he lived in North Huntington and I was really exhausted. I think at that time I was working hard and playing hard cause I was quite young and um and i was exhausted i fell asleep on the train and i woke up to these guys talking about the ad and i couldn't believe it that they were talking about our ad yeah and and and i remember thinking at the time it would have been so surreal if i woke up and just said hey i did that and then they would have just looked at me like as a lunatic but so it was really interesting when it started to ripple but i didn't anticipate not for one second that people would start hitting each other and causing perforated eardrums and all that kind of people to this day still talk about the impact of the ad when it when it came out and they were doing it in school i mean that's what i loved about advertising if you can do something that get people talking about it in the real world real people my brother you know people that aren't in advertising then i've really succeeded i think it's great to win awards and and to get plaudits from your peers but what really gets me excited i remember again going into a cinema to um see a film and apple tango was on the screen and everybody was laughing in the cinema and i i mean it sounds like a real ego thing but it was just you just couldn't i couldn't describe how what that makes you feel like when it's your work yeah and people are laughing and talking about it and i was like wow Well, ITV have got this tracker where they actually measure how many people agree with the statement, the ads in the ad break are as good as the programs that we watch.

10:54And I don't know the exact figures, but approximately it used to be about 50 % of ads. People would go, well, 50 % of the population would go, I think the ads are as good as the programs. I think it's something like 15 % now. So you're right. Back in when you and I were in the cinema laughing at ads, it was normal to think the ads were as good as the programs around them, but a lot less so today. I think having clients that are brave is above all the most important thing. Having clients that trust you as well. Like when we first did the Haribo ad, it might not seem such a courageous idea, but at the time when I showed it to my client, he didn't really get it.

11:35And he didn't really see what was funny about it. And it was on paper form. And also, the structure was odd because we said, look, we can't write scripts for it because it needs to come from the kids. It needs to be their inspiration, their interpretation of the product. If we wrote down what these kids said, it would be cringy. Oh, it's really so tasty and it's like the heart makes me feel loved. If we wrote those things, people would smell it a mile off and just go, oh, that's horrible. but because it's coming from the kids it's their imagination it's their interpretation of what the product is and that's what we do we just give them the product and let them talk about it yeah and we we add props in the room to get them to think around it's a bit darren brown but we get into we get we we create an environment where they will have imagery and thoughts around something so you can steer them but it's what they say and it's what is their is their interpretation of of the brand and the product and i think that's why people love it because it's it's real it's authentic and that's what we had to explain to our client this is what it needs to be and we we did the test film me and mary sue came up with that idea and um mary sue uses uh kids voices and we shot it with everybody in the in the office the account the test film for me is genius as well I love it because it's just, you had, I think it was two and a half minutes and it was just silly.

13:08But it kind of was a template for everything we did after that. And Hoag still didn't really like it that much when he first saw it, but he showed it to people in the office and they were cracking up. And then I think when we shot the commercial in the end and did the boardroom, the first one, he turned to me and said, this is going to be really hard to do another campaign past this because the benchmark is up here and i think it's because it's it's it makes you smile and it's not real belly last but it makes you feel and i always feel this when i'm directing it or one when we're on the shoots the crew's different everybody's got it's got the heritage of people seeing it and people smile you know if i say to strangers they go what do you do you know and and you say advertising and you say Haribo and people change their mood changes and I mean I really I really appreciate being able to do that with with something that you've worked on I think there's something about the simplicity of that idea and it's repeatable it's repeatable isn't it I mean you've run it for something like 12 years now haven't you and I think some sometimes I think brands have to sort of recreate the humor or or push the humor but actually you've just repeated some a very simple device many times and the more familiar people get with it the more they like it it's like it's like a classic joke you know you don't get tired of you know i think it's like police for instance that was like way down the line and that really did well on system one i think they've always do well on system one and that was people were police were imitating the ad and doing their little tiktok films and send them in and then you just think that's the best compliment you can you can get for something where here's an old campaign but people are still redoing them still talking about them and still feel something from them so a bit like spec savers i'm really proud to to be involved with something that's been and it's gone everywhere in the world it's been remade germany it's been france japan they won awards for it in japan it was bonkers the japanese is big sumo wrestlers with kids voices and it's really funny and as soon as you say super wrestlers and you just know it's going to be funny and um but it's it's taken off all over the world and it's the biggest campaign and herwig's gone from being you know he's now mr vinnikins he runs it all in the world and i think i saw him the other day for for lunch we did a little talk together as well and um i could see it in his eye and he just said i miss this because he's gone so senior now he doesn't really work on on the work anymore and then i think i I could see him like, oh, I wish I was making these ads with you again.

15:52So it's good. One thing I want to ask you about is where humour comes from. Because we mentioned Specsavers in that bit. And the interesting thing with Specsavers is the line that Specsavers came up with was almost an accidental line at the end of a script. And they almost had a bit of a joke between them that, oh, we should have gone Specsavers. And then over years, that's become the idea. And then the familiarity with the idea means they can play with it and it can pop up in social media or out of home and all this sort of thing. And because we get the joke now, they've got so much more permission to kind of, you know, stretch it all over the place kind of thing.

16:27But is a funny idea for an ad something you can plan for? Can you kind of write it down and formulise it? Or is it something that just happens with the right people, the right chemistry and the right clients? I always think it starts with the creative team. I mean, it starts with the kind of personalities. And I've struggled sometimes when I realise they're good people, but they're not very you know like me and al would just laugh our heads off about nothing and we used to love being in the office because we used to if anybody could hear what we're saying they would just lock us up it was like you could be as perverse or as nutty as you like and you can go away from the brief and just keep coming up with lots of ideas and i felt the same thing with mary sue and she's like a big one for fart cags but it was it was a real you need to have that permission and you need to have that permission to do crap as well and to get through the crap to get to the to the diamonds and and some people aren't tolerant of that they want the idea they want to get to the idea as quick as possible so they can go out to lunch and um and i i really like the journey and i really like just kicking things around and seeing how far you can go and if you can't surprise the people internally and the person opposite you you're in the wrong business and that's why even to this day i love coming up with ideas and we just i was saying earlier uh we presented about six ideas to a client three of them were really out there really out there and to the point that my planner and my account guy said you know should we be sharing this this is pretty bonkers this is nuts and it made me even more want to share it and it turned out the three most out there ones the client liked and they're slightly off brief slightly mental and you just hope those ideas get out there into the world because people appreciate that people don't want to see and hear the same old joke they want they want to be stimulated by the new and exciting and they they want to be shocked they want to re-watch the ad to go have you seen that i've got to watch that again now you just kind of look at ads and you just go yeah i'll get the gag yeah don't really want to see it again yeah and that's that's why people want to speed past them and not look it's funny actually because i think having spent five years working with system one and understanding the science and behind how advertising works.

18:58I think I'd now approach it as a client quite differently. It's been really fascinating because I think previously as a client, I would have probably put a lot of weight on, are you meeting the brief? Have you communicated the things that we've decided through our strategy that we need to communicate? And that would have been how I judge you. I think what I've learned at System 1 is actually, unless you entertain people and make them feel something, they're not going to remember whatever it is you were trying to say. So actually you are better making someone laugh, entertain them and creating a good emotion.

19:26Because what we find in our testing is that if you can make people laugh, make people feel good, every rational benefit you're trying to communicate will improve. Whereas if you go in and go, well, our bank is open for longer hours and our customer service is better than theirs, all the sort of things that most clients care about. Actually, your best way to do that is entertainment. And it can feel a challenge for a lot of clients because they work in logical organisations. that you know here's my brief and i need to make sure wave you present back is tick tick tick on my brief some advertising works in a much more mysterious way which is more about how you make people feel something i think the key point you made there is entertainment i've always seen what i do is entertaining even if it's a serious subject if i'm not gripping you if we're not entertaining you if you're not talking about what you've seen and walk away with it you've not done a good job so for me just doing an ad that meets the debrief isn't yeah isn't always enough you've got to do something that you feel a bit uncomfortable about as well you feel like oh is this going to work yeah it's odd you've reminded me one of the funniest ads of all time if i had to write a list of my funniest ads right one of them would be british heart foundation with vinnie jones doing cpr yeah can you imagine like that you know lock stock and two smoking barrels hard guy you know You hire him to show people how to do CPR, but you watch that.

20:49A, it's funny that it's him, but then you see his bodyguards or whatever that are looking very awkward. I mean, just the way it's delivered and it's done to staying alive. Ah, ah, ah, staying alive. So you've got the music, which is clever. There's a bit of humour in the choice of track. You've got him, who's obviously playing his tough guy act. And then you've got these kind of bouncers who are a bit awkward about what's going on. sort of thing but in some cases the best way to tackle a difficult subject can after can often be in a light-hearted way kind of gives you kind of permission to say things that maybe we did a project called um i do this spin-off to quiet storm which is crate not hate where i bring in basically kids from my background and um trying to get them in the industry and also get the industry to see them and say you know um and it's been one of my my passion projects for a while and we did one of the subject matters we did it just is after george floyd was brutally murdered i was very angry and my wife said look mate you got to chill out you got to do something do something positive and so we did the subject we got the kids in and we said how to how would you tackle racism which is a huge subject obviously and one of the ideas that won over actually was quite funny it was it was like it it was based on um a young guy manuel who did work with us for a bit he's just gone off to university but um he his idea was basically he loves frank sinatra he loves shakespeare but people look to look at him just think he's some you know this guy obviously likes grime or something and he says isn't that funny and then we made the idea about that we made the idea about these guys practicing shakespeare but from outside and they're in a little cafe but outside in the car park two people were watching them and they think they're aggressive and they assume it's a drug deal gone wrong or something like that but they actually passionately running out the thing that's so clever yeah and it's it's it was such a simple little yeah idea and it and it kind of makes you laugh despite yourself because you're suckered into thinking that as well yeah because you think what's going on it's only when you go inside we do this little camera move in you hear them saying these lines from rome and juliet and so for me it's like i'm not saying you always need to use humor i don't agree with that but i do think it's it is a fast track to make you take in an idea that you might not want you know sometimes you see these ads on for charities and stuff and you shut down you know you feel terrible but you go i don't want to see this i don't want you know and you you shy away from it and it's almost like a protection thing but if you're have the same subject matter and you use warmth entertainment humor yeah to get that over you're more likely to take it in so clever because in that shakespeare example it could easily have been a lecture like you know you know we're going to tell you about your prejudice and your unconscious bias and it can feel aggressive like you know you're you're being told off or whatever you do it like that and you experience it unconsciously and then you feel the emotion when you when the rug pull you know it happens that's way better because you'll remember it you'll feel it you're much more likely to think differently about exactly because we all have it yeah you know it's a it's not attacking you is it like it's attacking your core letting you just you know read that book cover and think you know you know it's kind of like it's it's i i i always think the best advertising does that you know it makes you even if it's a simple idea like the the gorilla cabarets ad and and i know people's like slagged it off in the past but i still think it's one of the best as ever yeah to talk about the emotion what it feels like to eat the product rather than showing somebody eating a bar of chocolate or feel it yeah yeah yeah feel it and appropriately with the with the track that they're using i remember again watching that and it's i always think there's a real gauge of a brilliant ad is when you envy it when you wish you'd done it And you have that sick feeling in your stomach when you see an ad come on.

25:11I remember when Tom O 'Waters' Guinness ad came on the box. And I think it was at the time as well, one of my best friends called me and he goes, did you see it? And I went, yeah. And it was like one of those moments in time that you just kind of can remember where you were when you first saw the Guinness. And the key thing was, I knew I could never do anything as good as that. not on that completely layered you know surfers horses the track you know beautifully shot by glazer and it was just it was awesome and and that for me is my favorite ad of all time but it makes me feel sick when i look at it because you just go oh my god it's so good and even when um chas and jim who did the black current tango ad they came into our office to tell us the idea and al was laughing about it and he's like i didn't get it at first when they said it as script for it i went why is that good and i was going you're joking it's really good then i saw it on tv and i went oh my god that is so good yeah and you just you just get it and i think sometimes the difficulty about an idea also as well is are people going to get it at script for are they getting you know having a client that gets it or at least trusts you as well it's so important the best ideas i've ever been involved with would never have happened if the clients didn't back us and as i know it's the obvious thing that's a really really powerful the other thing actually about black heart tango i can imagine if you had the storyboard of that you'd go what we're going to have a someone writes a complaint and we're going to have someone replying to it and then by the end of it we've got harrier jump chess white clips of dover and a boxing match that's completely bonkers right he just goes i mean like i think again it's like in hindsight it makes everybody a great judge of an idea and i think sometimes you have especially as a creative director i always have to just stand back for myself because sometimes when you hear a new idea it actually you reject it in a weird way because you're i don't know what to compare it to so So there's that little battle you need to defeat in yourself and to make sure a great idea doesn't slip through your fingers.

27:27And then the next thing, I think, and I'm really lucky because at Quiet Storm we write and direct our own work. So you're able to nurture that idea, nurture it and build it and escalate it, not just with the casting, but how you shoot it, how you edit it. And so many times, like looking at that Hamlet ad, i i remember envying that ad even before i was in advertising and just think it's one shot and it's like brilliantly acted and so simple and and and it's just every moment of it is perfect yeah you know and even when he smokes the cigarette obviously you couldn't do that now but and he blows it into the air and the camera flashes that i'd recommend people watching that if you haven't seen it you write actually about acting as well because ray gardner in the black caratango ads that only works really because of his personality yeah he carries that ad himself he talks about the hamlet ad it's brilliant the actor in there is amazing uh i did a i did a little uh linkedin post this morning asking people to tell me their funniest ads of all time the amount of them that have got comedic actors in rowan atkinson or you know peter k in the john smith's ad you know Melanie Sykes in the Boddington's ad so many of them depend on kind of popular actors you know comedians doing their turn you know doing what they're famous for and that that's a big big part isn't it you need talent and I've lucky enough I remember working with Olivia Colman before she was famous and we did a Schwartz ad actually that was with Herwig that's the first time I met him my Haribo client and we did a series of ads and one of them Olivia Colman and you could just see how amazing she was and and how talented she was and i just loved filming her and you just kept the camera rolling i just didn't want to stop filming her and i think i've been lucky enough to stumble across some really people that's gone on to doing some great work and and i think you you've got to start there you've got to start with the right ingredients and one of the right ingredients is if you're shooting something you've got to get the best possible person because they're going to escalate your idea you made a little dropping comment earlier about quiet storm that you you you both create and direct as well that's quite unusual because in my experience you've mostly got the creative team that come up with the idea and then there's this kind of handoff to a director who usually has their own ideas and one of the things i found is absolutely pivotal is that director selection and and the way the director works with the idea and i've seen great ideas crushed and i've seen average ideas become genius and i mean probably my one of my favorite ads of all time i worked on fruit shoots and this is back in britwick days actually when around the time we had been working with you guys on tango and we shot this ad in columbia of all places it turns out columbia's got an amazing film scene i never really realized yeah i mean insanely cheap as well um so we shot yeah no this is good tip this we we shot two ads for 130 000 euros an equivalent quote in the uk was 500 000 to do one ad and we did two for 130 000 euros and we flew out there we got the the acting talent there we had a crew of over 100 they were so dedicated and we had five days out in the mountains in in columbia it's just the most magical thing but anyway reason to tell you the story was um daniel the director was young up and coming and we spent so much time together like basically improving the scenes or the ideas or how the story is told there was no ego about I know what I'm doing you as a client can shut up you know it was just this collaboration it was it was brilliant I've equally worked with some much on paper more famous directors that have got like the most amazing books and I have it's just been like this is how I'm doing it I've got this is my treatment this is my way of doing things this is what you're getting and those have been the ones that have just not done very well you know but but what tips have you got on the direction as well to bring bring the you know bring a creative idea to life it's all about collaboration is all about everybody's got an opinion and it's being able to sieve through that opinion and take the best things from it i i feel the best directors did that matt forest who shot our tango years ago me and i was all over that because we didn't want it to fail and we were like pestering the whole time and in the end he exasperated he's a very funny guy he gave us a camcorder camera and goes go out this weekend shoot it just go in the park and shoot it and me and i went oh all right then and then we had the more common wise little slap on the cheek cheeks and then we we realized it wasn't impactful enough so we we that's why we ended up having our arms out wide and the slap in so it looked like wow that that's gonna hurt and it was those little things and we share that with matt and he took it and he just escalated and we just did that and i think that's the best way if people if you put the um the creative team on the monitor by the urinals by the toilets and not have their input it's their idea it's their thought you know and like you got to be able to keep them apart the the whole equation and invariably they're probably the one that's going to be doing the editing of it once once the director swans off to do another job yeah so and i i me and i was in that that problem where we had like yourself had ideas that plummeted and we thought they were great ideas and we realized the director didn't care or didn't even understand the idea really and we lived with it obviously we win the business or you've been nurturing it for sometimes up to six months a year to get it out the door and you give it to a director who's works on it for two weeks or something and and basically you you you believe that they understand the idea and they can escalate the idea and if you're lucky you'd get like frank budging was absolutely a genius who it doesn't he's not alive anymore but he was an ex-creative and i think that's why he really he understood and he loved advertising and he loved ads so he was able to escalate an idea and get the best out of an idea and i think the ideas i've been involved with they're not i wouldn't say it's genius i just think we know how to get the best out of that idea in the same way we know how to get the best performances for the haribo ads the best casting what's the ingredients that makes it sticky with people and make it makes it lovable and entertaining and we know we get that do you know what i mean and i got the feeling and i've seen it before when people who's dismissed the process and just did it their own way and wrote the lines and stuff they just don't work yeah it's just it feels sterile it feels fake you have an interesting point i was listening to jimmy carr on stephen bartlett's podcast talking about how much of his jokes have failed but how much work he puts into practicing practicing practicing and all the famous jokes that we kind of laugh at now, he said he's tried 10 ,000 in a pub somewhere you've never heard of, but he just keeps practicing, keeps being consistent, gets the feedback, improves it again and again and again.

34:36But I was really fascinated by how much effort he puts into, but also how it's built up over the years so that he now just knows, you know what I mean? And I think, you know, should have gone to Specsavers, that idea is 22 years old, your Haribo idea is 12. There's an element to which you now know, don't you? Because you've practiced it, some have gone well, some haven't. We know where it's still. you know how you know that formula now don't you yeah i mean like you we like numbers you can't have more than five seven people in a 30 second commercial because you can't you don't have enough time to to to experience the different characters and to watch the simplicity of having a grown man with a kid's voice coming out of them and it's in some keep it simple don't try and use lots of see camera work you know two guys sat in a car two policemen yeah talking about the product that's it yeah you know and keep it simple it's almost one of my top advice actually i think from reflecting on work i've done and now i help other people do advertising is uh probably simplify the idea try and say less but but make the less you say better because people try and do this like you know 30 second hour we're going to have six different scenes we're going to cut here cut there cut there we'll bring in this person that person we'll try and have everyone reflected in it all that kind of thing and it's often better just tell one story but just tell it brilliantly yeah and it's often what we try and encourage our clients to do well everybody wants to especially directors wants to it's a calling card they want it to be used that dolly that camera that crane you know that crash zoom that you know swing to camera and all all those things are they're trying their best to do you know their poor little things in a commercial and that's a movie by the way it's not not a statement about their work but it's um that they're trying to show off and so they should do they want they want to prove that they're they're good he or she's good at what they do but sometimes you're right less is more and just try and make the idea come to life and by any means possible you do that you know you do you try and make it you try and make it memorable and you and that's what you start with and you try and make it like and i often know something that i learned from um who was it water camber once said to me he goes shoot what you've come there to do and what the client has asked you to do and then just shoot anything keep going keep going keep keep trying stuff on the day and then once you've done that move to the next take and invariably i've realized that extra stuff is what i end up putting in it and it has that something you know that's great advice actually it's almost in your production shoot building extra time for the the funny takes i mean weirdly i find it on this podcast actually that some of the best content happens before and after the camera's stopped right and it's almost like you need to factor that in yeah because some occasionally i've you know we've actually put it in back in the edit but you know sometimes it's that's the best content isn't it is the bit that's unscripted yeah you just get the natural reaction i think so and i think that's what we we all strive for you know no one enjoys a conversation with someone where you don't really feel like i'm getting to know you and i i find i find that more and more i get older as well i forget people's names and it's invariably it's from people i've just met in passing in the advertising industry and you don't really know who they are you don't you never really they've not shared anything you've not shared anything with them and i think that's what we what we all hunger for you know is to have those connections not just with your kids not just with your family and your friends you want to have that with as many people that you come in contact and that's i believe what i'm trying to do when i'm trying to entertain people i'm trying to give people a little insight into themselves as well yeah now you've been a a can line judge haven't you i think even a titanium line judge so congratulations on that um what's happened to humor in the last few years i mean the data points are not great right we've had a you know not unreasonably escalation in purpose but it seems like we've got all serious right and that's that's replaced humor uh we also know from system one database we've been tracking amusement levels uh believe it or not we've actually actually measured this you know and we've seen a steady decline over over the number of years and then perhaps the most extraordinary um statistic is we did some work last year with adam morgan and peter field and peter looked back at the ipa database and the ipa database is astonishing in like how much data there is and campaigns and effectiveness and he looked at the campaigns that created emotion and the campaigns that didn't create emotion the ones that created neutrality right there the heat the ones that were dull for want of a better phrase and what he worked out was this incredible statistic that the dull campaigns had to spend an extra 12 million on media to achieve the same business outcome as the interesting campaign yeah so they they worked out that 12 million per campaign is the cost of being dull which i just thought flipping heck you know so being funny humor you know creating emotion is also good for business right oh yeah we used to say that even in the early days if you can't if you don't have a great idea you put it behind media you just ram it down people's throats and i always thought oh my god i just want that ad to remembered and people want to see it again and want to watch it again and and talk about it and that's that's the ambition if they only see it once you want to know it had some impact and i just think people don't think about like that you know they think about their briefs they're thinking about like you said earlier think about the things that they think is important that they they've they've ticked off this is what our brand stands for and they don't really think enough about those people out there don't care about your brand do not care about buying your product they're buying into the personality of the brand they're buying into those attributes that that they want to to have fun with want to enjoy i i think people are just a bit lazy because they think and i think that's why the advertising has gone so turgid and boring something that struck us we're looking through all this work and it's all brilliant clever stuff and then there was one campaign that was funny and like after we've been in this darkened room for about a week and it was funny and we were all laughing and oh this is great and we suddenly realized the reason that we love it so much it was just a it was an antidote to this terrible sea of of non-funny and taking the world very seriously and taking our products very seriously and i couldn't even remember half the brands that we had already given an award to you know that's that's the truth yeah and you work in the industry so you've got a radar for this stuff as well if you with your looking out for it and being sat down and presented it to can't remember it then what hope has that got in the real world and it's a key thing what you said earlier again it's about being entertained if i'm not being entertained by it why will i remember it yeah so why are you putting all this money into advertising that nobody is going to remember and nobody's going to be get any joy from at all well on that on that point let's let's try and work out the funniest ads of all time because i i asked the audience earlier just to give me a letter suggestions uh i asked rupert so rupert is um rupert is on the founders of how Henry but um I asked him what's uh what would be his favorite ad of all time and he actually said exactly the same as mine you've already referred to it which was the Hamlet cigar ad which I just think one take one idea brilliantly acted and so funny it's just that and also you have to be of our kind of age right because you have to remember like a because it's an old ad but also you remember going to get your passport photo done and those those little plastic chairs that used to have to spin round to get to the the right height so that you're kind of in the camera and but it still works i i we i shared it with um some students that we i was doing a talk for shared that ad none of them seen it and they all cracked up they all laughed about it because it's that it's there's a real truism you know he's struggling to look good and everything keeps going wrong it just feels like a little snapshot of life for all of us so everybody relates to it even if you haven't never sat in a booth yourself everybody relates to that ad and for me i i loved it because it's laugh laugh out loud funny and but it's the g the simplicity of the idea it's a perfect ad it's brilliant isn't it what would you put as your funniest ad of all time no no i don't mean the one that you've made but what would you if you had to pick one ad well it'd be that one but i'm trying to think of anything else i really loved the skittles campaign um the american skill stuff i just think some of those are genius and nuts and the thing going back to clients how does who signed those off and you knew they work and people talk about it and people show you creative teams come bounding in and going have you seen this one and they people scroll around on the internet to watch all the different versions so for me that was pretty impressive and I envy the work and it makes me laugh.

43:51Yeah. I think what would be the best American Super Bowl ad, I would go, I had two came to mind. Firstly, I think Old Spice is just very clever. Really good. And then the other one that just keeps making me laugh. I don't know why, it's funny how like, sometimes you can see things 20 times and you're still laughing the same 20 times. But the Tide ad, I just find really funny because they've taken everyone else's ad and said, oh, that person in a clean shirt, that's a Tide ad. You know, something like really inverting the genre of Super Bowl ads onto their favour and just turning the tables. I just thought it was a very clever, very clever device.

44:28And the other ad as well, if we stick on the American theme, in a different genre as well, is Dollar Shave Club. Oh, yeah. Do you remember the Dollar Shave Club ad? I remember those, yeah. And just like where it's like taking the mickey out of the dominant player, but you've got the founder just kind of doing it. And again, it wouldn't have cost hardly anything. Shot in a warehouse somewhere. It felt like a breath of fresh air band. Yeah, didn't it? It's so different. wasn't it? It wasn't overproduced. It was kind of slightly comically underproduced, but very well acted. And there's a real testament to it.

44:56It was imitated so many times afterwards. Yeah. And people would say, give me a dollar shave. Yeah. You know, so it's like you could see a little bit of that in the new Warburton campaign. There's an element of that in even in that execution. So I always think it's a real testament when an idea, even in people's subconscious, it pops out in their work. Yeah. Yeah. It's a bit like when you get into vernacular, like should have gone to spec sabers, you know, you create something that even becomes, or you've been, you know, when you've been tangoed, that became, like you said, about you're falling asleep on the tube kind of thing.

45:28That becomes something that seeps into popular culture. It's when you know you've done it. The other kind of category of brilliant ads, I think, is beer ads from the 80s and 90s. For some reason, that category just went all in on humour. I mean, some of the ideas that came in from the chat this morning, you've got Boddington's with Melanie Sykes. Actually, the other thing that – so we've got that. We've got Heineken, Water and Mallorca Don't Taste Like It, or that one as well. You had the Peter Kay ads with John Smith's as well. Oh, those are great. They even had the Joan Collins and Leonard Rossiter.

46:02ads are in a minute when i was a kid and just thinking there was it was the same gag every week yeah he ends up throwing drinks on her but it was just so funny and it just it was so watchable and i really lots of those ideas really were those things that compelled me to get into advertising and want to do something like that the thing the thing that uh i thought connected a lot of those actually was was play on words or an accent or language so another another one came up as well was yeah exactly water and muirka which i hadn't seen this one before but someone sent it was a german a german coast guard right and there's a british vessel going into german waters and this new jet the new german coast guard has turned up and there's a mayday signal and um basically on the mayday signal the english guys are going we're sinking we're sinking anyway the german guy goes what are you sinking about my german accent failed but it was basically what are you thinking about sort of thing like there's this very funny conversation about misunderstanding each other something brilliant you ever see that one i can't say on there i don't think but the one with the family in the car listening to uh uh a rather risque lyrics to uh to a song and it says at the end uh learn how learn english i think it was learn it was about learning the language and and it was just quite funny they're all jollily sort of singing this rather rude song and they have no idea what they're singing actually similarly to that there was um carrie sent me this one um i didn't know there's a vw ad that got banned and it was basically this little girl i mean she looked like four or five and she kept on saying bollocks like this so she knocks over some paint she goes bollocks and then something else happens as she trips over she goes bollocks and you're going this is what's going on here sort of thing anyway and then basically it then pans so she's in the back of the car in the car seat and the dad's uh putting petrol in his car and he realizes it's d it's a diesel car he goes oh bollocks yeah and then the little guy's going bollocks daddy bollocks it's a horrible moment as a parent where you realize you know your kid is copying you but how brilliantly done but it got banned well apparently got banned you know but like what a brilliant use of inverting the language yeah it's really really i mean that's why you love advertising and invariably all the ones that we talked about is probably over you know 10 years old yeah yeah it's kind of it's a bit shocking and i guess that's why they've introduced that category into can lions a comedy category well there we go yeah that was a surprise i find that bizarre isn't it bizarre i mean like i i i can see the point because i'm i've been sat in those rooms where everybody who believes they're going to win an award they don't believe that a funny ad's going to do it yeah and um i remember even and with me and i was doing work we would go not going to win in can it's funny and uh i think the problem is that's perforated throughout the whole of the advertising world the people just feel like and unless it's you know for a cause for a purpose it's not gonna it's not gonna um get past your clients and it's not gonna win you awards and that's yeah that's the terrible thing well apart from being rather odd that we have to categorize something that should be in everything exactly you know there's loads of pressure isn't there like you know to to win the win the humorals so i'm kind of looking forward to it oddly to kind of it's probably the category i'm going to go and sit and listen to and just see because i think we need a bit more humor so let's let's just get behind all those entries and uh show what it can do um trev it's been amazing chatting to you mate thanks for coming in and talking about this thanks for inviting us i hope we can get a bit more humor out there uh yeah and uh make everyone relax a bit and laugh oh i'll try my best yes whilst i'm still going.

49:42Trev's available if anyone wants a funny script written. He's around. For sure. Amazing. Cheers, mate. Good to see you. Thank you very much for listening or watching Uncensored CMO. I hope you enjoyed that. If you did, please do hit the subscribe button wherever you get your podcast. If you're watching, hit subscribe there as well. I'd also love to get a review. Reviews make a big difference on other people discovering the show, so please do leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to contact me, you can do. I'm over on x at Uncensored CMO or on LinkedIn where I'm under my own name, John Evans.

50:15Thanks for listening and watching. I'll see you next time.