In 1997, John Stewart Socha was president of Audio Computer Information, a company that produced tutorial tapes for newcomers to the high-tech world. At that time,
Socha decided to branch out his business focus into a very different direction. He hit on the idea to create a gag gift product that could be used as a PR fundraising tool by
animal rights and rescue organizations involving in spaying pets: Kitty Kondoms. Scissoring the fingers from latex gloves, Socha created the packaging that suggested tiny
prophylactics for felines.
The good news, from a PR standpoint, was that Kitty Kondoms created quite a stir in the media - Socha was bombarded with requests for interviews. The problem, however, was
that many of the requests were from feral radio shock jocks who wanted to have obvious fun with the concept of (according to Socha's press release) "putting the boot on puss."
And at least one media outlet, a European trade journal covering the industrial rubber industry, missed the joke completely and inexplicably gave Kitty Kondoms serious new product
coverage.
And what happened to the animal groups Socha hoped to sign up as customers for his fundraising gag gift? Despite coverage in the ASPCA's magazine, the target audience
shied away from the item.
"It was definitely over the top for its time," he recalls. "Perhaps it was a bit too edgy for the average nonprofit's board of directors. We had some faithful individual
buyers, but the organizations never did catch on."
Humor is clearly a subjective notion, but in PR the use of humor can sometimes create more concern than laughs. In Socha's case, the wrong people took the joke in the wrong
direction while the target audience either didn't get the humor or didn't want it.
Whether the laughter is carefully conceived in advance with the hopes of a big boffo payoff, or whether the comedy is an impromptu reaction, the ability to incorporate levity
into a PR campaign is a serious concern. Specifically, how can a PR professional lighten up the communications message while achieving a measurable return?
For starters, it helps if the PR professional is comfortable in creating and presenting funny campaigns. Scott Cohn, creative director with the New York-based Night
Agency, encourages humorous approaches from his team - even to the point of dissecting creative ideas to determine their laugh quotient.
"By and large we find ourselves hilarious, and our own opinion holds the most weight with ourselves," says Cohn. "We usually pass an idea around the office and see if we get
some laughs. If we bomb with our own staff, then we change gears and try something else. Then we have a bunch of friends who we send stuff out to for them to review. They'll in
turn supply us with feedback, which we'll ignore, and the campaign will go out to the masses for excoriation by wise-ass bloggers."
All flippancy aside, there are three key elements needed for a comic communications campaign to work: An original idea, the ability not to overplay your hand, and the talent to
shape your efforts to meet the specific personality of your target audience.
Say The Secret Word
For Paul Maccabee, the notion of lacing laughs into PR is the ultimate in subversion. "Everything in PR is obsessed with credibility, accountability and ROI, and humor seems
to fly in the face with all of that," says Maccabee, president of The Maccabee Group in Minneapolis.
Yet Maccabee has happily subverted the system whenever possible. Perhaps his most extraordinary PR campaign invoked the spirit of the ultimate warrior against a too-serious
society: Groucho Marx.
"We had a program for Malt-O-Meal cereal," recalls Maccabee. "This was product was usually found at the bottom of the cereal shelf in the supermarket. So we figured: What
famous celebrity would walk close to the ground and be at the same level as the Malt-O-Meal boxes?"
After clearing intellectual property licensing rights to use the Groucho Marx image, Maccabee hired actor Frank Ferrante, who played the zany comic legend in Off-Broadway and
West End stage productions. For supermarket promotions and food bank donations, Ferrante appeared as Groucho and either duplicated the classic routines from the Marx Brothers
movies or bent them to fit his food trade environment.
"We'd do a satire of Groucho's speech to the hotel employees in 'The Cocoanuts,' poking fun at Malt-O-Meal along the way," says Maccabee, adding that sometimes Ferrante's
audience would get into the act. "At one food bank, the employees put on Groucho glasses and noses - so we had a whole room full of Grouchos."
The idea of having a Groucho clone running amok in the supermarket aisles (often with delighted kids following him in Pied Piper-style) clearly stood out from the run-of-the-
mill food trade promotions. "We got saturation TV coverage," says Maccabee. "If there were four TV stations in a market, we'd get three or four of them. We even brought our
Groucho to a Christian radio station, and they went nuts for him. They'd do a live interview for 15 minutes, pause to take a prayer break, then go back to the interview."
However, Maccabee notes none of this could have been achieved had the Malt-O-Meal brand not been willing to allow a faux-Groucho to clown around at its expense. "Not many
companies would themselves to be taken as anything less than seriously," he says.
That's Entertainment?
Indeed, wacky PR campaigns can rarely be found in companies or organizations that attempt to maintain a business-like demeanor. Trying to sell humor (even a bit of light
mirth) often requires the a shift in the mindframe for thinking outside of the proverbial box.
"Humor doesn't necessarily lend itself to ROI," acknowledges Maccabee. "It's an intangible. It enhances the personality of a brand."
However, not everyone is ready to think outside of that box. Eric Robichaud learned this a few years ago when he was hired to create promotional screensavers for the U.S.
Mint as part of their PR campaign to encourage numismatics. Robichaud, who now directs the technology marketing as CTO for ETR Consulting in Woonsocket, RI, presented
a series of proposed screensavers with lightly humorous themes wrapped around a monetary tie-in, including tap-dancing coins hoofing their way through Busby Berkeley-style
formations. However, even something benign as dancing pennies was too extreme for the U.S. Mint
"The marketing lady there made it clear to me that she was the first 'marketing' person at the U.S. Mint," recalls Robichaud. "For hundreds of years it's been a government
institution - it's a monopoly - and they were just starting to go through a transformation to market themselves. But the marketing lady continued to remind me of the keyword:
Start. They had decades of old-school thought, and it was like bailing the ocean with a teacup to try to change the place. But it was a start."
The eventual result was a pleasant (if not particularly amusing) screensaver based on the theme of a treasure hunt along a tropical beach. Robichaud acknowledges
disappointment that his comic suggestions were nixed, but he recognizes the agency was not ready for dancing coins.
"We had all sorts of funny ideas for the screensaver, but it was still an old, stodgy, government bureaucracy and they were only willing to go just so far," he says. "It's run
by committee and being a face of the government, they have to make sure not to alienate any constituents, yada yada. They wanted safe, vanilla...yet cute. The goal was cute more
than humor."
The PETA Touch
One organization that has personality to spare is the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the animal rights group with a fondness of out-of-the-ordinary
PR campaigns. While PETA has a reputation in many circles for over-the-top stunts (such as throwing flour bombs at Paris Hilton during a recent London fashion show for a fur-
favoring designer), the organization insists that its antics are often the only way to call attention to its mission.
"The issues are so serious that it is often times difficult to get an entrée with anyone if you approach them with gravity that may be appropriate," explains Bruce Friedrich,
director of vegan promotions at PETA. "But we'd rather go too far than not far enough. Sometimes there is a fine line between what makes the point and what is over-the-line,
which is no longer funny. We try to stay on the correct side of that line."
The flour-soaked Paris Hilton notwithstanding, PETA's humor tries to aim for the ironic. One of Friedrich's most recent PR volleys was a public letter to South Dakota Governor
Mike Rounds following his signing of an anti-abortion law for the state. Friedrich challenged the governor to extend his pro-life politics to all living things, asking him to
"consider adopting and advocating a pro-life (i.e. vegetarian) diet." He added an invitation to cater food for Gov. Rounds and his family for a two-week trial period. (Gov.
Rounds has yet to respond.)
If that's a bit too dry in the humor department, PETA can also pull out a PR tool from its Benny Hill gag bag. One of the more eye-catching endeavors targeted Kentucky
Fried Chicken with allegations of inhumane treatment of batter-bound poultry. Dubbed "Chicks for Chicks," a squad of pretty PETA supporters carrying placards (including
Playboy Playmate Lauren Anderson, a.k.a. Miss July 2002) turned up at highly-trafficked intersections in bright yellow bikinis.
"Of course, not every situation lends itself to humor," acknowledges Friedrich. "The last thing we want is for people to feel assaulted or defensive, since that will make it
harder for them to hear us. If we can pique their curiosity or tickle their funny bone, they're going to want to hear what we have to say."
Take My Press Release, Please!
Of course, it helps if the PR professional has a buoyant and organic sense of fun. Melissa Prusher, an independent PR rep based in Manalapan, NJ, enjoyed stints in stand-up
comedy during the 1990s and has occasionally used her sense of fun into delightfully off-kilter campaigns.
"Marrying my two passions, comedy and PR, I once persuaded a client to coordinate a comedic portion of a product launch," she says. "We spoofed the 'Mr. Jaws' novelty song -
back in the 1970s that song had a radio announcer pretending to interview the shark, but instead of answering the questions the 'shark' responded with bits of lyrics from songs.
It made for a fun presentation, got a lot of laughs and, considering much of our target audience was way younger than I, came across as a novel approach."
For Alan Weinkrantz, there is no shame in being the butt of the joke. The president of Alan Weinkrantz & Co. in San Antonio, TX, he recently used his birthday as a
joyfully shameless way to drive traffic to his PR blog in order to boost his Technorati standing.
"Tomorrow is tech PR blogger Alan Weinkrantz's 53rd birthday," he announced in a press release. "He doesn't need a shirt. He doesn't need socks. He rarely wears a tie. He's
already got a digital camera, cool headphones, tons of music, an Apple PowerBook and other assorted electronic toys." The press release then details in depth how to reach
his blog, then how to reach Technorati to vote for the blog: "This will not only make Weinkrantz's birthday a special one, but it will help his Technorati ranking, which is
currently 72,000 or so out of 31,000,000 in the blogosphere. Even if you don't know Weinkrantz, he's a good guy and pays his taxes."
Weinkrantz notes his blog traffic increased about 50% in one day as a result of the "birthday" announcement. Still, not every PR professional feels comfortable in reeling off
the jokes in their press releases. But that's not to say a little whimsy cannot be incorporated into person-to-person aspect of the work.
"We don't necessarily interject a lot of humor into our campaigns," says Jody Winters, president of Jody Winters Public Relations in Santa Fe, NM. "But I do work in a
very human way. In my correspondence and conversations, I try not to stick to a firm, canned way of communicating with my clients. I think there's a place for humor - it brings
fun to the day and the job - and we need levity in this day and age."
Indeed, even the Arthur W. Page Society recognizes the importance of a light spirit. "One of the Page Principles is to remain calm, patient and good-humored," observes
Karen Arnold, communications director for the Page Society.
Although not a Page Society member, John Stewart Socha was able to remain calm, patient and good-humored when his comic Kitty Kondoms bombed. Socha never pursued the
fundraising market again. But where are the packages of Kitty Kondoms he created nine years ago?
"I have a limited number left," he says, adding with a hearty laugh: "Perhaps I will offer them on eBay."
Contacts: John Stewart Socha, [email protected]; Scott Cohn, [email protected]; Paul Maccabee, [email protected]; Eric Robichaud, [email protected]; Bruce Friedrich, [email protected]; [email protected]; Alan Weinkrantz, [email protected]; Jody Winters, [email protected]; Karen Arnold, [email protected].