Lots of Laughs.

There was a fairly esoteric article in last week's New York Times that might very-well be the most important article you'll ever (not) read. The article is by Dr. Gina Mireault, a developmental psychologist at Vermont State University and you can read it here.

If you save important articles as I do (though I have no filing system more adroit than my prodigious memory) the pdf gets saved automatically with a different title, one I like even more than the one the Times went with in order to goose their readership numbers. 

That secondary title is simpler, and more interesting to my baby blues. "What a Baby's Laugh Actually Tells Us."

What does a laugh--baby's or otherwise say to us?

We spend so much time, and burn through so much data, and solicit so many opinions when we create advertising work. We forget that before we try to tell people something, we first have to get their attention. We first have to excite some dopamine. We first have to make them feel something. 

We've rationalized all that out of 99.999% of all advertising. We assess work on whether or not it has provided all the requisite copy points and mandatories and disclaimers. In our race to get all the eyes dotted and tees crossed, in our race to regress to the mean and make sure nothing is colored in anything but a hospital beige, we've de-laughed, de-cried, de-discomforted, de-provoked about all the work you're likely to see or just saw on the stupor bowel. We compensate for our lack of humanity by using the ultimate non-humans--either celebrities or AI--whichever comes worst. Those same non-humans do most of the measuring and commenting, as well.

We suppress, we cover our faces, we stony ourselves. All not to feel or show actual limbic feelings.

But back to babies and giggling and Dr. Mireault's article.

Let's start here:

If babies "learn about and participate in the world" via laughter and humor, why would anyone--regardless of the haughtiness of their education and the social science books they've read and the Seth Godin books they've bought--think that the people we try to reach--i.e. you and I--are any different?

Why wouldn't we as advertisers--regardless of our role in the ad business--not try to create, as Darwin observed 150 or so years ago "social bonds" that go beyond the need for language? An attachment to the work that goes beyond logic, that, in fact is based on illogic?

Now, here's the bit that really struck me. 

The importance of upside-down and backwardness in communication. To be blunt: The importance of being different. 

A look that makes you re-look.

The importance of showing people something they've never seen before--like Van Gogh's "Starry Night." Or André Kertesz's fork. Or the importance of twisting a familiar phrase so it's "queer to the ear," and therefore striking and memorable. 

I've said about 62,000 times over the past few decades, Adidas' old tagline "Impossible is Nothing," stood out. "Nothing is Impossible" would have stunk to high-hell.

The article I'm citing talks about giggling and laughter--but the root of all laughter is something even 8-month-old children recognize--and you and I do too, no matter what our age or particular predilections. 

That root of all connection, according to Dr. Mireault is something she calls "benign incongruity." A "kindly disruption." A weird "not-adding-up." A "non-closing of the circle."

Dad "wearing a spoon as a mustache." A "stuffed toy taking flight from atop her mother's head."

I'd imagine as babies work on "incongruity resolution" in their development with the larger world, that brands who similarly ask viewers in engage in "incongruity resolution" will develop similar bonds with their larger world.

Incongruity resolution, after all, is a fancy-schmancy sciency way of saying asking viewers to make sense of something different.  Incongruity resolution makes viewers think. It makes people piece things together.

Different is the sine non qua of "impact." It really is that simple, as Dave Trott so eloquently and bluntly points out--starting at around 10:30. 

(Different, of course, comes with one caveat. There's good different. And just weird different. We're talking about good--on-topic-different here.)

I thought about starting an agency about a decade before I started GeorgeCo., LLC, a Delaware Company. About a decade before I had the confidence to recognize my uniqueness and name an agency after what I believed clients would be buying: me.

At that time, I thought about naming my agency "Kanizsa's Triangle," after this seeing this diagram and reading this from Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Eric R. Kandel. The key phrase below, and in all this and in all advertising and interpersonal communication, is "constructing a reality that is not there."

Again. Another fancy-schmancy sciency way of saying asking viewers to make sense of something different. 

They'll love you for it. (Or in my case, at least not hate you.)