Why Brands are Too Serious… and Paying the Price

Can a joke really sell a brand? Or save it from sameness?

Most campaigns sound the same because they’re afraid to sound wrong. Safe language, serious faces, purpose-heavy messages that all blur together. 

And yet one of the most successful creative agencies in North America has built its reputation by doing the opposite. Zulu Alpha Kilo lives by a simple motto… Fight Sameness… and they do it with humor, sarcasm, and a willingness to say the quiet part out loud.

Why does that work? Why does making people laugh end up being the fastest way to earn trust? 

Why does honesty often land better as a joke than a lecture. 

Listen For

3:01 Fast-forward to the start of the interview

5:19 Check out an example of a funny (sarcastic) ad by Zulu Alpha Kilo

5:36 Why does ad satire feel so personal to marketers?

9:11 What tiny detail annoyed people in that absurd ad?

Guest: Michael Siegers, Zulu Alpha Kilo 

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Doug

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Farzana

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Transcript

Solomon Ibeh (00:01):
Humour can tell the truth in a way serious words cannot. Here's a short story that shows why.

Farzana Baduel (00:14):
In the early 1960s, Stanley Kubrick set out to make a serious film about nuclear war. He did the research, he read the doctrine, he studied the logic that said the world could be destroyed by mistake and still be called rational. And the more he learned, the harder it became to take it seriously. The plans were airtight. The language was calm. The consequences were absurd. So Kubrick changed course. He made Dr. Strangelove, not because the subject was grave, but because it was too grave to pretend it made sense. Comedy became the only honest option. The film doesn't mock fear. It mocks certainty. It exposes how official language can sound reasonable while describing something insane. And that's why it still works because satire doesn't soften the truth. It removes the costume. And when you laugh, you're not distracted, you're aligned, you recognize this thing for what it is.

(01:13):
That's what this episode is about. Humour isn't the opposite of seriousness, but often the clearest way to get there. Sarcasm earns permission. Shared recognition builds trust, and some of the most effective marketing today sounds less like a lecture and more like a wink. Today on Stories and Strategies, gentlemen, you can't fight in here. This is The War Room.

(01:57):
My name is Farzana Baduel.

Doug Downs (01:59):
And my name is Doug Downs. Guest this week is Michael Siegers joining today from Toronto. Hey, Michael.

Michael Siegers (02:06):
Hi there.

Doug Downs (02:06):
How you doing? Good. How are things in the six, as the hip people say?

Michael Siegers (02:11):
They're great. Everything's wonderful. Winter and

Doug Downs (02:16):
Yeah,

Michael Siegers (02:16):
Not much more to say.

Doug Downs (02:17):
It's warm and delightful. People are picking oranges off the trees and the parks in downtown Toronto and

Michael Siegers (02:23):
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Doug Downs (02:26):
No, it's not cold.

Michael Siegers (02:27):
Of course.

Doug Downs (02:27):
Michael, see, we're creative here. Michael, you're a creative director with Zulu Alpha Kilo, a highly respected, independent creative agency in Toronto and New York that builds distinctive work by fighting sameness and embracing bold ideas. Now, over the years, the agency has been repeatedly honoured as Ad Age Small Agency of the Year and International Small Agency of the Year, named among the top independent agencies globally by Campaign and recognised on Fast Company’s most innovative companies list.

Farzana Baduel (03:01):
Now, Michael, you have built a successful and award-winning agency by leaning into humour and sarcasm. And I wanted to just check in with you. How did you persuade brands to go your funny way? Because a lot of people are kind of, especially brands, they can be quite conservative using humour, especially in today's age of polarization. What if people aren't going to get the joke? What if they're offended by it and so forth? What made you decide to actually go down that route when actually it's becoming harder and harder for people to take brands seriously?

Michael Siegers (03:37):
That's a good question. I won't take credit for everything the agency's done, but for my small part, convincing the brand, it's difficult. I think often a brand will already have the permission to play in humour and or you can feasibly imagine that it could play in humour and not breach any kind of trust. So often it's sort of like the door is already open. And generally speaking, when we're dealing with a type of brand, retail brand, things like things that are very transactional, those often are a little lighter and it's a little easier to insert humour. Things with more serious messages become more of an uphill battle. And often it might be inappropriate to discuss with humour as the tone. But I'd say it's never an easy thing to do to try to convince someone that a joke is funny. It's either they get it or they don't.

(04:54):
And that's kind of. So often the humour itself becomes the tool we use to convince. So if we do want something to land well with a client and we want them to imagine the consumer also having the same kind of reaction being evoked within them, if it works with the client, it often is easier for them to imagine it working for consumers.

Doug Downs (05:19):
Okay. Let's give an example here. And this is an ad that you ran, the Mango Chutney piece. And it's something it uses humour and definitely sarcasm to point something out to all public relations and marketing practitioners out there.

Advertisement (05:36):
After I removed his cranium, I stimulated his amygdala and I took his hands into mine and I said, Jimmy, you're going to be okay. It must be so rewarding to be a brain surgeon. So Greg, what do you do?

(05:59):
I'm in advertising.

(06:01):
Are you working on anything exciting?

(06:03):
I just finished this amazing case study.

(06:07):
Case study. Is that like a commercial? I don't know. It's for awards shows.

(06:12):
Yeah. To show the judges how successful the campaign was. I did this innovation piece for Charlie's Chutney.

(06:19):
Never heard of them. It's a small local chutney company that we approached.

(06:24):
What did you do?

(06:26):
I created a left-handed mango chutney.

(06:30):
Oh. Yeah.

(06:31):
It's this left-handed jar of mango chutney designed specifically for left-handers. It was for National Left Handers Day. The planner really helped beef up the case by playing on how the left-handed community is underrepresented.

(06:43):
That's important.

(06:44):
So you can find this in stores, I guess, yeah? No, it was more of a limited run. We sold out though. How many did you sell, Greg? Six. Only six jars.

(07:00):
And I bought four.

(07:03):
Yeah, but we generated 12 billion impressions and we helped build brand engagement by 112 percent. We also won the Grand Prix.

(07:18):
I actually also work in advertising.

(07:23):
Another one. So what case studies have you done?

(07:26):
I wrote the beer ad where the horse farts.

(07:33):
That went viral. Oh my God.

Michael Siegers (07:50):
Oh, I forgot about that ending.

Doug Downs (07:52):
Okay. All right. So as a left-hander, I want one of those mango chutney jars. And secondly, are you just kind of making fun of our industry? Because we do sort of deal in this stuff, man. This is sort of what we peddle.

Farzana Baduel (08:06):
I'm kind of hooked. Absolutely.

Doug Downs (08:07):
Yeah. Yes, I'm offended.

Michael Siegers (08:11):
Yeah. Well, I think Zach especially always likes to take a

Doug Downs (08:16):
Zach is your CEO.

Michael Siegers (08:19):
Yes. He's the father of the company there. And he also, I think that's his MO a little bit, is in the attempt to fight sameness and standing out, he tends to find these sort of trends that I think we can all maybe criticize somewhat safely. And yeah, and I think he's found satire just really has that lovely alchemy of message and connection, I guess. And yeah, I think it's been working well. That one is a good example that was sort of an agency ad for us versus something for a specific brand.

Doug Downs (09:04):
There was another one where the guy's changing the oil in the vehicle, right? Yeah. Briefly. Tell, briefly describe the

Michael Siegers (09:11):
Kids. Well, okay. So that was a spot to let people know that they could get good insurance rates if they were getting milked on their car insurance. And to represent being milked on car insurance, we made these very realistic udders, just fleshy, furry kind of udders. And they were jiggly. And they were right in the underside of a vehicle. And the scene is a car on its lift being lifted up with the udders there. And the mechanic is showing a lady her problem. And while he's showing, he's eating cereal. And he gets a little bit of the udder and squirts milk into the bowl and stuff like that, and he's eating. And anyway, we thought we were going to have issues with the udder and people were going to be very concerned with the udder and that would be our major concern. And so we spent a lot of energy talking about the udder and making sure people were comfortable with it and shopping it around to a lot of different people.

(10:18):
And at the end of the day, the main issue I think that people responded to was the crunching of the cereal. And that was it. No one really had an issue with the fact that there were udders jiggling on the underside of the car. It was really more that there was this audio sound of someone chewing that was what bothered them with the spot.

Farzana Baduel (10:59):
Well, I think, Michael, it sounds like people also just like responding to truths.

Doug Downs (19:22):
Here are the top three things we got today from Funny Guy Michael Siegers.

Farzana Baduel (20:06):
Doug, do you think comedy operates on a different plane?

Doug Downs (20:09):
Yeah, like different rules? I do.

Farzana Baduel (20:12):
Because it kind of hits the emotion button before you actually kind of process it rationally.

Doug Downs (20:18):
Yeah. I'd love Ricky Gervais because he'll come right out and say, "There's going to be some irony in the show, see if he can spot it." And then he proceeds to say whatever he wants, right? Beautiful.

Farzana Baduel (20:29):
Now, if you'd like to send a message to our funny guest, Michael Siegers, we've got his contact information in the show notes and Stories and Strategies is a co-production of Curzon Public Relations and Stories and Strategies podcasts. If you liked this episode, please leave a rating and possibly a review and thank you to our producers, Emily Page and David Olajide. Let me tell you a quick story. In 18th century Europe, ideas didn't spread through publications first. They spread through coffeehouses. Someone would hear something interesting and repeat it to one other person that chain mattered more than the original source. Sharing has always been the engine. Do us a favour, share this episode to one friend and thanks for listening.