Using humor for marketing is not a new idea, but it is surprising to see how few companies really make use of its power. Working with businesses, many times I feel that some companies are a bit afraid of humor, as if they are to “serious” to make fun of themselves. Are they really?
So let me tell you a story. Sometimes you meet a client that is a breath of fresh air. The interesting fact is that it came from a kind of business that you would never think of as creative or funny. It is a fund administration company, and what they actually do is all the tedious paper work hedge funds don’t want to do themselves: reports, accounting records, calculate fees, etc. Just talking about it makes me yawn… and yet this was the source of one of funniest videos we have done this year.
The CEO of this company, called (most appropriately) Fundadministration, came to us with an unusual request: she wanted a video that would tell people what they do, as most companies want, but she wanted something different. Something edgy, something funny, that would make her company stand out among many others that do the same kind of work.
We put our thinking caps on and came up with an idea. There’s a video we love that went viral a few years ago when launching a startup you probably heard of, called Dollar Shave Club. Well, this FUNNY VIDEO is actually what made the company a massive success. It did it so well that the company ended up being bought for 1 BILLION DOLLARS by Unilever only less than five years after it launched. Talk about one in a million… but the truth is that what made them stand out was this kind of self-humor.
So we asked Denise, the Fundadministration CEO: “What if we did something in the same style as the Dollar Shave Club video?“ And she absolutely loved the idea!
That was the genesis of the video we produced for them and you can watch here. Besides being a project that was fun to do, it also proves a point as it relates to humor and businesses: if you want to stand out, laugh at yourself! But do it in style…
