a sense of humour

point one:
Have a listen to this (it's only 20 seconds)...

Tree Hugger by Kimya Dawson & Antsy Pants

It's one my favourite songs at the minute (other than Noah and The Whale's in five year's time). I like it because she laughs, at about 9 seconds in if you listen close. I've been listening to music since I was about 10 and realised this is probably the first time I've heard someone laugh in a studio recorded track. It made me wonder why?

I suspect loads of musicians laugh when recording stuff but it will be edited out or re-recorded like the sneezes, stutters and forgotten lines. It will be seen as an imperfection. Laughing is an imperfection is this context.

point two:
A while ago a very nice chap called Michael Wolff came into see us at innocent for a chat. Michael founded a place called Wolff Olins so knows a bit about brands and branding from a lot of experience and a healthy dose of common sense. He told us about his thoughts on voluntary (genuine) and spontaneous (forced) smiles, how they both use completely different muscles in the face, how subconsciously we automatically know the difference between them and will react accordingly. And how he thought brands like innocent represented the former because of our stuff like 'enjoy by' instead of 'use by' dates and small touches that made him laugh (hence he thought we must have been having fun when when we make this stuff).

a fake smile (do know brands who communicate like this?)

a real smile (the clip got speeded up when I uploaded it for some reason)

the thought
How did we get to a point where laughing was seen as being an imperfection? Why should it be thought inappropriate for a brand to be seen to be having fun.

I'll be happily littering as much as I can with inappropriate imperfections for as long as I can. So be it.

Update:
An interesting bit in this week's Marketing magazine on google's sense of humour.

Another great is example of this stuff is the scripts that Wieden+Kennedy do for Lurpak and Honda. They've got dead pan voice-overs down to a fine art. I particularly like the new Honda sale ad on at the minute (can't find an online version right now).