I met a client for dinner and one of the topics we talked about was shooting a second video. More than 16,000 people have watched his first video.
We had previously discussed a fun idea for a second video. I wanted to learn why we hadn’t moved forward yet on scheduling a shoot.
When I asked, he briefly looked at me across the table as if not to hurt my feelings. He explained our idea was cute but he wanted a video that would be hilarious, a video people couldn’t help but share on social media.
We discussed some potentially hilarious ideas, making us laugh at the table. Some of the ideas were ridiculous.
This type of discussion with clients is tricky. Consider this: Many TV commercials, especially during an event such as the Super Bowl, try to be funny. Most fail. Major companies with big bucks and offices of creative brains often fail at being funny despite plenty of planning.
It’s hard to be funny on such a grand scale. Just read all those not-so-funny social media posts. People want to be funny, but often they are not.
Some of the funniest videos didn’t originally intend to be funny. Have you watched America’s Funniest Home Videos? People often didn’t hit record with the plan to be funny, but something hilarious spontaneously happened.
Our client’s first video included funny moments, but that wasn’t our strategy. But our client said some things during the video people frequency laugh at and those moments seem to help sell him and his service.
In a different video we did about a mother’s makeover, a woman said afterward she felt like the character in Pretty Women minus the prostitution. That was funny but not planned.
On Twitter, some of my funniest updates were not supposed to be funny. But that’s how people read them. When I try to purposely be funny on Twitter, it feels forced.
Edgy humor also brings risks. Just ask Red Robin about one of their TV ads that really rubbed some viewers the wrong way.
One of the best ways to sell your service via video is by making an emotional or personal connection with prospective clients. That was the goal of the first video for the client I was eating dinner with. It worked. Again, more than 16,000 people have watched his small business video. But here we were, discussing how to top ourselves with humor.
Shoot for the stars. Swing for the fences. Try to be funny. But remember that even the industry’s big players with plenty of tools can’t frequently solve the science of humor. Humans often are funny by accident. Just don’t assume being funny must be the way to a successful video. Connecting with viewers in other ways is sometimes more effective and reliable.