Do you ever remember doing something as a child that made people laugh, so you’d do it again… and again? And your Dad would say:
“The first time it was funny, the second time it was silly, now it’s just annoying.”
Well – Dads are wrong.
"I went to the bar the other day, so I decided to take a cab home, and uh, that's the first time I've ever driven a cab, to be honest with you,"
Larry The Cable Guy.
Some call it the treble, some call it the misdirection, and we call it what we like because it can’t hear us. Three is a useful number to remember when thinking about creating humourous content as a part of your brand identity.
"Some devote their lives to charity. Others to science. For us, it's cocktail weenies"
Hillshire Farms - Advert
Why all these threes?
Three is the smallest number required to create a pattern. Something expected happens, and something expected occurs again. So we have a pattern – our brain expects the next thing to happen to fit comfortably into that sequenced, and we notice when it doesn’t happen.
"My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She's ninety-seven now, and we don't know where the hell she is"
Ellen DeGeneres
And if the thing that happens in its place is very different from what we were expecting, we may laugh.
"No mercy. No pity. No weeds."
Round Up
It’s very simple, you state something that people recognise (truisms are fab for this), reassure them that they’re thinking in the right direction by stating something to confirm this, and then whip the carpet from under them.
"Once, I was with two men in one night. But I could never do it again—I could hardly walk afterward. Two dinners? That's a lot of food."
Sarah Silverman
The Rule of Three in Campaigns.
A film can do all of this in one piece of content; however, we can still stick to the rule of three but reverse the pattern.
Introducing Panda Cheese:
The New Rule of Three
The Panda Cheese adverts are funny. But which one is the funniest? The first one you watch? The second one you watch? Or the third?
In a campaign, the first advert (and it shouldn’t matter what sequence you watch the adverts in) makes you laugh at the unexpected. The second advert then acts as a device to enforce the concept – so the viewer is coming into it expecting the unexpected and feeling equally satisfied that it’s happened. However, you’re way ahead and doing the work by the third advert. Because we’re wired to be inquisitive, our brains write the end of the advert for us. So when it happens, we’re satisfied with ourselves and happy with the brand that made us feel good about ourselves.
So rather than using the model of:
Expected > Expected Confirmed > Unexpected.
We’re switching it around so that advert one becomes the unexpected:
Unexpected > Unexpected Confirmed > Expected.
How do you do this with a campaign?
It’s all in the concept. The usual story of keeping it simple. Look at Snickers, for example:
“You’re not you when you’re hungry.”
A straightforward concept that only required the famous person to be swapped out:
Whether it is Joan Collins, Mr. Bean; Joe Pesci; Betty White, or Willem Dafoe, the concept stays the same.
And the beauty of it is that once you have established this concept – your audience is not only hungry for the next one – but you have the freedom to play with the idea in such a way that they’re always one step ahead.
The takeaway
Take something simple, something recognisable in everyday life, and subvert it so that it becomes the expected.
Here’s an early example of us playing with that rule.
The Loading Wheel: