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Properly handled brand ridicule could prove to be an effective way of delivering the desired message to target audience

Making a potential customer look really dumb is not a great way to get him to choose your brand, right? Customers should be praised to the skies for their sagacity in choosing your brand; they should be made to feel special and super-bright according to conventional wisdom.

Maybe not.

Rupin Jayal

Let’s go back to our school days. The most popular boy/girl wasn’t the “sweetest” and most caring. But they would have a crackling sense of humour and be really outstandingly good at something. The sweet guys would be liked, people would use them as examples of being a “good person”, and teachers would usually hold them up as exemplars. But other than that questionable moment of fame, they would wander along the periphery of school-life forever condemned to be spectators of the shenanigans of those at the epicenter.

And once out of school, this pattern would probably be repeated in college, at the post-graduate school and then at work. For some reason, a person who can laugh at himself, gets other people to laugh at themselves; who can make fun of someone without causing lasting psychological damage, becomes the center of parties and office gatherings. Caricaturing people’s foibles using mimicry seems to encourage people to ask the maestro to impersonate themselves and their peers.

Brands have also done this with a fair amount of success. Sprite takes a pot shot at an entire bottled soft drinks category as well as the foibles of people in different situations, going so far as to characterise the “attitude” and “cool” advertising of the category as “bakwaas”. It could have alienated the core target audience of the cola majors that have ruled the category mostly using personality and charisma-based advertising. However, ridiculing it with a light touch has clearly (pun intended!) made an impact. So much so that it has stolen a march over the other clear lemon competitor and is now amongst the top three brands in terms of sales.

Ridicule is a great way of clearing away the cobwebs of traditions, attitudes and behavior that hobble aspirations and freedom. For a “young” country, both in terms of demographics and young as a relatively open economy, this is a very useful tool. Rather than attack outmoded ideas and dogma using rational argument while getting entangled in endless debate, it is much easier to just demolish it with a smart jab of ridicule.

Brands that want to disrupt the outmoded conventions of categories, many of which most people do not understand or consider irrelevant, would find a very useful weapon in ridicule. It becomes hard to counter-attack. And many times a reaction makes the reacting brand look leaden-footed, out of date or worse—irascible. What it can also cause is rapid change and acquisition of customers. Swatch poured ridicule over the Swiss watch industry by presenting a plastic, mass produced watch to counteract the traditional, hand-crafted, precious metal-centric paradigm of the industry. By doing so, it expanded the meaning of “Swiss made” and by picking up causes important to the people it was seeking to attract; it gave itself an iconic meaning. It transformed the industry, created a giant iconic brand and even inspired a car along the way.

When Virgin ridiculed the stuffy tradition-driven world of air travel, it was able to bring in a refreshing new experience. Pepsi India’s iconic moment of ridicule with “Nothing official about it” has never been forgotten and has propelled the brand to be a youth soulmate. But this is where ridicule can decay into a joker from a jester. The latter holds up something meaningful but outmoded to the harsh glare of ridicule and thus destroys it. The former merely tries to be funny without being edgy. The danger is that the brand thus becomes a slapstick shadow of what used to reflect the fault line between a conservative, inhibited generation that hitherto predominated and the more liberal one that was beginning to burst forth.

Of course, not all categories can handle ridicule. Those dealing with saving lives or the more intimate facets of our life would probably be ill-served by the use of ridicule. Also, using subjects that deeply impact the national psyche in a positive way or a negative way would probably generate an understandable backlash. So sensitivity has to be paramount. At the same time, picking up trivial subjects or being cocky would elicit some momentary laughter but no real long term impact.

Also, ridicule does not have to be through communication alone. In fact, tangible action forms a strong backbone for effective ridicule. Swatch, by being a plastic watch, was ridicule in action. Similarly, the Mac’s simplicity effectively ridicules the perceived complexity of its closest competitor. With this backbone, its faithful followers can create communication like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k. It strikes a chord not just with the Mac faithful but also harried users of the “other” brand. Similarly, the Virgin in-flight massage or in-flight movies effectively ridicule the more sombre and conservative approach of legacy carriers.

Amul has for a long time used satirical ridicule to create a distinctive image for itself. Using rather “utterly butterly” cartoon characters, it has often touched upon supposedly untouchable subjects. This is a classic case of ridicule based on topicality and coated with a piquant sense of humour so that it becomes something to look forward to rather than run away from.

Sometimes brands inadvertently use ridicule and this needs to be evaluated very carefully. There was a popular brand of motorcycles that had, in its TV commercial, its protagonist buzzing about the bike like a supercharged bumblebee extolling its virtues. The characterisation was so ridiculous that it probably caused quite a few prospects to stop short and wonder whether this was the right brand for them. However, since this was an aberration and the brand had already created a solid reputation for itself, the TV commercial did not do too much damage. Had it been in an FMCG category, the impact might well have been quite different and more adverse.

Using our cultural foibles and habits is also a good place to develop the art of brand ridicule. This had been done exceedingly well by a brand of salty snack food by first aiming gentle ridicule on popular TV serials and movies and then creating a wacky modern Indian family that exaggerated our family idiosyncrasies. Unfortunately, that brand also seems to be lapsing into pure slapstick today and is therefore in danger of losing that piquant edge of differentiation that it enjoyed over other salty snack brands that rely purely on slapstick, over-the-top humour.

Ridicule is radioactive. Handled well, it can provide almost ceaseless energy for a brand, often creating a very solid base for its continued success. Mishandled, it can be catastrophic. The worst case is when it is inadvertent, which results from a lack of understanding between its creators and their audience. Ridicule can be very culture-specific and what is considered acceptable in some cultures could be considered obnoxious in others. Though the influence of mass media is reducing, to a certain extent, the differences and cultural sensitivity have to be finely tuned when treading down the path of brand ridicule.

Brand ridicule may work most effectively for brands that see themselves as perennial challengers rather than those that see themselves as rulers or leader brands. It is also very useful when trying to shake people out of their comfort zone, especially when it comes to social initiatives. The most recent example being the “Jaago re” commercials that were encouraging people to vote. In fact, pious preaching to a young country is almost guaranteed to increase their disregard. Ridicule, deftly delivered, is far more likely to stimulate a constructive response.

So if you want to consider the use of ridicule to deliver your brand message, here are some guidelines that would be worth following to prevent ridicule from becoming dangerously radioactive:

1. The brand needs to think like a jester of old or cartoonists of today. Communicating something meaningful and possibly bitter, but encased in a piquant coating of humour to be not just palatable but actually attractive.
2. Ridicule needs to be intelligent—capturing a folly of the day, a fad, a superstition, a habit or tendency or some behaviour that people accept as wrong but continue with anyway.
3. It must diminish the behaviour, attitude, activity, etc., but not the person.
4. Walking into the minefield of socio-cultural ridicule that seeks to carve stereotypes out of different communities and people could lead to brand suicide—avoidable.
5. Topicality—finger on the pulse of what is pulsating provides the richest vein of ridicule—worthy material.

The author is Director-Strategic Planning at M&C Saatchi.

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