What Size Was His Shoes?
I was invited to write two articles for McCann Worldgroup. One on earned creative, despite me having no idea about earned creative, and one on how the lockdown affected me, despite me having no idea about how things affect me.
Transcript below
‘It takes a big man to cry. And it takes an even bigger man to laugh at that man.’ – Jack Handey
I remember watching an episode of Parts Unknown where Anthony Bourdain was having a meal in Scotland with a Glaswegian woman. She was talking about how dark the local humour can be, especially in comparison to American humour, and she said, ‘In Glasgow, if you say, ‘my fathers died,’ Glaswegians say, ‘what size was his shoes?’ And all I could think was, shit yes, that’s it. That’s the segue I was looking for to start my article.
I’ve been asked how the last year or so has affected me both as a person, and as a professional. It’s a big question. Almost as big as ‘what do you want for dinner’, and the answer is always the same. I don’t know. There’s a lot I don’t know. What the world will be like whenever you’re reading this. What it’ll be like tomorrow. That’s the thing about 2020, it’s an infinite present. No future plans, no anticipation of travel or events or celebrations, no job certainty. An endless today, never tomorrow. And ‘today’ is filled with mass deaths, ever-widening socioeconomic gaps, looming recession, a ‘tsunami’ of mental health problems.
It’s fucking bleak.
Now, I am a humble idiot, so in no way whatsoever do I have a profound insight into how ‘these times’ will change the creative psyche. But that segue I started with does indeed have a point.
Which is this: all I am doing at the moment is searching more and more for things that are going to make me laugh. I have always done that, but now it’s a bit more constant. And it’s not really a conscious decision. If I wanted to be sad, I’d watch the news or eat in front of a mirror. But I don’t. I want to find a bit of stand up from the comedy club near my apartment, or a Twitter profile where someone is tweeting as their cat. I want to find whatever misplaced funny can come out of this mess.
Creativity’s greatest weapon - and life’s greatest weapon, if you ask me, which you didn’t - is a sense of humour. I honestly don’t see why we always feel the need to be worthy. There’s a time and a place for it, of course. But must it be every single time and place? I want to laugh when things are a bit shit. That’s when people need it, whether it’s that laugh where they just blow a bit of air out their nose or just a good old-fashioned chortle. But not if they say ‘that’s funny’ instead of laughing. There is never any time for those people.
Comedy is just tragedy plus time. Obviously, that is not my equation, I did tell you I’m not very smart. But it is an equation I’m going to bang on about.
The question is, how does it work for 2020? The tragedy feels never-ending. Making a joke amidst everything that’s going on? You don’t want to be out of touch, insensitive.
But if you have people laughing, you have people agreeing with you. That’s the only way I even have a job right now. I’m just two 8-year-olds in a trench coat, making lots of jokes, hoping no one will question anything.
A sense of humour will get you through anything.
I’ll give you some examples, partially to prove my point, and partially to pad this word count out. One is a story of redundancy. They’ll say ‘there’s no right way to deal with it’ but they’re wrong, also they don’t say that, but mainly they’re wrong. The ‘right way’ has been summed up in my second-favourite headline* ever: ‘Auckland adman hires professional clown for redundancy meeting.’ The clown sat there making balloons while the creative was told his role was no longer needed in the agency. I can almost hear the intermittent squeaking in the silences. It made the news, and the team had another job immediately. Well, almost immediately. The story sounds better if I say immediately. But it showed that humour truly can be the lemon to life’s lemonade. Or the lemonade to life’s lemons. Whatever.
*If you were wondering what my favourite headline is – you’re only human – it’s ‘Monkeys Make Tree Catapult to Escape Lab, Lured Back with Peanuts’. You couldn’t write it. I mean, someone did write it, but you know. You couldn’t write it.
My potentially hair-brained theory also applies when things are more serious. One-off, mass devastations. Yeah, she’s going deep. In 2011, a tsunami hit Japan. There were huge efforts to help Japan’s recovery, but improving society’s malaise was always going to be a different matter. I’m sure a Robot-themed live performance with bento boxes was pretty far-fetched in conception, but it is one of the reasons the place supposedly came to life. I am of course talking about the Robot Restaurant in Tokyo.
It’s the exact kind of idea you’d brainstorm, people would laugh, someone might mumble under their breath something like ‘can I not work with her again’, and you’d change the topic with a seamless little throat clear. And then you’d move on to something more hard-hitting, you know, something that shows you’re a good person, that you care. And then everyone misses out on a petite Japanese woman riding a giant robot dinosaur while flailing a lightsabre and singing in fast-paced Japanese. And then everyone’s disappointed. Hope you’re happy with yourself.
This ability to laugh through tragedy is a huge part of Antipodean humour, as well. I’m a kiwi at heart, so it’ll be a cold day in hell before I call jandals ‘thongs’, but I did spend my formative years in Australia and love the place. The bushfires were, as they were to everyone, devastating. The disaster tore through an incomprehensible amount of life in regional Australia.
To help out, Aussie creatives came out with a lot of great work. Like a Christmas tree in Sydney’s city centre made entirely out of logs, branches, and shrubs, all sourced from local bushfire-affected areas, and topped with a burnt-out bike wheel as the star. Or the VR experience that places the viewer in a house surrounded by a massive bushfire. It shows you just how fast things can get out of control. It also it shows me what I continue to put my Sims family through.
These ideas were amazing for raising funds and awareness. But it was the local sense of humour that raised spirits. There were lots of stories shared, but I did have a favourite. One woman had a TV crew visit her house, and as they began walking over the rubble, she called out to them, "no, through here please," and proceeded to pick up what was left of the front door handle. She’d lost her entire home, and still managed to take the piss out of it. Lovely stuff.
Now I know this is more of an advertising book, so I’d be silly/a straight up negligent fool to leave out how finding humour in tragedy has of course, led to some of the best work we know.
This includes topics like drink-driving. As my mum always said, ‘it’s not funny and it’s not clever’. Well wrong again Sandra, it is funny. At least it is in this ad from New Zealand. Most drink-driving ads scare us with reality – look at the consequences, look what you would have to live with, and that’s if you even live. We all know driving under the influence is bad. We get it. This film instead pictured what it’d be like if you let your friend drive drunk, they died, and then haunted you for the rest of your life. I’ve lived in London for a while now, so me getting behind the wheel just in general would end badly. But if I somehow found myself in this situation, drunk-me would be far more convinced if someone called me a spoon and said they didn’t want any of my ‘ghost chups’. An accident is a statistical likelihood, but being made fun of is a certainty. And I don’t want that. My ego is far too fragile.
Even when the London terror attacks were all over the news, there was one photo that was all over social media. It was of a terrified man, running away from the danger, with a full pint of beer in his hand.
He was safe, just to mention. Now, the photo was defiant in the face of terror and hatred, but more importantly, it was funny. And while I was looking at it and having a good little laugh to myself, a strategist was penning the line ‘Nothing Beats a Londoner’ for Nike. Safe to say she wins that round, but my point still stands.
We need a sense of humour – I hate myself for writing this – now more than ever. A global pandemic, everyone in lockdown, murder hornets that were apparently coming to the US and then mysteriously disappeared. I don’t fully trust that they have disappeared, now that I mention it. That’s not the type of mess that cleans itself up. Americans have not seen the last of the murder hornets, is all I’m saying. But you, me, and the murder hornets have a lot in common.
No, that’s not the point I’m trying to make.
The point I am making, I think, is that if 2020 has changed anything for me, it would be how much more important humour has become in everything I do. A frisky little laugh every day is just the medicine we need. Not like, in place of a vaccine. We definitely need a vaccine. But an episode of 30 Rock, a McSweeney’s article, or pouring salt in your flatmates drink for no reason other than your own amusement will make things a bit better. Are there exceptions to this rule? Of course, there are for most rules. By all means, contact me and tell me how I’m wrong, but I might not read your email, because it will make me sad.
As I said at the start, I don’t know what life will be like when you read this. Maybe everything’s a bit better. Maybe it’s not. I’m just saying, depending on how you look at it, these are some potentially hilarious times we’re living in.
