In this op-ed, Kate Smither, AKA The Tall Planner, sets the record straight. In a world that feels like it’s gone completely bonkers, she highlights the importance of having a bit of nonsense here and there. From drumming gorillas to Lego cars and even Heinz Matcha Mayo, Kate shows how brands that dare to be silly, playful, and human give us something we desperately need – a good reason to smile when nothing else makes sense.
Warren Zevon sang, “Send lawyers, guns and money. The shit has hit the fan,” and in a time of global, national, social, political, and industry chaos, there has never been a more appropriate lyric to sum up the general sentiment.
But in the midst of all the madness, and after months of nothing really making sense, came April Fools’ Day and the permission for brands to let their rational guards down and remind us all that it is okay to let yourself just laugh occasionally. They reminded us of the power of feeling something familiar at a time when uncertainty is the typical mode of operation.
From the Uggbrella to the Cataire clothing line, an anti-scrolling thumb guard device from Yahoo, to the launch of Lego Auto and Heinz Matcha Mayonnaise, brands started to play against the culture surrounding them.
It felt like a protest of humour against the terminally dire headlines—and a protest that was kicking off a new debate of head versus heart, as humans seek moments of humanity when crisis turns into chaos.
That is because, in the context of chaos, emotions become our stability.
By definition, a crisis can be “managed,” but “in chaos, all bets are off; all rules of natural order (except perhaps at the subatomic level) are off too. Compasses fail. Up is down, down is up, and it’s almost impossible to distinguish between sky and ground. In fact, unlike with crisis, the very concept of chaos ‘management’ is an oxymoron. By its very nature, chaos cannot be managed; it is ungovernable.”
When things around us stop making sense, emotional nudges and moments give us an anchor. The truth is, as psychologist Kyle Davies says, “Emotional processing occurs at higher speeds than cognitive processing. This means that emotion often arises before we’ve had a chance to think about anything at all. The body feels first.”
And if the body “feels first,” the job to be done today is to give it more of a chance to feel, not less. Advertising’s unique ability to offer up small pieces of entertainment, content, product happiness, and consumer relief makes it the perfect antidote to the overwhelming confusion and numbness the world is creating now, as everything stops making sense.
In 2001, the phrase the “Lipstick Index” was coined by the then-chairman of Estée Lauder. It reflected a pattern that lipstick sales went up in times of economic chaos and crisis: The Great Depression, WWII, and then in the recession at the start of the new century.
In the article “The Lipstick Index: An Unexpected Economic Indicator,” the author explains it like this: “… the enduring appeal of the Lipstick Index lies not in its precision, but in what it reveals about human behaviour. It shows that people are remarkably adaptive. Faced with constraints, they don’t simply stop spending; they reshape their habits. They look for smaller ways to preserve comfort, maintain identity, and create moments of relief in otherwise uncertain environments. Because ultimately, in times of uncertainty, consumers don’t stop seeking joy. They simply redefine what it looks like.”
Don’t get me wrong—a lipstick can’t solve the problems of the world, but it can “preserve, maintain, and redefine.” A lipstick can make sense when the world doesn’t. It shows the ultimate power of a product to invoke feelings of the reassuringly familiar.
The familiarity of emotion is why, lately, by reimagining love, tragedy, and an iconic period of cultural memory, “Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr and Carolyn Bessette” has “… racked up 40m viewing hours to become FX’s most-watched limited series on Hulu/Disney+ to date.” Importantly though, the show, as soapy as it may be, “… has struck a deeper chord in culture too, with legions of fans eating up the couple’s fashion and insouciant swagger, often wanting to try it on for size. Nearly 300,000 TikTok and Instagram posts are tagged #CBK, mainly videos focusing on Bessette’s sleek style.”
Writer and creator Connor Hines sums it up in an article from The Guardian: “I’m not interested in a show about famous people,” he said. “I want it to just feel like you’re watching a boy and a girl figuring their shit out. He’s in his head and she’s in his head, and he hasn’t called and she hasn’t called … I want it to feel like, ‘Oh, my God, I’ve been there, or I’ve sat there wondering.’” The familiarity of emotions.
The show illustrates an inflection point where brands don’t adopt culture, observing from the outside—culture adopts brands and pushes them out from the inside.
We saw it last month with Punch the Monkey and IKEA: as Punch owned the emotional engagement of the world, IKEA was the support act—coexisting but not owning the moment. And now we are seeing it with “Love Story,” as it spawns brand relationships at pace.
The fact that Cadbury Gorilla just got voted the UK’s favourite ad in British history shows, again, the power of a brand that gets it right and just lets people have fun. There was nothing rational about the “Gorilla” ad, but that was possibly the point. As Cadbury started to move towards “Joy” as its brand emotional state, a drumming gorilla was pure, on-brand creative expression—all joy. And in 2007, at the start of the GFC and a backdrop of double-dip recessions, a bit of nonsensical brand joy was just what the world needed.
Today, with AI catching up to humans in representing and understanding emotions thanks to the combination of large language models, video, and image technology, defending human emotional reactions has never been more important.
For brands, that means remembering that a DBA is a trigger to an emotional connection, and that memory structures alone aren’t enough unless we understand the heart structures consumers have built around brands as well.
For creativity, it means the ability to provoke and invoke emotions, to be a bit silly – as “Cookie Man” from Maxibon has shown us—is an advantage right now.
There are many studies that show the commercial advantage of emotional ads.
When examined, they are more effective and more memorable.
Brands can make us laugh. They can make us cry. They can make us feel. And in a time of massive uncertainty, only the moments of humanity and creativity, from brands, will truly give us the anchor of feeling we crave to make us feel stable in the chaos.
