The Absence of Humor

Why can we recite movie quotes verbatim, but not the first amendment, or our company’s mission statement? How come the Daily Show is the primary source for news? Name an online trading company. I bet 8 out of 10 people will say E*Trade because they know the E*Trade baby and laughed, then went to YouTube to watch it again. And even more people probably heard the baby on the plane mention a Stop Loss Trade and went to Wikipedia to find out that that is.

What if E*Trade went the pretentious route and made commercials featuring urban hipsters complaining about their broker while eating sushi or drinking lattes out of tiny cups. Most people just find those f*cking hipsters unbearable and pray a bus hops the curb and plows through the “bistro” where they are kvetching about all their expendable income problems.

Delivering a sticky message is a conundrum that has existed forever. Advertisers have successfully used humor for many years. Why has the training and education universe been so resistant to the power of laughter?

Most corporate trainers and instructional designers operate in a very serious box built around them by a hypersensitive corporate culture. There is fear hinges on the belief that anything that makes you laugh is probably rooted in one of the corporate taboos like race, religion, politics, sports teams from Texas, gender, the VP of Finances toupee’

I’m not suggesting we fill our training products with zingers, but we should all consider the power of “bringing the funny,” be it a graphic, voice-over or text. Not so we can flex our comedic muscles, but to engage the learner and anchor your message to the emotional response of laughter.

I recently learned how to tune an edge on a snowboard by watching a YouTube video of a guy who used the term “buck nutty” to describe a filing technique. Had I been watching a sleep-inducing WBT, I would have missed such a hilarious adjective.

If you have ever golfed, think about how many times someone quotes Caddyshack and how many people can quote a mind-numbing video on how to correct a slice. Don’t forget to yell fore!

ILT Masterpiece Theater: The Golden Banana

While in a college marketing course several years ago I was witness to forty-five minutes of engaging, funny, relevant and interactive content all from a single PPT slide with the picture of a golden banana. This forty-five minute fruited-slide benchmark is my own personal instructor led-training equivalent of Michael Jordan's Game 5 performance against the Jazz. Except the instructor didn't have the flu...he also didn't have a Scottie Pippen so we'll call it even.

That night in Service Marketing 302 our instructor R. Hornfisher introduced the power of graphical simplicity backed by well constructed content. He used the Golden Banana to springboard into a brilliantly articulated lesson on the power of rewarding your employees and customers. The greatest lesson I learned that evening was not about service marketing it was about the power of content and simplicity.

Instructional Designers/Developers of the world, I challenge you to take the time to consider the Golden Banana or use the term as proper noun used to describe the perfect simplicity of graphics backed with a talented trainer. Or better yet implement an annual award ceremony where you hand out Golden Bananas to your designer, developer or trainer who exhibit the spirit of the GB.

Disclaimer: Under no circumstances should the Golden Banana phrase or likeness be allowed to mutate into anything resembling a phallic joke...no matter how hilarious or obvious.

In Case You Were Wondering....

Leave it to Malcom Gladwell to do the "hard-nosed" research on the mystery of what it takes to be universally loved and adored. Spoiler alert - gain weight and bone up on your elf managmement.

“To become the object of universal love, one must first live with a red-nosed rein­deer, and then gain a premier position as the sole registered employer of elves in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s as simple as that."

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2009/12/gladwell-200912