Comedian and one-time adland copywriter, Jim Gaffigan says that comedy leaves an aftertaste.
In a recent interview with Adam Grant he ruminated, “I believe that comedy has an aftertaste, and people never think about this. The reality is is that we can laugh at things that surprise us. How someone feels about what they’re laughing about is pretty important. People love put-down humor. People love kind of “us and them” stuff, but it’s not the best aftertaste.”
I believe this is true for ideas — the ideas that make their way into campaigns and messages for brands, which can linger much longer when those ideas and messages live in digital and social platforms, eternally screen grabbed, archived, and turned into memes and takedowns.
There was that tweet from Burger King UK that read “women belong in the kitchen” on International Women’s Day recently that left a very bad taste in the mouth of social media users. It was part of the brand’s social impact campaign to help increase the number of female head chefs in restaurants but it did not land. And remember when Apple partnered with U2 way back in 2014 to automatically drop the band’s new music into the the libraries of millions of iTunes users? Music fans, myself included, were infuriated by this assumption of taste, never mind the invasion of things we thought of as ours.
Just do an image search for “poor taste ad campaigns” and you’ll be buried under enough innuendo and cultural insensitivity to make you crave a palate cleanser.
Aftertaste often has negative connotations but the word itself purely means the persistence of a sensation (as of flavor or an emotion) after the stimulating agent or experience has gone. And I suspect we’ve all had the experience of a persistent sensation after hearing an idea. I think that’s an important clue.
It’s happened countless times in conversations, briefings, and early ideation sessions. Someone will “what if…” or just throw something out, usually without it feeling like a punchline or nodal point in a discussion. You just gulp it down, swish it around with other things, sink your teeth into something else and move on. But you’ll see the room change, subtly, if you’re really perceptive. And that is what I want for you. If you’re even remotely in the business of ideas, I want you to be the most perceptive person in the room because it’s through that tuning in that you will notice when you’re onto something.
- When an idea has an aftertaste you may notice the person who uttered it suddenly becomes withdrawn, even if it’s for a few seconds. The most charismatic and persuasive orators will shrink for just a second as everyone keeps moving on. I have seen this time and time again. I think it’s because they might know they just uttered something that has a life of its own and sometimes the bigness of those moments can cause us to shut down. This is especially true for the empaths, neurodiverse, and deeply creative. As esoteric as it may sound, the bigness of an idea can sometimes feel overwhelming, so people will fleetingly shut down their other systems to accommodate it.
- The aftertaste of an idea can present quite differently from the initial expression of the idea. You may notice other people restating it, swishing it in their glasses, hacking away at it with a butter knife. This can sometimes get, I believe, misattributed to mansplaining. Listen, I’ve been around plenty of that but this feels different. When you witness this, I want you double down on our analogy here and imagine a group is sharing what they’re tasting in a wine, a whisky, a cheese or chocolate. They’re sort of saying the same thing, some of it will sound convergent, redundant, divergent, but they will be describing the same experience of a flavor that has surprised or delighted them. And ideas, the really good ones, will always feel surprising.
- It’ll come back up. Later. OK this is a little gross but have you ever had food poisoning and when you’re in the absolute throes of it, you’re reminded of folklore that suggests if when you think of the foods you ate and one thought really makes your stomach flip, that’s the culprit? Well, it’s like that with ideas. I hope they don’t make you feel ill but they may revisit you and when they do pay attention to how you’re now experiencing the idea. If you wrote it down the first time, great! check your notes. If not, don’t worry, jot down your approximation and call the person who uttered the idea — they’ll say it again.
- The aftertaste will be what people play back not the idea. This is an important one. Develop whatever note-taking or idea organization system works for you (I’ve got plenty of templates if you need but I’d advise you to workshop which templates feel most like you, otherwise you’ll be distracted by fighting with entirely the wrong thing). When ideas are magnetic and worth pursuing, the gist will have patterns regardless of who reframes or retells it. Even when you’ve copy written and crafted the perfect message based on the idea, people will still be able to “feel” it roughly, even if they can’t parrot it back to you precisely. That’s when you know it’s big.
Wait, why? Why on earth would I suggest that if people slightly misquote your brand message to you that’s a good thing? It’s a great thing. It means the feeling place of the thought, the idea, transcends language. This is helpful if your campaign or message is intended for global deployment. It means your idea can be localized and translated freely but will retain the spirit. That means it has bigger, cultural, human appeal and relevancy.
This also means that your brand is able to hand itself over to culture and that, my friends, is the holy grail of cultural and commercial effectiveness. It’s the thing that most brands long for, even if it terrifies them in the process.
Have fun with this concept and see if it helps you coerce breakthrough ideas out of your team. Ask yourself: what are the persistent lingering sensations that surround an idea? If you have those, you’re onto something.
