Old Spice
The 2010 Isaiah Mustafa campaign by Wieden+Kennedy turned a stale men's grooming brand into a national in-joke. Be funnier than the category permits, and the category will let you in.
01 · Character at a glance
The Jester is organized around a single motive: what it moves toward, what it moves away from, and the way it closes the distance between them.
01
Drive
Delight, playfulness, fun, ease, togetherness.
02
Fear
Boredom, gloom, sadness, loneliness, dullness.
03
Strategy
It gets what it wants by helping people enjoy the moment, staying quick and spontaneous where the room stays careful.
02
What the Jester wants.
To live in the moment with delight. To break tension. The Jester wants the audience laughing, and wants the laugh to matter. The best jesters use joy to say the thing no one else in the room could say straight.
03
What it sounds like.
Fast, rhythmic, self-aware. Jokes that respect the audience's intelligence. The Jester writes tight and edits hard. No throat-clearing. Wordplay that lands on the beat.
04
What it looks like.
Bright saturation, unexpected juxtaposition, visual non-sequitur. Photography that could not be taken accidentally. Design that risks looking ridiculous and commits to it. The Jester never apologizes for the choice.
05
What it believes.
That laughter is a serious kind of attention. That the point of comedy is honesty the audience can accept. That taking the brand less seriously is often how the brand earns being taken seriously.
The shadow side
06
What it rejects.
Solemnity, corporate throat-clearing, and jokes at the audience's expense. The Jester punches up, sideways, or at itself. Refuses the joke it cannot own the morning after.
07
Common distortions.
The Fool. Humor without conviction. Trying too hard. Punchlines at someone's expense, dressed as edginess. When the archetype curdles it becomes the brand whose jokes read as marketing meetings where the loudest person won.
08
Where it fits.
Where the Jester can be lived credibly, and where the posture rings hollow unless real substance backs it.
Wear it well
Categories the character can occupy and actually deliver.
- Snack food, candy, and casual beverage
- Consumer packaged goods with a legacy character (M&M's, Skittles)
- Entertainment brands with a permission to be strange
- Categories where seriousness is the incumbent posture and delight is unclaimed
Wear it with care
Saturated or ill-fitting. Choose here only with real proof.
- B2B software attempting personality through jokes about spreadsheets
- Financial services attempting warmth through fake humor
- Startups whose product doesn't justify the brand's confidence
09
Brand examples.
The Jester at work in the wild. Brands that live the character, each in its own register.
M&M's
Candy-shell characters have been advertising the brand longer than most marketing executives have been alive. The Jester sustains by never breaking character.
Skittles
TBWA Chiat/Day's Skittles work treats the brand as a license to make work that would not fit anywhere else. The singing rabbit. The touch-everything-becomes-Skittles man.
10
Counterweights that work.
The secondary character that complicates the Jester without contradicting it. Three that have been earned.
The Onion
Jester + Sage.
The Onion writes in flawless wire-service deadpan, headlines that diagnose the culture better than the culture can. Sage gives the Jester something real to satirize: the joke understands the target better than the target understands itself.
Ben & Jerry's
Jester + Everyman.
Ben & Jerry's names its flavors Chunky Monkey and Half Baked and packs them with chunks anyone can pronounce. Everyman keeps the Jester grounded in a shared world: delight that includes the audience rather than performs at it.
Wendy's
Jester + Outlaw.
Wendy's built a Twitter account that roasts competitors and turned National Roast Day into a sport. Outlaw sharpens the Jester's teeth: the brand willing to take shots is more fun to watch than the brand that only tells jokes.
Soul · Pursue connection
The Jester
To live in the moment with delight.