...and reflects what your business or non-profit does. In San Francisco, for example, there is this sign in the window of the Lighthouse for the Blind: "Yes, we're the blind leading the blind."
And Andy Sernovitz found a sign that pulled more people into a store. What sign has stopped you in your tracks while you were walking or driving by?
What do people put on a sign when they want attention? Over at Huffington Post see “Funniest Protest Signs.”
Of course many
reflect a warped sense of humor – some perhaps even intentionally. Now others have submitted their
favorites and are voting on them.
Join in?
Here’s some of mine to lighten your day...
• Obama has a crisis of competnce!
• Latinos for the metric system.
• OBAMA BRING BACK ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT
• My two moms can beat up your 14 wives.
• elizabeth taylor had 8 husbands. my brother just wants one.
Speaking for myself, one of the most helpful signs is for pedestrians and you see it when you stop at many corners (in life): walk with the light.
1. All Jokes
Come Down to One of Four Themes
Anywhere in the world, all jokes can be reduced to just one of four themes, according to professor Richard Wiseman, a British scientist who conducted mass-participation experiments about what we think is funny. (See * below.)
2. What's the Funniest Animal?
Wiseman also found that if you insert different animal names into the same joke, one animal evokes more laughter than any others. Guess which animal? (See ** below.)
3. How Hard Is It to Get Others to Laugh?
Mysteriously difficult, according to scientists, and many professional comedians agree. In fact, it is easier to get others to cry or smile than to laugh. While you need to evoke a response in only one part of the brain for the first two, you must stimulate a more complex "laughter circuit" involving many more parts of the brain for laughter to happen.
Several researchers, including John Allen Paulos, author of Mathematics and Humor. discovered that when we attempt to understand puns, we process them on the left side of the brain.
More complex, non-wordplay jokes are sent to the right side of the brain to comprehend, triggering many more parts of the brain along the way.
Researchers Wendy Wapner, Suzanne Hamby, and Howard Gardner, in a paper titled "Brain and Language," described the left side of the brain as a "highly efficient, narrowly programmed linguistic computer. In contrast, the right hemisphere of the brain constitutes a suitable audience for a humorous silent film."
Perhaps that's why comedians often use their body and props to silently act out a part of their story: to activate more parts of your mind.
4. What Makes Us Laugh?
What makes us laugh? Here are three clues from the researchers: incongruity, superiority, and the pattern of three.
~ Incongruity
A joke: "I went to my doctor for shingles. He sold me aluminum siding." When we see or hear something incongruous, we are surprised into laughter, often as a sort of relief.
This may be a primitive response for alerting your community in ancient times that an apparent danger is, in fact, nothing to fear. V. S. Ramachandran, in Phantoms in the Brain, wrote, "The main purpose of laughter might be to allow the individual to alert others in the social group that the detected anomaly is nothing to worry about."
~ Superiority
Those who tell us funny stories about their own foibles - or those of others - help listeners feel momentarily superior to the jokester or to the people who've been made the butt of the joke.
~ The Pattern of Three
Joke: "My favorite books are Moby-Dick, Great Expectations, and Rock Hard Abs in 30 days."
Comedians have long believed that jokes work best in a pattern of three parts. Offer two straightforward examples and then a third one to shatter the pattern.
Wiseman is probably Britain's most well-known psychologist - at least since he took his humor research to the world via the Internet. His mass-participation experiments cover emotions from lying to laughter. For example, he asked participants to detect who was lying after being exposed to accounts offered on television, on the radio, or in print. (See *** below.)
Wiseman decided to learn about global differences in humor and opened a web site. The server for the site broke down when Wiseman got three million hits in the first five days after the site opened.
Among other studies, he asked visitors to contribute their favorite jokes and rate others' jokes on a 1-5 rating scale. He has received over 40,000 jokes. About two-thirds of the submissions are so off-color, violent, or otherwise offensive that he chooses not to post them for site visitors.
With Wiseman's permission, here's a description of one of the mass- participation experiments: Wiseman and his colleagues asked people who took part in LaughLab to answer questions that involve making various estimates, such as: "How many words are there on one page of a typical paperback novel? A) Under 500, B) 500-600, C) 600-700, D) 700-800, E) Over 800."
They found that people who are good at this type of question (the correct answer is under 500) "tend to have good frontal lobe activation. Those who had wildly inaccurate estimates have very bad flexible-thinking skills."
People who answered this question correctly tended to prefer more complex jokes, such as, "A scientist and a philosopher were being chased by a hungry lion. The scientist made some quick calculations and said 'its no good trying to outrun it, its catching up'. The philosopher kept a little ahead and replied 'I'm not trying to outrun the lion; I'm trying to outrun you!'"
People whose answers were way off often liked simple jokes such as, "What's pink and fluffy? Pink fluff." or "Which day of the week do fish hate? Fry-Day."
~ ~ ~ ~
* Almost all jokes, according to Wiseman's research, seem to involve one of these four themes:
1. Someone trying to look clever and taking a pratfall.
2. Husbands and wives not being loving.
3. Doctors being insensitive about imminent death.
4. God making a mistake.
** A duck
*** Of those options, people are most likely to detect lying they hear on the radio.
One of the most powerful reasons to evoke humor, other than bringing others closer is its power to heal as Allen Klein demonstrates.
Then, for a change of pace, see what happens when Zach Galifianakis the comedian does stand-up in front of pre-schoolers.
One says to the other, does this taste funny to you?"
When genially serious Jim Lehrer dryly delivers this and other corny jokes it cracks me up. But that was MGH’s intent when they crafted this ad for the upcoming, six-part PBS documentary called "Make em laugh: The funny business of America."
It mixes performance clips “with interviews of 60 funny folks who
try to put the jokes and pratfalls in their cultural contexts,” reports Jeremy
Egner. Billy Crystal hosts it and Amy Sedaris narrates. Many of the
greats get interviewed including Carol Burnett, Sid Caesar and Chris Rock. Then there’s the book.
First get their attention. Sequentially. Unexpected humor helps - especially if it is visual. So is consistency: repeat the punchline, motto or promise in many different ads, parts of your blog, web site and on-site in your organization.
Contrary to the saying, "familiarity breeds contempt" instead it breeds acceptance. That's a big step towards buying. Out to Launch's Amy Corr offers these great examples that may make you laugh too. Also notice the way Holiday Inn Express offers guests a luxury shower experience that doesn't cost the hotelier anything more to provide. That's SmartPartnering.
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