Fun/Funny Impact
Samuel L. Jackson Motherfuckin’ Windfarms ad for Vattenfall.
Can brand purpose be playful?
Can social impact be irreverent?
Can sustainability be surreal or even silly?
Yes. Yes. And absolutely yes!
I’ve just returned from pat leave and while catching up on news, one impact campaign kept popping up: the Samuel L. Jackson Motherfuckin’ Windfarms ad for Vattenfall.
Hats off to Vattenfall’s marketing team. They got one of the greatest screen actors/shouters/swearers to ever do it to show some love to offshore wind farms and the seaweed snacks they can also surprisingly generate. Jackson brings his trademark fury and swagger to the extremely polite and earnest world of renewable energy.
And it got me thinking about how being fun/funny can be one of the sharpest tools in the toolbox for social impact and sustainability campaigns.
Yet strangely, so few brands use it.
Which is odd when you think about it. Most brands have spend decades carefully honing a fun/funny personality to appeal to the masses. But when they turn their hand to impact work, they suddenly become sombre and worthy, abandoning their usual tone through fear of being seen as flippant.
It’s like your most happy-go-lucky friend showing up at the pub one day and giving everyone a TED Talk about the carbon footprint of your burgers. Totally out of character. Just not them.
Truly nobody wants a lecture about x or y social issue from their favourite snack brand, or to be guilt‑tripped by their shampoo brand while they’re in the shower.
And the thing is, playfulness, mischief, absurdity, parody - these tools have real power. From an impact standpoint, they’re particularly good at busting social taboos, changing behaviour, pressuring policy change, and raising awareness of important but little-known issues. They’re also effective at building brands.
Why? Because fun/funny cuts through the noise better than almost anything. It reachers further. It sticks in the memory more. It gently persuades instead of preaching.
90% of consumers say they’re more likely to remember a funny ad (Link)
72% of people would choose a brand that uses humour over one that doesn’t (Link)
Brands disproportionately described as fun and playful had a stronger ability to build future demand for the brand, +24 points above average (Link)
So yes, brands can create meaningful change without losing the sense of fun that makes people warm to them - and choose them over the next name on the shelf. In other words, they can do good and make people feel good at the same time - and build themselves in the process.
Here are some of my favourite examples of fun/funny impact work from past and present, with the tactics they used - and results data where available.
Fantasy as a reframing device
VegPower & ITV wanted kids to stop hating vegetables.
So they recast them as heroes munching their way through an army of evil veggie villains.
It made healthy eating fun for kids and resulted in 981 million more vegetables eaten.
Celebrating the beautiful reality
Bodyform wanted to dynamite the shame some women feel about their vulvas.
So they assembled a choir of vulva lookalikes to sing about their glorious diversity.
Relate wanted over 65s to feel comfortable talking openly about sex and intimacy.
So they asked Rankin to photograph their randiness in action.
Parodying a familiar format
Guinness wanted Rugby Fans to drink responsibly during the Six Nations.
So they launched a new beer: “Guinness Clear” (aka… water) and spoofed classic beer ad tropes to urge fans to alternate every pint.
After two months, 80% of fans said they'd moderated their alcohol intake by drinking water.
An amusingly tenuous link
Hellmann’s wanted to tackle food waste, half of which happens in people’s homes.
So for their Super Bowl ad, they had NFL stars literally tackle stars and consumers as they’re about to bin leftovers.
The wider Make Taste Not Waste strategy has added 3.5 points in total share gain and increased food waste conversation by 24% over three years.
Colliding unlikely worlds
The British Heart Foundation wanted to teach people how to perform hands-only CPR.
So they hired famed movie gangster, Vinnie Jones, to pump to the beat of Bee Gees disco classic, Staying Alive.
It increased people’s likelihood to perform ‘Hands-only CPR’ by 17%, and at the time they estimated that 30 lives were saved by people who saw the campaign and employed the technique.
Tide wanted Americans to know about the CO2-savings of cold washes.
So they turned to two “icons of cold” to “cold-call” the nation and spread the word.
In the first 10 months, over 1.3 billion loads were done on cold, resulting in over 1 billion kilogams of CO2 saved.
A mischievous work-around
The Female Company wanted Germany to stop taxing tampons like luxury goods at a whopping 19%.
So they hid tampons inside a book about the history of menstruation - taxed at the literature rate of 7%.
10k copies sold out in a day, the petition gathered 150 signatures, and it eventually led the government to abolish the tampon tax in 2019.
A funny metaphor
Absolut wanted to prove it had nothing to hide about how its sustainable vodka is made.
So they had 28 real employees, including the chief exec, show up stark naked to walk us through every step of the distillation process.
Cartooning the enemy
Greenpeace wanted the UK to stop dumping plastic on poorer countries.
So they dumped a day’s worth of exported plastic straight on the Prime Minister’s head.
Brewdog wanted to protest Putin’s anti-gay laws.
So they brewed a “Not for Gays” beer with a fabulously dolled‑up Putin on the label.
Creating a comic distraction
O2 wanted to fight back against the 7 in 10 Brits targeted by scammers.
So they unleashed Daisy, the AI granny, to natter on and waste fraudsters time.
It earned 1.7 billion earned impressions, led to a 44% increase in the awareness of the scam reporting number, and increased satisfaction with O2’s fraud prevention efforts by 10%.
