By now most of us are familiar with TBS’ “Very Funny” branding campaign–particularly the actresses from Sex and the City laughing and saying those exact words during brief promos for the show. To further that campaign, Mother, New York has developed a Web site for the network at TBSHumorStudy.com. The serious site solicits silly input from viewers on what is funny to them.
At the TBS home page, John Cleese’s voice welcomes visitors to the TBS Department of Humor Analysis. From there the site offers several paths. They are organized into three categories: Take the Survey, Play in the Humor Lab, and About the Department. There are also alternating links at the bottom of the page to things like Funny Shorts, Funny Desktops and Funny Animals.
Once the survey option is selected, viewers are taken to the humor survey and asked questions like “Who walks into a bar?” The choices, with accompanying photographs, are a.) a rabbi, b.) a bear in a white coat, c.) a thirsty horse or d.) two blonds.
Another question, which ties into the programming on TBS, asks, “In which language is Seinfeld funniest?” Then the participant has to choose a clip (either “Fun” or “$20”) and a language (original, French, German, Mountain Speak or Spanish). Once the choices are made, a clip of the TV show plays with the selected language. The clip can be sent to a friend as can many of the elements in the survey.
A sadistic question asks, “Where is the funniest place to hit this man with a fast-moving ball?” The highlighted areas include his forehead, chest and groin. The survey questions change during each visit and one offers a video of the man being pummeled with small orange balls.
In the Play in the Humor Lab category, Web surfers can choose from the following options: Funny Shorts, Table of Periodic Laughter, Funny Movie Maker, Fun with a Pun, Create a Future Sitcom, Anthropomorphosize It or Wallpaper Generator.
The Funny Shorts are seven viral clips that range in subject from “recent lab analysis” that revealed Eva Glass is an anagram of Las Vegas to funny homes of the future. The former uses video footage and stills to tell the story of an Eva Glass who has been to Las Vegas and even had her picture taken with the famous Las Vegas sign, but is unaware of the “anagrammatic comedy of this huge event.” The latter features clips from sitcoms that run on TBS and the respective housing structures and furniture arrangements, like those in Friends and Seinfeld.
For example, the sofas in those shows are located in the middle of rooms, which is not the setup of most American living rooms according to a cited study. Animations demonstrate how most Americans place their sofas against a wall. Later in the clip, apartment buildings are labeled as funnier than houses according to current research. TBS liked the virals so much that they are planning to broadcast them, creative director/partner Paul Malmstrom related. The animation for the virals was done through Stardust, Los Angeles.
“It got very rich and deep, it just kind of grew and was so fun doing it,” Malmstrom said. “You can sit in front of a computer for quite some time I think.”
In the third category, About the Department, there is a video that is actually the cinema ad for the campaign. In the 2:45 clip, John Cleese gives a tour of the Department of Humor Analysis and a glimpse into the research that takes place there. Again, we see the man who is part of the study to determine where the funniest place to hit a man with a ball is. In the final scene Cleese even takes a shot at him. The long spot as well as :30 broadcast cut downs of it are driving traffic to the Web site. Kevin Thomas of Thomas Thomas, London, directed the cinema ad.
“He is kind of the grandfather of comedy in some ways.” Malmstrom said of Cleese. “He was an absolute joy to work with and very cool, and of course had some opinions on what was funny and not funny, which was very interesting as we were kind of studying that ourselves in this campaign.” Additional credit at Mother goes to creatives Dave Clark and Rory Hanrahan as well as producer Margaux Ravis.
Mike Douglas of Cut + Run, New York, cut the spots as well as the virals, which are heavy on still images and clip art. “You are working from scratch and there was no film that was shot but that was kind of liberating too in a way,” he said of the virals, though the creatives did shoot a small amount of video for the Las Vegas clip. “I had a good time cutting it and it was really challenging, but in a way that I’m not normally accustomed to because it was wide open. Normally when you get the film, it’s like you’re confined visually to what was shot and here it was kind of wide open.”