A large part of what makes jokes – and humour in general – work is the elemen…
….SURPRISE!!!
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
We think we know where a story is going and then, all of a sudden – WHAM! – we’re hit with a surprise we didn’t see coming and we laugh.
Want an easy way to surprise your audience?
DO THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT THEY’RE EXPECTING
That’ll surprise them.
Once you’ve got the basis for the surprise, you’ve got the basis for humour.
You’ve now got a situation you can play with, like a scene in a sitcom.
(More on that in a future post…)
Get in the habit of looking for situations in your business where you can throw some surprise into your content by doing the opposite.
USUAL HUMOUR CAVEAT: Don’t overdo this. You don’t want to be always using this technique in your content but, for practice, it’s good to look for as many potential opportunities as possible.
How can you do the opposite of what your customers are expecting?
Play. Test. Experiment.
Are you:
- a magician that not only says the name of the secret move you’re doing, as you’re doing it but also gives correct book references?
- an unattractive stripper, who arrives in a semi-naked state, and gets appropriately dressed in time to not-very-sexy music?
- a bank who doesn’t believe in red tape, instead preferring to give out loans in brown envelopes in Lidl car park?
Opposites are an easy way to find the potential for humour, so…
What are YOUR customers expecting to happen?