Using Humor in Your Marketing With Frank Kern (1 of 2)

Welcome to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast. In this episode, we get to talk about humor. As you may have noticed, Dan Kennedy has a certain way of putting humor throughout what he does. He has a very specific taste and a very specific process. In this episode, Dan Kennedy brings on Frank Kern in order to get his two cents on how he uses it, because as you all know, humor can be a wonderful way to captivate an audience and bring people closer to your world. But get it wrong and your intentions can backfire. So listen in as Frank and Dan share not only the best ways to use humor, the best places to use humor, and the situations you need to stay away from.

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Welcome to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast with your host, Dan Kennedy.

Well, hello, Diamond members. This is Bill Glazer and another one of our monthly calls, and I'm joined this month with Dan Kennedy. On a topic which is called "Using Humor in Your Marketing: The Good and the Evil." And we are also able to tap into another expert who, whether— and we could get to it— whether he consciously or subconsciously— I actually think it's consciously, but he may not admit to it— consciously or subconsciously uses humor a lot in his marketing, to join us, which is the dubious Frank Kern. Is on the call with us as well. And Frank's staying on for the whole call?

I've already left.

Yeah.

So, well— Looking up what the word dubious means right now.

Oh, aren't you at a computer?

It'll be the most work he's done all month.

That's awesome.

Well, actually, what might be just a better— is I could just let Dan and Frank keep jabbing at each other all the entire hour and a half, and I think our members would enjoy a lot more. So we can do that as well. So I will try to be the referee today on this call, which is a frightening thought in and of itself. So hello, Dan and Frank. Thanks for doing this. So hey, listen, let me, let me sort of dive into the topic, and I'm going to start with you, Dan, is because I know And, uh, I've heard you for years actually talk about the fact that you've been a real student of humor. Um, you know, you've read a lot on it and studied a lot of folks, and you often quote, um, comics, uh, and talk about how difficult it is actually for a lot of people to do stand-up comic, you've mentioned. And, um, so let's talk about it a little bit. Start with you, Dan. Let's look at different ways or the applications of it, number one. Well, actually, let me even back up a second. Let's talk about the good and the evil first. So what is the positives for using it, and what are the dangers for using it? Let's start with that.

Well, I mean, you just named— I mean, it It almost goes without saying that it is very dangerous and risky because first of all, humor is very subjective. What one person thinks is screamingly funny, another person is offended by or horrified by or more likely just doesn't see the humor in it at all. Two people can look at the same thing or hear the same thing or read the same thing and have varying reactions to it when it is comedy, maybe more so than anything else. And so there is that danger of literally falling flat. There's usually a danger of being misunderstood and there's a danger of offending. And there's the danger of distracting from actually making a sale.— which is what happens more often than not in traditional advertising when attempts are made at comedy. More often than not, even if it's successful, people remember the comedy but can't remember the product. And if it's not direct response, if it's traditional advertising, it sometimes takes calendar quarters before anybody really realizes that they're gaining all sorts of critical acclaim and everybody's running around using their catchphrase or asking for their stuffed dog, but their market share has actually declined rather than improved. So, and the last danger, I guess, is that, as you pointed out, it's a lot more difficult than people think it is. Just about anybody can get a laugh with a halfway decent joke delivered relatively well, but in very friendly environments with their buddies at the bar or at the cocktail party, especially if everybody's had a few drinks, and especially if they'll work dirty. But that does not necessarily translate into your ability to work humor into an ad or a sales letter or a speech and make it work. It's a lot harder than people think it is. Of course, professionals, whether comedy writers or comedy performers, professionals like professionals in anything else, work much harder at it than most people know, are more serious students of it than most people know, and try and make it look easy. When they actually do it. So the risks are extremely high. The payoffs can also be extremely high because in the battle for attention and interest, perhaps more so with people you sell to again and again and again and again, or audiences you get in front of again and again and again and again, at bare minimum it's sort of necessary for it to be good-natured and sort of in fun. For example, in all the years I've been speaking and all the speakers I've ever known or watched, I've only seen one who could sell effectively from the platform consistently who had no sense of humor, used no humor, was humorless. Everybody else relies on it to some extent or another. So it's used well, it's an extremely useful tool in putting people in a receptive and responsive mood, and that then carries over into your ability to sell to them. In whatever media it is, whatever way that you are selling to them.

Well, you know, I have a follow-up question for you, but I just want to make one comment before I do that because, you know, I teach a lot of outrageous advertising and I teach it exactly the way you just articulated it, which is the reason why you try to make your advertising outrageous is to grab attention. In a society which is getting increasingly difficult to grab attention because people are just more and more and more and more overwhelmed with messages that they're getting every day. And especially now with the proliferation of this internet thing, which Frank may or may not know something about. And so you have to first grab attention, which is why I use this outrageous advertising, which is sort of in the humor genre It definitely is. And of course, I always tell people that that within and of itself is not enough to get the result. You have to combine that now with the kind of direct response marketing that we teach at Glazer Kennedy. And with the combination of the two, it works. I also point out to people that if you look at like the Super Bowl commercials, which people in 2009 paid $3.1 million for 30 seconds. Commercial, that's a great example of outrageous advertising or the use of humor in advertising that doesn't work because very few, if any, of those spots are actually getting a return on investment. So, you know, using it has to be done very smart and strategic. But my question to you, Dan, my follow-up question is, are there, are there Are there nuances in different media, how to use it? It's kind of like a setup question because I've got to believe there are. Let's look at paper sales letters. I'm going to ask Frank to talk a lot about online video, how he uses it there. Let's look at something that all 3 of us do, which is getting up in front of a room and speaking, how it's used there, radio, television, all kinds of media. Does that have to be thought through as far as the different nuances of using it?

Yeah, there's nuances by media. There's also nuances by audience. And sort of a need to be congruent with your overall voice, the business you're in. I mean, being, for example, in the funeral home business puts some restrictions on you that don't exist on you if you're in the restaurant business. But by media, certainly the hardest thing to do is to write funny. And I don't mean even laugh-out-loud funny. I mean funny really like we're talking about here, more of a good-natured, good humored, put people in a good mood, not necessarily have them rolling on the floor laughing. But writing funny is the hardest thing to do because of course you're deprived of all sorts of visual tools, be that props or body language or gestures or whatever. And then doing it via any media where the person is seeing it in isolation. So the reason that they added laugh tracks to comedies very early in television was because there's a big difference to sitting at home in your living room by yourself and watching comedy and watching comedy with a group of people because laughter feeds on itself. If a few people start laughing, then everybody starts laughing. And so comedies needed laugh tracks for that very reason. So when you do it by distance media, it's hard. When you do it purely in print, it's even harder. And on stage, other than at a comedy club, but on stage, say, in our kind of environments, in a seminar or in a group presentation, whether that's in your office as a a chiropractor for 50 patients or it's in front of 5,000 people in an auditorium, that maybe is the easiest place to do it because you have a full arsenal of weaponry that you can use and you have the audience feeding on itself. And in a friendly audience, there are always early laughers. There are people who want to be amused. And want to play along and want to have a good time, and they'll sort of drag everybody else along with them, and you don't have that opportunity in print. Conversely, maybe the place that it is the biggest advantage when you can do it is in print because there's fewer people who can and do. So again, it's an opportunity to stand stand out.

So, so, Frank, um, I, I don't know whether or not you're— you would agree with what I'm about to say. Um, I don't know that whether you agree with anything I would ever say, but, but, uh, only because— not because you wouldn't agree, you would just wouldn't publicly agree. But the, uh, you know, I find you to be a very natural funny guy, you know, or humorous guy. Let's say actually use humorous, not funny. Do you feel like when, you know, when you use it in your marketing, and we're going to talk about a couple different places that you use it, when you use it in your marketing, it's deliberate or it's just the way you are?

I think it's a combination of the two. A lot of times it's deliberate. It's almost always deliberate when it's a video. For something that I release, or content is deliberate. When I'm on stage, it's just a natural reaction to being in front of a lot of people who are staring at you and hoping you don't screw up. It's an attempt to sort of diffuse the intensity of the situation and sort of break the pattern of normal seminar behavior and everything.

So let's talk about a third media that I've seen you use it in, which is in actual print paper and ink print stuff. So I get every month from you, I get your Mass Control— I think it's called Mass Control Monthly, actually. And with that, I get a DVD, and I also get a, you know, multi-page sort of newsletter type of thing. And in there, in the print piece of this, I mean, you're using it there as well. Having spent time with you one-on-one and hearing you just talk naturally, it's actually almost— when I read your newsletter, I'm hearing your voice in there almost like I know you naturally. But once again, you're putting more of that in there than most people are putting in their newsletters. Again, is that deliberate or just sort of like the way you naturally just talk?

It's a combination of the two. It is the way I naturally just talk, but I believe that a really good way to communicate with prospects and customers is to treat them as if you've known them forever and that you guys are just really old and good friends. On one hand, that's kind of like assuming the sale a little bit. If you act like you've known them forever and you're really good close friends, then they might just start to feel that way. That's one side of that. And the other side of that is that I really view my customers and my newsletter subscribers as very good friends because they're supporting this extravagant, awesome lifestyle that I get to enjoy. I just pulled up to my office in a $500 Jeep Scrambler. So that's serious business. A $500 Jeep?

Yeah, Scrambler.

Well, that's great.

Yeah, I'm talking about it.

But it's just the way I write. But also, I think I learned it from listening to some of Dan's stuff that was recorded back in 1911 or something about direct mail, which was, you know, you want to write like you're at a bar talking about stuff over some beers. So that's how I talk when I'm at a bar talking about stuff over some beers, and thus that's how it comes out. I think the use of humor would be very, very difficult to fake. I think you were talking about and asking me and Old Dan about the dangers of it. I think that's a very big danger of it is if you're just not funny, then it's best not to try. Or you can make a joke out of how not funny you are. That's one aspect of doing it. I don't think it's as easy as just going, okay, I'm going to be funny now. I think you actually have to sort of be a funny person. And to be a funny person, I think it's necessary to see funny stuff in everything around you.

Well, so that's a very interesting point you made. It's actually one of the things I was going to ask both of you about is this whole issue about, you know, you just said if you're not funny, you can make a point about being not funny. And so, you know, one of the ways to use humor is in sort of self-deprecation. You know, you make fun of yourself. What are, you know, Either one of you can jump into it first or second, but what is your thinking about that as a default? If you need to have something to fall back on as far as knowing that you want to add some humor into your marketing, is that a good strategy to use as the last resort if you want to add something of interest in? And are you— have either of you deliberately done that over the years?

Well, I do it all the time.

I don't—

but I wouldn't view it as a last resort. And I do think it still requires a certain level of skill to do it well. But like if you look at Halbert and all the Halbert newsletters over the years, or you look at Carlton, you look at really any good copywriter who also writes.. So you find an advertising copywriter who puts out a newsletter or write books or whatever. You're probably going to find them using humor, and you're going to find them using some self-deprecating humor. And generally speaking, they're each going to arrive at a little collection of repetitively used self-deprecating positioning. So, like, Halbert fans, I mean, he even fairly late, but he even had, I think he had actually a website, nosexgary.com, and made much of the fact that he was not particularly attractive and, you know, didn't have a very easy time of connecting with women. Carlton has always made much of his tendency to screw up his own life. You can go down the line. I think there are things people who aren't funny can do. I've devoted a fair amount of the book to it because more people aren't funny than are. And so if you think, like, in a performance, if you think of, like, Leno's headlines routine— now, that's not to say Leno isn't funny, but really anybody can do the headlines routine. And be okay with it, because it frankly doesn't require a great deal of skill. I mean, the thing itself is funny. Prop humor sort of works that way. But the self-deprecating thing, done again skillfully so you're not going so far that you're destroying your credibility and your authority and all of that with your audience, but it is a humanizing thing. It is in some cases a, if I can do it, you can do it strategy, which is useful usually in selling to people and motivating people. If you are high on a pedestal to an audience you are writing to otherwise,, then some part of it helps them identify. So I don't really know about it as a last resort. I wouldn't think about it in that context. I think about it as almost a staple tool, but one that does require some skill. I think Frank's point, you know, if you are genuinely— you know, not naturally humorous or even good-humored, then you ought not try to be something you aren't to the point that it's obvious and it's sort of painful for everybody to witness. And you have to hunt for ways that you can bring humor into your marketing. And outrageous advertising or gimmickry advertising is one way to do that.

It doesn't require the individual necessarily to be funny. So Frank, let's go back, same question for you, and again, I want to stick on this thing of this whole notion of self-deprecation.

Are you using it? If you are, how are you sort of using it right now, or how have you used it? And talk about it a little bit. I use it constantly, and I use it as really like a pattern interrupt kind of thing, which sort of immediately will set me apart from other people.

And that was Frank's way of letting everybody know he's an NLP expert.

Yeah. And by anybody didn't catch that, I listened to a tape recording. Yeah, I listened to a tape that once. I guess, I mean, if I can say— if I say it on my website, then it's true. So I'm going to start putting it on there. But it's a big pattern interrupt. And you have to kind of have your finger to the pulse of the marketplace you are serving a lot to know what's going on. But in my marketplace for a long time, the whole pattern was show off these big numbers, show off your fancy cars, and tell everybody what a badass you are, and sort of beat them into submission into giving you money. It's a major pattern interrupt for me to come out and shoot a video in my Jeep and brag about the $500 replacement value of the Jeep, for example. It's just different. When I took the stage recently at a Robbins event as a way to interrupt the pattern, because most people had taken the stage and listed all these credentials as why they are so badass, which many of them were, I got on stage and said, "Hello, my name is Dr. Frank Kern, attorney at law, chief engineer for NASA." And obviously if you take one look at me you realize that I don't have any business leaving the house, much less certainly not a doctor or an attorney or with NASA. So people got a laugh at that. And then I was able to say, "Hey, if you're going to fake your credentials, you might as well go for the gold." And then you got them. So I think getting that first laugh through self-depreciation almost throws people off balance a little bit, sort of like in judo, you know. If you, you have two opposing forces and they're both coming at each other, you're not going to get anywhere. But if one of them goes off balance, then he can be controlled by the other, more stronger and congruent force. So I don't know if that makes any sense. It sounds pretty good though from my perspective.

Well, yeah, I actually, I want to stick to this for a second with you, um, so, you know, because you always in your videos, you know, you always talk about about this sort of 3-step process, which the first step is this whole thing of pattern interrupt. And so what I'd like you to do, if you would, is make sure everybody who's listening to this call knows what you mean by that. And then the next question is, are you always infusing humor in your pattern interrupt every time that you do it?

Not always, but I can't remember. No, definitely not always. Yeah, so one thing is you have to be really careful if you produce lots of stuff that you can't have your pattern interrupts become a pattern within themselves. So first let's define pattern interrupt, right? A pattern interrupt is simply when you break the pattern of predictable and expected behavior. So it's kind of like people always have, or often complain of always having the same argument with their spouse. So the spouse might be, I want to watch football. I want to watch Oprah. You always watch Oprah. Always watch football, then the big fight. And that's always the pattern, right? So a pattern interrupt example would be, I want to watch football. Okay, you can watch football. I was going to get naked and watch Oprah, but whatever you want to do is fine. Then it's like, what the— you know, it's a completely different expected response, and therefore it sort of jars your brain. So in marketing, if the pattern is constantly, hello, I'm a badass, buy my stuff, then the The person gets used to seeing that and almost has this defensive barrier up to it, whether it's consciously or not. And then they have this pattern of reaction, which is going to be, this guy's an asshole, blah blah blah, he's full of shit, or whatever. Or he's just another one of these guys trying to, you know, jam something down my throat, or these are faked income claims, or whatever. So if you come right out and do almost the complete opposite of that, you know, and then, you know, for example, I might make an ad that says, complete idiot, weirdo surfer mysteriously ends up wealthy after stumbling across the internet in 1994. After having managed to not screw it up over the past 10 years, he's willing to show you some of his bizarre yet effective techniques or something. That's a completely different approach. So that's what pattern interrupt is. So to answer the question of whether or not I always use humor in it, the answer is no. Because if I did always use humor, then the use of humor originally on the outset of the promotion would then become a pattern. So my audience would be like, oh, here comes the joke, and now here's what he's going to do next, and it would become less effective. Does that make sense?

It makes a lot of sense.

All right.

So here's my follow-up, well, here's my next question, it's not even a follow-up question. And I'm going to ask it first to you, Frank, then to Dan, if you can answer it, is stuff that would be either consciously or subconsciously on the list of things I would never use in humor, use in my humor.

I mean, obviously, Frank, profanity is not on that list for you.

You're willing, you know, anybody just listening will hear that you're very comfortable using profanity in order to add humor to your to talk and grab attention. I have often said, by the way, about you, never where you could hear it, but I've said to others, is like, he's the one guy I know that can use more profanity than anybody else and everybody just sort of enjoys it. Nobody gets upset by it. Whereas others, obviously, people would be running out screaming about that.

So what's on your do not use humor list, or is there anything on that list? [Speaker:ADRIAN WILSON] Well, yeah, I would never want to say anything that would be racist or sexist or anything like that. I don't want to make derogatory comments about anyone. So I would always try to really avoid using humor at someone else's expense where it wasn't in fun. So I use humor at my friend Dr. Mike Wu Ming's expense all the time. But it's always in fun. So I would never say, come out and just make fun of someone in a mean way and turn the tide against someone to laugh at them and hopefully make myself look good. I would never do that. Never do anything to harm anyone else or cause someone pain. And I think that's an important distinction because a classic way to get a laugh is to just, well, let's make fun of this guy and we'll all laugh at this guy over here. Hahaha, and in the end that's just a real sucker's game because either way you cut the cake, you're being an asshole, you know, and you might be getting a laugh at the end of the day, but you're getting a laugh and you're still being an asshole. So that's not really the way to go. Other than that, everything is really on limits. And, you know, the only time you'll ever see me really being profane and getting, you know, working dirty as Dan said, I'm going to start using that phrase all the time, is when I'm in a live environment and I'm constantly gauging the audience's response. So what people probably don't know about me when I do live presentations is they are 90% improvised. I will literally take a notebook up on stage with like 5 key points I want to talk about, and then I'll just have a conversation with the audience. So if I'm getting a deadpan I don't just go out there and say, I'm going to use a bunch of profanity and this is going to be great. If people got real freaked out by it, I'd back off.

Well, listen, and everybody is going to have a great opportunity to witness that at the Info Summit because we're giving you a whole evening of Frank Kern uncensored, I guess we're calling it, or unplugged, I think we're calling it.

That's right. What I meant to be— What I mean by improvised is carefully, meticulously planned out for maximum benefit to the audience.

Well, but just to save your ass for a second here, the fact that you've got 5 really key points that people can take back with them that you'll be teaching them, that in and of itself is worth sitting in that room. I've seen you speak on the stage actually by watching videos you speak on the stage, and I know that it— I mean, it's very clever and it's also very, very informative and helpful.

So, so I don't, I don't know, is that you snoozing on the other end? Um, that was a helicopter. I've got all the doors and windows in this office, and my whole office is on a cliff now on the sea, and you just open one wall and for some reason helicopters know when I'm on the phone and they like to buzz by. So thank you. Before, before I ask Dan, to answer that question, I just want to ask you one follow-up quick question to that. Politics— do you ever touch it? Um, I don't. Uh, well, I mean, I would— I kind of made fun of George Bush and let it be known that I didn't care for him, but I'm not interested in politics at all. So if I, if I was passionately interested in it and had any education about it, I would, you know, because at the end of the day, if people don't like me or like my point of view, then they can just kiss my ass and go do business elsewhere. There's, you know, God's making people every day, and they're all gonna have money, and I can sell everybody something, you know, is my belief. So I don't stay away from politics because I think it's bad. It's just not my bag, you know. But my whole philosophy about selling stuff and the use of humor in marketing and just about the approach to this stuff in general, and it's something that I'll be talking about at the InfoSummit, which may be surprise coming from me is I believe that one way, not the only way, but one way to get very, very wealthy and to be very, very successful is to give away things that make people feel really good and then to sell things that make them feel even better. I should amend that by saying give away things that make people happy and make them feel good and then sell things that make them even happier and make them feel even better. So when it comes down to the use of humor and joking around and shenanigans and stuff, The bottom line is I would never want to do anything that would make anybody feel unhappy. So that's the stuff that's off limits, is something that could potentially make someone feel unhappy or hurt or used or anything like that. I just don't think it's really the way to go.

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