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See what’s brimming beneath marketing’s surface. Explore every installment of ‘The Deep End’ — a periodic column brought to you by studioID’s Strategy Group.
In the background of most of my video calls, if you look closely, you’ll see a print from the illustrator Michael Paraskevas. Aptly called “The Advertising Art Directors’ Convention,” it shows a crowd (in business casual) on a balcony, with muppet-like animals and objects as heads. It’s a little weird and very silly, and it serves as a perpetual reminder to not take what I do too seriously.
I’m not alone in embracing this absurdity. Media in the last few years has increasingly leaned into what we’ve been quick to label as “Gen-Z” humor (think memes you have to be in the know to get, unexpected non-sequiturs, and pure chaos), with marketers tentatively picking up the cues to incorporate in youth-centered content campaigns.
While younger demographics embrace this storytelling style to find meaning in an unpredictable world, this is not a new or particularly generation-specific phenomenon. This style of leaning into nonsense to uncover a deeper meaning about present-day life goes back at least 100 years.
As marketers (yes, even B2B marketers), it’s time for us to dust it off.
Source: The Advertising Art Directors’ Convention, Michael Paraskevas via Travis Gonzaelz
Fun fact: Michael Paraskevas is also the creator of an absurdist children’s show, Maggie and the Ferocious Beast.
The Weirding of Content
As someone who spends too much time at the movies, I knew “weird” was back when Everything Everywhere All at Once won the 95th Academy Award for Best Picture. If you haven’t seen it, an attempt to sum it up (without giving it its true justice) would be: a mother and daughter redefine the meaning of their relationship across boundless, multidimensional time and space. Throw in some googly eyes and a literal (and metaphorical) bagel, and you have one of the oddest, most heartwarming, and universally loved stories of 2022.
Source: Everything, Everywhere All At Once via GIPHY
At one point in “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” the protagonists turn into rocks. Because why not?
In 2024, things have only gotten weirder. Problemista, which came out this past February, connects the threat of a visa denial with literally disappearing off the Earth. Outside entertainment, we’ve seen reputable media brands like the Washington Post “memify” the news, blending serious socio-economic stories with internet talk.
In marketing, we’ve seen this trend trickle into traditionally stuffy sectors like financial investment, with the banking elite playing into some of the more “nonsensical” terms bandied about by advisors.
The weirdness is not bound by channel, either. Wherever content can live, more creators, storytellers, and brands are leaning toward concepts that push the boundaries of everyday reality to capture attention-strapped audiences.
🤣 Related Reading: Cue the Comedy: 3 Brand Campaigns Making People Laugh in 2024
What Does It Mean to Be Absurd?
While these stories across entertainment and advertising are ultimately funny, memorable, and viral, they do more than stretch the extremes of our imagination. For the audience, they offer an honest perspective of everyday life amidst very real challenges. This is what playwrights wrestled with in the late 50s when they coined the term “Theater of Absurd.”
Absurdist theater seeks to depict a heightened example of regular people attempting to find meaning in a “fundamentally absurd universe.” It borrows its philosophy from the Dadaist movement of the 1910s, where a bunch of artists tried to prove that art was anything the artist intended it to be, effectively rendering it meaningless (which is how we were blessed with a 1919 postcard of the Mona Lisa with a goatee drawn on it).
Source: L.H.O.O.Q., Marhcel Duchamp, via Staatliches Museum Schwerin
Yes, this is from 1919, not 2024.
Both the Theater of the Absurd and Dadaism were reactions to periods of instability (in both cases, World Wars) that used irrationality as commentary. The cycle repeated through the ’60s and ’70s, with similar turbulence leading to Neo-Dadaism. Only this time, artists used absurdist principles and a mish-mash of pop culture not to destroy meaning — but to find it. And while adults drove this movement forward, you can see the trappings of this movement in children’s shows (Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, The Muppets, and even SpongeBob SquarePants, to name a few).
Send in the (Clowns) Memes
In 2024, it makes sense that absurdist and (neo)Dadaist content has re-emerged and thrived.
In a 2022 “Stress in America” survey, 77% of 18- to 25-year-olds said that the COVID-19 pandemic has stolen major life moments they will never get back.
Of the climate crisis, 70% of Americans in particular say climate news makes them feel sad and frustrated, with another 41% believing their community will become a worse place to live over the next 30 years because of it. Economically, younger generations, in particular, feel increasingly short-changed by inflation, job insecurity, and what feels like an endless barrage of bad news.
♻️ Related Reading: Crisis Fatigue + ESG Messaging: How to Recenter Trust in Your Brand’s Narrative
Faced with feelings of dread, Millennials, and Gen-Z have used their internet-savviness and deeper access to pop culture to repackage these feelings into humorous in-jokes for others trapped in the same boat: memes.
Source: Climememechange
Source: YPULSE
Can you imagine what the original Dadaists could have done with memes?
Memes follow the same recipe of past absurdist art forms:
- Take a piece of pop culture
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Strip it from its original context
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Join it with a piece of meaning that the artist and their respective community will understand
The resulting work gives the original content a new interpretation. Memes play up irony and create exaggerated comparisons. And, in many cases, they also act as resistance against institutions or ideas deemed undesirable.
As the internet spreads memes instantaneously, and with online communities becoming increasingly fractured and niche, memes and the absurdist notions they convey have become a standard form of humor. Even in the workplace, employees expect an office environment that is more receptive to their humor.
According to McKinsey, leaders with a sense of humor are 27% more motivating, with humor being a top predictor of employee psychological safety.
Why (and How) Marketers Should Embrace the Madness
So where does this leave marketers looking to catch the wave? The quick answer is to be funny. And to be funny, you need to take risks. Ninety-one percent of people globally prefer brands to be funny, yet 95% of business leaders fear using humor. It’s easy to understand the latter, with the margin for error for brands to convey the right intent being so low, especially in online spaces.
It’s not enough to try to be funny or to reuse a meme format you’ve seen work on social media and expect to get the same engagement.
Like past connoisseurs of the absurd, that comedic post has to unveil a deeper meaning about your audience’s lived experience.
Explore Contradictions
One way for brands to create genuine absurdist content is to mine their market for interesting paradoxes:
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What does the gap between success and failure in a given industry or area of interest look like?
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What is the tension around expectations?
Contradictions in Action: ‘Couch Potato Farms’ by Pluto TV
For their 2024 Super Bowl ad spot, Pluto TV explored the age-old contradiction between perceptions of laziness and the joyful consumption of television. Here, the streaming app challenged the negative associations around being a “couch potato,” by depicting literal couch potatoes growing proudly on a farm.
The spot has racked up over 3.6M views on YouTube, and even earned The Washington Post’s pick for Best Parody at the 2024 Super Bowl.
Deconstruct Old Standards
At its best, absurdism offers a platform to challenge old ways of doing things and to imagine a better way forward. Marketers can do the same, leaning into the aspects of their brands that can make life better for their audience or speak to their larger efforts to be a more socially responsible organization.
Deconstructing Old Standards in Action: ‘Oblivian’ by Make My Money Matter
Make My Money Matter, a UK non-profit focused on more socially responsible investments of pension funds, used a mock investor “thank you” message to push for divestment in fossil-fuel companies. Whereas the standard used to be putting taxpayer dollars into “stable” portfolios filled with these companies, this brand is using the silliness (and mild horror) of “Oblivia Coalmine” to rethink that approach.
The PSA garnered more than 15 million organic YouTube views within three weeks, leading to more than 70,000 visits to the Make My Money Matter website.
Help Your Audience Find Meaning
While the goal of any marketing campaign should be creating a clear sense of intent with your audience, absurdism also allows more room for audiences to come to that realization on their own.
As a storytelling format, content like memes reflects what audiences think about regularly. They are an opportunity to reignite those thoughts and feelings and associate your brand with a potential solution or new perspective.
This is especially true for B2B marketers, who are fed a steady (and often boring) diet of product specs, cost savings, and ROI. While all of those points are important in moving from consideration to purchase, B2B buyers are also human.
Help Your Audience Find Meaning in Action: ‘The Future’ by CrowdStrike
CrowdStrike accomplished this recently with its IT-focused Super Bowl ad. Set in a universe that collides Spaghetti Western and SciFi Steampunk, the modern-day CrowdStrike hero saves the town from robotic threats. While funny, the ad conjures up IT buyers’ everyday challenge: rapid technological change combined with antiquated corporate systems.
CrowdStrike’s second Super Bowl ad spot continued to do its job of introducing the importance of cybersecurity to a broader audience through creative storytelling, racking up 76k views on YouTube, and making several ad industry round-up lists.
Absurdism Matters
When used correctly, absurdism can be another powerful tool in the marketing toolbox to engage audiences increasingly occupied with the uncertainties lurking outside their door. But perhaps more importantly, it’s also a way to keep us honest and authentic in our storytelling.
Audiences and potential customers want to engage with brands who not only get them, but will also stand with them, embrace who they are, and support what they care about. And, somewhat selfishly as a connoisseur of the absurd myself, it’s a way of helping us all make better sense of being human.
