Why weird is winning
Weird is winning. Don't believe it? Paul Cotton looks at the creatives who turned bizarre ideas into breakthrough successes.
Why weird is winning
There you are, on the train, in the office, having it all from home with the laptop in the kitchen, undoubtedly keeping an eye on the Cannes Lions just gone by. You’re a plugged-in and hip-to-the-trends marketeer, you watched all the Grand Prix, and you didn’t miss a beat. I see you.
And with all the seeing you were doing, it means you probably noticed something… something weird.
A good number of the brands getting big wins this year were getting those Ws with bizarre campaigns. Creative, absolutely. But stuff that makes you think, who even signed off on that? Did I really just see that? You did. It was cool. Let’s talk about it. First up: examples (just in case you missed something, even though you totally, totally didn’t).
The Pop-Tarts Edible Mascot
Weber Shandwick / Grand Prix for Live Brand Experience or Activation
I wouldn’t normally start by plugging my own colleagues, I’d be more subtle. But nothing about this idea was subtle. Instead of turning food into a college football mascot, they turned a mascot into food and then made everybody watch while it was devoured by the victors. As a snack. That is definitively, deliciously weird as shit.
Michael CeraVe
Ogilvy PR / Grand Prix for Multi-Platform Social Campaign
Imagine hijacking your own brand to convince your audience that your product belonged to some reclusive, camera-shy celeb with a thin beard. Getting that dude to do things your brand team would never sign off. Asking your legal department to deny that you’re doing exactly what you’re doing. Creating a massive conspiracy just to reveal… that it was a conspiracy all along. Nothingness. Bizarre, effective, nothingness.
Dramamine’s The Last Barf Bag
FCB / Grand Prix for OTC Oral Medicines
A film, art exhibition and product range outlining a grimdark future of extinction for their category’s long-standing competitor. Disguised as an effort to elevate, this strange work of comedic gold existed only to sound the final death knellof the product they’re putting out of business: the barf bag. Gross and strange, but brassy AF.
Specsaver’s The Misheard Version
GOLIN / Use of Audio & Radio as Medium
Do you know what will make your audience love you? Gaslighting them. Making them believe everything they know about something is wrong, even when they’re right. Weird but true. The stats don’t lie.
And there was a vast avalanche of entries, winners and losers both, that exhibited this theme of getting strange and going too far. Or… just far enough?
But why?
Much like any AI-generated SEO-milking gadget review listicle, there is no solid answer. There are only the many contributing factors, the considerations and ultimately your own opinions and understanding of what feels right to you.
Regardless, here’s some low-key guidance to help you, the savvy marketeer, find your way to that understanding:
Your brain on novelty
Every time the ape-like meatware that we think of as a brain encounters novel stimuli, anything new, shiny, that breaks with our deep endless unconscious pattern processing… we get a dopamine hit. This is (part of) why we’ve been successful as a species, scanning the plains of our ancestors for new threats and opportunities. It’s also why we may eventually succumb to doomscrolling and stop going outside altogether. We are absolutely hooked on novelty at a baseline neuro-chemical level. Not only does copping a fresh experience trigger our reward systems, it triggers the systems that motivate us to desperately hunt for more – just in case there are more rewards we can get our paws on.
It’s like, the culture
The proliferation of mememunication (editor’s note: absolutely not) communication through memes has changed not onlyhow chill peeps like you and I talk to each other, but caused a tectonic shift in humour. Simple slapstick be gone, andbaseline sarcasm sods off. Now self-deprecation is king alongside absurdism, his non-binary co-ruling life partner. A beautiful couple that allows the world to take a step back, exploring not only their deeply cool shared experiences but struggles and insecurities. Through this defocusing lens of humour, they can commit to revealing stories and secrets with each other to lighten the cursed days when shrinkflation and enshittification darken their doors. And committing is key.
Then you have the memes themselves. An I-can’t-believe-this-stupid-sh*t-works mixed media language buoyed by shared cultural context that inserts their brilliantly adaptive messages directly into your awakened mind. Endless repetition and iteration are inherent to the slide towards memes as a rapid-fire information delivery mechanism, necessitating a sudden growth in novelty – pushing much of it towards the weird. Not everyone can be clever like you, dear reader. Some of us must simply be unexpected to be watchable. As every slick talkin’ tabloid rag writer knows weird is beyond watchable, it’s talkable. Weird is in the water cooler.
When their powers combine
Our friends, family, customers, audiences and really, just about everyone is hard-wired to at the very least notice, the weird, because their brains crave novel. And remember: not everything novel is weird, but everything weird is by its nature novel. Meanwhile, our newfound penchants in communication and entertainment (see fig. 1: the socials) are programming us to create, seek and enjoy it, making weird both relevant and effective. If you’re up to it anyway.
So, what can I do for my brand(s)?
You’re testing me, that’s cool. I get it. Asking to see if I know, right? Fair. I’d do the same. Out of the wild infinitude of future possibilities that exist in this timeline alone, how can I and the brand(s) I represent, ride the wave of weird culture into unfathomable wins?
It’s not easy, my friends.
It takes trust. The hardest earned, most easily wasted currency of all.
Trust and a triumvirate of sacred guidelines are below.
Build and re-build your cultural framework
Limit the amount of trust you need by outlining flexible guidelines around the kind of topics you can comment on. The sorts of creators you can f**k with. The level of engagement you’re comfortable with. Not the specifics, think districts. Work the knowledge mines with your preferred brains-trust or go solo. You’re in charge boss. Just don’t do it once. Do it regularly, culture isn’t waiting for you and the memes are repeating faster and faster and faster.
Empower yourself, your team, and your agency to play within that framework
With everyone listening to the same bassline, it’s time to let them freestyle, trusting (ah, there it is) that they’re going tomake sweet harmonies. Encourage them to watch the world go by and give them the loose approval structure they need to act on it quickly. You don’t have to rip out the handbrake and ride free, but you can loosen your grip on the wheel.
Commit with swagger
The world is out there literally creating and communicating through snippets of culture big and small, telling their truths more openly, more vulnerably and authentically than ever before. They’re hitting livestream to the unknown with abandon, even though once it’s on the Internet, it’s always on the Internet (right, Babs?). That means you need to be right there in it with them.
You cannot walk down into weird-town without commitment to the play. The younglings will smell “hello fellow kids” on you from across the generational divide before you’ve gotten up the gumption to hit the post. The oldies will feel something unpleasant in the pit of their stomachs, as they watch what they might have flubbed. No one will be inspired.
Instead, when you’re confronted with an absolutely bizarre but incredi-wow juicy cultural opportunity that fits your brand, you need to lock arms with your hot and spicy musical gang members and go all-in. Be the confident, cultural maximalist you are in your personal life (or your most extroverted dreams.)
An end, of sorts
There is no end. What is weird will forever change, as it should or it won’t be what it is. Though these guidelines should help you, there is no set path and again… nor should there be. It’s more philosophy than methodology. Lifestyle over book learning.
But if you’re feeling it within… the guidelines should help. For real.
Investigate novelty. Stay close to the conversation. Form your framework. Let go of the wheel and commit with confidence. That’s how you be weird.
And right now? Weird is winning.
Paul Cotton is the head of ideas for the Australian arm of Jack Morton Worldwide and Weber Shandwick.
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