Today’s humorist labors under onerous conditions and restrictions not experienced by the cutups of yesteryear. (Matter of fact, I just thought of this yesteryear.)

“And what are those conditions and restrictions?” you may well ask. Go ahead.

There are too many landmines out there that we humorists have to avoid nowadays.  Too many sacred cows you can no longer tip over.

For instance, when did orphans and poor people become off limits? I’m sure that many of them have a keen sense of humor, but still it seems we now have to steer clear of them.

“Well, what about making fun of rich people,” another question you again may well ask…but don’t push it.

The stars of the silver screen, the gridiron, the stump, the pulpit, the boardroom, and the car pool would seem to be fitting targets for japes, bon mots, and knee slappers, but when you look closely at the tragic lives many of these gin besotted, reefer smoking, bejeweled celebrities lead, holding them up to good natured ridicule would be like shooting fish in a barrel (now that is a hoot).

And if one writes about one’s hilarious experiences at some mogul’s mansion, the vast majority of one’s, or even two’s, readers can’t identify with them; in fact they are still smarting either after paying a cover charge to hear your nasal delivery of excerpts from your writing, or after paying big bucks for your book and blaming you for its exorbitant price. Though, here’s a tip. Do what my readers do. When my latest book comes out, just wait a week, and then buy it off the bargain table.

Anyway, it seems like the only things left that are funny might be you and I. You? Don’t make me laugh.  And, there’s certainly nothing funny about me, a fact I will continue proving throughout this piece.

So what could I write about that would tickle a reader’s fancy? (The pros don’t move on lines like that.)  What would be a funny subject that hasn’t been done or done well, making it rare indeed? Something readers could identify with, wrap their eyes around.

Here are some subjects that could be grist for a humorist’s mill. Unfortunately they already have been ground exceedingly fine…over and over and over : • Potholes • Going to the dentist • Politicians
• Sitcoms • The local weathermen WHO STILL CAN’T GET IT RIGHT! • Taxes • Airplanes • People in foreign countries who can’t understand plain English (“I know, right?).

Well, my secret to my having become a wildly popular writer (here, I’m using the future improbable tense) will be to ignore content, and just concentrate on style.

Now as to style, who to emulate (rip off) without anybody catching on? I remember showing one of my essays to all of my friends, and being profoundly embarrassed when all three scornfully, joyfully, and correctly accused me of plagiarizing Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy. I had hoped that I’d picked my friends more carefully, and had taken the appropriate steps to cull out anybody whose reading comfort level had not risen much above Love Story.

I gave up long ago on trying to be Benchleyesque, (a ballet term meaning “impossible to duplicate).”

So, I just decided to do a blend of my favorite humorists—a dash of P.G. Wodehouse, a soupcon of
Dave Barry, a pinch (something I’m sure she was used to) of Dorothy Parker, a hint of Mark Twain, a schtickle of Jerry Seinfeld, and a shot of Chelsea Handler—put them in a blender and serve—chilled.

In conclusion (sounds of coughing subsiding noticeably—finally, replaced by the sounds of chairs scraping expectantly, ready to dash out—“Hey, we can still get home in time for ‘Keeping up with the Kardashians’”), just pick anything non-controversial for a subject of your humor. Make fun of rocks, for example. Talk about the young pebbles and the old fossils. See, you’re smiling already.

Now, if anybody wants to buy one of my books, come up to the counter and I’ll be glad to sign it for you. I do charge extra for signing baseballs, helmets, and other memorabilia.

Know who else will suffer? Potential (and existing) customers for your product(s) or service(s) who will be hitting the remote on the TV, zapping through your commercial that was on a program that they had DVRd.

Anything else that might suffer? Right, sales and profits.

Putting pretty much untalented kids into a commercial in which it’s not essential for them to appear, becomes trickier when one finds that the child in question is the client’s son or daughter, neighbor’s kid, etc.; indeed, is fraught with peril.

I’ve used children in commercials where it was appropriate, and not just “borrowed interest” like putting women in skimpy bikinis to help sell swimming pool motors.

In one radio commercial I had a popular baseball star do a commercial for an Orthodontic society. The baseball player was wearing braces to straighten his teeth—true fact. So I set the scenario as the star meeting a kid in the reception area of an orthodontist, and responding to the kid’s natural questions, making the point that  orthodontists work with adults, too.

In another radio commercial, I had two kids voices talking in the womb (theatre of the mind), talking to each other about the client hospital’s new Birthing Center. That was a National Silver Microphone winner.

Just pick the right situation, and not just one that you want to put your family in simply because you can because it’s your dime.

Talent agencies actually do have access to young children who can read lines well, and/or can act on TV.

If you don’t go that route, you can have your own cattle call (more of a “calves call”), actually.  But it might lead to hurt feelings on the part of parents whose kids didn’t make the cut.

What’s that? Have I ever used one of my own kids in any commercials? Well, that’s neither here nor there, is it? Oh it is?  Well in one tv commercial for a mass merchandiser’s local chain stores, I had my youngest daughter featured at about five years old under a Christmas tree in front of the fireplace. It was a “Merry Christmas” spot from the chain.

Come on, she was surrounded by St. Bernard Puppies for crying out loud!

If all your agency or someone at your company can come up with for your advertising is a ripoff of an acclaimed ad campaign, like “Got Milk?*” somebody is getting paid too much money for too little thought, and usually, too little results.

Knowing that imitation is the sincerest form of plagiarism, you should eschew it; if you have a hardware store, I (in my role here as the consumer) do not need to see “Got Hammers?” on your employees’ aprons. Hey, I’m already in your store. I know you sell hammers. Tell me something I don’t know, more important, tell me something that would convince me to buy something at your store. How about the aprons saying, “Save energy—yours—with a titanium hammer,” and then have a point of purchase display inform potential buyers that swinging a titanium hammer transfers 97% of your energy from swinging the hammer to the nail head, while a steel hammer transfers only 70% of your energy to the nail. Titanium drives a nail more efficiently and there’s less recoil energy to travel back into your arm.

Finally, think what your attention getting headline is really saying, and whether or not it’s believable (it probably won’t be memorable if every copycat advertiser is already using that phrase or a variation thereof).

Take “One (name it) at a time.”  The first use of it made the point of individualized attention, but not every ripoff of that line holds up under scrutiny.  One public school system used (briefly) the line, something like “Preparing for the future, one student at a time,” and it just came across as not credible—not with what we hear about overworked teachers, disruptive students, and less than ideal student to teacher ratios. A private school might have been able to use it with more believability. A realtor used something like “Selling real estate, one house at a time.” Really? You must be a part timer or not too successful if  you’re currently working on only one sale.

*Got Milk? is an American advertising campaign encouraging the consumption of cow’s milk, which was created by the advertising agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners for the California Milk Processor Board in 1993 and later licensed for use by milk processors and dairy farmers. It has been running since October 29, 1993. The campaign has been credited with greatly increasing milk sales in California, though not nationwide.

The ads would typically feature people in various situations involving dry or sticky foods and treats such as cookies and peanut butter. The person then finds himself in an uncomfortable situation due to a full mouth and no milk to wash it down. At the end of the commercial the character would look sadly to the camera and boldly displayed would be the words, “Got Milk?”.

…The slogan has appeared in numerous alternative versions on t-shirts, advertisements, and real advertisements. For the most part the California Milk Processor Board has ignored the alternative uses, although in 2007 it threatened lawsuit against PETA for its anti-dairy campaign, “Got pus”, which began in 2002.    Wikipedia

Sometimes that means listening to dozens of pre-screened voice demos from  talent agencies.

Of course, I also have to work within the parameters of the client’s budget—just because I know that Brad Pitt has the perfect set of pipes for my local commercial doesn’t justify my trying to book him for the spot. Nor do I line up a celebrity impersonator, although I’ve used good impersonators from time to time—with great success in spots that use the vehicle of humor. Bad impersonators unfortunately are almost literally a dime a dozen, and while using one of them keeps production costs down, they also are an annoying distraction from the message and the image of the client and his or her product or service, just like attempting to use humor that falls flat. Usually that commercial just builds for sixty seconds to climax with a so-called punch line. So, now you’re into “negative marketing.”

Make sure the voice is appropriate to the situation; you don’t want Ted Baxter doing his fake bass in a “slice of life” spot that is supposed to be depicting the average Joe talking to the average Jane. And look at the script for your slice of life commercial—do people in real life really repeat the name of the client and the phone number that many times?*  The dialog should reflect the way real people talk. Some times slice of life spots have as much connection to reality as realty tv shows do.

When planning on running radio or tv commercials, either for a short flight or an extended campaign, don’t have production costs tacked on at the end as an afterthought.

Bad execution can ruin a great script. Sure, the salesman (excuse me, “account executive”) from a radio station tells you that not only can they write a script for you, they’ll produce the spot for you—for free and donate the talents’ voices if you’re just going to run on their station. Remember, not only do you get what you pay for, you also get what you don’t pay for—irritated and/or unconvinced potential customers. I really don’t understand how some of these voices can be on the air in the first place, let alone on every low budget commercial that runs on their station.

You might get lucky with the script, usually it’s written by an overworked traffic person, fresh out of college or by the account person. There’s a reason that they aren’t out making a living writing—they can’t.

Your receptionist may not have the right voice to play your receptionist on the air. She may have a voice that is actually annoying to people who don’t know her and can’t see her friendly smiling face.

A few more helpful observations on this topic will be the subject of the next blog.

Meanwhile, let me leave you with this:

For years, every Fall, a client who owned a health club would entertain pitches from various radio stations for his annual membership drive. When he picked the station(s), he’d give them a fact sheet and take them up on their offer of writing a script at no charge for him. I’d tell him how wrong he was (He had become a friend, so I could get away with it) and that he was wasting his and everybody else’s time by trying to get an effective commercial from under-qualified and overworked people to whom he had not been able to convey his vision of his club.  He responded that he didn’t want to miss out on any approaches we might have overlooked. And just before the indoor season started, as regular as calendarwork, he’d call me in. He’d say, “You were right, they had no clue —get to work,” which I did, only after making him promise to take me out for a steak dinner, besides paying my usual fee, for making me scramble at the last minute.

Now, I really couldn’t blame him for trying to get something for nothing, but I kept hoping each year that he would have learned from the experiences of previous years. Hope is a wonderful thing.

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*About that phone number: Unless it’s incredibly easy to remember, like 888-888-8888, don’t bother with putting the phone number in the spot. A good portion of your listening audience will be driving, and they have enough distractions, from texting to shaving their legs, to bother with writing it down. Repeating the number four times in a commercial, just takes valuable time away from your message. If you have Joel’s Auto Salvage, “Get a Crash Course in Savings,” just mention your website. Once. If its a tricky one like “Joelsautosalvageopen247365.com,” just say “Google Joel’s Auto Salvage.”