Plan de Comunicación

In humans, survival and pleasure exist side by side. They are the ying and yang, the left and right, the balancing forces of our existence.

At the dawn of human history, survival was critical. Pleasure, although important, was secondary, but never absent. As noted in Chapter 2, whenever survival needs were met, even momentarily, pleasure took over. Pleasure could take many guises. Food, sex, and sleep were always pleasurable, and, for survival purposes, came first. As time progressed and survival required less attention, people began to seek out other pleasurable experi- ences. One such early human example would have been the sharing of stories around a nighttime fire. Out of those early stories, a whole new way of giving and receiving plea- sure was born, the entertainment arts.

We know that there are scientific reasons for the development of the entertainment arts. Robert Sylwester, in his book A Celebration of Neurons, reported the findings as fol- lows: “Our brain has more frontal lobe capacity than we normally need to survive because that critical-thinking and problem-solving mechanisms located there must be sufficient for crisis conditions.”2

CUE CARD: The entertainment arts

were invented to make use of excess brain capacity.

He continued by explaining that the entertainment arts were invented to make use of our excess capacity:

“Since our survival doesn’t require our problem-solving mechanisms to operate at capacity most of the time, we’re invented social and cultural problems to keep them continually stimulated and alert. The arts, games, and social organizations provide pleasant metaphoric settings that help to develop and maintain our brain’s problem-solving mechanisms.”3

As survival became assured, we have increasingly moved toward those things that give us pleasure. Whether the forum was a nighttime cave fire, the Greek coliseum, the Eliz- abethan stage, the vaudeville palace, Broadway, the movies, television, or most recently, the Internet, a straight line can be traced from the receding of survival needs and the ascension of entertainment.

We have become a society obsessed with entertainment. In the United States, on average, we spend 5.1 percent of our income on entertainment. That’s figure is compara- ble to our spending on health care (5.3 percent), and is more than we spend on clothing (4.7 percent).

What those figures don’t represent is the rise in entertainment spending through the years. In 1935–36, we spent just 3.3 percent of our income on entertainment, 4.4 per- cent on health care, and 10.4 percent on clothing. Even more discouraging, the percent- age spent on education, mostly for college and continuing adult education, has remained relatively unchanged through the years, from 1.0 percent in 1935–36 to 1.4 percent in 1999.

Where spending on entertainment is at a high, the rate of personal savings is at a low, under 3 percent.4_{After housing (32.6 per-}

cent), transportation (19.0 percent), and food (13.6 percent), enjoyment trumps all. In addition, the percentage of income spent on food is misleading, because 5.7 percent of that category is dining out costs.5_{As we}

shall soon see, a significant success factor in the food service industry is the enter- tainment value a restaurant provides.

In The Entertainment Economy, Michael Wolf observed, “The lines between enter- tainment and non-entertainment are dis- appearing.”6_{He then continued to explain}

that “entertainment has found itself at the forefront of economic growth and cultural revo- lution,”7_{and that “we seek entertainment in activities that used to be purely work-related}

or at least chore-related (such as buying groceries, choosing a car, looking for a new home).”8

He also suggested that the implications for organizations are huge: “Without enter- tainment content, few consumer products stand a chance in tomorrow’s marketplace.”9

Walt Disney concurred: “In my opinion, entertainment in its broadest sense has become a necessity rather than a luxury in the life of the American public.”10

The impact of entertainment that Wolf and Disney referred to is upon us. Advertis- ers, news organizations, businesses, sports, and educational services have all responded to the info-fog by placing entertainment content in their products. We will examine the ways that organizations in each of these arenas use entertainment techniques to com- municate. In the process, we will set up our later examination of Show Biz Training techniques.

Advertisers

Advertisers have an especially difficult task. They must make buyers out of people who have no knowledge of, or interest in, their products. They must cut through the info-fog, gain and then hold attention, and move people to favorable action. As advertising exec- utive, Bill Bernach (Doyle Dane Bernbach), stated: “The truth isn’t the truth until people believe you, and they can’t believe you if they don’t know what you are saying, and they can’t know what you’re saying if they don’t listen to you, and they won’t listen to you if you’re not interesting, and you won’t be interesting unless you say things imaginatively, originally, freshly.”11

The advertiser’s task is especially daunting when you consider that the actual differ- ence between products is often minimal. Advertisers cannot rely on reasoning or logic to prove their point. Instead, they must associate their products with pleasure, and they use entertainment to induce pleasurable emotions. As Malcolm Gladwell explained in The

Experience Economy: “There is a simple way to package information that, under the right

circumstances, can make it irresistible. All you have to do is find it.”12

These days, entertainment usually provides the packaging. The entertainment industry is so involved in the production of commercials that advertising is responsible for approx- imately 40 percent of the entertainment industry’s revenues.13

Television commercials provide excellent examples of how advertisers package infor- mation through entertainment techniques. Advertisers start with a solid story that engages people, add comedy, use props, present gee-whiz magical effects, and play toe-tapping music to make their points. See if you can identify the use of specific techniques in Table 3-1.

COMEDY IN COMMERCIALS

Comedy is a major factor in ad success. In fact, approximately 42 percent of all commer- cials use humor to communicate their messages.14_{It may also be appropriate to say that}

the best commercials use humor, given that 69 percent of the commercials honored with an International CLIO award had a humorous tone.15

Comedic ads deliver an amazing feat: people watch for them, enjoy them, and talk about them with friends and colleagues in spite of the fact that the ads are sales pitches. Think about the number of telemarketing calls you hang up on, and you begin to see the point. Commercials dodge the “hang up” reflex by making the product being sold more appealing and therefore more likely to be marketed successfully. Advertising expert Luke Sullivan, in Hey Whipple, Squeeze This, explained it this way: “In all categories where products are essentially all alike, the best-known and most-well-liked brand has the winning card.”16