Wit + Wisdom: June 16, 2023

Meat the new boss, not  the same as the old boss 😂

Does anyone out there even really get meat-free eating? There’s vegetarian, vegan, pescatarian, flexitarian, etc. We even have one friend who refuses to eat anything that has a personality. Cows? Nope. Flounder? Mmmm yes please! Amid all the confusion, here’s one brand that’s using humor to try to break through in this industry that’s more clogged than Fred Flintstone’s right coronary artery. Impossible Foods has launched a hilarious new marketing campaign that focuses on the yuks of plant-based burgers, not the yuck! Singing about the ancient Egyptians chowing down on pigeons is enough to stop the most committed carnivore in their tracks.

Who are you as a leader? Hopefully like this 🦉

“I remember once I was pitching a $500,000 piece of business. Every time I asked Mike if he liked my ideas, he nodded. Which was great…except that his name was Mark.” Admit it. We all have stories like this. Tales of self-deprecating woe that at the time felt so cringe, but now we can laugh about them. (Right?) But who knew that, as a leader, using self-deprecating humor can have a profound effect on your team? Results of a new study of more than 600 professionals in 150+ teams at a tech company suggest that when a leader pokes fun at themselves, it actually helps individual contributors learn from their own failures. So the next time someone on your team drops the ball, don’t send them a message like one of these losers. Instead, share a nugget from a time when you were less than perfect.

I can’t explain this, but I love it 🪄

Sometimes when we talk with clients about humor in business, they sigh and tell us: “We can’t find any humor in Product X. We wouldn’t even know where to start looking.” The answer, my friends, is that humor is all around us. Sometimes we just need to look out the window. Following the collapse of part of Interstate 95 in Philadelphia recently, one “area man” quickly became “The most Philadelphia man ever” after his unforgettable interview with the local Fox affiliate. Imagine the marketing opportunities! If a coffee company has not already offered this guy a year’s supply of its strongest morning brew, that’s an epic fail.