An apology:
In last week’s issue I included a John Smith’s ad as part of an interview with Brendan McNamara (the ad is here). One or two readers wondered if it was such a funny ad after all: Peter Kay grunting lustfully about a female colleague struck one reader as ‘going beyond the occasional wince I’ve had before at [watching] older ads’.
The ad was Brendan’s choice, but I take responsibility. I should have flagged up the fact it was potentially offensive — as I promised here. The very aim of ‘Brands & Humour’ is to discuss why and how something is — or isn’t — funny and to explore debates in humour science; it’s not to include ads unquestioningly or ‘just for laughs’, as it were. My apologies.
***
Earlier this year, the brand strategist Brandy Cerne1 very kindly pointed me towards a news story on US highways. In a nutshell: from 2026 onwards, the US Federal Highway Administration is cracking down on humorous slogans that appear on highway road signs.
When you think of road signs, you might well think of this:
Or indeed this…
But no! We’re talking electronic ones, more like this:
Or seasonal ones, such as this…
Or, wonderfully, they can echo the local accent. Boston is famous for its distinctive accent (whereby park becomes pahk), as this Hyundai ad, Smaht Pahk, amply shows:
…So when you’re driving into Boston, here’s what you might see (blinkah = blinker = indicator):
…But no longer. The US Federal Highway Administration has issued their directive in a 1,100 page Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices for Streets and Highways which, dear Reader, I cannot confess to have read in full. That said, if you’re looking for an effective cure for insomnia, go for it.
So! Is this a wise decision?
The US Dept of Transportation says that all signs should be “simple, direct, brief, legible and clear”. Fair enough. But people have objected.
You could take the political angle: Republican David Cook of Arizona (below) certainly did, saying, “The humor part of it, we kind of like. [But] why are you trying to have the federal government come in and tell us what we can do in our own state? Prime example that the federal government is not focusing on what they need to be.”2
Given a) I’m not a US citizen b) you probably don’t subscribe to B&H to get in-depth American political analysis (frankly, I wouldn’t know where to begin), I’m gonna side-step this objection.
My objections, viewed from the other side of the Atlantic, would be threefold.
The first would be that humour makes things more memorable. You can remember a short joke quite easily; you might have to think hard to remember what your partner asked you to buy in the supermarket. Why? Because there’s a physiological reaction when you first hear a joke, and then repeat it. It’s not like being asked to buy more Shreddies.
Second, we know the importance of driving safely and staying under the speed limits. So these American signs riff off that. Would you prefer to be addressed as an adult, or a child? I’ve seen this sign hundreds of times on British motorways:
…And yes, yes, I get the importance. But the flatness of its articulation is rather, ahem, deadening. Humour hits things at an angle but, marvellously, “the main value of humor is precisely that it lets us face our problems realistically.”3 In-laws can be really, really annoying:
…And as the great comedian Richard Pryor once said, “Be truthful and funny will come.”
Third, let’s not forget the obvious: driving can be boring. So humorous road signs make it that bit less boring.
Don’t believe me? Look at the rise in autonomous (self-driving) cars4. Or take a long car journey from the UK to the south of France with two young children in the back — my wife and I did, last summer — and count how many times they ask, “Are we there yet?” You take my point. When we finally got to Briançon, after 736 miles of craziness, I for one needed a holiday.
Many thanks for reading,
Paddy
Book a free half-hour meeting with me here.
pg@studiogilmore.com
+44 7866 538 233
LinkedIn: here
Morreall, John: Humor Works, 1997, HRD Press, p. 32.