The effective use of humor is no laughing matter

Before you go for the laugh, make sure you meet the Must-Have criteria of the funniest man to ever be called a PIO

Today we wrap up our four-part storytelling series with a deep dive on the use of humor. The first question you might be asking is, should I even attempt it? The answer is an unequivocal yes, according to a 2022 study.

Of course, wanting to be funny and actually being funny are two different things. Since I’m not nearly as funny as I think I am, we turn to the GOAT of government humor, Jay Socol, for today’s lesson. Jay left local government a little over a year ago to return to his beloved radio, but his legacy of the effective use of humor is unmatched. (I say that even though he’s a former student of Texas A&M University and I got my degree from hated rival University of Texas and he refers to me as a t-sip.)

I could share dozens of examples of Jay’s work to back up my claim, but I need cite only one. Jay is the man who made Drinking Water Quality Reports funny. This is a miracle on the order of parting the Red Sea.

For the uninitiated, these required annual reports are a deadly dull documentation of all the substances in a utility’s drinking water. Important? Absolutely. Pedantic? Like you wouldn’t believe. Jay turned the report into a hilariously entertaining calendar that City of Bryan, Texas, residents could proudly display in their homes. The page below is taken from the year they did a movie-themed calendar, which featured utility employees in delightfully reimagined posters of popular films.

Younger readers may not remember the movie Flashdance, the inspiration for this. Here’s what the original poster looked like.

Ah hell, the first rule of comedy is to not have to explain it. So while you may not remember Flashdance, surely you’re familiar with Oscar-winner Forrest Gump. Here was the welcome page in the calendar with the Mayor in the eponymous role.

Clearly, no further bona fides needed. Good friend (and subscriber!) that he is, Jay was gracious enough to share with his fellow Good Government Files readers some sage advice on what you need to know before taking the plunge.

Jay Socol’s 6 Must-Haves for Using Humor

1. You and your staff are legitimately funny

2. You and your staff possess “The Filter”

3. Your audience appreciates humor

4. Your elected officials have a great sense of humor

5. Your top appointed official has a great sense of humor

6. Your organizational culture embraces humor

Here’s a breakdown of the most salient points, with commentary from the master himself and some examples of the Must-Haves done right. And wrong. We can learn from both.

Are you legit funny?

“Are you? Are you really? Would your friends and coworkers agree? Find people you trust to be abundantly honest with you,” Jay says. “Remember, it’s not just your voice; it’s your organization’s voice and reputation.”

I won’t spend any more time on this point because it’s so obvious. Hopefully for you and your organization, it doesn’t become painfully obvious.

Do you have ‘The Filter?’

It’s not just enough to be funny.

“You need to have a solid feel for what’s appropriate and what’s not,” Jay says. “You have to possess a great understanding of the global politics affecting your organization, your council and your citizens. You also need to know what’s going on, real-time, around you — in your state, across the country and around the world.

“The Filter is a really big deal.”

Here’s an example of an organization lacking The Filter.

Needless to say, someone in the the South Dakota Office of Highway Safety wasn’t thinking before launching this campaign. The state was experiencing a rash of vehicle accidents caused by drivers jerking the wheel in icy conditions. The idea behind the campaign was to remind drivers it’s a really bad idea to overreact in these situations. Turns out, it was a really bad idea to use a double entendre. The well-intentioned safety campaign was pulled (I couldn’t resist!) after a state legislator complained (see Must-Have No. 4).

Make sure you have The Filter.

Is your audience good with a joke?

Having spent his career in the Bryan-College Station area, aka the Aggieplex, Jay readily admits the presence of 70,000 or so college students provides a large audience receptive to the use of humor.

Those same students are also a mother lode for the mining of humorous content.

A regular complaint of those students is the taste of College Station’s water, and they often take to Twitter with snarky comments about it. So in the spirit of Mean Tweets, Jay and Co. recorded an episode of a show called “Takin’ It to the Tweets” where they tackled the criticism with a video that is one of my all-time favorite uses of humor by a government agency.

“My water director was not in favor of doing this, but I asked him to trust me and he finally relented,” Jay says. “Notice that, after the fun, he gets to defend his water’s honor.”

I won’t try to explain the humor in this one, other than to say: funny cats. You can never go wrong with funny cats.

Are your elected officials OK with humor?

If not, tread very, very carefully. One thing I tried to avoid (this is sage advice from Will now, not Jay), was using elected officials in humorous content. Maybe it’s because I sat through too many contentious City Council public hearings and watched as elected officials came under withering, usually unfair, attacks. I never wanted an irate citizen to be able to say to the Mayor, “I saw you yucking it up on YouTube the other day, but the City’s proposal to FILL IN THE BLANK (zoning change, water rate hike, not build a new pickelball complex) is no laughing matter!”

Of course, there’s an exception to every rule. Which leads me to Molly Fox of the City of Bedford, Texas. Molly’s been consistently delivering the funny for years, and enjoys copious amounts of Must-Have No. 1 and a time-tested Must-Have No. 2.

Last year, the City of Bedford opened a new recreation center, and Molly was tasked with promoting it. You’d think that would be easy, but there was some controversy. (Parks and Recreation projects are never as readily accepted as you would think, as Leslie Knope painfully — yet humorously! — learned.) The City partnered with the YMCA to operate the facility to save money and thus keep membership fees affordable. The public was skeptical, Molly said, and then came a couple of opening delays to further frustrate folks.

Her team developed three goals for the promotion:

1. Create excitement about the facility’s grand opening

2. Show off the various areas and amenities within the facility

3. Reaffirm to the community The Bedford Center YMCA was worth the membership cost

The video “First with Mayor Mike” is a master class in the use of humor while putting an elected official front and center.

What makes this work, for me, is Mayor Mike is genuinely funny — Must-Have No. 1. He pokes fun only at himself and no one else, thus meeting the criteria for Must-Have No. 2. The fact he’s wearing a Flint Tropics jersey from the underrated Will Ferrell comedy Semi-Pro earns him bonus points on my scorecard.

I’ll let Molly take it from here, to provide insight into the creative process.

“As Communications staff was brainstorming video ideas with the Mayor, we mentioned how cool it would be that he would get to be the first to do all these things in the rec center, before it opened to the public,” she said. “The idea took off from there, and we all took turns writing humorous scenes, highlighting the various amenities of the facility such as the indoor track, indoor aquatic facility, basketball courts, meeting areas, and the childcare room.”

They created a hilarious video, implying Mayor Mike couldn’t wait to be the first one to use all the amenities. The ending showed he loved it so much, he slapped down his application at the reception desk on his way out. So all three goals for the project were achieved.

Not surprisingly, the video won Molly and the talented team in Bedford another first place award in what has become her annual embarrassingly impressive haul at a statewide conference.

More importantly, the City is well on its way to meeting its membership goals for the rec center.

Organizational humor

I’ve gotta show some love to non-local government organizations doing humor right. The agencies in charge of managing large parks and open spaces have found humor to be a go-to method to educate the public, and understandably so. They are generally in the business of making sure everyone has a good time outdoors. The National Parks Service Twitter account is consistently good, but I think the Washington State Department of Natural Resources’ Twitter feed is even better.

Here’s a sample of its tweets from last holiday season:

• “If you encounter a cougar, never approach or offer it food. You are not a Disney princess.”

• “Most grandma/reindeer collisions are entirely preventable. Please give wildlife plenty of space.”

• “Please be responsible with hot takes this Thanksgiving if your turkey is as dry as our forests.”

The tweet below is superb. It’s addresses a serious subject — how to not get killed by a bear — delivered with a killer punch line.

Funny cats. Like I said …

By this point, I’m guessing regular readers (thank you!) thought they’d finally get through a GGF without a Round Rock project. Alas, Beloved Wife would not forgive me if I didn’t include this one (sorry!).

Let’s face it. Funny cats rule the internet. Well, at least the internet as it existed before it fell into a hell hole of QAnon conspiracies and Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk challenging each other to a cage match.

Six years ago, the online world hadn’t completely lost its collective marbles and cat memes ruled supreme. As noted in this post on budget communications, the first step in getting the public engaged on fiscal issues is to get their attention. Cat videos and a host willing to wear silly, cat-themed T-shirts did the trick.

It worked in large part because we met all of Jay’s Must-Haves. Major props to Brian Ligon, our multi-media specialist at the time, for creating the hilarious graphics that somehow made cats look truly business like. Brian also did a great job of directing me — the guy who’s not nearly as funny as he thinks he is. And we must recognize comms manager Kristin Brown for finding those, uh, memorable T-shirts.

I will say we got right up to the edge of violating Must-Have No. 2 at the 2:40 mark, but by that point in the video we’re fully committed to the absurdity of our approach and trust our audience is, too. We warmed them up for budget absurdity with the Ron Pitchman video a few years earlier.

And, yes, it won a bunch of awards, earning this comment from one judge: “A bizarre, funny, creative way to interpret the budget. The information is easy to understand. Who knew there were so many ugly cat shirts out there?”

The City Council loved it (Must-Have No. 4), the City Manager loved it (Must-Have No. 5) and the public loved it as well. Win, win and win.

Personally, the video helped win the heart of then-future Beloved Wife. It’s a reality for those of us in public communications that we leave quite a digital footprint. During the courting process she, of course, Googled me and that video turned up. Cat lover that she is (and not in a weird cat lady way, she requests that I add), she knew I was the guy for her. It’s been rampant bliss ever since.

That’s no joke.