By Shaziya Khan
As a species, the childhood of humans is the longest, which implies the longest time for play. As life expectancy rises, there is more time for leisure (globally life expectancy has increased by 6 years, as per one estimate). For this reason alone, and several others, fun matters.
It is both interesting and important to see how vital fun, playfulness, bliss, enjoyment, liberation are. Relatedly, how businesses and brands can tap into this understanding of fun, playfulness, for making more meaningfully, apt connections with people.
SPARK OF INSPIRATION
This article was sparked by a pattern observed for several years (which recent experiences, cemented). This is the story of how it came about:
Travelling to a peaceful part of a war torn country overseas, on a longish work assignment, is where the inspiration struck.
I was surprised to see people having so much fun, the same people had lived through and were living through uncertainty, trials and tribulations. Yet, their zestful spirit, generosity, warmth, humour spilled over and embraced all. These qualities were not only intact, but abundant right in the midst of rather trying circumstances.
Meal times were grand, fashions were extravagant, plans were exciting.
Basking in their effervescent spirits, as a visitor, but still mystified by them – I finally asked : how are you people like this? how are you able to be so fun loving and care free given your circumstances? Most of their answers were to the effect: when life is uncertain, or problematic, one makes the most of every bit of good one has, rather worry about what is going to happen. The views shared were surprising, impressive, simple but also quite profound. There must be more to learn here, I imagined.
FUN – A SERIOUS MATTER
I was set on a path of curiosity – to discover more about the real place of fun in the human experience. Again, to my surprise, I learnt that even in serious fields like philosophy the topic of fun is regarded as important!
Indeed for philosophers, fun is vital to the human experience, contributing meaningfully at several levels. Democritus believed that the goal of life was contentment or cheerfulness.
Homo Ludens (“Man the player”), a book brings out the natural basis of playfulness and fun. It argues that “Play is older than culture, for culture … always presupposes human society, and animals have not waited for man to teach them playing.”
On a related note, another book Play, Playfulness, Creativity and Innovation, argues that playfulness facilitates originality in nature and society (so a lack of it should be particularly worrying).
FUN – AN UNLIKELY BUT MEANINGFUL ROOT OF GROWTH
In short, fun, playfulness can be the basis of a lot of good. It is not only an ancient root of personal growth, it is so – across a variety of human experiences.
Fun is an unlikely but meaningful emotional root of growth for: learning, education; adjustment; well-being, health; social engagement and life skills.
Thus, businesses and brands, operating in these areas, definitely, and in others too potentially, could find it useful to leverage the fun, playfulness lens and potential of their category.
I believe modern day businesses and brands could benefit from seeing or making a fun connection! Especially for new categories, for spurring growth.
BUSINESSES FIND IT HARD TO CAPTURE EMOTIONS
Businesses find it hard to capture emotion, especially a ‘non serious’ emotion like fun.
The roots of an emotion like fun can be harder to take note of, discern and capture let alone articulate. Yet, the pursuit of growth, demands, I believe, tools and analyses to uncover new (especially surprising) roots of growth.
This analysis brings additional clarity, sheds biases, baggage, helps businesses and brands stay alive to their unique human connection; stay true to what is emerging now and for the future, and can be the basis of thriving, surviving.
This clarity is required – to pursue fresh human centred design, customer experience, engagement, innovation, communication, evolution and re-crafting category and brand worlds to be in step with people, and times.
Non-linear tools (like mind maps) are a useful type of analysis to get going. Sharing a brief map of why fun matters (more so now than ever). Sharing a short take on a very large topic based on synthesis of multiple reports and studies related to the topic (source: Warc, Medium, psychology studies, GFK, Brandz)
RELEVANCE OF FUN – IN EFFECTIVENESS, VALUES, MEANING
What puts a bow on the growing relevance of fun for people, and brands engaging with them is – that as leisure time has increased, so have opportunities for play, fun.
If people are going to enjoy more leisure, playfulness and fun, they will love brands that echo more fun, playfulness, and associated aspects like liberation, engagement, spontaneity.
These shifts have already been showing up in research studies for several years- signalling a change of expectations from communication and engagement from brands and businesses.
1. Shifts in effective ways to communicate: A recent study (Kantar) on Five Fs Of Creative Effectiveness on what makes some brand communication more effective than others points out fun as being among the top 5 factors of the most effective brand communications.
2. Shifts in core consumer values: A study on Core Values (GFK) revealed enjoyment or fun are among the top core values of consumers along with long standing core values like security and achievement.
3. Measure of meaningfulness: Last but not last, we already know, from measures of brand meaningfulness that one part of the measure of a meaningfulness is UTILITY based (consumers answer is this “useful to me”), the other important part of the measure of meaningfulness is AFFINITY based (consumers answer do I “love this brand”) (BRANDZ).
Studies reveal six major psychological underpinnings of fun: novelty, spontaneity, connectedness, boundedness, engagement, liberation. These are potentially rich emotional zones for businesses and brands to meaningfully create connections with their customers, across categories.
In sum, for modern day brands, fun is a serious matter.
ROLE OF FUN IN CATEGORY CREATION
Many already know, that fun is key to learning and interaction. This by itself, is a big and useful (perhaps overlooked) starting point for a business or brand – operating directly in any kind of education or any category where it is important to educate. A category that focuses on adopters, triers upgraders, relatively nascent consumers.
The fun key to learning can aid category creation in four ways – safe place creation, social interactivity facilitation, weaving in improvisation and richer types of gamification.
SAFE PLACE CREATION:
Several experts in the social sciences share that play, fun create a safe place to learn. A safe place to adopt new tricks and tips, use tools and solve problems.
Creating a safe place for consumers in a new category – to spur more learning is starting point for brand and business owners, custodians.
An enlightened parenting view, again with universal application, quoted in one of the reports: “I’ve been trying to weave more fun into my days with my kids”.
I loved that – and ask are enlightened brand and business custodians trying to weave more fun into the regular days of consumer interactions, in the apt way.
Unboxing, is now a thing, but it was really a way to mindfully weave more fun into an everyday experience. What are fun ways to “open the box”, so to speak, for consumers of a new category, is a question to start with.
SOCIAL INTERACTIVITY FACILITATION:
Social scientists emphasise that play is also key to learning social engagement, finding ones’s place in a hierarchy, learning how to interact. Emotional control, curiosity, resilience are positive results of play. (Researchers have found that play deprived children manifest responses ranging from unhappiness to aggression).
Creating zones for interaction, facilitates relationships beyond the day to day transactions – indeed provide a foundation for building life time value with target audiences. The notion of community has already captured the imagination of many; the findings on play, fun re-iterate the importance of facilitating social interaction in the community via more playfulness, fun experiences.
To share a recent example (there are many) – simply the fun way in which an airline crew handled an unfamiliar situation for customers : of a 6 hour delay, sitting in a stationary plane – created a few life life long fans of an airline brand. And it was just two crew members – whose fun attitude, constant interactivity kept spirits up in a plane load of disappointed, tired and hungry people and one howling baby. Their being in the zone meant a lot to customers – keeping the channel of interaction open and ‘on’ mattered and was noticed and appreciated (distinct from other crew members who were not interacting socially).
WEAVING IN IMPROVISATION:
Social sciences experts say that unstructured play is most important for development, because that is when rules are created, improvised, negotiated.
I loved this quote from one of the research reports, which can be universally true in its local adaptation:
“The kids skateboarding down the street, sipping imaginary tea, and building a pillow fort are learning just as much—perhaps more—as a peer in a piano lesson”.
Many know how the modern day aspiring but sceptical, well informed consumers, love to think for themselves. Consumers, especially Millennials, love to figure it out on their own.
Crafting brand experiences that facilitate the amateur, the first time user, the learner, the experimenter, the non serious flirter matter more than ever; this field is demanding requisite attention, care from business and brand custodians.
As an aside, it is these type of consumers (who are on the fringes or on the edge) who can often inspire the best innovations and improvisations for the future, in several elements of the mix (packaging, ingredients, usage/dosage etc.) .
RICHER TYPES OF GAMIFICATION:
Gamification is key to creating modern brand experiences and connections with consumers. There can be several types of fun experiences designed that are based on gamification.
A commonly known type is Challenging fun (objectives, rewards, levels, etc.). Yet there are others too that experts point out:
1. Easy fun (imagination, curiosity, content, experiences, exploration)
2. People fun (niche interests, collaboration, community, co-operation)
3. Creative fun (individuality, personalisation, avataars, customisation, expression, creativity)
WRAPPING IT UP
Fun has received a lot of worthy attention from social scientists. Philosophers and psychologists regard fun to be a vital life goal. Fun is seen as essential not only to learning (as described above) but to many other areas, especially health, well-being, living an ideal life. More on that another time perhaps. For now, for brand and business custodians:
1. It is timely to audit funand explore if there is a fun deficit in the experiences being provided for consumers – at present, for the future.
2. Most immediately, leverage the learning benefits of funto spur category creation – via provision of a safe place, enabling social interactivity, facilitating improvisation, and a richer, varied embrace of gamification
The fun of category creation is putting fun in category creation, too!
Shaziya Khan is National Planning Director, Wunderman Thompson. This is republished from a post first published on LinkedIn
By Vidya Heble