Making ads entertaining

I reckon Tim Dillon knows a thing or two about marketing

I really like Tim Dillon.

The guy is funny. There’s something about a big, loud, and deranged lunatic, screaming obscene rants that just does it for me.

Bill Burr used to be this kind of funny too but he’s gone downhill since he started doing therapy. There might be a lesson there.

I think I was a subscriber to Tim’s Patreon when it had less than 2000 people. I guess I was ahead of the curve. Or I’m just cool ;)

Now, I’m not going to be the first person in marketing to talk about what can be learnt from listening to comedians. The lines, the delivery, the themes.

But I am going to carry on the trend.

Because most advertising is anything but entertaining. It’s like companies think that being dull and boring is the best way to get attention.

A great example of this is the ad reads that Tim does on his podcast.

He is always going off script.

He’ll turn them into a joke.

And then people like me don’t fast forward when they come on.

Brands like Ridge Wallet, Keeps and Morgan and Morgan Law Firm have been etched into my mind courtesy of Tim.

Interestingly though, the scripts that Tim has to read from never change.

And apparently he often gets in trouble for his tangents on the ads. He’s lost clients over it.

It’s crazy.

Brands are so caught up in their own thing. They’re so serious that they’d prefer people to fast forward over the content they are paying to be read.

But I think Tim knows something about the power of being entertaining that many marketers don’t.

Check out this thumbnail below for a YouTube short that popped up in my feed.

An extra 336K views that NeuroGum didn’t have to pay for. And the whole short is about them. It’s even got their name in the title.