Lean into your flaws
A few nights ago in Beverly Hills, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association held the 80th edition of the Golden Globes. From its exclusive location to its prestigious guests wearing their haute couture, nothing about the Golden Globes screams “every man”. The whole event is designed to feel special.
Which is why Jennifer Coolidge’s acceptance speech for for Best Supporting Actor in a Television Series has made such a splash.
For those who don’t immediately recognise her name, Jennifer Coolidge isn’t exactly Hollywood royalty. In fact, up until her career defining performance in the outstanding White Lotus, she was most famous for playing “Stifler’s Mom” in the American Pie movies. Some of you might better remember her for a small but charming performance in Legally Blonde.
But her speech has garnered upwards of 19k upvotes on Reddit. On YouTube, if you type in “Jennifer Coolidge”, the suggested result is “…Golden Globes Speech 2023”. And just check out the Trends results for her: the highest peak ever.
Jennifer Coolidge’s 3 minute acceptance speech wasn’t articulate. It wasn’t rehearsed. It’s practically impossible to remember anything she actually said.
So why has it gone viral?
Two words: Pratfall Effect.
In 1966, distinguished American psychologist Elliot Aronson speculated that people considered “superior” by others could become more attractive upon committing a small pratfall, or blunder.
Aaronson’s experiment asked 48 participants to listen to recordings of contestants auditioning for a quiz show. There were two types of contestant, “superior” and “average”. The “superior” contestants had a correct-answer rate of 92%, while the “average” contestant only hit 30%.
He then had half of the contestants commit a “pratfall” toward the end of their audition.
“Oh my goodness, I’ve spilled coffee all over my new suit.”
Guess what? There was a significant increase in the likability of the “superior” contestant who committed the pratfall vs the one who didn’t.
Sometimes called the blemishing effect, this is all about how a person typically seen as superior can be humanised by committing an action that average people can relate to.
We all spill coffee from time to time. Or in my case, on a daily basis.
(To an extent this likely contributed to Boris Johnson’s popularity – repeated, yet calculated uses of the Pratfall Effect).
When asked to spontaneously stand up in front of a group of people we don’t really know very well, we all get nervous. We stumble, we ramble and we experience different ranges of emotions (nerves, excitement, shame, fear, etc).
Jennifer definitely did that. And that’s a variation of Pratfall in action.
But that alone wasn’t what made her speech so great.
It was her candid vulnerability.
I’m paraphrasing here, but Jennifer essentially said that when you’re younger you have big dreams. You think you’re going to be a huge success (the “Princess of Monaco” in her words), but things don’t always pan out the way you had hoped.
Things go wrong. Chances aren’t taken. Belief ebbs and fades.
Jennifer Coolidge is 61. She was 37 when she played Stifler’s Mom in American Pie in 1999. That film made over $200m, and became a cultural phenomenon. And yet despite that breakthrough, she never really hit the heights that were on the cards. She had to wait 24 years to experience the success she dreamt of in her youth.
In her acceptance speech she put that vulnerability on show for all to see. She admitted that her career hadn’t panned out the way she had expected, but that certain people had kept faith in her. And one person in particular had given her a second chance. That second chance was White Lotus, and she grabbed it with both hands.
When juxtaposed against the “elitist” luxury backdrop of the Golden Globes, her emotional, rambling and vulnerable speech was something that all of us could relate to. It completely humanised her.
Whilst the Pratfall Effect is focused on committing an accidental blunder, I think its effect can be applied to moments like this, too.
So what’s the takeaway for leaders of service-providers?
There is an unspoken rule amongst service/consultancy brands that you need to keep emotion out of your lexicon. Buyers of your products and services are business professionals. They don’t care about how you feel. They want the cold, hard facts. How much money will you save me? How much time can I get back? How will this streamline my process?
Right?
Well as my two-year old likes to say, “Maybe. Maybe not”.
Let me ask you this. Do you turn off all your emotions when you get to work? Do you suddenly stop experiencing anger, fear, shame, excitement or joy? Of course not.
So why does your brand refrain from communicating in the same way?
The marketing world divides consumers into buyers of products (retail or otherwise) and buyers of services. On the surface, this makes sense. Placing people in buckets certainly makes our jobs easier. But both audiences are still “people”. Service-buyers become retail-buyers the instant they leave the front door of their workplace. They become retail-buyers the instant they open up Instagram, or go online to shop for a new pair of shoes on their lunch break.
The drivers for buyers of products (the search for value, meaning and authenticity) aren’t suddenly absent when they’re in the office choosing their next PR agency, or where to invest their income. The opportunity to humanise your brand and appeal to the same drivers that FMCG/CPG have been targeting is enormous.
Some examples:
When Telsa presented their Cybertruck, Musk claimed the pickup truck was ‘bulletproof’. He then asked his design lead to lob a metal ball at a window to prove his point. The metal ball smashed the glass. But instead of brushing it under the carpet, Telsa created a t-shirt celebrating the failure and sold it on their website. “T-shirt is bulletproof & makes u buff” tweeted Musk.
The famous “Lemon” and “Think Small” ads by Volkswagen in the late 50s, which pointed out that their cars were slower and smaller (also an early example of de-positioning, by focusing on what makes you better and inferring that this is what your competition lack).
Language learning platform Duolingo were becoming known for their aggressive push notifications that irritatingly pestered users to let them know that they hadn’t used the app recently. So Duolingo released a campaign where a larger than life stuffed-version of their famous owl interrupts people’s every day activities to threateningly lurk beside them.
So think about Jennifer Coolidge. Think about Guinness telling you that “we’re sorry, we know you’re in a rush, but our pints take almost 3 minutes to pour”. Think about Steve Jobs’ infamous iPhone 4 launch, when the phone didn’t connect to WiFi. Twice.
Being vulnerable might just be your superpower.