Sharing the joke on Twitter

Have you ever heard the theory that you laugh louder at something if you’re with other people? Something that may get a mild chuckle if seen by yourself will apparently make you laugh out loud for several seconds if you’re with others seeing the same thing. I always had my doubts about this (mainly because I laugh like an idiot who gets funny looks from other people so can let myself go when I’m on my own) but last week saw something happen in the naming world that has maybe changed my mind.

What everyone had assumed was a joke turned out to be the real thing when Ben and Jerry’s released ‘Schweddy Balls’ as their latest limited edition flavour. For those who don’t know, this is a tribute to a Saturday Night Live sketch involving Alec Baldwin who plays ‘Pete Schweddy’, owner of a holiday bakery called ‘Seasons Eatings’. The main joke of the piece being that although Pete offers lots of treats like Zucchini bread and fruitcake, the thing he most likes to bring out for the holiday season is his balls (popcorn balls, rum balls, cheese balls, ‘balls for every taste’). I’m sure you can fill in the gaps to work out most of the jokes but ultimately it concludes that no-one can resist Pete’s ‘Schweddy balls’.

My very quick name review before getting to what really interests me:

The name certainly has two of the qualities most associated with Ben and Jerry’s existing name portfolio. Firstly it fits in with their love of wordplay (Phish Food, Cherry Garcia, Caramel Chew Chew). Secondly it is a funny name which is expected of most new Ben and Jerry products (Fairly Nuts, Half Baked, Chunky Monkey). On the negative side I’d probably say that it’s gone a bit too far to the dark side for what is very clearly a family brand. Mark Skoultchi from Catchword said in his full name review that he’d feel the urge to wash his daughter’s mouth out if he heard her order some ‘Schweddy Balls’ in the shop (Mark’s review can be found here: http://bit.ly/qd61dy). I’m all for funny names but feel this joke conjures up images that I personally don’t want while eating anything. There used to be a shelf in our office of foreign food products with names that in English would give some truly bizarre and/or awful images while eating them. ‘Schweddy Balls’ wouldn’t have looked out of place there and would have had people making fun of it if it happened to be a foreign product that didn’t understand the joke. So I’m not really a fan.

Now onto what intrigues me…how it was chosen and how it was accepted so readily.

There aren’t many branding agencies who would have put this forward as a serious suggestion in the first place, let alone recommended it. It’s the type of name that would have probably come up in a brainstorming meeting that everyone laughed about and then moved on. I’m fascinated that it was chosen as the final product name. It shows that Ben and Jerry’s had some real confidence in their customers when they said that ‘they get the humour’. Although they said that they didn’t want to offend anyone, they have been around long enough to know that intentions don’t always matter and the name could have backfired. But most people seemingly did ‘get the humour’. Last week ‘Schweddy Balls’ was trending on Twitter like crazy as people shared the joke and desperately tried to find out where to get some.

This was one of those cases where it was very easy to point to the name and say ‘there’s the main reason for your success’. What I find interesting though is that in this case the name under any normal conditions could have been a disaster but in an environment like Twitter people are able to ‘laugh louder because they are seeing something with other people’. People were making jokes about the name but it didn’t matter because everyone understood that they were supposed to be finding it funny and were therefore sharing it on that basis. They didn’t have time in a social setting like Twitter to put their thoughts together and say ‘actually, maybe that’s not quite right for something sold to kids’. Everyone was caught up in the moment of sharing a joke together.

So has this changed the landscape when it comes to deciding on brand naming strategy? In some ways I won’t be too surprised if it has. I don’t expect we will see many family brands pushing the humour further than ‘Schweddy Balls’ but I do imagine we will see a slight shift towards some companies being a bit braver in their name choices knowing that people are willing to share a good laugh. It is assumed that a good controversy will spread just as fast as a good joke but Schweddy Balls may have just pushed the limit of where the line is.