How Frank Macera Finds Humour Anywhere He Looks
An award-winning executive creative director/copywriter, and self-published author of two books, currently, Frank Macera leads creative at TAXI Toronto.
Having been recognised by the likes of The One Show, Cannes, D&AD, Clio Awards, and many others for effectiveness and creativity, he’s led strategic, world-class work on multiple brands, ranging from McDonald’s and Google to IKEA and adidas. Notably, from 2017 to 2021, Frank led creative on one of Canada’s biggest accounts, Canadian Tire, during which time it created some of its most successful campaigns ever, and picked up an Effie award for sustained success on its ‘TESTED’ platform.
In his spare time, in addition to writing two books, Frank has run two marathons, learned to juggle, solve a Rubik’s cube, and tried his hand at stand-up comedy. And, he’s never had his name spelled wrong on a Starbucks cup.
To learn more about how he approaches advertising with a sense of humour, and how he aims to embody this in the work he creates, Frank sat down with LBB’s Josh Neufeldt for a chat.
LBB> How did you get started in advertising? Tell us your story!
Frank> I’ve always loved writing and originally went to university for journalism. The short version of my start in advertising is that a few years after I graduated from university (not with a journalism degree), I was looking for a way to combine writing with creativity and problem solving. Eventually, I found my way to the one-year post-grad Humber copywriting programme. After that, I landed a one-month internship at JWT. Looking back, one month is an insanely short amount of time for an internship, but I did enough of the right things in that month to show I was worth keeping around.
LBB> Have you always had a strong sense of humour? What are the greatest influences on this aspect of who you are?
Frank> I’ve always been interested in humour and what’s funny (to me and other people). If I had to pick a word to describe the biggest influence on my sense of humour and my attitude toward it (which is something you are not asking me to do), I’d pick irreverence. I can be a very serious person (as Logan Roy from ‘Succession’ might say), but I don’t look at a lot of things very seriously. As a writer, I tend to gravitate toward great writing that’s clever, funny, biting, insightful, and irreverent. The Onion is something every writer would name, but I’d also name Jack Handey, Norm Macdonald, Kurt Vonnegut – all people who are great writers and have a fun, playful, maybe non-traditional attitude toward life.
LBB> How has this sense of humour matured both since joining the industry, and throughout your time in it?
Frank> I wouldn’t say it’s matured. But, I would say that during my time in advertising, I’ve learned what kinds of humour play well in ads and what kinds of humour play less well. Generally, broader, bigger humour plays better in ads. That’s partly because we’re usually targeting a broad audience, but it’s also because ads are quick. Humour that’s too subtle or too irreverent or takes too long to get doesn’t tend to work as well as bigger, more visual jokes in short formats like 15 and 30 seconds.
LBB> Creatively speaking, how do you find or look for humour? Where does your process begin?
Frank> You can find humour anywhere you look or anywhere you pay attention - especially when you have the attitude of “How can I look at this differently?” I wrote two books that were full of random, general observations and thoughts about literally anything and everything (for example, only 2% of bug CEOs are ladybugs). The books are full of finding funny in everyday thoughts and wordplay.
When it comes to ads though, looking for humour is identical to looking for insights. Find a truth – a brand, product, audience, cultural, or other relevant truth – and then look at it every way you can until something funny or compelling, or funny and compelling, pops out.
LBB> And how does this evolve throughout the making of a spot, from writing to final product? Do you adjust your vision on the fly, or do you stick to your guns?
Frank> I think the key to making anything great in life (and in ads) is to have a plan and a strong point of view, but to be adaptable. You need to understand which parts of your idea are adaptable and which parts aren’t, and then use every resource you have to make the adaptable parts better than you could have imagined on your own.
In adland, there are a lot of people who work to bring an ad to life – even outside of the client and agency. We hire really smart artists, directors, editors, etc., and my philosophy is to take full advantage of all of their brains and to be open to just about anything. At the end of the day, you have to make a call on what the final product will look like, and maybe that thing you started with and had a strong point of view about is the best version of it, but when you stay open, you’re able to adapt that thing you started with and possibly create something better and different and funnier than what you had in mind.
LBB> Building on this, how do you approach finding the right tone for certain brands? Are you always pushing for more?
Frank> Tone is extremely important. Tone is the thing that people will remember from experiencing your ad. There’s a quote about how people won’t remember what you said, but they’ll remember how you made them feel, and I think that’s especially true for ads and brands. That’s also why if you try to say too much in an ad, people might not take away anything at all. You need to leave room for making the audience feel something.
Anyway, the right tone is always a question at the start of a project: “How do we want people to feel when they experience this ad?” Even before we know what kind of ad it is (stunt, TV ad, radio, print, etc.), I want to know how we’re trying to make people feel. What I will push for is trying to make the audience feel something – making sure that we don’t lose the feeling while we’re trying to get our message out. Because sometimes that feeling can be the message, but it’s also that a feeling can make a message memorable, or not.
LBB> Do you have any particular favourite pieces that demonstrate this ideology? And what do you love about them?
Frank> The simplest example might be a radio ad I wrote a long time ago for Harvey’s. It was a very tactical project. The brief was an offer to buy one combo of a burger, fries, and a drink and get a second combo all for $9.99 total (which seems like a VERY good deal today). I looked at that and thought, ‘The two combos are their own combo. This deal is really the combo and combo, combo’, and that’s what the radio ad became. The finished ad said the word combo over 10 times. I hope people listened to it and thought it was fun, but it may have also left them feeling like it was weird. But even for me personally, I remember that ad and there are plenty of radio ads I’ve worked on that I’ve forgotten.
LBB> You mentioned the idea of finding humour in anything you pay attention to. Tell us more about this! How do you look for it, and more importantly, why is this important to you?
Frank> The world is fundamentally absurd. It’s a silly place full of people doing very serious things, and that’s what makes everything full of humour… if you look closely enough. Perfect example: I was watching an American feed of a baseball game last night. Every commercial break had an ad for Taco Bell’s latest fast food innovation, followed by an ad for a neck surgery clinic. The idea of an ad for neck surgery (to me, a Canadian) is insane. Like, beyond parody. And the fact that it comes on immediately after a crazy new combo from Taco Bell is perfect comedy. But you have to take a step back to notice that, and I think taking a step back from nearly anything can reveal comedy. In fact, taking a step back from writing these answers made me laugh at how I decided that writing these would be easier than just having a chat and you transcribing answers. That was very wrong, and is now very funny!
LBB> Similarly, how do you reconcile this approach with the occasional need to create more serious work? Do you aim to juxtapose the two?
Frank> Any good ad is going to grab people’s attention. Whether it’s funny or serious, sad or happy, every good ad is compelling to watch. And, if you’re making something compelling, you usually want to be insightful and unexpected. You want your ad to have a moment when people are let in on the message – when they get it. The difference between serious work and funny work is just that the thing that’s unexpected is funny instead of serious. Even if you look at movies, horror movies and comedy movies have a lot in common. They’re both trying to grab your attention and then surprise you. The tools are actually very similar - it’s just the punchlines that are different. And the more effectively you can deliver on grabbing people and surprising them, the more memorable your message will be – regardless of whether it’s serious, funny, scary, or sad.
LBB> As executive creative director, you play a big role in imparting knowledge to more junior members of the team at TAXI. How do you approach this, both in general, but also with regards to writing with humour in mind?
Frank> The important thing to me is to try to play to people’s strengths as much as possible. Nobody in the department would write an ad the way I would, and I wouldn’t write an ad the way they would. And, humour is so subjective that it’s hard to give the direction ‘be funny’ to someone. Being funny on command is one of the most difficult things you can ask anyone to do. It’s helpful to talk about what humour represents. A feeling of fun, lightheartedness, playfulness, and unexpectedness. And when we talk about humour in that way, you can start to see how those words can provide better direction than ‘be funny’.
On top of that, when someone has something that’s funny, you can look at how to make it funnier. Can we make it more unexpected? Can we make it more true? Can we make it simpler? All the elements that go into making any good ad can also be applied to humour: simplicity, unexpectedness, craft with the writing or wordplay.
LBB> As a whole, how do you think the industry is doing with regards to creating humorous advertising?
Frank> I wrote an opinion piece on this a few months ago called ‘Please Don’t Clap’. To paraphrase, I think the industry is doing fine with humour and is occasionally doing great – same as TV or movies or anything else. It’s hard to measure humour when it’s meant for a mass audience. By its very nature, something meant for a mass audience can’t be extremely funny. If it’s doing broad appeal correctly, then it’ll never be hilarious to anyone. That’s why sometimes, you’ll see ads with a more specific audience in mind that stand out for their humour. The US insurance industry is a pretty good example of this. Progressive’s ads about turning into your parents are inherently targeted to a smaller audience of adults, and because of that, the ads can be more insightful to that group, and because of that, they can be funnier.
It's also good to understand what we mean when we talk about humour in advertising. Are we talking about a smile, a chuckle, or a belly laugh? I think when we talk about humour in ads, most of those ads are trying to get as many people as possible to smile and possibly chuckle. You don’t see many ads going for belly laughs – probably because you’d need to shrink your audience too much to achieve it.
LBB> Finally, how does Canada compare to the status quo in this regard?
Frank> Canadian advertising is full of great, unexpected ideas, but the funniest ideas in Canada don’t generally make their way to TV. That’s because TV is expensive to produce and even more expensive to air, and with TV you’re generally targeting a mass audience. You’re not looking to connect with a small group in an insightful, niche, or possibly funny way.
