The opportunity of playfulness isn't just limited to advertising alone. In a world powered by AI, bots and algorithms, the humanness of playfulness can liberate us from the mundane. In this context, play is a tool that brings CX out of the vanilla and sparks joy to those who touch it.

In this episode, Andrew is joined by Daniel Van Vorsselen, CX Lead, and Laura Mulcahy, Head of Culture Practice, to unpack the opportunities presented by Play – a major study recently launched by TRA.

Andrew: Playfulness and humour are a big part of how we all seek joy in our lives and in our day-to-day interactions –  how we find little ways to liberate ourselves from the mundane. So,  how can brands use these ideas to find connection with people in the experiences they create.  In a world increasingly propelled by AI, bots and algorithms, how can these uniquely human ideas be brought to bear to ensure that CX rises out of the vanilla and sparks joy for those who touch it?

Hello and welcome to FRAME a podcast dedicated to the art of knowing people. I'm your host Andrew Lewis, Managing Director at TRA, The Research Agency and over a series of three episodes we're exploring themes of humour and playfulness with thought leaders from different human science disciplines. By layering their unique perspectives on the topic we're going to search for the truths others don't – the uncommon truths.  

In the first episode of the series we unpacked the findings from play – a major study exploring what playfulness and humor mean to people and brands in 2024. Then in the second, we looked at the opportunities of play from a branding and behavior change perspective and in today's episode we look at how to inject joy into customer experiences and what the lens of culture teaches us about the opportunities in play in this space. I'm joined by Laura Mulcahy, Head of Cultural Insight and Dan Van Vorsselen, CX lead, who were both involved in conducting our latest research on humour and play. Hello to you both thanks for coming in today.  

Laura: Hey Andrew.  

Dan: Hey Andrew.  

Andrew: Laura, over the past few episodes we've been unpacking the opportunity of play for brands and organisations what happens when we add the lens of culture to the findings from the research?

Laura: The first thing I always say when talking about culture is let's take a step back and think about the context we're in because that's really important right now when we're talking about why play is so important and why we wanted to dig into this area of research. Right now, the context is that we find ourselves overwhelmed with information. There’s so much out there that is hanging over us and making us more anxious – especially with the last couple of years – with the proliferation of AI into the mainstream, where we were sceptics before about content and marketing and any information and news – we were just plain scared of everything that's around us. So, any way to break up that monotony, any way to break up that skepticism within consumers, play is a way that can cut through all that noise, and it totally makes sense, right?  

From a human perspective, play is one of the first things that we learn. It’s how we understand our world, it’s how we test our world, and it's how we test other humans.

In the context of brands trying to market and advertise to us, and in the context of AI and fake everything, we're trying to find the human in anything, and play is one of those fundamental elements of being human that we look for. That's what brands need to do a bit more of these days: be a little bit more human and a little bit more agile, and a way that you can do that is by leaning into play.

This year at Cairns, we saw humour as a category being added for the first time, and that demonstrates that audiences and advertisers are leaning into this element of joy, this element of play to kind of break up the monotony of the world right now. One of the favourite quotes that came out of the qualitative research was from a participant who said:  

“I want the happy vibes, lots of energy, draw me in with humour and then be playful. Include me so I remember you. Include me so I come back.” That kind of sums it up, pretty simple, right? It's hard to do but really simple when you look at it from an audience's perspective.

Andrew: That’s a fascinating insight, isn't it? From a cultural perspective and context perspective – this idea of play helping us identify humanity in an increasingly synthetic world. That idea that it's a sign that there is a person out there behind the content. I love that quote; it jolts us from our sceptical haze – what a great way of putting it. It's similar to what Dan Talbot talked about in episode 1, a definition of playfulness “as a spontaneous liberation from the mundane.” I think this idea of jolting us from a haze or a liberation from the mundane speaks to the role of playfulness and humour in everyday life. Injecting that humanity and taking us above that white noise – the vanilla-ness that comes with increasing levels of AI in our world – we can certainly see why that makes it such a powerful idea for brands and for experience.

Was there anything that surprised you about the findings from a cultural point of view?  

Laura: We did this study across Australia and New Zealand, as we always do, and one thing that stood out was that over half of Australians see themselves as more playful and funnier than people from other countries. When asked, ‘Compared to other countries, how funny or playful do you think Australia is?’ we scored pretty high – we saw ourselves as 66% more playful than other countries. In New Zealand, it was around 47%, and we found that these perceptions held across all age groups. But if we flip that, we find that around 6% of people in both Australia and New Zealand think we use less humour than other countries. These are two populations that are really primed to expect humour and playfulness in everyday interactions, and I'd probably say that internationally, people look to Australia and New Zealand for that light-hearted, comedic, ‘not taking ourselves too seriously’ vibe. Not only do we expect it of ourselves, I presume that other countries expect it of us too. We both have that underdog mindset combined with – kind of – definitely an Australian ‘she'll be right’ sort of attitude, tall poppies, all those cultural codes that are playing into this.

For brands, not taking yourself too seriously is important in countries that don't take themselves too seriously.

Play and humour are a natural outlet for that expression. I've now worked with a lot of New Zealand clients, and comparing the type of marketing and advertising, I will say – New Zealand is punching above its weight in introducing play and humour in really unexpected ways. And again, it reflects the culture of New Zealanders and their context, their DNA; it can be in banks with ASB's ‘Ben and Amy’ narrative, Tina from Turners, or even in government campaigns – which I know Lindsey talked about a couple of weeks ago – through ACC’s ‘Have a Hmmm’. Taking on serious subjects or topics that people don't like to talk about and breaking the ice with a little bit of humour. It's not a wild joke; it's not an outrageous kind of statement with humour, it's just being playful and bringing people into the conversation who might not want to come into it. That dry sense of humour serves New Zealand well. I think 47% of New Zealanders should bump that up; we have more confidence.

Andrew: We've always been a little more understated than our Australian counterparts in that way.

That's an interesting idea too. Not only is play important in the context of this increasingly synthetic world we're trying to navigate, and where we're looking for signs of humanity, but also in Australia and New Zealand, it's pretty much hardwired into our DNA. We think of ourselves as funny – you could almost extend the idea that it's probably a matter of national pride to be a bit funny too. To be playful with things, and certainly, a brand that doesn't lean into those ideas – that takes itself seriously – probably isn't going to be particularly on code at all. Perhaps that's again why we tend to, as nations, punch above our weight in terms of creating interesting, playful advertising as a response. It’s what we look to. A very interesting idea you brought forward is that New Zealand certainly does use humour to try and broach difficult conversations that people don't want to have. I think of the Taika Waititi campaign a while back about being a little bit racist and trying to deal with racism in the country – yeah, super humorous. But certainly from a cultural context, it's really, really important because it's hardwired into our DNA. We want to see it.

Dan, in last week's episode, we began to look at the opportunities of play beyond advertising alone with Mark and Lindsay, and I want to pick up on that conversation from there with this added lens of culture and get your view from a CX perspective.

We know that the opportunity for playfulness isn't confined to advertising alone. How can it benefit CX?

Dan: Yeah, it's a really good question, Andrew. Whenever we talk about CX and how it applies to insights, we come back to this fundamental point of view, which is the role of CX is ultimately to deliver on the brand promise that’s created. When we’re talking about advertising and brands being a lot more playful and humorous, we do need to consider how the brand actually delivers on that.  

CX can either meet the expectations that customers have and deliver that joy, or it won't.

We found through a lot of this research that people are telling us they expect brands to be a lot more playful. They expect them to be more playful in their customer experience. It’s good news for brands because there are alot of ways they can deliver playfulness through their CX. We find time and time again that often the most boring tasks can be ripe for playfulness. We see some industries where there's quite a low bar for overall playfulness, and we don't have high expectations around it – things like superannuation and financial services. We often find that they can be quite serious and solemn brands, and often, putting a little bit of playfulness into those brands can be impactful. It can disarm, lighten the mood, and make people feel more positive, and address some of that anxiety and uncertainty that can be associated with them.

We often find that playfulness can turn mundane and important points into quite engaging parts of the experience – things like the Air New Zealand safety videos, that injecting of playfulness into what is traditionally a serious task can be disarming and create memorable emotional peaks for people. You can also do this through unexpected playful moments.  

Using playful elements in both big and small moments can break up a lot of the routine and monotony of an interaction, creating a more memorable experience for people.

Andrew: There’s a lot of opportunity for playfulness to add something powerful to CX. The bar is low – play in CX is surprisingly limited in its application at the moment. It’s interesting to consider that, relative to the movements we've seen in advertising – in terms of the adoption of humour – play feels more significant than what we're seeing in the CX world. And it’s interesting when you relate it to that first idea you expressed, that CX is about meeting the promise by the brand, meeting the promise set by advertising, and the idea of these things being out of step with each other can end up causing conflict. It can end up creating a situation where, if we're taking our CX too seriously, we're not delivering what people expected to find – what the brand promised them.

Dan: 100%, you can get this real expectation gap where without the CX to reinforce it, you're creating that real challenge for the brand moving forward.  

Andrew: Absolutely! But the good news is, like you said, in adding more playfulness, in taking our CX less seriously, there's a lot of significant upside to this, and I love what you said about disarming and lightening the mood. It rings clearly with what Lindsey was talking about last week from a behaviour change point of view, about disarming and reframing – to take audiences who are coming in with an emotion that's not so positive, as they are in a lot of corporate CX experiences, where you need to contact the service centre or fill out some form you don't want to. By adding playfulness to it, engagement flips the mood and allows us that chance to get a level of reappraisal on the situation that we might not have been able to get previously.

A fantastic tool for driving engagement and, as you said, even delight – finding these little moments of unexpected joy or spontaneous liberation from the mundane in little ways. One thing, though, strikes me as we talk about playfulness and CX – CX is already pretty challenging to do well. Could adding play to these experiences make it even more complex to deliver on these promises?

Dan: Yeah, it's a really good call out, Andrew, and we did see from the research that although people in both countries are more open to play, it should be applied with caution. There's a time and place for humour and playfulness, and people don't want it all the time. As Customer Experience professionals or practitioners, we need to understand what is the most appropriate place to be using playful elements, and often that means being selective in where we’re applying playfulness in the customer experience.

It’s easy to turn playfulness into frustration when it interferes with something that's functional and important.

What I would say to people is to pick the right moments for play – playfulness should complement, not compete with those functional aspects of customer experience. But also, explore options like opt-in playfulness, to mitigate for people who aren’t necessarily as onboard with play as others – having that option to choose when it’s playful, to choose when they can engage with playful elements is a useful way to give customers control over that experience. Allowing them to have a straightforward, no-thrills experience when they want it, but also add those playful, surprising elements when they are looking for that.  

Andrew: I love that idea of selecting your level of playfulness for an experience – that in itself is play. It would be interesting if you could approach a form or something, selecting how you want to see it based on the level of play you're up for. Dan, you’re saying there are some rules about getting this right – balancing play with functionality, not letting play get in the way of functionality is super important. Picking the moments for it, and this idea of opt-in playfulness – allowing people to set their own level for when they play. These are ways we make sure that play adds to the experience rather than detracts from it.

Building on that, one of the things we've talked about over the weeks is this idea of staying true to your DNA. As a brand, there's probably an inherent level of playfulness or a kind of playfulness that is going to sit easily with us, and another that’s going to feel quite forced. Knowing that and staying in your lane is another way to make sure that we're additive in how play is being used.

Dan, I asked this question in last week's episode, so I'm interested in your perspective. How can you use playfulness to address solemn or more serious moments? Can you?

Dan: I think you definitely can. There is a lot of opportunity to inject play into many of those functional, often serious processes, and I’m thinking of things like financial services, government websites, things that traditionally haven't necessarily been that playful. I think it gives you that opportunity to diffuse the seriousness, create more engagement around those functional tasks, and we have seen quite a big move in Australia with a lot of financial services moving in that direction. Up Bank, for example, has a playful design – really colourful, almost psychedelic, but with engaging UX, a lot of gamification, and quite informal, playful language. I think it’s a good example of how they’ve leaned into playfulness as a way to disarm and reset the bar for what seriousness means in the category.

You do see play coming up in a range of different areas. We see playfulness coming up in a lot of low-stakes areas – that acknowledgement that you don't need to go from 0% to 100%; you can have these small, less significant touchpoints. We can start to introduce playfulness into those elements, and they do lighten the mood; they do start to reset the expectations of the brand. But we also see the idea of bringing fun into an ecosystem and creating this idea of connection, playfulness, and interaction with brands. Even the idea of things like employee experience – a lot of brands are starting to explore how to use employee experience and playfulness with their employees as a way to build on that. An example was from a recent internal memo released by Mr Beast, where one of the key things he tries to instil in his employee is the idea of playfulness and fun and how important that is to the end output that’s being created. If businesses can look at ways to gamify and create those moments of fun and playfulness, it does reflect in the end customer experience.

Laura: What I like about that Mr Beast example is he basically said to his staff, “If I'm not having fun, the audience is not going to believe it,” and that comes back to our first point about playfulness being a sign of life out there. That’s why it’s bad if you try and fake it because it even kind of digs more of a hole. It’s actually got to be genuine, and it’s got to be an authentic approach from where it’s coming from.

Andrew: Absolutely. I love that idea of bringing playfulness into the employee experience – we often see people celebrated when they create their own joy in their jobs. Like when you see the janitor or someone who’s found a way to inject fun into the role themselves and is taking an awful lot out of the role. It’s almost like, let’s do this for people, not make them find it on their own but as a way of adding. You talk about morale, and we often talk from a brand perspective about how ‘brand’ starts internally, right? That employee brand is your external brand, there’s no difference. In many ways, we should be thinking about CX in a similar way in terms of this potential for play.

Dan: You wouldn’t expect your customers to want a mundane, boring experience, so why do we expect that from employees? If we can instil that into what employees experience on a day-to-day basis, it has nothing but benefits for our end customers.

Andrew: To sum up what you said before, it does sound counterintuitive at first, but it's really these sorts of solemn, serious moments where there is a lot of opportunity to introduce play. It doesn't have to be all or nothing; it's about finding the appropriate touchpoints, finding the appropriate spaces and experiences to add something. At the end of the day, we are looking for joy and escape from the mundane, and it's these deeply serious tasks that often offer us the most fertile ground. Again, it reminds me of what we were talking about with behaviour change in last week's episode when we were talking about the importance of play, driving engagement into those spaces where people don't want to engage. When we were talking about sexually transmitted diseases, voter registration, or online porn – these spaces where there's this opportunity to disarm and engage people, and it’s incredibly true in these solemn spaces too.  

Laura, what's your perspective on playfulness and solemn, serious, difficult topics. Where in some of these spaces is this organically happening?

Laura: Yeah, I didn’t have to go far for inspiration. I’m gonna highlight people that ask for free money all the time, and that is bartenders and baristas. The reason I point to them is, just think of your local café or bar and that tip jar that is in front of you. When you're buying a drink or coffee, they’re asking for free money at that point, and especially in Australia and New Zealand where the context for that is everyone’s paid well behind the counter, as opposed to America and the tip culture there. So, there’s no real need for consumers to hand over any money, but culturally it’s sort of caught on. What I've noticed, especially over the last few years, is people getting creative with those tip jars because we expect a tip jar – it’s sort of commonplace now. But if you look up #tipjar on social media, you get all these funny examples: ‘Money is the root of all evil, cleanse yourself here’, ‘If you fear change, leave it here’. And then another good one was three jars asking for people to vote for who their favourite Spider-Man is with their spare cash – and for me, it's Tobey Maguire, that’s controversial. But I mean, tipping has become so ubiquitous that a funny tip jar can put a smile on your face and might just convince you to hand over those coins.  

That's a really small example, but you know, from a brand perspective, I loved the latest Dunkin’ Donuts and Scrub Daddy collaboration.

Scrub Daddy is an interesting brand. It’s done interesting collaborations, and I go back to the connection report – we were talking about finding these unexpected connections and joining them together. There is no real reason for a cleaning brand to be partnering with Dunkin’ Donuts – on paper, there’s no real connection. But that doesn’t matter – both those brands were basically up to have fun together, and I think we’re going to see that more with brands. These unexpected connections that, from a brand or product perspective, don’t align perfectly, and that's okay, because their brand ethos or brand vibe is connecting. In this instance, it was really playful and fun, they just decided to have fun together.

Consumers are looking for signs of life out there, so fun is a sharp way to prove that your brand is not a bot.

Andrew: I love Scrub Daddy, and that Scrub Daddy x Duolingo collaboration was awesome. It’s funny because I was talking about this with my 14-year-old, who was going, ‘I love Scrub Daddy, why don’t we have a Scrub Daddy? Can we get a Scrub Daddy?’ And 14-year-olds are not particularly interested in dishwashing.

Laura: Not last time I checked.

Dan: I think you’ve just unlocked the secret to cleaning!

Andrew: Yeah, exactly! It’s interesting that even there, that's a great example of playfulness creating engagement and connection – disarming people to a topic that they might otherwise not be interested in. Fascinating, isn’t it? But again, they make sense at a deeper level in terms of where our connections lie in the background, and I think the ‘ecosphere idea’ has something to add there. But ultimately, we are looking for signs of life out there – and that comes back to the cultural context you were talking about.

Laura: Yeah, it’s what’s going to break through.

Andrew: Yeah, it’s a way to break through and show you're not a bot. So, fascinating conversation on play and its potential in the world of CX, and what the culture lens brings to our understanding. What I want to do is summarise that conversation.

First and foremost, from a cultural context, what we’re saying is play is really important right now in the context we find ourselves in – our increasingly synthetic environments. Play is a big way we look for humanity, the idea that there's a human out there behind the content. So, it's really important to signifier. Not only that, but it’s also super culturally on-code for Kiwis and Aussies. We see ourselves as funny, we see ourselves as funnier than others and  we take pride in seeing play in our brands, in our advertising, and in our experiences, and we want to see more of it. We know that it's true as well.

From a CX point of view, there’s a really big opportunity. We’re starting to see more humour and more play from an above-the-line perspective in advertising, but it's surprisingly underplayed in our CX. If we consider the idea that CX is the delivery on the promise made by the brand, it's important that we raise the bar with CX and bring it more into alignment. We need to recognise the opportunities of play to create greater engagement and greater relevance for people. It’s an incredibly useful way of engaging people in tasks that they would otherwise find mundane or be unwilling to participate in, and it has great potential in terms of reframing people from a negative to a positive state.

But there are rules to getting it right. If we’re looking to inject more play into our CX, we have to allow people the freedom to opt in, to consider the level of play that they want to see and it can’t get in the way of the functional aspects of the experience. That’s where it goes from additive to subtractive. Ultimately, we have to be true to our own brand DNA. There’s a type of play that’s going to sit with us more comfortably, and a type of play that’s going to feel more forced. Understanding where we are and where our home is helps us make sure that we get it right.

Andrew: Laura, Dan, thank you for the fantastic conversation.

Laura and Dan: Thanks, Andrew.

Thanks for listening to Frame, a podcast by TRA dedicated to the art of knowing people. TRA is an insights agency, and by layering perspectives from the science of human understanding, we see what others don’t – the uncommon truths. To explore, visit https://www.theresearchagency.com/play  

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