Thought Leaders Circle

Children are naturally drawn to having fun. When they play, they are having fun in the “learning state”. Fun helps all of us more deeply engage in learning.

Just watch a young child’s mimicry of adults in play, to see how important fun is for their adoption of life skills.

One of the reasons fun, is so fun, is that it gets us out of our comfort zone.

The emotional experience of fun means; “the doing of it is an end itself, I am detached from the results”. Approaching a task with “fun” as the desired outcome, gets us out of that “win-loose” pressure, allowing us to be highly experimental.

So fun is not just a laughing matter, it does two powerful things for ourselves, and for a brand:

1. It makes us engaged in the learning of things, through the reward of pure fun

2. It gets us out of our “known” into a state of learning

So how can a brand capitalise on this fun stuff?

Innovations are bringing competitive points of difference hurdling down the pipeline at an incredible rate. In order to succeed in the market, you don’t need to just build it, you have to create adoption.

“Fun” is nature’s in built strategy to help us adopt something new. An innovative brand needs to learn how to link their product innovation to “early adopter” fun, which will go viral and become ‘fun for all’.

Who does this well? Why Apple of course.

Apple has sold 183 million iPhones since 2007. The iPhone and iPad, while neither of these were in the market 5 years ago, generate 72% of Apple’s revenue, and Apple is struggling to meet demand.

Why are people picking up Apple? Hey they are just more fun.

Fun is also embedded into Apple’s customer service. As a branding expert I could not help but marvel at the inspired t-shirts, sales people were wearing at Apple’s mega store in George St, Sydney. It simply said “I could talk about this all day”. That is blinkin brilliant. That says to people, hey its fun when you come to me to learn.

Apple’s Genius branding for their technical consultants, also makes it “fun” to learn.

So have some fun with your brand and your customers!

It works for you too, find the fun in all you do, and you will keep learning and growing.

Fun is about adventure, creativity, humor, play, sensory delights, and it is not just for children, fun is the way we can all be forever young.

Louise Kelly

Managing Director

Hearts and Minds

http://www.heartsandminds.com.au