How Steve Jobs Cracked ’em Up and Why It Matters

Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone during his keynote address at the Macworld conference in San Francisco, January 2007.  

Standing on stage, in his bluejeans and that black, mock turtleneck, Jobs whipped the crowd into a frenzy by confirming the Apple phone was here. 

And then it was time to reveal it.  

Three minutes into the presentation, he said, “Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone. And here it is…”  

The room went silent. And that giant screen behind Steve Jobs showed the image of… 

…a big white iPod music player, with a rotary telephone dial attached below the track list window.  

The crowd exploded in laughter. That was a funny joke.

There’s a guy named Peter McGraw who studies humor.  

He’s a marketing and psychology professor at the University of Colorado,  Boulder. 

In a column he wrote, I learned someone counted the laughs in Jobs’ iPhone keynote.  

“Steve Jobs’ keynote launching the iPhone clocked in at .6 laughs per minute…” McGraw wrote in this column. “…Not good enough for Letterman, but better than most new comics.”  

That’s one laugh every 100 seconds.  

And, according to McGraw, that’s comedy gold for Apple.  

Humor breaks the ice.  

It builds bonds.  

It makes you memorable.  

It earns you trust.  

It helps the bottom line. 

McGraw puts it this way: “Humor can help brands cut through a cluttered marketplace. A well-executed joke grabs attention, sticks in customers’ memories better than most ad campaigns could, and injects brands into water cooler conversation. It also has the benefit of making companies seem more human.”  

I know business people who make me laugh in casual conversation. Great senses of humor. Great personalities.  

But when the time comes to write an email or post to their blog or say something on social media, they leave all that personality behind. They get serious.  

Please…put some personality in your copy.  

You don’t have to write a stand-up routine.  

You don’t have to keep score and count laughs per minute.  

You don’t even have to be funny.  

Just be human. 

The more human you are in your business, the more human your business relationships will be.  

That’s good for your clients, and that’s good for you. 

That’s good for your business. And that’s good for your spirit.