Entertaining Is Not The Same As Interesting

The uproar about the Barbie movie being snubbed at the Oscars is based on a misunderstanding between what is entertaining and what is interesting. The box office receipts speak for themselves. The movie is a huge hit, and audiences went to see it in droves. Barbie succeeded in its ability to entertain, but according to the Motion Picture Academy, it didn't deliver on interestingness. It wasn't a remarkable artistic achievement. Pamela Paul's opinion piece in the NY Times attempts to disentangle the entertaining from the interesting. "Can I say that, despite winsome leads and likable elements, it didn’t cohere or accomplish anything interesting, without being written off as a) mean, b) old, c) hateful, or d) humorless?" Her point is, yes it is entertaining, but not interesting (at least not to her).

Martin Scorsese says essentially the same thing when he distinguished between entertainment and cinema in his 2019 editorial “I said Marvel Movies Aren’t Cinema. Let Me Explain.”

Like movies, when judging the potential effectiveness of an ad, the industry asks if an ad is simple, clear, and entertaining. We don't ask if it's interesting. Being entertaining is seen as an effective way of embedding memories into consumers' minds BECAUSE it is believed that entertaining means it will get an emotional reaction. System 1 Research promotes itself by saying "We predict sales and growth impacts by measuring emotion, letting you make ads that entertain for commercial gain." According to their website, "the more people feel, the more likely they are to buy." In 2024 Cannes Lions have added a separate award category just for humorous ads. Adding further support to this belief, a 2014 Journal of Marketing Science article titled "Why, When, and How Much to Entertain Consumers in Advertisements?" Harvard and MIT professors Thales Teixeira, Rosalind Picard and Rana el Kaliouby, claim using web-based facial tracking that "The presence of positive entertainment (e.g., visual imagery, upbeat music, humor) in TV advertisements can make them more attractive and persuasive."?

Entertainment = Emotion = Memorable = Effective

Entertainment does have emotional value. And emotions do play an essential role in helping us remember and decide. For effective advertising, "Memory is everything." as Sharp and Romaniuk have made clear. But entertainment value is not the only way memory works. We also remember things we think about. "Memory is the residue of thought," says cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham. In other words, while emotions aid memory, it is also aided by thinking about something.

Further, emotions and thinking cannot be separated. The neuroscientist Antonio Damasio published this finding in his book 1994 Descartes' Error, Emotion Reason and The Human Brain. Before Damasio's discovery, it was assumed that the brain structure responsible for reasoning was distinct not only from the body itself but also from the "lower" regions of the brain that govern other aspects of biological function. But all of this, Damasio argues convincingly, is entirely wrong: “This is Descartes' error. I propose that human reason depends on several brain systems, working in concert across many levels of neuronal organization, rather than on a single brain center. Both "high-level" and "low-level" brain regions...cooperate in the making of reason. In Damasio's view emotion and feeling are not in opposition to reason but provide essential support to the reasoning process. Knowing about the relevance of feelings in the processes of reason does not suggest that reason is less important than feelings, that it should take a backseat to them, or that it should be less cultivated. On the contrary, taking stock of the pervasive role of feelings may give us a chance to enhance their positive effects and reduce their potential harm.” [p 246]

However, advertisers and advertising researchers still make the case that they are distinct and one is valuable and the other is not. We tend to see emotion and reason not only as distinct spheres but also as forces working in opposition to each other. Reason is something to overcome through emotion and entertainment. "Speak to the heart, don't bother the brain." System 1 claims in their "Five Secrets to Advertising Success."

This is a misreading of the science of how the mind and memory work. You can't feel without thinking and you can't think without feeling. There is anecdotal evidence in advertising that Demasio and Willingham are correct. The most memorable Nike ads over the past thirty years aren't merely entertaining ones. They are the ones that also make you think. If you let me play. Hello World. I am not a role model. Dream Crazy. Frozen Moment.

And before you say hold on, conscious processing takes a lot of mental energy and the brain's job is to conserve that energy. That is again, only one way thinking works. Another way is in the background. Unconscious processing is still going on even though we are not consciously thinking about things. This is where those ‘aha’ moments come from while your conscious processing is distracted by doing something else like showering or exercising. The brain is still processing, thinking, making connections. Graham Wallace proposed a strategy for insightful thinking in his 1926 book, The Art of Thought. Step 2, was Incubation: “not consciously thinking about the problem." Step 3: Illumination: “The appearance of the happy idea.” He acknowledges that the brain will still work on a problem in the background.

Back to the distinction between entertaining and interesting. In general, interesting things continue to feel worth thinking about, even after they’re over, while entertainment can feel great at the time, but doesn't necessarily last long after the viewing is over. In that way it is spectacle. Spectacle attracts but doesn’t necessarily hold or grow.

Interest and enjoyment also stem from different appraisals. In a 2006 experiment (Turner & Silvia), people were asked to view a set of paintings. Some of the paintings—such as landscapes by Claude Lorraine and Claude Monet—were soothing and relaxing. Other paintings—such as works by Francis Bacon and Francisco Goya—were twisted and disturbing. People rated their interest and enjoyment of each painting, and they appraised each painting on a wide range of appraisal dimensions. The results showed that interest and enjoyment had contrasting within-person relationships with appraisals of the paintings. Paintings rated as interesting were appraised as complex, unfamiliar, negative, and disturbing; paintings rated as enjoyable were appraised as simple, positive, and calming. So the Barbie movie could be rated as enjoyable (simple, positive and calming), but not complex, unfamiliar or disturbing. You can like the Barbie movie, without finding it interesting, just the same as you can dislike something and find it interesting.

This means to consider one (entertaining) a goal in creating ads and the other (interesting) irrelevant is limiting creative opportunity. And, as we will discuss in other posts, less efficient, which finance and tech people should like.

What Pamela Paul is doing in her editorial is what A.O. Scott, the long-time film critic from the NY Times described as the job of the critic in his book Better Living Through Criticism; to recommend things that you may not love, but "to point your attention to something that is interesting." Both Paul and Scott are distinguishing between things that are entertaining and things that have qualities worth thinking about. Scott in a recent interview furthers the point. “I’d say that it’s not so important to like things or to experience only what we like...If we didn’t sometimes see movies we hated—or were bored by, or didn’t understand, or found offensive—we would know a lot less about movies, our tastes, and the world. There are a lot of movies I’ve found unpleasant or that I’ve had various aesthetic or other problems with—White Ribbon, The Color Wheel, The Wolf of Wall Street, Gangs of New York—that I’ve found it interesting and challenging to think about. My hope is that my readers are open to that kind of experience as well, and that I can sometimes nudge them toward it."

The study of Interestingness is similar to the job of the film critic. To recognize that things that are worth thinking about also have personal and commercial value. So when we make advertising, and when it is judged, instead of asking only is it simple, is it clear, is it entertaining. Asking if it is interesting recognizes that the brain and advertising can work in multiple ways.?

#interestingness #marketingeffectiveness