The Misunderstood Weapon That Led to Two Trillion Dollars: The Introduction of iPhone.

Head fakes. Misdirection. Reversal. Cognitive dissonance.

All of them were on display as Steve Jobs introduced the product that would one day lead Apple to a two trillion dollar valuation.

It was the most jumbo of moments, and it was handled unlike any major product intro ever.

To the biggest — or at least most profitable — product reveal in the history of history, Steve Jobs brought shenanigans, high jinks and subterfuge.

Who does that?

A supernatural storyteller.

Funny. The most misunderstood and overlooked tool in business.

Before we label Steve Jobs brutal. Insensitive. Demeaning. Punitive. Let’s add, for a moment, Pryor-esque. As in Richard Pryor-esque. Steve Jobs was a funny motherfucker.

As ad creators we are often required to defend our use of humor. Deep down we know it works, but more grounded reasons can sometimes prove elusive. If we closely study Steve Jobs, they don't have to be.

While most CEOs avoid humor like the company cafeteria, they do so at their own risk. Love it or hate it, funny sells.

If you demand proof you can start with a new book that gets at the heart of this.

While it never mentions Jobs directly, Humor, Seriously, recently released by Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas, is a book that celebrates the unlikely power of levity atop the ivory tower.

Humor isn’t just for clowns. It’s a tool of titans because it's a rich source of that one critical ingredient business cannot function without: trust.

Science tells us how it works: laughter triggers oxytocin, and oxytocin is what is known as the “trust hormone.” If you are selling the first version of anything, you’ll want a mighty Mississippi of it coursing through your sales channels.

It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end. -----— Leonardo Da Vinci

The biggest challenge to new product introductions is initial resistance. When you move people’s cheese it pisses them off. People naturally feel threatened by the new. If you’ve ever shared a challenging new idea with co-workers, you've been there.

To deliver something new requires softening the blow. We need to dull the automatic resistance. We need to create a safe space.

“The link between humor and psychological safety lies in laughter,” the authors of Humor, Seriously write. “Even the anticipation of laughing has been shown to decrease cortisol (our “stress hormone”) and epinephrine (out “fight or flight,” hormone) by 39 percent and 70 percent respectively, making us feel safer, calmer and less stressed.”

Laughter lowers our resistance to change.

In high-stakes product launches there is a strong gravitational pull to stick to the straight and narrow. When billions, or trillions, are at stake, one certified dictum has to be DO NOT CONFUSE PEOPLE. For the introduction of iPhone Jobs defied a lot of dictums.

He started by saying that he had three products to share. A wide-screen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary new phone, and a state-of-the-art internet communications device. With each came hungry applause. But the audience soon discovered they had it wrong. Jobs then repeated this mantra three times, “A wide-screen iPod…” until people finally connected the dots. And just in case, they didn’t, he spelled it out: “These are not three separate devices, this is one device.” Uproar.

Jobs was operating under what is known as the Incongruity-Resolution Theory. Aaker and Bagdonas write: “This is a fancy way of saying that people like being surprised. When the setup of the joke leads our brain in one direction and the punch line unexpectedly pivots to the Backstreet Boys, we experience incongruity.”

When people finally figured out that these three things were one thing, they did exactly what the storyteller had in mind: they went bananas.

Now came the piece de resistance. Or the coup de grace, if you happened to be a "competing" phone maker at the time

“Today Apple is going to re-invent the phone. And here it is.”

This is the first picture the world ever saw of the iPhone:

It’s like raising the curtain at the Detroit Auto Show to a donkey in pajamas. And again: this was the biggest product launch in the history of the world. Who does that?

 If you were an executive at Apple, you probably had some justified anxiety around this image. The likely fear being that when people thought iPhone all they’d remember is that big, honking rotary dial.

This is always the first objection to humor. It will somehow say the wrong things. Its blast zone is just too big. There can be collateral damage. But caution can also be dangerous.

Sticking safely to the facts never got anyone in trouble at launch. And no one would blame the failure of a product for its crappy reveal. But that's what happens. When literalists set the tone, those down the line have little interest in going beyond speeds and feeds.

In a speech given in 1980 at the annual meet ing of the 4A’s (the American Association of Advertising Agencies), ad legend Bill Bernbach warned of an overly stubborn belief in the power of the facts. He outlined numerous competing campaigns where the winner was not defined by their underlying message (they were promising the same thing) but, instead, the execution. He talked about social change, and if those who cared about changing our society for the better didn’t get the communications part right they would fail. No matter how impressive the facts, they would go unheeded unless the communicators made their audience feel something. “Until you wrap all these facts in a talented expression to which people respond, until you cloak those facts in the artistry that makes people feel, you are not going to communicate.”

Laughter makes us feel. It can be that cloak. Humor is a bet on our emotions and a belief that levity can reach places facts never can.

Jobs could have just as easily pulled the iPhone out of his pocket and held it aloft for the world to see (much like Jeff Bezos did years later with his Fire Phone). At this point in the presentation it would have been easy to fold his hand on humor. But Jobs stayed at the table.

Why wouldn’t he quit while he was ahead?

There’s a notion of consistency in effective salesmanship. In fact, in Robert Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Selling, there’s a whole chapter devoted to it. Basically, we all want to be consistent and we want others to be so as well. Had Jobs abandoned humor after his first salvo, like millions of public speakers before him, it would have run counter to who he was. He instinctively knew that those who can create levity in high pressure moments earn our adulation and win our confidence. So instead of projecting a glossy photo of the now ubiquitous communications device, Jobs doubled down with satire. The clunky version of the future — with a subtle jab at makers of cumbersome tech— made the sleekness of the iPhone even more sublime.

Scientifically there is a case for humor. Psychologically as well. But, still, in corporations funny is largely frowned upon. Humor requires risk taking, and, most importantly, an ultra-high level of empathy. To get someone to laugh you must have that rare ability to understand what others are thinking. And even what they may think next. This is empathy raised to the emotional IQ of a Gandhi.

We trust people who make us laugh because they are not full of shit and we find their confidence compassionate. They are willing to risk self-immolation to show us a good time. They live to surprise and delight.

On January 9th, 2007, Steve Jobs jobs did just that and it was pure dopamine.