What do animals, selfies, Super Bowl ads, and the viral #SochiProblems Twitter feed teach us about entrepreneurship, visual content marketing, and social media strategy? Here is the fourth entry for The NICE Initiative for Female Entrepreneurship White Paper Series, about the psychological and practical aspects of today's startup culture. Written by an educator turned entrepreneur, using the NICE lens to study, write about, and yes, newsjack current events for takeaways that help us better balance our humanity and technology in today's iEra and globally connected but emotionally fragmented world.

1. 2/7/14 © Penina Pearl Rybak, Socially Speaking LLC, All Rights Reserved
NICE Initiative for Female Entrepreneurship: White Paper 4
By Penina Rybak MA/CCC-SLP, TSHH
Founder/CEO Socially Speaking LLC
Director: The NICE Initiative
Train Tracks Underneath Visual Content Marketing & Social Media Train:
From the Super Bowl to Sochi--Case Studies in Humor
"The tragedies of your life one day have the potential to be comic stories the next."
-- Norah Ephron
"To me, comedy is just twisting reality. It's commenting or observing or twisting life."
-- Steven Wright
What an interesting week's it's been this first week of February! Who knew I'd have so
much fodder to choose from for this white paper! From funny Super Bowl ads to the
@SochiProblems AKA #SochiProblems feed (the Twitterverse take on what's really
going on behind the scenes at the winter Olympics) the point I made in my Wordpress
post last week, that humor is where the mind and heart meet, is being made all
over the globe! I’ve been writing about humor on Wordpress because I wanted to use my
NICE lens to provide some psychological insights into current content marketing trends
entrepreneurs should be aware of (and take advantage of), to maintain the human
element of providing disruptive innovation re: their service/product. While it's
inevitable that entrepreneurs end up joining the ranks of those selling something, there
are ways to stand out from the crowd and connect to our clients; storytelling and humor,
which I wrote about in my book as well.
Many of us have been told that successful entrepreneurship today hinges on wearing
different hats and taking a crash course in digital marketing. Many of us have been told
lots of things (some true, some false) about the road to successful entrepreneurship,
some of which I wrote about in my latest article for The Huffington Post. While I agree
that it's important to be active on social media, I believe that more of us in
entrepreneurship need to remember the "social" in social media. That means tapping
into our collective humor, and recalling our fascination with stories from childhood so
that we hone our storytelling skills (which I wrote about previously here and here).
Honing a sense of humor is also intellectually and emotionally beneficial for ourselves,
as well as others. It hones our resiliency and creativity, especially when it's portrayed
visually. Balancing our humanity with our technology is key, particularly in
entrepreneurship, and particularly for content and digital marketing in today's iEra of

2. 2/7/14 © Penina Pearl Rybak, Socially Speaking LLC, All Rights Reserved
customizable selfies, narcissistic ramblings and promo-selfies, and the ever expanding
visual based mobile tech tools promising increased productivity but creating a social
etiquette quagmire. Thanks to the mobile technology revolution, an offshoot of the
overall Tech Revolution, advances in software and Apps such as Canva provide a
plethora of tools to incorporate humor like never before. Thanks to social media,
another offshoot, being globally connected 24/7 lets us all become better at comic
timing, especially when we combine that with newsjacking, like I tend to do :)
There are many case studies on humor available in the blogosphere, and my Pocket (to
tag) and Evernote (to organize in my "Blogging Fodder" Notebook) Apps are getting
quite the workout this week! There are many ideas and insights to gain from the online
Super Bowl chatter (pre-game and post-game) about the best/worst i.e. funny ads to the
hilarious photos accompanying real time tweets by journalists in Sochi about their
adventures. I will write about deconstructing types/stages of humor and implications for
entrepreneurship and visual content marketing, including an excerpt from my
upcoming book, as this series continues.
For now, I want to point out that in marketing, a call to action is used to trigger the
process of creating psychological momentum for "leads" to become customers and enter
the "funnel", which is something entrepreneurs need to keep in mind. I first learned this
by being a pediatric speech therapist in the school system, trying to find common
ground with my students, and then my fellow educators/therapists and parents of
children with Autism, who needed us to all find ways to work together as a team to help
them succeed and grow. I then learned this again the hard way when I first started my
company. I made mistakes and learned by trial and error, and from a few less than
stellar elevator pitches and presentations/keynote speeches when I started out as an
entrepreneur. One of my personal mantras thus became "Trigger humor to trigger the
connection", something I strive to be mindful of in real time and cyber time, and
especially when giving seminars/speeches. That's why "Join the Journey for Change" is
my company motto. That's why I've given educational seminars around the country
since 2009 on play, social skills and humor development in youngsters with Autism/
Special Needs. It's all connected.
Our brains make continuous connections between what we see, and what
we know about our world, and how "it's supposed to work". Laughter is
triggered when we find something humorous, usually because of how it looks (physical
humor), or how it sounds i.e. the content's delivery is tweaked to appeal to our episodic
memory (linguistic memory).
That's why I believe that one of the train tracks underneath the visual
content marketing train we're all on these days is HUMOR. I agree with Brian
Solis, a thought leader on social media whom I follow regularly, that digital marketing
relevance is contingent on emotional resonance. Humor is a crucial vehicle to providing
emotional resonance in content marketing. It SHOULD be used in social media
marketing campaigns, especially via funny pictures because it quickly and efficiently
provides memorable messages, Calls to Action (CTA), and emotional triggers for our

3. 2/7/14 © Penina Pearl Rybak, Socially Speaking LLC, All Rights Reserved
brains to zero in on, process, store, and integrate into our inner landscape and psyche,
which in turn affects all our actions and deeds.
A person's sense of humor is as individualized as a fingerprint; no two are alike. Part of
the human condition is self discovery about one's talents, ideas, humor, and the
intersecting process of all three, which contributes to the journey; especially in
entrepreneurship. Honing a sense of humor in one's self and finding it and harnessing it
in others are both essential to an entrepreneur's state of mind and digital footprint, as
well as the social media marketing campaign to gain clients and retain their loyalty. It's
all about finding common ground and having Theory of Mind (empathy, perspective),
both of which can be QUICKLY accomplished using visual content based social media
posts! As Walt Disney said, "There's nothing funnier than the human animal."
Animals have always been popular in the humor arena, and were very prevalent in this
year's Super Bowl ads. They are also a popular them in art. Have you seen artist Yago
Partal's renditions of animals wearing clothes and portraying various human
personalities i.e. buyer personae AKA social media archetypes? Have you seen the "cow
romance" courtesy of Chevy? Have you seen the funny RadioShack Super Bowl
ad displaying your favorite 80s characters? We are all visual creatures somewhere on
the archetype continuum, not just people who are "visual learners". We are all selling
something at one time or another. We can all tap into the visual modality, especially in
entrepreneurship and marketing; something Dan Roam does so well. It's why I am
eagerly awaiting his new book Show and Tell and want to share his humorous Ode to
Pictures, which I've shared before. Got humor? Then you have strategy, game, and one
of The Hooks for visual content marketing!

4. 2/7/14 © Penina Pearl Rybak, Socially Speaking LLC, All Rights Reserved
Penina Rybak MA/CCC-SLP, TSHH
CEO Socially Speaking LLC
Director: The NICE Initiative for Female Entrepreneurship
LinkedIn Page: Penina Rybak http://www.linkedin.com/pub/penina-rybak/
37/900/191
Email: penina@niceinitiative.com
Website: http://niceinitiative.com
About.Me: http://about.me/NICE.Initiative/#
Twitter: @PopGoesPenina
Tumblr: The NICE Initiative http://niceinitiative.tumblr.com
WordPress Blog for Book: http://niceinitiativeblog.wordpress.com
Pinterest: Peninaslp http://pinterest.com/peninaslp/the-nice-initiative-for-femaleentrepreneurship-tb/
Slideshare:
http://www.slideshare.net/PeninaRybakMACCCSLPT
Facebook: The NICE Initiative https://www.facebook.com/
TheNiceInitiativeForFemaleEntrepreneurship
Google +: The NICE Initiative http://google.com/
+TheNICEInitiativeFemaleEntrepreneurship
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/storytellergal
Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/user19684006
Phone: (646) 820-5547