Idiosyncrasy Preservation (The Stand-Up Comedian Test)
Protect the odd, inconsistent details of your product — idiosyncrasies count double.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 92%
Companies systematically sand off the quirks in their products in the name of consistency, rationality and efficiency — and in doing so they destroy the very features people remember and talk about. Sutherland's rule is that idiosyncrasies count double: a slightly weird detail earns disproportionate attention, memory and word of mouth. The diagnostic is whether a stand-up comedian could do a routine about your product.
Origin
Sutherland's own formulation, seeded by an Ogilvy New York creative director who told Jaguar in the 1990s to keep its inconsistent interior-light switch. He cites Veuve Clicquot's accidental yellow label and MCI's Friends & Family (brought to BT in the UK by marketer Ed Carter) as canonical cases.
Core principles
- 01The urge to appear serious is in many ways a disaster in marketing.
- 02Comedians notice what is slightly weird — so if your product is comedian-material, it has an attention handle.
- 03A little extra friction or irrationality can be an asset, not a defect: it makes the offer discussable.
- 04Visual and UX distinctiveness compounds into brand identity — the champagne with the yellow label.
- 05Consistency reviews are where distinctiveness quietly dies: the quirk gets flagged as an inconsistency and removed.
How to run it
- 1
Inventory the oddities
List every detail of your product, pricing, packaging and UX that is inconsistent, quirky, or slightly irrational relative to category norms — the things a tidy-minded reviewer would flag for removal.
Pro tip Ask long-tenured staff what they have been meaning to 'clean up'. That list is your distinctiveness inventory.
- 2
Run the comedian test on each
For each oddity, ask whether a stand-up comedian could build a routine around it. If yes, it has a splinter of attention — it rises above the normal shape and people will notice and discuss it.
Pro tip Friends & Family generated whole comedy routines in the UK ('it's basically my mum and nine adult lines'). That was free attention no across-the-board price cut could buy.
- 3
Decide keep, celebrate, or kill — deliberately
Sometimes the right thing is to remove the quirk; sometimes you celebrate it. Make it an explicit decision rather than letting a consistency audit delete it by default.
Pro tip When in doubt on a distinctive asset, escalate it: Veuve Clicquot made the accidental yellow even more yellow.
Watch out The default corporate move is to kill quirks as 'inconsistent'. Jaguar was about to remove its signature light switch for exactly that reason.
- 4
Prefer a weird mechanism over a flat improvement
When you can deliver the same economic value either as a plain across-the-board improvement or as a slightly odd, effortful mechanism, choose the odd mechanism — it earns attention the flat version never will.
Pro tip MCI could have cut all call prices 15-20%. Instead it made you nominate your numbers — same economics, vastly more talkability.
Watch out The friction must be meaningful and pleasant, not punitive. Weird friction that only costs the customer is just a bad experience.
- 5
Codify the quirks as protected assets
Write the surviving idiosyncrasies into your brand and product guidelines as things that must not be optimised away, so they survive future redesigns and staff turnover.
In the wild
Instead of cutting call prices across the board, MCI made customers nominate a handful of specific numbers to get roughly 20% off calls to those numbers. Most people make 80% of their calls to five or six numbers anyway, so the economics were similar — but the nomination step created deliberate friction and a talking point.
→ It garnered far more interest than an equivalent across-the-board price cut, and when it launched in the UK via BT it spawned whole comedy routines — attention money cannot buy.
In 1990s Jaguars, the overhead reading light was operated by a button on the central console rather than a switch on the roof, unlike every other car. Jaguar planned to remove it as an inconsistency. Ogilvy's New York creative director told them to keep it.
→ The quirk was recognised as a distinctiveness asset rather than a defect, and Sutherland cites it as a template for what companies should protect.
A printing error left the French champagne house with labels in an unwanted yellow. They dumped the stock on the English market — where it sold so well that the British asked for more of 'the one with the yellow label'. Clicquot then made the yellow even louder.
→ The accidental yellow label became the entire visual identity of the brand — customers cannot recall the name but can always recall the colour.
Common mistakes
Auditing quirks away as inconsistencies
The instinct to look serious, consistent and rational systematically deletes the exact features that make a product memorable and discussable.
Buying attention with a rational discount
A flat 15-20% price cut is economically clean and psychologically invisible. An odd, slightly irrational mechanism with the same cost generates conversation.
Confusing distinctiveness with differentiation
Agencies talk about nuanced differentiation; Sutherland's point is that you simply have to be distinctive and stick with it visually without messing around.
Is it for you?
Best for
Marketers and product leaders on an established product whose redesign or consistency review is about to strip out its memorable oddities.
Not ideal for
Safety-critical or regulated interfaces where quirky, non-standard controls create genuine risk or confusion.
From the transcript
“so you once said if you can imagine a stand-up comedian doing a routine about your product then you're on to something the urge to…”
“one of the things I always point out is that idiosyncrasies kind of count double”
“and that's what I mean about the comedian the comedian notices things that are slightly weird”
“famously Verve Cleo the the French champagne house their labels ended up yellow by mistake”
“the entire identity of that champagne even you know you can't remember the number it's the name it's the one with the yellow label”
From the episode
What most people miss about marketing
Rory Sutherland (Vice Chairman of Ogilvy UK, author)