Low-stakes and high-stakes goofing
Low-stakes goofing
Adam Buxton came to the Edinburgh Book Festival to promote his book. He was interviewed by comedian Zoë Coombs Marr. During the conversation, Buxton described his style as “low-stakes goofing.” Hearing that I ran a mental showreel of everything I’ve seen and heard him do, and I blew him a chef’s kiss because he’s bang on. He knows what he’s about.
Low-stakes goofing is the irresistible truth of Adam Buxton.
Book festivals are not a great format for a low-stakes goofer. The event was strangely less than the sum of its parts. Buxton is naturally funny, with the kind of affable manner that usually works a treat for live audiences. Zoë Coombs Marr asked interesting questions with wit and warmth. But it was like they were trying to blow up a balloon with a hole in it. Watching someone goof is more fun than listening to someone talking about goofing, which is more fun than listening to someone talking about writing about goofing. Goofing is loose and spontaneous, even if there’s an idea or a plan behind it, even if it’s goofing aforethought. Premeditated goofing works just fine if it’s done well. Interviewing an author about a book limits the scope for spontaneity. It was like seeing Buxton in a zoo rather than the wild. It’s sad to see a proud apex goofer in a cage.
High-stakes goofing
A couple of weeks after Buxton at the Book Festival, my friend James shared an article about the charismatic Democratic candidate for Mayor of NYC, Zohran Mamdani. The article describes the marketing approach that took Mamdani from complete unknown to frontrunner.
Much of the article is about Mamdani’s style. And the word “goofy” appears four times. Adam Buxton had sensitised me to any mention of goof, goofy, or goofing, which, let’s face it, are not common or garden business or political words. They’re not common words, period. As far as I can tell, based on some shallow noodling, “goofy” doesn’t even register in any datasets that measure the frequency of use of English words. Anyway, now I had a couple of goofy dots to join, and that sort of thing is irresistible if you have a newsletter to feed.
I won’t regurgitate Mamdani’s marketing strategy here. Read the article. I want to focus on goofy as a style, on goofing as a means to charm and disarm. This Instagram video of Mamdani trying to not wave his hands about when he’s talking is a good example.
It would usually be a slur, dismissive at least, to describe a politician as goofy. Boris Johnson is the notable exception. He’d take it as a compliment. He’s an arch exponent of goofy baffoonery. Johnson used goofiness on the back foot, as a defence mechanism, as a deflector shield, as chaff.
For Mamdani, goofing is a front-foot strategy. It’s a positive choice. And it works because it’s a choice that preserves and projects his authenticity. It’s not hard work for him to goof in front of a camera. It’s not an act.
Goofing is powerful because it’s subversive. On the surface it’s harmless, playful fun. But it’s the velvet glove for harsh truths and hard policy. Witness “Halalflation” and Mamdani speaking with his mouth full in the opening frames.
Plasticine Action is another example of goofy subversion. It’s the Pulp Fiction foot massage of mass protest ideas. You know it, they know it, but there’s naff all they can (legally) do about it. For now at least. I wouldn’t put it past our (UK) government to proscribe this kind of subversive goofing.
Mamdani, advised and filmed by Melted Solids, has got his Strategic Narrative down pat. A Strategic Narrative is framed by context, anchored in substance, and delivered with style to create a feeling of inevitability around a desired outcome.
Mamdani’s context is the affordability crisis, an issue on which NYC voters appear to be united. His substance is a series of simple, catchy policy messages straight out of the populist playbook. And his style is naturally goofy, which feels authentic for him and fresh for a politician. Add those things together, particularly the style and the substance, and the mayorship starts to feel inevitable, like it was meant to be.
It was never just about introducing New Yorkers to the person of Zohran Mamdani. It was also the agenda, and having those things become inseparable.
Andrew Epstein, Mamdani’s Director of Communications, quoted in “Selling Zohran” by Corey Atad for Defector
Low-stakes, high-reward goofing
Thinking of goofing, I couldn’t help thinking of Dougal. Dougal recently directed Paddington in Peru, his first feature. But my memories of him are from his advertising days. I first worked with Dougal and his creative partner Gareth back in 1993 when they were a placement team at the now defunct Faulds agency. I remember the conservative management team at the time having kittens at some of the zany ideas the pair would bring to creative reviews for clients like Standard Life and Scottish Power. The ideas were so fresh, but so never going to be presented to the client. It was inevitable that Dougal and Gareth, like me, would soon switch to the Leith Agency, which, in those days, was like moving from Rangers to Celtic or vice versa.
At Leith we worked together on some of the agency’s most famous ads, in an environment which felt like low-stakes goofing most of the time. A lot of that goofing ended up being commissioned, shot, and broadcast: like this launch ad for indie radio station Beat 106. The creative strategy was that the Beat 106 playlist was too good for it to be background music. It was foreground music. The proposition was a gift to a goofer.
These idents for Orangina’s sponsorship of Eurotrash bear the goofy hallmark of Dougal and Gareth.
As does this ad for Tennent’s Lager, superbly animated by Aardman.
Dougal was always goofing around with cameras. He wrote goofy ads in the spaces between goofing around with cameras. This was long before mobile phones. He’d make Heath Robinson rigs using tin foil and Blu Tack. He’d put cameras on skateboards and in footballs and make experimental films in the street outside the agency.
We went to Utah to shoot an ad for Tennent’s SD on the salt flats at Bonneville. SD was a new product, using the nitrogen process of creamy ales like Caffrey’s to create a hybrid smooth lager (it was never going to last.) The ad had to get across a lot of NPD product detail. It was always going to be workmanlike, but Dougal and Gareth came up with a goofy wrapper idea featuring a pair of flat-earthers. It’s a hard ad to find. It only seems to exist on Gareth’s portfolio site.
Dougal goofed on location. He had the idea to put my camera on the salt, set the self-timer, and for he and I to run away from the lens as far as we could before the shutter clicked. This photo, scanned from the print, sprung immediately to mind when I started thinking about goofing.
The goofing may have been low-stakes but it paid off handsomely. Honda put the Leith Agency on a pitch list, having been attracted by our off-the-wall work for IRN-BRU. Dougal and Gareth’s scripts played a big part in us winning the pitch, after which the Honda client affectionately christened them “the loonies”. Goofy, loony work stands out. Ask Mamdani. Big clients pay good money for it. People vote for it.
And look at Dougal now. He’s only gone and goofed his way onto the A-List.
Low-stakes high-profile goofing (bonus content!)
Twenty four hours after I sent this newsletter out to subscribers, I listened to Adam Buxton having a “ramble chat” with Benedict Cumberbatch on his podcast. About 44 minutes in they start goofing around with funny voices, and Cumberbatch tells how he started “acting” around the age of twelve, goofing around by recording himself at boarding school.
I guess that’s how all this started actually, with dictaphones and doing silly voices and noises, and my own version of jingles and stuff.
Benedict Cumberbatch talking to Adam Buxton on The Adam Buxton Podcast, September 2025
Then, right at the end, they both goof off each other, doing ever more extreme impersonations of Werner Herzog. Any pretence of doing a standard film-promotion interview with an actor goes out of the window. For a glorious moment, it’s entertainingly unhinged in all the ways that the Book Festival event wasn’t.
P.S. Tom and Matt asked me to do a guest post on How I Work for their excellent Ideas We Love Newsletter.
Maybe try this too: Doing work that never sees the light of day, a post about brand strategy in private and more on Strategic Narrative.
Love this Phil. We goofed well back then.