Yum, it’s The Oatmeal

Watch this quick presentation from Matthew Inman, creator and curator of “The Oatmeal,” the righteously hilarious and nutty website that gets almost 5 million unique hits a month, as he talks about why people like his site.

Sure, Inman’s content might be a little crazy or irrelevant for actual client work and marketing campaigns. But Inman’s ability to identify issues that people can relate to, and use those issues or topics in his work, is a timeless rhetorical skill – the kind that keeps millions returning to his site every month.

Often times in this industry and always in our reality TV society, we all race to come up with the oddest, most random, unique, funniest, craziest, and most eye-popping idea for campaigns. Whereas that approach is obviously not the smartest way to get attention from the masses.

Identify issues, experiences, feelings, commonalities, and genuine responses that we all encounter – that we can all relate to. Add some humor or creativity – keep it simple – and it’ll resonate.

That seems to be Inman’s formula and it’s a simple one. Five-million-visitors-and-growing-simple.