Monkey Business: What’s Up With Punch Mania?

by Freddy Tran Nager, Founder of Atomic Tango + Monkey Enthusiast; photo by Daiei Onoguchi, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons…

I was recently quoted in a story by Annenberg Media about the social media phenomenon Punch, the baby monkey. (If you haven’t heard about him yet, you must have been hiding out.) Below is the full interview, with questions by journalist Zia Sirianni…

1. Why do you feel this baby monkey video has drawn so any people in? What about the video or who’s in it that makes it so appealing to people to get invested?

Obviously, baby animals are cute, and what makes them cuter is when they act in human-like ways. We love to anthropize other species (I certainly do with my cats). And that’s been a fixture of social media dating back to I Can Has Cheezburger. What makes Punch particularly captivating is the empathetic element: he isn’t just cute, he’s clinging to a ragged stuffed animal for emotional support, and that resonates strongly in a time when human loneliness is at an epidemic level worldwide. (Ironically, one of the causes of this loneliness might be social media.) The pandemic confined most of us to our homes, and many people are still struggling to develop close relationships with other humans. That’s exacerbated by our political divisiveness. Animals appeal to all persuasions and political leanings — notice that Pixar’s first hit film in years, Hoppers, is about animals, and it arrives at a time when movie box office receipts are drying up. So amidst all the social dysfunction and doomscrolling, here comes Punch to our emotional rescue. The fact that he’s now bonded with other monkeys gives his story a happy ending that we all crave.

2. The Japanese Zoo has used this viral video to make a lot of money, such as selling out the orangutan plushies and making edits of Punch. Do you feel this is good marketing?

Absolutely. Zoos worldwide are struggling. Not only are they high-cost, high-maintenance 24/7 institutions, they are confronting heated antagonism from activists who oppose holding animals captive for human entertainment. So when a zoo happens to have a feel-good story, whether it’s the birth of a panda or a rare-species rescue, they can and should make the most of it. That will generate both revenue and goodwill, and remind people that they can see animals in person and not just on their phones. The fact that Punch would likely not have survived in the wild makes the zoo also appear as integral and hopeful, not as an exploitative indulgence.

3. The Zoo has also sold out tickets. How is the zoo using the monkey in ways that marketers do in other sectors? Are there similarities to their methods?

Yes. These days we call it influencer marketing. If only all influencers were as universally appealing as Punch.