When the going gets tough, there is a tendency to talk everything down. But what people really want is to be told that there is hope out there, that there is a route to something better. Maketers know this and it's leading to a surfeit of advertising designed to elicit feelings of joy.
But joy is a feeling of deep happiness and contentment. It is not some fleeting moment of a smile when you see a gorilla or a station filled with "dancers". This is not a time for coating your product/service with a patina of positive thinking. It is a time to shape that product/service so that people feel utterly content when they use it with nothing going wrong at a functional level and their spirits lifted by your having eased them through some aspect of their day
Tougher to do, but much more arresting than mere entertainment.
