How to Use Humor in Advertising
Thinking beyond your product and more in terms of humor and entertainment can maximize your advertising effectiveness. Here’s how to pull it off.
Screenshot from YouTube
The E*Trade Talking Baby ad campaign debuted and the company saw an increase in brokerage accounts.
Old Spice. Taco Bell. E-Trade. Blendtec. Budweiser. Some of the most memorable advertising campaigns in recent history, regardless of company size and marketing budget, and whether broadcast, print or online-only, have involved humor. As an audience, consumers most enjoy being entertained instead of pitched, and so appealing to them emotionally can lead to further engagement with your product in the future. Utilizing social media can be an inexpensive and extremely effective way to do that.
For example, when you're a company like Cisco selling $100,000 computer routers, it can be difficult to put a commercial together that will appeal to anyone but hardcore tech programmers. But thinking creatively and beyond the product, you can create something that becomes a viral hit and appeals to your customers, while also allowing others who may have zero intention to buy your product to share it with their friends, raising brand awareness.
So why should your company use humor in its advertising? How can you implement it into your overall marketing strategy? Those questions and more will be answered in this guide.
How to Use Humor in Advertising: Why Advertise With Humor?
According to a 1993 Journal of Marketing study that examined multinational effects of humor on advertising (a study that still stands true), the major conclusion was that 'humor is more likely to enhance recall, evaluation, and purchase intention when the humorous message coincides with ad objectives, is well-integrated with those objectives, and is viewed as appropriate for the product category. Under such circumstances, humorous advertising is more likely to secure audience attention, increase memorability, overcome sales resistance, and enhance message persuasiveness.'
Humor should not be the only form of advertising your company employs. Particularly when you're selling a very specific product, you need to give your customers valuable purchasing information and specifics, but without hitting them over the head with it. Spend money on traditional advertising that will actually lead to conversions for your leads, because that's where the bulk of your business will come from. But occasionally adding humor into the equation when it's least expected can be a great way to show customers that you care not just about sales, but about their individual satisfaction. You can do this in your blog, via your company's social media presence, or in a traditional advertising campaign.
'It still takes a lot of work to sell an entire organization on an ad campaign that employs humor, particularly on social media platforms,' says Tim Washer, a senior social media and marketing manager for Cisco Systems in New York City and a comedy writer/actor who has worked with Conan O'Brien, Jon Stewart, David Letterman and more. 'Typically you have an entire marketing group and the whole fiber of your being is geared toward evangelizing your product and services. So someone will always feel left out. But talking solely about your product just doesn't work.'
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How to Use Humor in Advertising: When Humor Works
Comedy can be the great differentiator for any product, notes Washer. So when Cisco was releasing their new ASR 9000 in 2009, Washer helped to create a sketch around how many ways a man can show his wife he loves her, with the purchase of a new router was the humorous conclusion. 180,000 YouTube views, a New York Times blog mention and later detailed in David Meerman Scott's best-selling book The New Rules of Marketing and PR, the executives at Cisco began to see the value of Washer's overall belief in terms of humor in advertising.
'Humor, when executed properly, helps cut through the noise and helps you stand out,' Washer notes. 'If you can make someone laugh, there is an emotional connection with them. And anything you say beyond that is going to be more meaningful.'
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How to Use Humor in Advertising: When Humor Doesn't Work
Identifying examples of advertising where humor was employed but failed could be a story in itself, but there are plenty of recent examples of poorly executed campaigns that teach just as much about doing it right as they do things to avoid.
'There are two big mistakes that you often see in the campaigns that fail,' Washer says. 'The first, and easily the biggest, is trying to include too much product messaging. As soon as you start doing that, you lose the audience. It's important to fight the urge to burden a comedy with product information. The second mistake I see is companies that simply are not willing to take a risk by being a little bit edgy. If you are safe, your results will be average. But it's when you take a chance that something can become really big.'
Among recent failed campaigns, industry analysts point to the 2009 Super Bowl advertisement by Sobe beverages as an example of when humor doesn't work as intended. In the 'Lizard Lake' campaign, the brand employed three NFL players, CGI (computer-generated imagery) lizards and monsters and had them dancing in a mockery of the old and famous ballet Swan Lake. There were many reasons the campaign was not received well: too much CGI and computer enhancement, football players turned ballet dancers, lizards turned football players, the inherent promotion of a new movie (Monsters vs. Aliens) and too much product promotion throughout.
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