Humor Appeals in Advertising: When Do They Work

Humor works by:

• Aiding exposure: Blocking zapping and zipping. Preventing consumers from avoiding the commercial by switching channels (zapping) or avoiding the commercial by fast-forwarding while watching a prerecorded program (zipping).
• Holding attention: Getting people to listen to or watch the ad (rather than shift their attention to something else);
• Helping memory: Making people remember the ad by the joke.
• Gratification: Adds to the enjoyment people derive from the use of media. It leaves a pleasant feeling by having amused the consumer, and this pleasant feeling rubs off on the brand.
• Multiplier effect: Repeated self-rehearsal. People like to tell jokes and talk about funny commercials; doing so further helps memorizing.

Humor works best when:

• Consumers already have a positive attitude toward the brand. (With initially negative consumer attitudes, humor might work only if it is self-deprecating.)
• The product is light, low in involvement.
• The product is not upscale, and gravitas is not the brand’s aspired positioning.
• The product pokes fun at itself (rather than at other brands or other people);
• The joke and brand message are integrated. For example, in an airline ad, a man comes home with flowers for his wife and begins to undress (to bare briefs) even as he walks toward the interior of the house, only to discover his in-laws waiting. The airline was promoting its cheap fares! (Had this ad had been for a company selling flowers, the humor would have stood unconnected with the message.)

Remember, humor can backfire when:

• The ad makes fun of a specific group; and
• It is in bad taste, relative to the sophistication or culture of the audience.

Below, we leave you with a few examples of recent ads with humor. Judge for yourself whether and how humor would work in these ads.

• Pink Bunny shows up in all the places (e.g., in the shower).
• Cheaptickets.com: Father and son are standing at the edge of a public swimming pool. The son points out a quarter on the pool deck, and the father lets go of the son (who falls into the pool) just to get the quarter. Tagline: We like cheap customers!
• Capital One Credit Card: Shows an unnamed competitor always saying “No” to customer requests. A character, playing a new employee, saying “yes” gets stung with hilarious torture.
• Maker’s Mark: On a billboard in Times Square, a liquor bottle sits horizontal and empty; copy reads: “Disappears Faster than Five Biggest Accounting Firms!” (Remember, Enron?)

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Source: MyCBBook (Chapter 8) www.mycbbook.com Google keyword: MyCBBook