Humor and Advertising
A recent poll in USA today (February 5) ranked the Super Bowl commercials. I sorted their rankings through my listing of the humor based commercials. Seventy-three percent of the Super Bowl commercials used humor. However, in the Top Ten, ninety percent were humor based.
Budweiser/Bud Light ran the most commercials of which all but one where humor based. Eighteen percent of all the Super Bowl commercials landed in the Top Ten. But seventy-five percent of the Budweiser/Bud Light commercials made the Top Ten.
The Top Ten had approximately twice as many humor-based commercials when compared to the Bottom Ten.
On their popularity ranking scale, the humor-based commercials averaged a score of 6.94. Non-humor-based commercials averaged a popularity score of 6.61.
Humor gets attention. Humor is remembered. Humor entertains. Humor sells.
But writing a great piece of humor is no simple task. Take for example the ad ran on Super Bowl Sunday by Rolling Rock (apparently not during the game, I couldn’t find it on any of the lists of commercials). They ran an ad which apparently fell so flat in a ratings poll that they ran an apology in USA Today (February 5). Or maybe the whole thing was a scheme for PR and a viral ad campaign. Whichever, personally I thought the ad was cute, well written and I liked it. However, had I been advising them on whether or not to run it, I would have voted against it. The ad titled “Man Thong” is about a man coming to work in an office where he discovers that the men wear no pants, only thongs. Our male dominated, hetero-sexist, and generally-sexually-conservative American culture would be unlikely to warm up to such an ad. Granted, many will like the ad. But because of cultural bias and taboos, the choices made in the ad were risky.
Lessons learned:
1. People love humor and it sells. It sells in commercials. And as speakers, we need to remember that it sells from the platform.
2. The strength of humor comes from the relationships and strong writing. And it comes from pacing and delivery.
3. Sexual, body part and bodily function humor is often an uncreative attempt to be funny. But even when the writing is good (as in the Rolling Rock ad), it’s still a risk because of our cultural attitudes. Generally, the risks aren’t worth the rewards, especially for public speakers.
February 18th, 2007 at 6:11 am
Having stumbled across them using google, I have been following your posts on humour. I am currently writing my degree dissertation on the growing use of humour in advertising, and its increasing appearance in broadcast advertising for more high-involvement products and services (cars, high-cost digital equipment, financial services). I would really appreciate it if you could let me know how you feel about the changing use of humor in modern advertising, and the growing acceptance of wit as a ploy to sell high-commitment items – I cannot comment on American advertising but here in the UK it is definitely a growing trend. Do you feel the use of humour for high-involvent products damages the message strength in any way, or alternatively, serves to warm the consumer to the brand in question?
If you have the time to reply, it would be great to hear a non-British opinion on the issue.
Regards,
Alex.
February 19th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
I do think that there is definitely more humor in broadcast advertising than there was twenty years ago. Part of that comes from a greater appreciation of the value of humor for feeling good, building relationships and selling products. Much of the humor twenty years ago seems to have focused on lower-priced products. Mr Whipple squeezes the Charmin. Clara’s Where’s The Beef. But its now not unusual to see commercials for cars which are humor based. One I have enjoyed several times is the businessman making a phone call to his wife from a rental car. “The hotel is on the left” says the GPS synthetic woman’s voice. The wife hangs up. “Call florist.” Cute commercial, and I think it was selling a car, but I can’t remember which one. The overall success for humor in advertising is so much more complex than humor or no-humor. Although humor definitely helps with getting attention, getting remembered, getting repeated, building trust…it’s really a complicated process as one goes from the writer’s pen to actually making the sale. The right match to the target market is critical. A humor piece that falls flat to the general public but which is mostly loved by your target market, is not a bad thing, it’s a good thing. The link of the product to the commercial is often missed in humor advertisements. Having an advertisement which people love is good, but if nobody remembers what product was being advertised, that’s very bad. Repetition of the brand name, a basic advertising principle, during the advertisement is important. Another factor is the linkage between the culture of the operations staff, the marketing people (especially the customer service front line) and the PR folks. Humor driven advertising for a company which has a low score on the corporate-culture sense-of-humor scale is a mis-match. The prospect sees one thing on the ads and another when contacting or visiting the company. I’ve never had the task of finding an advertising agency which was great at
advertising strategy AND humor skills. But from the ads I’ve seen, I can tell that it would be a challenging search. Being funny AND selling to your target market is not an art easily mastered.
February 20th, 2007 at 4:20 am
Here in the UK it seems like modern consumers now expect more from brands – we expect brands to have personality, to be approachable and knowable. Brands present themselves as our ‘friends’. Pretty much everyone in the UK is familiar with Howard Brown, the ‘friendly high-street bank manager’ figure brought to our screens courtesy of the Halifax adverts first launched on Boxing Day 2000. Halifax are a well-known high street bank that have used well-known songs and singing/dancing employees to shout out the benefits of their services in an ongoing series of advertisements – so that’s six consistent years of musical Howard (who has become some form of cult figure) gracing our screens and belting out the joys of banking with Halifax – and it worked. Other large banks are playing the same game – rival company Nationwide use humour in their recent ad campaigns. Churchill Insurance communicate with us via a talking dog. Privilege (insurance) would like us to have our butler call them, and Mint Card ask us to celebrate our own brilliance in choosing them in their witty 2006 ‘clever/dumb balance’ adverts.
I don’t know if it was aired across the atlantic, but Honda created an advert that left people humming it merrily three days later. Their ‘Hate Something, Love Something’ animated advert played on the idea that the Hondas bosses’ hate of the diesel engine caused him to revolutionise it, therefore changing hate into love (to advertise the launch of Honda’s new diesel). Skoda used a metaphor of an overweight-but-agile gymnast to represent their new large Octavia 4×4 Estate, showing a willingness to see the funny side – a tremendously clever advert mixing the humour and the product benefits entirely successfully. Both of these adverts were award winning (and successful in terms of increased sales), and they really are the tip of the iceburg when it comes to a new approach to advertising.
I’m interested in these campaigns because as far as I can tell from research, since work on the areas of humour in advertising began it has widely been agreed that using humour to sell expensive, high-involvement products is entirely innapropriate and weakens the credibility and positives of a product. Yet these campaigns are consistantly successful. I just feel it is an area that is fairly interesting to explore. The trick seems to be to integrate the humour with the product message – as opposed to creating a funny ad then sticking a tag-line on the end to tie it to the product advertised.
February 20th, 2007 at 8:53 am
Thanks for an interesting and informative look at humor ads in the UK. I’ve not seen them on this side of the Atlantic. Your comment is right on target about integrating the humor with the product message. It’s the same challenge public speakers run into. Because speakers know that humor has a certain power, they often force fit a joke into their talk that has nothing to do with the message. Often it’s the routine open-with-a-joke formula that gets a talk off to a bad start as the audience is thinking “why did he/she tell that joke?” Magician speakers often fall into the same trap. They LOVE their magic and often force-fit a magic trick into their talk linking it to a contrived message. The trick, whether you’re an ad writer or speaker, is to make the humor an organic part of the message. It has to blend in as a natural part of the storyline and product message or speech theme so that it compliments it and does not conflict or compete with it. When there is a disconnect, although the audience might be somewhat entertained, they are also confused and no points are scored. And nothing, neither products or ideas, gets sold. IF you publish online some of your findings on humor and advertising from your degree dissertation, send me the links and I’ll post them for our readers to enjoy.
August 14th, 2007 at 9:27 pm
i want to know about your opinion, how humor in advertsing specially in television related with brand awareness.
im sorry if my english bad.
i had sent u an email. i want to thank u for your reply.
i hope you can help me.
thx u
February 6th, 2008 at 3:00 am
What would you say is the difference in consumer response rates between ’straight’ ads and humorous ones?
July 18th, 2009 at 8:27 am
John Kinde,
This has been of great help to me as I’m currently writing my degree dissertation on the growing use of humor in advertising. I’m writing it with special reference to international advertisements as in Sri Lanka where I’m living in, humor is not commonly used in adds.
So I’m referring to international adds through add books and internet which lack feedback on them. My intention for the Comprehensive Design Project as a Graphic and Communication designer is to address a serious issue like cancer with the usage of humor. I would like to hear about the possibilities and negative points you see in it. It would be a great support for making my project a success.
I would like to get in touch with Alex Durham who has done a dissertation on the same topic. Alex I would like to hear from you or it would be of great support if John Kinde can get me his email address so that I can get in touch with him.
Regards