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Is Laughter Really the Best Medicine (In Advertising)?

06/12/2022
Advertising Agency
London, UK
167
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Paul Mellor, loud mouth and MD at Mellor&Smith, on the hidden (and not so hidden) power of funnies

Is laughter really the best medicine? Short answer, yes.

But, I’ve been told blogs have to be longer than one word.

Were people funnier back in the day? Growing up, a trait often cited as desirable in men’s magazines was 'a sense of humour'. And so for years, we kept our ears to the ground, hoping for that one silver bullet that would make people fall in love with us; the class clown then was as aspirational as a YouTube influencer is today, (probably, no citation needed).

I remember a time when making people laugh to sell your gear was all the rage. From the Wine Gums Hoot Man ad to the glorious Carling Black Label’s Dambuster ad, to, one of my favourites, Cravendale’s Cats with thumbs, these ads were damn funny, and my sugar, lager and milk intake went up by about 14%. (again, no citation needed).


Yet the desire to use humour in advertising and to build a brand through entertainment has crumbled like a muffin in the rain, replaced with generically vanilla-flavoured, happy families. Or worst still, a value prop delivered straight down camera.

At a time when Bounties have been taken out of Celebration boxes – why the chuff aren’t more brands using humour? Because we could all use do with laughing our socks off.


What do we mean by humour?

Like every good scientific debate, we have to first set out the parameters. So, what do we mean by humour? For me, a joke’s gotta be somewhat true. Cravendale’s cats with thumbs is funny because it’s somewhat true – cats would steal our milk, little dairy marauders.

From a scientific point of view, EConsultancy research broke humour down into these five buckets. Print it out, laminate it, stick it in your wallet.

Identification: As in ‘That is so true!’

Surprise/incongruity: As in ‘Why did the monkey fall out of the tree? Because it was dead’

Transgression: A way of saying the unsayable, as in dirty jokes, jokes about cancer, most of Jimmy Carr and all of Frankie Boyle  

Relief: As when my wife laughs uncontrollably any time I bang my head (and the more it hurts, the funnier she finds it) — unless, of course, this is…  

Schadenfreude: The taking of pleasure in the misfortune of others

Usually, advertising falls into the first two buckets. Historically, in the case of the Carling ad, a man couldn’t parry away bombs like they were shots on goal. But the combination of the inaudible pilots, the black and white aesthetic, the parody of a real event combine into something magic. Would it have been as good an ad if it was for Fairy dishwashing tablets? Unlikely. It was surprising and unusual and, apart from the pack-shot, not a beer in sight. 

As an aside, I feel a lot of brands risk falling into the bottom three humour buckets and thus avoid the category altogether. But, as my 80-year-old Nan says every night before line dancing – if you don’t risk anything, you risk everything.   

I recently listened to the comedian Whitney Cummings on the Rich Roll podcast "Comedians say something that isn't true, and then prove it". What a segue into my main question…


Isn’t that what advertising chuffin’ well is!?

Find the truth and tell it well. Get your brand noticed. 

Remember advertising is different to marketing. Advertising is the mouthpiece of marketing. And it's a small part of the marketing jigsaw. But it's often the sexiest part, it drives around town on a Vespa saying “Ciao”, uses Instagram filters and shouts in your face – anything to get the attention.

So, if the job of advertising is to get noticed, then surely you'd use every trick in the damn book to get that job done?


A guy walks into the pub…

Think about the pub, dinner parties, wherever. Who do you remember? It isn’t the dull-as-shit guy in the corner or the peacock who struts about shouting about how great they are. It’s the funny one. The one that makes you laugh. The one you tell your wife about. Yet, in advertising, we think laughter is beneath us.

Look at this quote from Dave Trott in Orlando Woods’ Look Out "Laughter is a powerful motivation but, in current advertising, laughter is looked on as trivial and crass". 


Why so sad?

Look, there’s a myriad of reasons why brands aren’t opting for funny. Here’s a few I can think of, and my instant rebuttal:

• Because marketers aren't that funny? Nope, I've met loads of funny marketers. And the appetite is there.  

• Marketers love purpose, which is often the opposite the humour. I know plenty of brands who aren't into purpose. I definitely don’t need my sofa company changing the world.  

• It’s against the category, or, I’m a serious brand, and I need to do serious ads. There’s not a single category that couldn’t benefit from humour. And who the hell wants to fit in anyway?

• Because marketers are stuck in a bubble, where all they think about is their brand and how great it is. We're getting closer, but I know lots of marketers who get themselves outside of the bubble. 

• Because marketers are so ridiculously busy, getting pulled in a bazillion directions, they've forgotten what their job is? Ohhh, now we're close. 


Busy busy busy

It’s hard to be funny. So, instead marketers opt for middle-of-the-road, inoffensive wallpaper and promise themselves next time they’ll have the minerals.

Add to that how farkin’ busy we all are and suddenly we’re all defaulting to your BAU “Family reunited over their love of Product XX”. And what’s the point of just doing something if you know it ain’t going to work?

 

Sad and getting sadder

And we’re not getting any funnier. Research from Marketing Charts shows humour in advertising is dropping. So, even if you don’t believe in making people laugh (what the flippin’ fuckstix?!), you might believe in zigging while everyone else zags. In this case, the argument for humour is once again powerful. 

Analysis from System1 (in the image) shows ads have become less funny in the last 10 years, being replaced by a rise in solemnity (purpose) driven advertising. And I for one am thankful my laundry detergent has pulled its finger out and is now saving the rainforest.

WARC research shows “humour establishes hierarchy in aggressive display”. So, for those playing at home, you’ve figured out that being funny elevates your brand among the competition. 

I’m just going to pause here to ask you – have you chuckled at any point yet?

Here’s another one for the CMO’s to beat CEO’s over the head with: Research by Kantar showed that "humour is the most powerful creative enhancer of receptivity". They go on to say, "Only 33% of the ads researched incorporated some form of humour, yet half of Kantar Creative Effectiveness Award winners use it."

In other words, if you want to be effective, be funny. You want to win awards, be funnier.

The last citation, this time from The Journal of General Psychology published in the National Library of Medicine in 2010; Humour in the Eye Tracker, Attention Capture and Distraction from Context Cues,

"The results confirmed that humour receives prolonged attention relative to both positive and neutral nonhumorous information. This enhanced attention correlated with impaired brand recognition"

Basically, funny = higher recall = higher sales.


Let’s get totes emosh

I touched on it earlier… humour is truth, because truth is also emotional. What makes us laugh or cry is linked to truth. We laugh when we know something’s true; we cry for the same reason, but often with different motivations. And, unless you’re my ex-girlfriend, in my experience it’s much easier to make someone laugh than cry.

Take what Karen Nelson-Field says in her book The Attention Economy:

So, where does this leave us?

A quick recap for the naughty kids at the back:

• Marketers are fooking busy, they're taking on too much and advertising is a small part of their marketing jigsaw,

• But, they forget advertising is often one of their most powerful levers,

• Also, non-marketers are shit-scared of humour because it's exposing, and risky, and nobody else is doing it…

• But counterproductively, everyone wants their brand to be noticed and recalled,

• And humour is one of, if not the most effective way of getting noticed.


So how do you do it?

1. Take a look at the 70/20/10 budgeting rule. Allocate 10% of your marketing budget to experimentation. If it doesn’t work, you’ve lost nothing except the whimsical innovation of 10%. 

2. Fight tooth and nail against any internal boffins and bean counters, especially the ones who think they know best. They don’t. And play dirty if you have to.

3. Give your agency the time and bandwidth to surprise you. You’d be surprised how many people want to do something great if they know it’s not going to be killed. 

4. Remember, if the idea makes you nervous then it's probably right. Trust your gut. 99% of marketers kill great ideas at this point, mistaking it for heartburn.  

So should people use humour in advertising? The answer I gave then was yes and I hope now with all these fancy studies you’ll see why. But you don’t need these studies to get that, do you? 

You already know that humour works. Because I guarantee that your favourite ad uses it in some shape or form. Humour crawls into our brains and sits there. Just like the Carling ad. And that beauty has been living rent free in my head for 33 years. Mental.


Want more of this rubbish? Every Tuesday at 9am (UK) I have a LinkedIn Live. Next Tuesday’s topic… The 873 million dollar question; how do online brands grow? It’s 15mins long and you might just learn summat useful. Click here to attend and see you next Tuesday.

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