What marketers can learn from the science of humor in marketing: How to use content and humor in marketing to increase shares and trust
Why would a video clip that is a little over a minute long earn this tweet from MSNBC’s Chris Hayes to his over 300,000 followers?
This ad’s basically a masterpiece http://t.co/NSsFVXY1zG
— Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) September 17, 2013
The video was posted by congressional candidate Carl Sciortino during his campaign and was titled – “Father’s Son”. Sciortino is openly gay, and the video played with the idea of coming out to one’s parent. However, in this instance he is coming out not as a gay man but as a “Massachusetts liberal” to his conservative “Tea Party” dad. From a marketing point of view, the video blurred the line between political agenda, advertising and content marketing to use humor to attract attention and connect with viewers regardless of their political inclinations.
Why use humor?
People are interested in smart and meaningful content. Consider this – no one comes home after work to sit through a long dry talk. No is also tuning into programs like “The Daily Show” or the “Colbert Show” because they being forced to. They do it because they want to. Humor or comedy done successfully allows a subject to slide past a person’s intellectual defenses. It works because it is unexpected and allows a person to see from a new perspective. This is why people are more often open to new ideas or even criticism of deeply held beliefs when expressed comically. Humor has the power to transform any topic or conversation into something funny and worth sharing. Sharon Begley, a Newsweek science writer, says that the cognitive scientist Matthew Hurley (along with two co-authors: Daniel Dennett and Reginald B. Adams, Jr.), of Indiana University, has written:
“the most persuasive theory of humor in the centuries that scientists have been trying to explain why we crack up.”
It is called “Inside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Brain”. In it Hurley essentially says that a joke involves clever twists, twists that are funny and not sad or that induce any other negative emotion.
Is humor in marketing really effective?
Humor is effective because it humanizes and surprises. For example, you can play it straight and write an article that logically and emphatically states how your yogurt was created from natural ingredients and good for you. Alternatively, you can get the point across and create something relatable, charming, and (of course!) shareable like Chobani did.
Chobani did this by creating a commercial for its yogurt that emphasizes that a cup of yogurt will not change the world but how it is made might. The former is boring. The latter infuses the message ad brand with a human element. So how can we leverage humor in our content and use humor in marketing? Before we get into that let’s get a better understanding of why humor is an effective emotion in terms of getting people to take notice and share.
Humor is a good thing
Humor appears to help people with their psychological and physical well-being according to various studies. However, humor also has social benefits.
(Photo credits: Celestine Chua and JD Hancock)
Funny people tend to receive positive attention and admiration that explains why the acronym GSOH (good sense of humor) is found so often in personal and dating posts. However, humor can be used for subversion. In fact, research by the Humor Reasearch Lab found that consumers effectively used humor to criticize brands. An example of which is the publishing of Dave Carroll’s YouTube video “United Breaks Guitars”. The release of this video and its gaining over 10 million views coincided with a decrease in United’s stock price by 10%.
Why humor backfires?
Humor is great when it works, but the reality is that is can backfire, and the results can be destructive, leading to broken trust, sales drop offs, etc. An example is Groupon’s failed Super Bowl commercial.