The Effective Use of Humor in Advertising Messaging and Global Warming Prognostication

Humor is a tool. Think of it as a hammer—no, make that a nail gun! In the right hands, a nail gun can be very productive. In the wrong hands (say that of a chimpanzee or an English planner), it can be deadly.

My first executive creative director, now a Kmart greeter, told me straight-faced: “Mike, humor is a funny thing.” I think/hope what he meant to say was that humor can be highly subjective and very elusive. Which is true. If the message is going to work, it has to strike a relevant chord within a well-defined audience.

This is particularly true with IT managers, a frequent target in the B2B tech sector. IT people don’t necessarily spend all of their days inside the dark confines of a data center like so many earbudded badgers. They have lives, dreams, likes, dislikes and secret websites like the rest of us. One way to gain their confidence (and their attention) is to highlight the common “enemies” they all share: career-altering data breaches or imbecilic end users (P.E.B.K.A.C.) like me, for example.

But how can you tell if your message is seriously funny and highly effective? “Test it,” you say? “Go to hell,” I say. Focus groups are to humor what Dick Cheney is to heart health. Don’t go there. Trust your research and your instincts. If the creative is on message and follows the brief, it is very viable. Remember, consumers aren’t waiting to see your next ad. You have to reward them for their attention. And humor is an excellent (and memorable) way to do that.

Oh, and don’t be afraid of offending somebody because you’re going to offend some party if the ad is even slightly provocative. I once won a Clio (when they meant something) for a steak house spot wherein a cowboy inadvertently burned down his own chuck wagon. Big hit with client and consumers, except for the one guy whose letter chastised me for “making fun of fire when [all of] the San Fernando Valley is in flames.”
Screw him, he was probably a vegan.

Written by Mike Gallagher