Power of a smile – Humour in Marketing
If you make someone smile, they will remember you, but you have someone laugh, they will surely remember you. I am sure that you will remember an advert, which made you smile or laugh rather than a regular one. Humor can be implicit, explicit, and satirical or presented in different forms, but it leaves a mark on our minds. This subtle relation between humor, happiness and customer recollection has been effectively used by marketers to come up with some of the best marketing and branding strategies and campaigns.
Like any other attribute, humor also triggers human senses and can impact their purchasing behaviour. Humor in marketing is not necessarily only in audio or video mode, but it can be in print and digital media as well. How can one forget the evergreen ‘Utterly Butterly Delicious’ Amul ads, which brings a smile to your faces? How well we can relate to each one of them?
Humor had entered the social media space as well with witty hashtags or the funniest videos going viral or funny posts circulated on Facebook. humor is employed at near unanimous levels for all viral advertisements. Consequently, humor has the universal appeal for making content viral.
A few important reasons why to use humor to create effective marketing and branding campaigns are as follows:
Humor triggers emotional response
Laughter is an emotion, which is associated with happiness and positivity. It is a stress buster and creates a healthy effect on our mental state. Laughter helps to release endorphines, which relaxes our body and boosts immune system. Audience, who gets pleasant vibes from a brand, can associate and respond in a positive way.
Humor makes the brand memorable
As mentioned earlier, you will definitely remember something pleasant, which triggered an emotional connect. A recent study shows that we tend to forget only 42% of positive experiences as opposed to 60% of negative experiences. Hence, you will surely remember an ad, which made you laugh or a tagline, which invokes instant humor. You tend to discuss and talk about it more, hence it keeps coming back to the top of your mind. This way the brand recognitions and retention keeps happening in your mind.
Humor brings people together
Experts say that we tend to laught 30 times more when we are with people around than when we are alone. We tend to share a joke or a laugh with friends over a Facebook post or a tweet. We tend to discuss ads with a humorous touch when we are with friends or family and try to come up with our own version rather than talking about a mundane or serious ad. This way the audience reach of the brand grows and this is more like a word of mouth promotion.
Humor gives audience insight
Have you ever thought what makes us laugh? Do we laugh at everything or what makes something funny? Well, Peter McGraw from Humor Research Lab came up with an interesting concept – the ‘benign-violation’ theory. He explained that ‘funny’ is an intersection of benign (things which are very mundane) and violation (things we are very extreme).
To make things ‘funny’ to evoke humor and laughter, marketers need to find that overlapping region for their brand to create an impact on the audience’s mind. What is hilarious might not always work in a marketing campaign, it has to be what the audience interprets to be funny. Humor needs to be carefully chosen and presented tactfully for a successful campaign.
People are so busy in their stressful lives today that they forget to laugh and enjoy the lighter moments of life. So, they wouldn’t mind a dash of humor, when they switch their TV sets or read the newspaper. Marketers need to trigger their emotions effectively with classy humor, which needs to be simple, sustble yet eye-catching.
The power of humor gives marketers the opportunity to give their customers cherishable moments of LOL!
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