Creativity Magazine

Humor In Content Marketing: It’s NOT About Being Funny

By Mrstrongest @mrstrongarm

Humor In Content Marketing: It’s NOT About Being Funnyblank vertical space, 16 pixels highblank vertical space, 16 pixels highA lot of brands and marketers steer clear of humor. They think it makes them look unprofessional. They think “humor” means telling jokes.blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

It’s NOT telling jokes.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

It’s NOT standup comedy.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

It’s NOT trying to make people LOL.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

Those definitions are much too narrow.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

So what is it, then?

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

Core Meaning
Humor In Content Marketing: It’s NOT About Being Funny
Humor In Content Marketing: It’s NOT About Being Funny
blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

Here’s the best definition I know, courtesy of writer and critic Clive James:

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

“Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.”

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

Life is a dance, a relationship is a dance, marketing is a dance.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

Dancing is about communication, and humor makes it possible: it’s being genial, positive, upbeat, talking with a smile, and being ready to laugh and poke fun at yourself. It’s about putting others at ease.

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

Comedy & Drama Are A Team
Humor In Content Marketing: It’s NOT About Being Funny
blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

And consider: comedy and drama complement each other. The best playwrights know this. Jerome Lawrence, best known for Inherit The Wind, put it this way:

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

“The best playwrights– Tennessee Williams, for instance– will puncture the most serious moment with an outrageous laugh. The audience delights in it.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

“They need the relief. They need laughter– or what Norman Cousins calls ‘inner jogging’– for the joy of life.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

“The more an audience laughs, the more it feels.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

“Shakespeare knew this– there’s comedy in his most serious plays.”

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high
Humor In Content Marketing: It’s NOT About Being Funny
Infotainment

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

Lee Odden of TopRank Marketing echoes this idea when he says you have to connect with buyers “on both an intellectual and an emotional level.” That doing so will help you stand out from competitors who take a strictly intellectual (= informational) approach.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

He sees “infotainment”– content that both informs and entertains– as the key to attracting and engaging prospects.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

Intellect and emotion. Information and entertainment. Drama and comedy.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

For best results, you need to leaven the one with the other.

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

Grabs Attention, Lowers Shields
Humor In Content Marketing: It’s NOT About Being Funny
blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

Storyteller and creative strategist Kathy Klotz-Guest writes that “as content marketing explodes, so too, does the volume of noise. You have about 7 seconds to grab attention.”

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

Humor does that. Kathy says it does something else, too:

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

“Laughter lowers the intellectual shield your busy prospects have up all day just to survive the messaging onslaught.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

“Humor opens up a space for connecting because it disrupts the expected pattern.”

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high
blank vertical space, 16 pixels high
Humor In Content Marketing: It’s NOT About Being Funny

Shared Humanity & Trust
blank vertical space, 32 pixels high

Tim Washer points out that a lot of comedy comes from pain. When we use humor to address a prospect’s problem, we’re showing that we understand his point of view.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

Tim also maintains that if you can make someone laugh, then you’ve made the most intimate connection you can make.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

Humor opens up a channel. A channel called “shared humanity.”

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

It’s hard to relate to a salesman who speaks jargon, but it’s easy to relate to someone you’ve shared a laugh with— and that builds trust.

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

Personality
blank vertical space, 32 pixels high

Consider, too, that humor is a dimension of personality. When we say someone has a great personality, we usually mean someone who’s genial, warm, upbeat, funny— someone who draws you in.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

In her article about “boring” big brands that use humor, Kim Speier notes that humor can be especially helpful to companies in highly-competitive or saturated industries. She asks:

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

“What better way to stand out from those that sell a product
or service of similar 
quality and price than by letting your company’s personality shine?”

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

Humor gives you a way to do something absolutely essential: set yourself apart from your competitors.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

And we like people with warm upbeat personalities— which is why your brand needs to be likable.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

Michael Brenner, CEO of Marketing Insider Group, says being likable helps your audience relate to you, and makes them more likely to engage.

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

Retains Attention
blank vertical space, 32 pixels high

A lot of public speakers open with a joke. They know it grabs attention and puts the audience in a relaxed receptive mood.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

But it’s not enough to grab attention— you have to retain it. True for presentations, true for blog posts or any other kind of content.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

Andrew Davis is one of my favorite speakers who presents on marketing topics. He sprinkles humor throughout his talks to hold the audience’s attention.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

You might be thinking: I can’t be funny all the time!!

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

There’s that key point again: humor isn’t about telling jokes, it’s about keeping things light. It’s that light touch that makes communication possible.

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

Humor As A Teaching Tool
blank vertical space, 32 pixels high

Sofia Fenichell is a mom whose startup, Mrs. Wordsmith, produces The Storyteller’s Illustrated Dictionary. It uses wacky illustrations to help kids learn new words. The humor keeps them engaged and makes learning fun.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

It’s important to note that the goal here is learning, not being funny or getting laughs. The humor has to facilitate learning, which means it can’t be a distracting influence.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

Same with marketing.

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

Humor succeeds when it’s relevant to your target audience; then it can hold their attention and improve retention.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

College professor Ron Berk, who uses all kinds of zany humor to teach biostatistics to college students, puts it this way:

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

“What I do and how I teach is all about the students. It has nothing to do with me.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

“I’m tapping into their multiple intelligence needs and their culture so that they can understand the material in their terms.”

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

Carol Schlef, RNC, MSW, a women’s health educator, takes the same approach.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

While teaching pregnant teenagers about proper nutrition, she noticed they seemed bored and disinterested. So she created a special “food pyramid for teens” that identified the 4 major food groups as “refined sugar, fat, caffeine, and salt.”

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

The teens laughed at the absurdity, and were more receptive when she introduced them to healthier ways of eating.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

There’s a lesson there: comedy is subjective. You need to understand your target audience and how they’re likely to respond.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

Here’s a good rule of thumb. It’s from a book called The Humor Code by Peter McGraw & Joel Warner.

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

“It’s not whether or not you’re funny, it’s what kind of funny you are.”

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

I hear that as “what kind of fun you are.” Because humor in marketing is not about getting laughs, it’s about keeping things light and engaging your audience on their terms.

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

It’s Not Just Short Attention Spans
blank vertical space, 32 pixels high

Earlier, we spoke about short attention spans (“You have about 7 seconds to grab attention.”)

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

But marketers are also up against what psychologist and Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman calls “fast thinking.”

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

In his best-selling book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman says our minds have two systems of thought: the first is fast, automatic, instinctive– we can’t really control it.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

The second requires logic and analysis: it’s slow, deliberate, and takes sustained effort. In other words, it’s painful.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

Kahneman sums it all up with this great line:

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

“Thinking is to humans as swimming is to cats; they can do it but they’d prefer not to.”

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

We don’t like to think too hard. We make emotional choices, not rational ones.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high
Humor In Content Marketing: It’s NOT About Being Funny

Behavioral scientist Richard Shotton puts it this way:

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

“Even when we think we’re making reasoned conscious decisions often the conscious mind is merely post-rationalizing decisions that have already been made.”

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

Paul Cash, who runs a B2B storytelling agency, has this advice:

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

“Make sure the content you create is simple, truthful and engaging. Make social, social. Too many facts and figures will turn buyers away.”

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

I hear him saying: use humor. Not to get laughs, but to create what Lee Odden calls info-tainment: content that’s entertaining, upbeat, and fun.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

Perfect example: advertising jingles. You don’t have to think too hard to “get” them, and you remember them because they’re fun. Wrigley’s sold a lot of chewing gum with this one:

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

Double your pleasure, double your fun, with double good, double good, Doublemint Gum!

Humor In Content Marketing: It’s NOT About Being Funny
blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

Shares

blank vertical space, 32 pixels high

We all want people to share our content, and what gets shared the most? The funny stuff.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

Al Lautenslager, author of Market Like You Mean It, puts it this way:

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

“Humor is social by nature; people share funny stories all the time. It’s no secret or surprise that the most viral online videos are those that do the best job of making you laugh.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

“A humorous brand is a confident brand, and a confident brand is in demand– and gets noticed.”

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

Moonpie
blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high
One of the savviest brands today, IMO, is Moonpie. It combines humor with a unique voice; it’s a voice that helps them stand out from their snack food competitors.
blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

Moonpie has been in business for over 100 years. They make graham cracker and marshmallow snack cakes. They’d fallen off the radar of most young people, and needed a way to reconnect.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

Their marketing agency revamped their Twitter account, giving it a quirky, absurdist feel. In December 2017, Moonpie had 42K Twitter followers; today it has almost 300K. Some examples of their tweets:

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high
blank vertical space, 24 pixels high
Humor In Content Marketing: It’s NOT About Being Funny

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

Humor In Content Marketing: It’s NOT About Being Funny

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high
Very interesting point: they don’t do punchline jokes, they’re not aiming for LOL; they’re “keeping it light,” and speaking in a voice that resonates with their Twitter target audience— young people. 
blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

Here’s a much simpler, small biz example:

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

Main Crust Pizza
blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high
There’s a pizza place called the Main Crust Company in Marlborough, NH (pop. 2K). They’re just off Main Street, tucked away, and they don’t have a big high-profile sign. What they do have is one of those “changeable letter signs,” about 3 feet high, right on the main drag. Motorists can see it as they drive by.
blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

They post dumb jokes and puns on it, and change them regularly. I take a look every time I drive by. A couple of examples:

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

“I fell into a furniture upholstery machine. But I’ve recovered.”

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

“Time to start exercising and eating healthy. Just kidding— order a pizza.”

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

Sometimes it’s fun to groan. They’re the “pizza place with the joke sign.” People remember them, and their sign says they’re a fun place to go.

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

The idea of using humor in marketing goes way back— here’s a great retro example:

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

Yule’s Barber Shop
blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high
When I was a kid, my brother and I got our hair cut at Mr. Yule’s barber shop. He worked out of his house on a quiet residential street. No sign, just a tiny little barber pole. But all the kids in town went there. Why?
blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

Simple: he had a million comic books you could read while you were waiting. It was tough putting them down in the middle of a story when it was your turn.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

Mr. Yule used humor in a prepackaged form that was perfect for his audience.

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

Confidence
blank vertical space, 32 pixels high

Humor projects confidence, as Mr. Lautenslager stated above:

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

“A humorous brand is a confident brand, and a confident brand is in demand–and gets noticed.”

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

Kevin Daum, author of Roar! Get Heard in the Sales and Marketing Jungle, echoes that view:

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

“Combined with knowledge, humor enhances expertise, demonstrating confidence and strength.”

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

One last rather cosmic thought courtesy of editor Alison Beard at Harvard Business Review: in The Humor Code, McGraw & Warner cite a line from the anthropologist Edward Hall:

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

“If you can learn the humor of a people and really control it, you know that you are also in control of nearly everything else.”

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

Now that’s confidence.

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

Small Biz Advantage
blank vertical space, 32 pixels high

Jason Miller, Marketing Leader at Microsoft, says humor helps level the playing field between  big-budget ad agencies and small brands.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

Digital marketer Ann Handley concurs:

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

“Small businesses might be challenged with limited budgets and resources, but they nonetheless have an advantage when it comes to creating humorous marketing.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

“Big companies generally have more bureaucracy and longer approval processes, making it difficult for them to be nimble or edgy in their marketing.”

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

Miller says brands should take a tip from comedian Jerry Seinfeld and take a look at their everyday situations and ask: “What’s funny about this?”

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

Perhaps a better question: what’s fun, amusing, positive, upbeat?

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

Why do we like working here? What fun and interesting aspects of our business are we not seeing, simply because we see them every day and take them for granted?

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

A lot of times that equates to the people, the employees, and what goes on behind the scenes.
blank vertical space, 16 pixels high
blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

Jordan Winery
blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

Humor In Content Marketing: It’s NOT About Being Funny
blank vertical space, 16 pixels high
Take Jordan Winery, a family-owned winery out in California. They’ve made a series of behind-the-scenes videos, including some very funny song parodies, that feature their employees.
blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

My favorite was their blooper reel, showing all the flubs and outtakes: very funny, but the best kind of funny— very human. I was ready to shell out for a bottle on the spot. Take a look.

Humor In Content Marketing: It’s NOT About Being Funny
Humor In Content Marketing: It’s NOT About Being Funny
blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

Humor In Content Marketing: It’s NOT About Being Funny
Humor In Content Marketing: It’s NOT About Being Funny
blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

I’ve seen some great non-digital examples as well.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

Good Fortune Jewelry & Pawn
blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

A jewelry store in Keene, NH, turned a back room into a performance space.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

They called it The Neon Coconut because they had an electric sign with that name which had been used in a local theater production.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

Local musicians performed, and you had to walk through the entire store to get to the back room.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

Great way to support the arts and bring in potential customers at the same time.

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

Souvenir Shop
blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

I was on a bicycle tour out west a few years ago, and we came upon a souvenir shop out in the middle of nowhere. There was a huge dinosaur skeleton out front, and it had a very odd look.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

We stopped, of course, and I asked the owner what it was. “That’s a Cowhorsasaurus,” he said.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

A local artist had constructed it out of cow and horse bones.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

A joke, and a very successful one, because it brought people in.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

Clark’s Bears
blank vertical space, 16 pixels high
blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

Clark’s Bears (formerly Clark’s Trading Post, estab. 1928) is a family-owned roadside attraction in Lincoln, NH. Lots of rides and family-friendly amusements, including a trained bears show.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

They also have a 2.5-mile steam-powered train ride, and here’s where the humor comes in: the train gets chased by the Wolfman who drives a rusty old junkheap and looks like a cross between a caveman and a pirate. He tells everyone to get off his land.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

But he’s not so bad— you can have your picture taken with him after the ride. Great example of quirky humor that also functions as a talk trigger.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high
blank vertical space, 32 pixels high
Humor In Content Marketing: It’s NOT About Being Funny
blank vertical space, 24 pixels high
blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

Humor In Content Marketing: It’s NOT About Being Funny

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high
Humor In Content Marketing: It’s NOT About Being Funny
Better Content
blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

Need another reason to put some humor in your marketing? Consider this line from advertising legend David Ogilvy:

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

“The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.”

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

He’s right. Humor inspires creative leaps. Laughter makes it easier to think more broadly, and to free associate.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

Ever had an idea that was a little “out there” but didn’t voice it because you were afraid of being judged? Or maybe you did some self-judging, and didn’t think the idea was good enough.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

Humor frees us up, so we can take a break from self-monitoring.

Humor In Content Marketing: It’s NOT About Being Funny
blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

A really good joke creates an a-ha! moment. It clicks. We get it. Humor puts us in a freer state of mind, making it more likely that we can “connect the dots” and solve a problem.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high

In the words of comedian John Cleese: “Creativity is all about play.”

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

Writing in Psychology Today, David Evans puts it this way:

blank vertical space, 24 pixels high

“Surprise is at the heart of comedy. Surprise is also at the heart of creativity.

blank vertical space, 16 pixels high


Back to Featured Articles on Logo Paperblog