What is the role of humour in marketing?

I noticed an interesting fact. People seem to grasp the material for study better when they experience positive emotions. Laughter is probably among the most effective means of stimulating the person to learn. The same thing goes with marketing – good humor works really nice, when you need to present a new brand, product or any material that must be offered to the public.

What does humor do with a person?

Humor is indeed a powerful tool that can become a part of any marketing strategy. Go on reading to learn how exactly does the humor affect the prospects?

• The humor stimulates the level of cooperation. Almost all people love laughing and, as you might have guessed, it is contagious. The joke that doesn’t offend anyone’s feelings is a powerful means of building up trust and friendly relations. If knowledge is combined with something funny it becomes more argumentative as it demonstrates a high rate of confidence.
• Good humor stimulates the parts of the brain which are responsible for memorizing the information. The jokes which make the viewer shake with a positive surprise fall into subconsciousness staying there for a longer time than if it was some boring informative presentation where we would see facts, facts and nothing else but facts.
• Humor assists in making the idea viral. People tend to remember funny jokes and retell them to other people. If the humor level is good enough it will be quoted by a greater variety of people. Just remember which videos have the largest amount of likes – the funny ones of course!

Points to consider when you plan to implement the humor marketing strategy.

So, you’ve decided to put the humor into operation. It seems a very simple business but in fact, there is a thin borderline between an effective joke that will attract people and an evil prank that will, on contrary scare the potential customers off. Consider the following things to develop an effective marketing strategy:

• Pinpoint what is funny

First of all in what product should add the comical fleur. It can be either some picture with a funny quote, a video advertisement with some situation that will catch the attention of the viewers, an entertaining song which people will want to thing again and again or any other means of advertisement. Remember that this will be a starting point so pick the means depending on the product or service you need to advertise.

• Pick the target group for implementation

Humor is an individual thing and people of different age can react in a directly opposite way on the same joke. Think for what ages the product is and try to pick the most suitable things for use. In this case a potential test group would be great as you could check your technics on them and see if it suitable for their age.

• Avoid controversial topics

There are some topics which should be avoided as they might be offensive to some groups of people. These are religious, ethnical, sexual and other suggestive themes which can harass the other people’s feelings, making the brand look bad in the eyes of others.

• A good humor is a natural humor

Nobody likes artificial phrases. The same thing goes with humor. There are plenty of jokes which only pretend to be funny, but in fact, they are totally useless and even silly not to say worse. Spontaneous situations are the best sources of good jokes as they originate from your sheer heart. Being sincere always brings more affection.

• Use KIS (keep it simple) method

You can use some fancy phrases, situations, slang but if you want to make people laugh and remember the brand – put it simply. Non-complicated things are remembered better than some piles of terms. The exception in this situation is the case when your brand is some medical, technical or other stuff that cannot be used without specific terminology.

• Stay close to the prospects

People like those brands which do not wear a crown of prime and are not afraid to play jokes on themselves.A share of healthy self-criticism makes the brand human-friendly and clients will more likely choose the brand that your company will offer. So think about the possible means of reaching out to the prospects in the friendliest manner.

• Engage in social media

The system of social media services is still the most influential. Now we can see it even better than before. Not only television and radio have acquired have a popularity among people. More and more people prefer obtaining the information through the Internet via social networks, private blog, video channels etc. It is a good idea to monitor what is in trend to develop an own working plan.

So the answer to the question to laugh or not to laugh is – to laugh of course. There is a very simple truth – customers like being entertained. Putting some fun into your marketing campaign will make the prospect both happy and aware of your brand.    

Petra Mainer is a writer for Madestones