Humans love to laugh. Whether it’s a favorite sitcom, the latest wacky movie, the joke making the rounds of the office, or the meme we’re reposting on our social, we all appreciate things that make us smile and giggle.
So it’s no surprise that when we’re developing advertising and other communications materials for our businesses, we think, “Maybe we should do something funny.”
That’s usually a terrible idea.
I love humor. I was raised on Mad Magazine, National Lampoon, and Monty Python. I can recite large chunks of Mel Brooks movies from memory (and often do, to the dismay of those around me). However, I rarely recommend that my clients incorporate humor into their marketing communications materials. Given my deep appreciation for everything from the silliest slapstick to more cerebral witticisms, that might seem odd.
The reason incorporating funny things into your materials is a bad idea is that humor is often filled with more than laughter. It can be full of land mines that can explode in your face and leave your company’s reputation in a situation that’s anything but funny.
That’s always been a danger, but in this era of social media and viral communications, it can be deadly. Your company’s poorly chosen attempt at humor could become famous for all the wrong reasons.
You see, humor is an extremely individual thing. It’s also extraordinarily subjective. What’s funny to me could quite possibly be offensive to you. Or you might consider it demeaning. You may even wonder why I find it hilarious when it’s completely unfunny to you. For example, my favorite Monty Python sketch is a bit called “The Fish Slapping Dance.” I’ve seen it hundreds of times and it never fails to get me laughing so hard I can barely breathe. But I’ve watched alongside people who never even broke into a grin.
If you’ve ever told a joke at work and been met by blank stares from the audience, you’ve experienced the individuality of humor. If your joke resulted in glares from the audience, you’ve seen the subjectivity. The danger is that you never know how the audience will react. You don’t know what kind of personal beliefs or emotional baggage they bring to your humorous premise. The same holds true with the stakeholders who will view your marketing communications. What you see as an innocuous yarn may come across as offensive, leading a customer or prospect to turn elsewhere for what you offer.
You may be grumbling that people are overly sensitive today. That’s absolutely true. You may decry what you see as political correctness. Doesn’t matter a bit. The simple fact is that people are much more likely to be offended by humor today than they were twenty or fifty years ago. So the prudent approach is to avoid putting yourself in that situation in the first place.
Another common problem with humor is that many situations we find funny fall into the category of “inside jokes.” Everyone in our small circle of friends or colleagues responds with hysteria, but it doesn’t make sense to the outside world.
Need proof? Ever been to a social occasion with your spouse or significant other’s colleagues? At some point, someone will say something like, “Yeah, but don’t hand Bill a 7-Up,” and everyone in the room will chortle with amusement. Everyone, that is, except you and the other spouses and significant others. You don’t have the background information to understand why Bill plus 7-Up equals gut-busting funny. And when it’s explained to you, you’re forced to smile politely, because it just isn’t all that funny. You lack the common experience that made it humorous to those in the know.
The same thing happens when you put an inside joke in your advertising. You get it, and so do your close colleagues. But everyone else responds by scratching their heads.
A particular pet peeve is companies that continue to use chauvinist sexual innuendo in their ads. For example, you’ll pick up a trade magazine aimed at some corner of heavy industry, and there will be an ad featuring a rather buxom young woman holding some kind of industrial part, accompanied by this familiar headline: “It’s what’s up front that counts.” If you get into the copy, you’ll see that what’s “up front” is usually the company’s service or its engineering.
I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve seen variations on that theme, and it astounds me that I continue to see it. It’s employed as an attempt at humor, but it comes across as something you’d expect from a group of snickering 13-year-old boys. If you’re not already aware of this, women have been playing a growing role in business for the past half-century. Not only do most women (and a lot of men) find that kind of ad unfunny, but they consider the people who run it to be pathetic. That’s not how you want prospective customers to view you.
Sometimes, advertising creatives will encourage companies to run humorous ads because they know that funny material stands a better chance of winning an award. That’s true. But unless the primary objective of the ad is to win an award, humor may not be the most effective strategy. In fact, if the objective is to sell more products or services, it may even be counterproductive. If you don’t believe me, pick up an award show annual from three or four years ago, and look at the funny ads. Then check to see how many of those clients still work with the firms that created the ads. Odds are the ads didn’t rack up as many sales as awards.
In some cases, companies may be willing to risk offending some people with funny messages that connect with their specific audiences. I did work for a client whose business had a strong ethnic underpinning, and whose advertising was built around a style of humor associated with that ethnic group. The ads resonated extremely well with his key audience, but sometimes offended others outside the group. He believed the benefits outweighed the risks and had the confidence to continue the approach in the face of the occasional complaint from a non-customer.
Still willing to risk incorporating humor in your materials? Then I’ll offer one more piece of advice: don’t try to do it yourself. Hire an expert. Effective humor involves more than having a good joke. It has to be delivered in the right way, with perfect preparation and timing, and most people just don’t know how to do that. Think I’m wrong? Visit a local comedy club on amateur night, and climb behind the microphone. Even if you’re the funniest guy or gal you know, I suspect you’ll quickly learn why Steve Martin warned, “comedy is not pretty.”