effectiveness of humor in advertisement

Contents

What is Humor According to the Theory What is advertisement Humor advertisement Involvement Effectiveness Contribution to the success. Positive Brand impact Benefits of Humor in Advertising

Humorous Advertising can change the concept of any product.

Effect of ad humour on Recipent Relief Theory Superiority Theory Incongruity Theory

Guideline for Humor Advertisement

Seven Reasons to Laugh

What is Humor:

“state of mind.”“humor is anything that causes

amusement.”

According to the Theory:

One theory states that humor results from incongruity or deviations from expectations.

In other words humor can be something unrealistic, exaggerated, or unexpected.

Mowen, J.C., & Minor M.S. (2001) Consumer Behavior-A Framework. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall

What is Advertising:

“Any paid non personal communication of information about products or ideas by an identified sponsor through the mass media in an effort to

persuade or influence behavior.”Advertising is about attracting, holding, and focusing attention, and nothing gets our attention like a

funny TV spot. But funny is a double-edged sword.

Humor advertisements:

Humor in advertising is a delicate method of attracting a viewer's/listener's attention to the client's product. Done right, it achieves success. Doing it right means not only engaging the prospect but getting them to remember the product.

Humorous Advertisements

A bit of humor is always welcome!If your creative strategy is based in humor, it might not be the best ad, but it will certainly catch people's attention.  TCAInspired(blogger) thinks that making a good ad is cool, but making a funny ad is better. 

Involvement

Involvement is defined as an individual, internal state of arousal with intensity, direction, and persistence properties.

Involvement has been identified as an important variable that influences advertising effectiveness.

Contribution to the success.

There are three things that contribute to the success of the humour as an advertising appeal. Humour makes Consumers to

1.      Watch 2.      Laugh 3.      Remember.Humor is used in about 24 percent of TV ads and about 35 percent of radio ads.

Positive Brand impact

When we see a funny advertisement we tend to discuss it with our friends and family.

It tends to bring a higher level of involvement to the consumer. These two factors help build a companies positive brand image. E.G: Ufone Because of this Ufone was declared as the best telecom brand in

Pakistan by Nielson survey. It has also won the best advertising campaign award of 2010-11 given by Pakistan Advertising society (PAS).

Benefits Benefits of Humor in advertising.There are many benefits associated with using humour in advertising. We will look at each of them.1. AttentionThe major advantage of using humour in advertising is that it grabs target audience’s attention. Target audience pays more attention to the ads that are funny and entertaining than factual and serious ones.2. Improves the Brand Image.Another advantage of humorous ads is that it improves the brand image. People tend to like that particular brand that uses humour in their ads.

Benefits of humour in advertising.3. Good Word of Mouth Humorous ads help to spread the good word of mouth about a particular brand. Usually people talk about the ads which are funny and entertaining.4. Increase Brand awareness.The basic objective of most of the ad campaign is to increase the brand awareness among the target audience. For that purpose they have to ensure that maximum number of people watch their ads. In short they have to break through the clutter. Humorous ads helps to achieve this objective of advertisers as most of the peoples are attracted to funny ads and thus it increases the awareness of that particular brand.5. High RecallHumorous ads tend to have high recall among the target audience which finally helps to increase the market share of a brand.6. Humorous ads improve the mood of Target audience.Humorous ads tend to improve the mood of the target audience and made them to relax which improves the overall image of the brand and leads to the purchase decision. Happy consumers associate good mood with the advertiser’s product.

Humorous Advertising can change the concept of any product.

Therefore the advertisers need to be very careful while selecting the appeal for their ads. The advertisers must make sure that the appeal is in compliance with their products values, positioning statement and the product’s concept.

Similarly if not executed correctly the humour appeal can change the overall concept of the product. Advertisers must make sure that humour must not overpower the advertisement. When humour fails it is because the joke in the ad is remembered but the message is not or it is perceived incorrectly.

Effect of ad Humour on recipient

There are many theories of humour which attempt to explain what humour is, what social functions it serves, and what would be considered humorous.1. Relief theory2. Superiority theory3. Incongruity theory

Relief theory Relief theory maintains that laughter is a homeostatic mechanism by which psychological tension is reduced. Humour may thus for example serve to facilitate relief of the tension caused by one's fears. Laughter and mirth, according to relief theory, result from this release of nervous energy. Humour, according to relief theory, is used mainly to overcome sociocultural inhibitions and reveal suppressed desires. It is believed that this is the reason we laugh whilst being tickled, due to a build-up of tension as the tickler "strikes".

Superiority theoryThe superiority theory of humour traces back to Plato and Aristotle, and Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan. The general idea is that a person laughs about misfortunes of others (so called schadenfreude), because these misfortunes assert the person's superiority on the background of shortcomings of others. Socrates was reported by Plato as saying that the ridiculous was characterized by a display of self-ignorance. For Aristotle, we laugh at inferior or ugly individuals, because we feel a joy at feeling superior to them.

Incongruity theory The incongruity theory states that humour is perceived at the moment of realization of incompatibility between a concept involved in a certain situation and the real objects thought to be in some relation to the conceptThis theory is base on the assumption that the crucial element in a humorous situation is a kind of incongruity which surprise the recipient . while she except some certain features that ad evoke the situation that ad does not comply with the recipient expectation . however in order to be humours, the situation must be safe and not threatening.

Role of humour in advertising Launches Humour can assist cut-through without detracting from communication effect if done right.But humour can distract from the message if misused –can be critical for launches. Relaunches Humour can inject life into the news. Maintenance Humour is a particularly good route for making advertising distinctive and involving- key when performing a maintenance role.

Guideline for humor advertisement

1. Do use humour to entertain. People love to be entertained. (What do you do in your free time?)

2. Do use humour to be thought-provoking, but not offensive.3. Do test humorous concepts, not techniques. Slapstick, irony and word play

are techniques, but what is the idea you want to convey?4. Do let your reader/listener/viewer experience the joy of "getting it." You'll

make a friend.5. Do engage the imagination of your customers. Theirs may be even bigger

than yours.6. Do the homework on your customer, and I don't necessarily mean formal

research. A renowned copywriter from the early days of advertising called research "putting on my hat and going out to talk to people." Humour comes from knowing your audience inside-out.

Guideline for humor advertisement

1. Don't over-analyze a humorous idea. It's funny, or it's not. As Mark Twain said, "Trying to figure out why something is funny is like dissecting a frog. You'll come up with answers, but the frog always dies."

2. Don't use humour for its own sake. Make it relevant to your objective.

3. Don't use humour to deceive or tell a lie. It's a scientific fact that humor intensifies positive physical and psychological reactions; deceit will undermine these good feelings and supplant them with anger and resentment.

4. Don't forget that rules are meant to be broken. The best humor comes from the edge, where there are no rules.

BUT DO NOT FORGET

That rules are meant to be broken. The best humor comes from the edge, where there are no rules.

Seven Reasons To Laugh

1. Comparison - Putting two or more elements together to produce a humorous situation.

2. Personification - Attributes human characteristics to animals, plants and objects.

3. Exaggeration - Overstating and magnifying something out of proportion.

Seven Reasons To Laugh

4. Pun - Using elements of language to create new meanings, which result in humour.5. Sarcasm - sarcasm is a separate category including blatant ironic responses or situations.

Seven Reasons To Laugh

6. Silliness - Silliness ranges from making funny faces to ludicrous situations.7. Surprise - Includes all advertisements where humour arises from unexpected situations.

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Effectiveness

Humor can influence attitudes and behaviors:1) Humor places people in a good mood, which in turn lowers

counterarguments to the message.2) Humor can attract attention to an ad and increase its recall

and comprehension.3) Its strongest effect is that it increases the likeness of the

advertising.

Mowen, J.C., & Minor M.S. (2001) Consumer Behavior-A Framework. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall

Effectiveness.

Humor has to be planned carefully in order to avoid unanticipated negative effects:

1) Humor can reduce the comprehension of the message.2) Using humor may shorten the life of the ads.3) It can have a negative effect on various audiences.