Why the consumer should be the last one laughing, not the brand

Humour used in corporate and consumer communications can be an effective, and often underrated, tool to launch a campaign, deliver a message or respond to criticism. But laughter isn’t always the best medicine.

Good Good and Callaway found this out the hard way. Intending to spoof the horror film Obsession, the golf brands created an advert that saw a male golfer push a woman to the ground after she reached for his club.

Within days, both companies had pulled the advert and were fielding accusations that they’d made light of violence against women. What started as a joke became a reputational problem – and reputational problems tend to evolve into commercial ones.

That’s the risk with humour – get the tone, timing and message right and it can be the building blocks of a relationship that outlasts a single campaign. Get any of these elements wrong and you undo goodwill and are left managing the fallout.

As with all comedy, timing is everything. With traditional media, including TV and radio, campaigns and messaging had to be planned out far in advance, with companies investing significant time, effort and money in a campaign designed to make their audience chuckle, for better or worse. A brand that’s too slow to react looks dated, while one still running last year’s reference looks tired.

Social media changed that. Brands can now react to trends or moments in record time. When a competitor announces a new product, the brand which shifts the conversation onto its own terms and pokes gentle fun at the rivalry cuts through because it’s fast and on brand.

Heinz has taken a similar approach over the year, particularly with its ‘Last Drop’ campaign, which found humour in the lengths people go to in pursuit of every ‘Last Drop’ of sauce. It was, organically, inspired by a mother licking ketchup off a child to avoid waste. It also reinforced the brand’s position as the market leader.

Research backs the use of humour in campaigns too, with Oracle finding that 90% of people are more likely to remember an advert if it’s funny and 80% are more likely to do business with a brand again if it successfully uses humour.

But that research doesn’t measure what happens when a joke fails to hit the mark, which is the side many brands don’t consider. April Fool’s Day is a good example: what was once a genuine opportunity for a brand that typically plays it straight to have some fun with its audience has become a crowded annual trend – so content really needs to hit the right note to stand out.

This is what brands should really consider when implementing comedy into their messaging. Not “is this funny?” but “what do we stand to gain if this lands, or lose if it doesn’t?” Knowing your audience matters just as much: brands need to understand who the target market is for a specific message, and the topics and trends they engage with, before crafting something intended to tickle the funny bone. There is a reason famous comedians try out new material in small venues before embarking on arena tours, after all. They need to gauge what works and what doesn’t before the stakes get higher.

Humour is one of the sharpest tools a brand has. It is also one of the few that can do almost immediate reputational and commercial damage once it’s been deployed. The brands who get it right treat it that way, not as a creative flourish bolted onto a campaign, but as a decision that starts with what the business needs and is judged by what it delivers.

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