Nothing breaks down barriers like a shared joke. But when it comes to advertising, do clients reach for the funny bone too eagerly in their quest to promote their wares? After all, if the gag has little relevance to the brand, it is unlikely to leave an impression on the consumer.
'The biggest mistake, particularly among more creative companies, is seeing humourous marketing as a means in itself, rather than a means to an end,' says Justin Kirby, managing director of agency Digital Media Communications. 'They forget to ask if the humour is actually achieving something. Mostly, humour is used as a creative solution to a problem, not as a properly thought-through strategic approach.'
While agencies are often blamed for always wanting to make the jokes, clients are just as guilty. Rupert Pick, market-ing manager for Marmite, which has used humour to good effect with its long-running 'Love & Hate' campaign, says: 'Marketers tend to want to be involved in a funny campaign. Let's be honest - you want your friends to laugh at your ad. Maybe it's because marketers know that humour can make consumers feel positive, so they think that if they produce something funny, it will be successful.'
Marmite's nine-year joke around the theme of loving or hating the brand has delivered both laughs and sales. After years of clean-cut campaigns, including 'Growing-up spread you never grow out of' and 'My mate Marmite', the Unilever brand turned to polarising comedy in 1996, with a campaign that played on some consumers' vehement dislike of Marmite. The BMP DDB-created ads cannily recognised there was no chance of converting Marmite haters, so instead focused on making Marmite lovers feel part of a select and intensely loyal group.
The 'Love & Hate' concept is also a creative platform, which works across many executions and media channels. As Pick says: 'Since we began 'Love & Hate' in 1996, we have achieved an additional £50m worth of sales. I'd say that humour has played a huge part in driving that commercial return for the brand.'
Matt Law, account director for Tribal DDB, which has translated the theme into an online community of Marmite lovers and haters at www.marmite.com, says that the humour works because it so closely fits the brand's marketing objectives. 'Humour goes wrong when brands start chucking around jokes just for the sake of it. Consumers know you're trying to sell them something, so they're not going to laugh along easily. For a brand, being funny is not like having a banter with your mates in a pub.'
Sector relevance
The challenge of using humour is often dependent on the sector the brand is in. Beer has classically been the richest comedy seam in British advertising, spawning campaigns for brands such as Heineken, Castlemaine XXXX, Foster's, John Smith's and Stella Artois. The fact that Carling Black Label's 'Dambusters' ad is still remembered 20 years on proves that well-judged humour can be a huge boost for brand recall.
The use of humorous advertising in this sector is under threat, however. Guidance notes published by the ASA state that alcohol ads should not have themes 'likely to appeal strongly to under 18s', such as depicting adolescent behaviour or practical jokes. The enforcement of such a ban would have major ramifications on existing strategies.
Rory Sutherland, vice-chairman and creative director of OgilvyOne, says the traditional success of humour in beer marketing is attributable to the way consumers mentally divide their spending. 'In their minds, people have two budgets: money they spend seriously on necessities such as financial services, and money they spend frivolously on things such as entertainment and alcohol. As people get more disposable income, that sense of frivolity extends into areas that were once treated seriously, such as cars, but you have to be careful how you tread. Many people don't spend any of their money lightly and for them funny marketing is inappropriate.'
The traditional domination of direct marketing by financial services, collectibles, charity and business-to-business sec-tors means that below-the-line has less history in humour compared with advertising. But now that brands such as Egg are bucking the trend and introducing humour into their direct marketing, Sutherland is surprised more are not following suit. 'The problem with humour for advertisers is bad targeting. It's like a best man's speech - you can't please everyone in the room. But with direct marketing you are free to target a specific audience, which, in theory, should make it easier to be funny.'
Barclays is one brand making the transition from serious to humorous as part of a carefully constructed strategy. Its 'Fluent in Finance' campaign, featuring actor Samuel L Jackson, was big and serious, but now, under marketing director Jim Hytner, the bank is adopting a more light-hearted approach, as can be seen in new TV ads featuring a man stung by a wasp who falls into a lake.
'The use of humour will be part of Barclays advertising for the foreseeable future,' says Hytner. 'But are we a serious brand? Yes. Do we deal with a serious issue? Yes. We will be careful not to diminish the brand, and we won't use it willy-nilly.'
Standing out
Hytner, who famously devised a poster for Five depicting hard-man footballer David Batty wearing stockings and suspenders, thinks memorability is a key reason humour is effective. 'Consumers hear 1500 commercial messages every week, but only listen to five and act on one. Humour is a fundamental tactic in engaging people and making them listen to your message.'
Barclays' shift is no idle whim. Hytner says he has sold the new strategy into the branch network and the group board. 'It's important that it is taken very seriously and that everyone is galvanised by it. It's also vital that something like this comes directly from a brief from the client and is part of a wider strategy. If it is the agency that suddenly decides to be funny, you're stuffed.'
Although some of the most memorably funny advertising, such as 'Hello boys' for FCUK, or 'You've been Tango'd', come from mainstream media campaigns, it is getting more difficult to be funny on television, print or outdoor. 'For humour to work well, it needs to be pushy and irreverent, but that's increasingly hard to do,' says Kate Stanners, creative director of Saatchi & Saatchi. 'There are so many regulatory bodies to get past, it's amazing that anything funny ever gets through.'
Ever more graphic sex and outrageous comedy on TV makes it especially hard for humorous advertising to make an impact. According to Digital Media Communications' Kirby, this is tempting more advertisers into the unregulated domain of online, and especially into viral marketing.
'Given the level of material some people are used to seeing on TV, mainstream advertising is like trying to reach the unreachable,' he says. 'With so many regulatory constraints, advertisers just can't cut the mustard. As a result, they are being forced to sell their product in other ways.'
Viral sophistication
Creating a viral message, which is essentially an unregulated online TV commercial, nearly always involves humour. The aim is to surprise and make people laugh so much that they pass it onto their friends, selecting people who they know will find it funny and, in the process, distributing the message with a sophistication of targeting that the advertiser alone could rarely achieve. Budweiser's 'Whassup' campaign, which helped add £80m in UK sales for the brand between 1999 and 2001, was born out of a viral ad. Its cult status meant the 'Bud-Weis-Er' frogs were already famous by the time the TV work broke. The vast number of email jokes that are sent each day has ensured that consumers are used to and receptive toward such messages, even if they are commercial.
Dangerous ground
Nowadays, perhaps in an effort to keep pace with boundary-pushing youth humour, advertising virals are far more close to the mark - so much so that brands often claim they had nothing to do with their creation. The Ford Sport Ka viral that showed a cat being decapitated by a car sunroof is widely believed to have been approved by the company, even though it denies any involvement. On the other hand, a recent viral featuring a suicide bomber blowing himself up in a VW Polo - which withstands the blast - is thought to be a genuine spoof. It certainly created a PR nightmare for VW, which had to fight strenuously to convince people it wasn't involved.
Ultimately, successful use of humour in advertising is something that many brands seems to want, but few can achieve. The best and most memorable ads are often the funniest, but it is also true that for every comedy great, there are many more that die on their feet. If there is any final guideline to be had on this issue, Mary Newcombe, head of marketing at Skoda - which has made an effective use of self-deprecating humour to shift impressions about the Czech car marque - offers this advice: 'Don't set out trying to be funny; don't go for belly laughs that forget the brand.'
HIT - WALLIS
The 'Dressed to Kill' campaign for Wallis turned the retailer from high-street me-too into a brand that really stood out. The series of press and poster ads, including a girl looking out to sea with a Porsche crashed into a wall behind her, gave what was an unremarkable brand a real sense of attitude. The black humour combined with elegant art direction was a powerful combination, making you sit up and take notice.
MISS - KEEP BRITAIN TIDY
This 'saucy' poster campaign is designed to stop us dropping litter. One execution featured a woman, cleavage on show, in a short skirt and crawling toward the camera, together with the line 'While you're down there ...' with the words 'could you put this in the bin for me?' tacked on in smaller print. Though trying to communicate a serious issue, the ads came across as smutty, especially as many of the posters were carried in male toilets.
TONY MCTEAR, JOINT CREATIVE DIRECTOR, TBWA\LONDON
Humour is always seen as the easy option - a quick way to make people feel warm toward a brand. There's no doubt that it's over-used and is often inappropriate, but when it's right, it can be powerful. For it to work best, it needs to be surprising and a big idea, not just a one-off execution. The true test of a great idea is its flexibility, and if humour is part of it, it must work well in all forms of communication.
HIT - JOHN WEST SALMON
The 'Bear Fight' advertising campaign is a superb piece of communication. Though basically a very dry message that John West goes to great lengths to source its salmon, it is portrayed brilliantly, using an absurd scenario of a bear fighting a fisherman for the right to the fish. With a funny script, production and execution, it has managed to create real emotional attachment to a brand that under normal circumstances is pretty uninspiring.
MISS - VAUXHALL ASTRA SPORT HATCH
This campaign has all the typical shots of a car campaign, but comes complete with the new angle of a mountaineer throwing himself down a hill wearing a helmet. He lands in front of a gleaming Vauxhall Astra Sport Hatch, utters the throwaway line of 'Nice car mate' and it then drives away. I don't see the point. It is not terribly funny and ends up compromising both the humour and the message that the brand is trying to convey.
RUPERT PICK, MARKETING MANAGER, MARMITE
When you use humour in marketing it must reflect the brand's personality. It should support the communication, not just drive the advertising. Whether you are selling door-to-door or advertising on TV, making people smile is essential and creates an affinity between the brand and the consumer. As we have seen with Marmite, it can also boost customer loyalty.
HIT - INNOCENT DRINKS
What I really like about Innocent Drinks is that it uses lovely, cheeky humour all through its branding. The humorous message is consistent whether it be on the bottles, delivery vans, cartons, website or wherever the consumer could possibly encounter them. It's not often you buy any sort of drinks brand and just reading the label makes you laugh on the way to the till.
MISS - AA
I did a quick poll among my marketing colleagues at Skoda and the 'Kev and Bev' campaign for AA Car Loans was unanimously unpopular. It is supposed to be funny because of the way they repeat the names of the eponymous 'Kev' and 'Bev', but it just ends up being deeply irritating. It's unfortunate, as the AA has a good advertising pedigree outside of this particular campaign.
MARY NEWCOMBE, HEAD OF MARKETING, SKODA UK
In research groups, people always remember the ads that made them laugh. But do they remember the brand? There is a risk of only remembering the gag, as opposed to the message you are trying to convey. You have to think of the message first and then if you make people laugh in the process, all the better.
DO'S AND DON'TS OF HUMOROUS ADVERTISING
DO make sure the humour is being used as part of a wider and long-term plan. Humour should support the overall marketing objective and help build a tone of voice that lasts.
DO consider how well the humour can 'travel' across different communication channels. Can it support the message as well on TV as it can at a live event, on the radio, internet or in ambient media?
DO take inspiration from other countries. Britain does not have a monopoly on funny advertising. DON'T flog a dead horse. Being brave enough to ditch a long-running execution while it is still popular is better than allowing it to go stale and turn people against the brand.
DON'T allow over-research and cautiousness to remove everything that was originally funny from a creative idea. You'll be left with a half-baked and unamusing version of what was once a good ad.
DON'T let the joke clash with the brand's core message. Remember Griff Rhys Jones advertising Vauxhall's sexy VX220 sports car, wearing turquoise underpants and a fake ginger beard?
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