Walk the line, don't snort it - finding funny for your Brand
I have a confession: I spent the better part of my twenties trying to make it as stand up comedian. Long nights spent in small clubs, sharing my big ideas with tiny audiences. It wasn’t that bad - it gave me an excuse to delay using my marketing degree, I had some great experiences across Australia (and even New York) and learnt more about creative communication than all the General Assembly’s in the world could ever hope to teach. Plus I met more B-grade celebrities than you could poke an award ceremony at.
So, much of what we do today at Ruck has some grounding in this world (except for the B-grade celebrity bit…unless you want Dee from Neighbours in your next campaign?) After all, why just communicate something when you can add a bit of irreverence, cheek, quirk or wit and amp up the fun factor.
Using humour in brand communications has been proven to aid retention of information and increase engagement of your message. But working out what makes something is funny has been compared to dissecting a frog; no one is really interested and the frog dies of it.
Across much of marketing, advertising and social media, humour is used to capture an audience, build rapport and improve message recall whilst providing a platform for to share your brand values and experience principles. It’s not always easy. What is funny to one person, isn't to another. It’s a fine line - most brands aren’t brave enough to walk it while others snort that line up and go too far.
So what helps make a brand’s communication funny?
It has been said that the idea of a joke is based on tension and trickery.
When a situation is naturally tense — an important meeting, a funeral, a compulsory but boring task - humour can provide a much needed release. Laughter is the process of ridding our system of built-up tension. The skill is in picking these moments to introduce the right type of funny at the right time.
Trickery is based on the incongruity theory that suggests that humour presents when logic and familiarity are replaced by things that don't normally go together. Content becomes funny when we expect one outcome and another happens.
The key ingredients to comedic brand communications?
Humour should be unifying — in that we can all share in the joke and the laugh. That means we need to be mindful that it make fun of all of us, or none of us.
Pick your type — because a form of comedy content is trending or capturing the imagination of culture, doesn’t make it right for your brand. Understand what your brand’s sense of humour is (try mapping it to a known TV show or movie) and play in that space.
Know your audience — make sure that the references or underlying ideas of your humour are shared by your audience. It can be easy for your LOL to miss the mark. Make sure as a minimum you play to the majority of the room.
Find the third thing — strive to find new ways to say old things. Next time you have to express a familiar idea, bin your first option then push past your second option to the third one. Chances are, this is a unique take on overused example.
Ruck offer Brand Brain workshops that meet the custom needs of Marketing teams to help manage your brands more creatively and effectively. Contact us for more info.
