Advertising and marketing people have done plenty of their own research on the effectiveness (and ineffectiveness) of humor in branding. Using the usual deadly prose, Marc Weinberger and Charles Gulas reviewed major findings in “The Impact of Humor in Advertising,” my source for this section.

PERSUASION
Wit is only persuasive if it’s used the right way. First and foremost, the humor has to be integral to the messaging. You can’t just toss in a gratuitous joke. It has to be relevant to the product and the marketing claims. Second, the joke has to be told from the audience’s point of view. The agency that launched IKEA in the U.S., Deutsch Inc., does a good job with this. Kathy Delaney, president and chief creative officer of the New York office, says, “Furniture isn’t funny, but life at home is. IKEA bases their product designs on a deep understanding of how people really live, with all the quirks—not the fake stuff we usually see in catalogs and on TV. If you show that and get people to say ‘Omigosh, that’s what my house is like,’ then you’ve made a connection with them.” The branding reflects the audience’s self-image back at them: smart, antiauthoritarian, and quick to delight in the ridiculous. It makes the brand feel like a club you want to join.

“When you engage and entertain people, you earn their loyalty,” Delaney says. “When you give people something to chuckle about, you make their day a little better. Making the effort to give them something reflects positively on the brand.”

Here’s an example that shows how wit creates distinction. Izzy is a new brand in the same market as IKEA: high-design, you-build-it furniture. One distinction is that izzy only makes office furniture, but since the two brands are basically addressing the same audience, izzy is taking the witty approach that IKEA has proven effective. Izzy gives each line a person’s name—Evan, Jack, Rylee—and then creates a complete personality for it. “Hard working and tidy. Jack is both.” Their brochures, designed by BBK Studio, have little jokes scattered throughout. A spread of basic components includes a picture of “Joe Sales Guy.” The caption for a series of pictures in Rylee reads “Jack folding base and modesty panels; HAG Conventio seating; UFO: Please duck.” (There’s a fuzzy UFO above the table.)

CREDIBILITY
Humor tends to make the source look less knowledgeable, but there’s one exception: sentimental or friendly humor. That’s the approach Apple is using in their recent ads. They’re walking a fine line by having a nerdy guy play the PC and a hip guy play the Mac, but the hip guy is so solicitous of the nerdy guy, and the script is so careful not to exaggerate, that you come away feeling sympathetic to both of them. Given how high feelings run in both camps, it’s nice to see a nonaggressive approach to direct comparison.

Let’s let Kathy Delaney wrap this up: “The competition for attention is so intense now that we’re constantly having to raise the bar. Humor is another way in—even if your brand isn’t about something people usually think of as funny. Take car insurance. Geiko’s ads match up real people with over-the-top performers who interpret their car insurance story in their own way. It’s laugh-out-loud funny, but it’s also informative. The big idea here is that humor can be an effective way to get people to connect with your brand.” If it’s good enough for all these companies, it should be good enough for your clients.

HOW TO USE HUMOR
Don’t:
• be ha-ha, belly-laugh funny
• be mean. Making fun of other people is a turn off.
• use gratuitous humor
• assume that what’s witty to one group will be witty to another
Do:
• be gently funny
• create incongruity, then resolve it
• create tension (pose a question or riddle), then defuse it
• tell the joke from the point of view of the audience
• make the joke relevant to the product
• make the joke an integral part of the message
• pretest witty solutions

WHEN TO USE HUMOR
Humor works better for familiar brands than new ones.
It’s great for brands that are well liked.
It’s terrible for brands that are in recovery.
It’s great for the soft-sell approaches.
It’s not so good for the hard-sell approach.
It’s great for any product with emotional overtones.
It makes difficult or taboo subjects easier to talk about.