By: Dominic Grapentien
As students, we have learned that advertisements use various emotions to capture their target audience’s attention. One emotion that consistently stands out is humor. Whether the advertisement is on social media, print, or video, humor has the ability to stick in buyers’ minds because it creates a positive feeling. Especially in today’s crowded media environment, where people scroll endlessly past traditional ads, humor helps a brand capture an extra second of the viewer’s attention to deliver its message. This works because humor makes the message feel lighter and less pushy. Researchers found that the positive feelings associated with humor transfer to the brand. This type of connection makes brands recognizable to consumers because the emotions behind the advertisement make it stand out.
Humor also makes a brand feel more like a friend. When a brand can make its buyers laugh, the company seems more relatable to the public. This builds trust and makes the brand stick in consumers’ minds. Most people like brands that make them happy/feel good, and tools like humor create this positive feeling for buyers.
Research supports this idea. Eisend explains that people enjoy the humor in an ad, and the good feelings they experience often transfer to the brand itself (Eisend 2010). This means viewers are more likely to have a positive impression of the company and remember it in the future. This type of connection makes the emotion of humor stronger than other emotions in traditional ads.
Overall, humor works in advertising because it grabs attention, influences positive emotions, and helps buyers remember the brand. Humor gives companies a simple but powerful way to connect with their audiences.
Eisend, M. (2010, May 13). How humor in advertising works: A meta-analytic test of alternative models – Marketing Letters. SpringerLink. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11002-010-9116-z
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