Before kicking off: this November I’m offering 30 x 30 minute sessions to 30 brands. You can ask me anything about using humour in your comms. Last year I did this and spoke to brands like Kayak, Allied Irish Banks and Zipcar.
The cost? $0. I accept all major credit cards.
Interested? Places are going steadily, so don’t dawdle. Just pop here and book your half hour.
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A few months ago I was chatting away to a lady called Beverley, the head of a big ad agency, about funny ads.
I showed her an ad. Here it is:
I talked about the humour mechanisms it uses, why it would appeal to the target audience and how it related to the product. But then, frowning, she made an unexpected but valid point:
“To me, I wouldn’t describe that ad as funny. Instead, I would say it’s clever.”
It’s a fair observation — thanks Beverley! — and taps into a bigger point:
How do we describe funny ads?
After all, this ad is funny:
…But it’s very different to this ad — which is also funny:
…Which is very different to this ad — which is also funny:
Tough, huh? And those are just print ads.
To muddy the waters further, with video, the situation can get even more complicated. How do you define this?
…And then this?
…Both funny, but utterly different. All of which might seem like we haven’t a snowball’s chance in hell in describing what we’re talking about.
But there’s good news. Since the 1980s, academics have developed an increasingly sophisticated way of naming humorous ads. Indeed, a key part of my methodology, HumourScope®, is naming names, so we know what we’re talking about. We now have a very strong way of categorizing funny ads and knowing how they work; given the advances in our knowledge of how humour works, this will only become more detailed as time goes on.
Here’s an example. Take a look at this lovely ad below for Harvey Nichols, the high-end department store. We see a fancy pair of sunglasses and Kitty having to forsake a month’s worth of food: tough luck for the cat, but a nice look for the owner.
It uses a mechanism called incongruity-resolution (more here), whereby we see an incongruity and resolve it mentally: this conjures up the humour.
What does all this mean for brands? When we know the names, we know what we’re talking about. When we know what we’re talking about, we can find the best territory to play in — and that’s what matters for any brand.
All that said, I’d say if there’s anything that marks ads out as funny — a common denominator, if you like — it’s the speed at which they work and the speed at which we react. Indeed, sometimes these two movements can feel spontaneous, they’re so fast.
The great critic and broadcaster Clive James knew a thing or two about humour1. For one thing, he was tremendously funny. But he was also very intelligent, too. He once wrote:
‘Common sense and a sense of humour are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humour is just common sense, dancing.’
Wise words indeed.
Many thanks for reading,
Paddy
Book a meeting with me here
pg@studiogilmore.com
+44 7866 538 233
LinkedIn: here
Instagram: @mrpaddygilmore
Don’t believe me? Just read his memoirs, which are hilarious (they’re called The Complete Unreliable Memoirs, vols. 1 and 2). A Times critic wrote of it: “Clive James cannot find it within himself to write a dull paragraph”. I agree 100%.