Three Big Ways Humor Can Drive Marketing Success
Kathy Klotz-Guest MA, MBA
Cultivating braver leaders, employees, cultures who innovate boldly | Humorous Keynote Speaker & 2X Author | Event MC | Improv-fueled Comms, Story, Creativity Strategy
Humor is Human! As content marketing explodes, so too, does the volume of noise. You have about 7 seconds to grab attention. Or your audience is out of there. That's how I feel most days. Too much stuff chasing too few brain cycles.
Laughter lowers the intellectual shield your busy prospects have up all day just to survive the messaging onslaught. Humor opens up a space for connecting because it disrupts the expected pattern.
As a marketer and improviser, I know how important humor is in connecting with an audience.
Here are just three ways (there are many more - for another post!) I've used in marketing and on the comedy stage to add humor and get results.
1. Show Empathy
Connect on an emotional level by tying your company and offering to a real human challenge your prospect has. When you parody a real challenge by taking it to extremes – the height of exaggeration—you show customers you get it. The truth is pretty funny.
Source: Kinaxis.com
Start with the pain points of your audience, and of your ideal customers. What drives customers in your space crazy? Relationships can be a great way to explore the comical truth. In 2012, I wrote about a supply-chain management software company called Kinaxis. It has a very funny video that parodies the ‘awkward’ relationship between a vendor and customer by comparing it to a romantic one! And it is.
2. Tackle Your Customer’s Problem and Go Way Over the Top
Scofield Edit has a great video from 2009 parodying the client-vendor relationship much. I first wrote about this video back in 2009 when it was fresh. It still works! The company took a universal issue its customers can relate to – not being valued by some customers who want more for less – and took it to a humorous extreme. What if you went to your hair stylist and asked for a free haircut to “test drive?” That’s exactly what I love about this video which received over 1 million views within weeks of its launch.
3. Parody and the Power of Flipping Expectations
One of my favorite techniques on the stage (and page) is flipping expectations - in improv we call it a "tilt." Not too long ago, I had a credit union client. It had to attract Millennials to grow its customer base. The challenge: many Millennials don’t know about credit unions, or have negative opinions of them. They are into convenience and technology, not old-school, in-person customer service. So we created a campaign “When Millennials Rule the World!” We put twenty-somethings in bank VP roles and in customer service, and let them improvise how they would run a bank. Then, we asked Millennials to submit ideas online. The results were hysterical. This audience loves humor and the campaign successfully up-ended perceptions about this credit union being low-tech.
What would be unexpected from your company? Find that and go ‘there.’ Surprise is a tremendous weapon precisely because it can change perceptions in a powerful way.
Header Image source: Pen Waggener CC by 2.0
Your Turn
How do you use humor successfully to connect and drive conversation? How do you create "surprise" and turn expectations upside down with humor? Leave a comment below.
About the Author
Want more humor tips? Download my ebook on Humor and Storytelling from the Amazon bookstore.
Kathy Klotz-Guest, MA, MBA, is founder of marketing firm, Keeping it Human, whose mission is to help executives and companies turn marketing-speak into compelling human stories customers care about. A comic improviser, speaker, and marketer, Kathy runs The Jargonorrhea Live - Viral Marketing Show podcast when she's not ridding the world of jargon-monoxide poisoning and un-human marketing. She is a founding member of two improvisation troupes. Her fave audience is her little dude, who laughs himself silly daily.
Visual Communicator: I create images that humanize brands and distinguish them from competitors. You have to get noticed before you can gain someone's trust.
6yHumor tends to have a strong visual element. It's part of the experience. It's the joke PLUS the way someone tells it: their gestures, mannerisms, facial expressions. We all have our favorite comics and comedians. We feel we KNOW them because humor creates a very intimate bond. That's exactly what brands need to be successful. And the sky's the limit, really: there are hundreds of ways to string humorous images together to tell a story.
Executive Director, Marketing at SAP, moving the world with stories
7yTrue, Kathy, humor is human! ^^ Humor opens up the possibility of human-to-human connection, which is at the core of all our relationship, including the digital ones, too. ^^ During a talk show that I co-host with my beautiful partner, I open up the conversation with humor. It can be about anything: about the guest's name, nickname, his/her background, and what not. ^^ Thanks again for reminding me the significance of humor in building and growing a human-to-human relationship. Have a great day. Cheers! 🍻
Trading for a better tomorrow
8ythanks for the article. I've got a couple stories that you might like
"COOL UNDER FIRE" workshop facilitator, presentations executive coach, senior writer --& LIVE to ZOOM executive coach
9yGood article Kathy. Love your point about The Tilt. I'm continually delighted by how much Improv can "school" business about opening up communications. I also wrote about "Why Being Funny At Work Matters" here on my LI post. Let's keep spreading the word.
Humour is also habit-forming in a way and goes well with repeat purchase situations. While it is easily campaignable, it has to be used very sensitively. The real challenge is in converting the attention into sales.