
Dave Harland – Copywriting vs. AI
Why we love it: Copywriter Dave Harland loves poking fun at the self-proclaimed thought leaders and trend-hoppers of LinkedIn. And his audience loves him for
Adam Hunt is the creative director of White Label Comedy – the social media, digital marketing and creative agency powered by comedy writers and copywriters.
With a career that straddled the worlds of broadcast TV and branded content – Adam has also Produced The One Show (the BBC’s flagship entertainment show, with 4 million viewers on a good night), and generated creative ideas (and written scripts) for brands of all shapes and sizes – including Xbox UK, Uber, Plated.com, Rev, Curaleaf and Magellan Healthcare.
He brought together the best comedy writers from his time in TV, and the most talented creatives from his time in advertising, to create the White Label Comedy Hive-Mind.
Why we love it: Copywriter Dave Harland loves poking fun at the self-proclaimed thought leaders and trend-hoppers of LinkedIn. And his audience loves him for
Why we love it: Posted on Father’s Day, this has clear topical appeal. And while it’s not really a joke – thanks to the lo-fi
Why we love it: The execution here isn’t 100% (our joke writers would have a thing or three to say about the flagrant disregard for
Why we love it: In contrast to the other meme from RyanAir we’ve looked at in this issue, this one capitalises on a trending topic
Why we love it: Stock photos, paired with a brand-safe Relatable Truth, combined with a dash of topicality? That’s kinda our whole thing here at
Why we love it: Yes, LinkedIn is a ‘professional’ environment. No, content posted there doesn’t need to be sterile and grammatically flawless. Quite the opposite
Why we love it: Posted on the official first day of summer in the Northern Hemisphere – and during a heatwave in the UK –
Why we love it: The RyanAir team know that memes highlighting their audience’s Relatable Truths around holidays and flying (in this case an unexpected Small
Why we love it: What does the announcement of Apple Vision Pro – an upcoming ‘mixed reality headset’ – have to do with Greggs’ baked
Why we love it: If there are two things that are sure to provoke engagement, it’s entertainment… And controversy. Here, Yorkshire Tea combines the two
Why we love it: Innocent Smoothies takes a set of relatable truths based around the realities of work right before a bank holiday – and
Why we love it: Xbox Game Pass pretends to have added relatable desires as additional functions that can be triggered by this mouse. Three of
Why we love it: Not every joke you make needs to be about a topic that’s only relatable to your specific audience. This particular observation
Why we love it: Most brands focus all their energy into their original content – leaving audience interaction to a separate Community Management team who
Why we love it: Ryanair are great at jumping on board a trending topic – and spinning it around so that their take on it
Why we love it: It’s not often we’ll praise a brand for not telling a joke, let alone policing jokes told by others. But we
Why we love it: Jacks Flight Club have paired one of their audience’s Relatable Truths (we’d call it a Small Joy, if you want to
Why we love it: We love to see our clients getting results! (Especially with the content we’ve created for them.) But even putting our heavy
Why we love it: Runna is a new brand on our radar, thanks to this ‘meme dump’ Instagram carousel timed to coincide with the London
Why we love it: Corporate Rebels consistently drive engagement on LinkedIn with graph gags that speak to their audience’s relatable truths, and here’s another strikingly
Why we love it: Brands Against Mundanity Monthly subscribers will know – we love a bar chart gag. And this is a fine example from
Why we love it: Aldi has perfected the art of brand beef on Twitter. The supermarket has previously been on the receiving end of legal
Why we love it: Here we’ve got another LinkedIn marketer taking advantage of the relative rarity of memes on the platform – once again using
Why we love it: Memes are still a relatively rare sight on LinkedIn – which is why, when they’re executed well, they have a strong
Why we love it: This is comedy content creation at its laziest – letting your audience write the jokes for you. Here, Alexa UK have
Why we love it: Think about the ‘myths’ your audience might currently believe – the Objections and Limiting Beliefs that could be making them hesitant
Why we love it: It’s not funny, but it is a beautifully executed and informative Instagram carousel, which takes advantage of the fact that the
Why we love it: In this recurring meme series, LEGO have found a way to showcase their products in the context of genuinely funny content
Why we love it: When we write and edit jokes, we obsess over the ‘leap’ we’re asking an audience to make. If the link between
Why we love it: Here we see perhaps the silliest form of graph gag in action – the ‘single answer’ pie chart. This one works
Why we love it: We wrote it! Look closer, see – that’s Adam Hunt from White Label Comedy. (No, not Buzz Lightyear. Above that.) This
Why we love it: The air travel industry has a strong track record when it comes to comedy on social media, spearheaded by RyanAir –
Why we love it: Dave’s done it again – dropping this spoof Glastonbury festival poster packed with copywriters’ relatable truths, on the same day the
Why we love it: Weird design choice where they’ve tried to make a pie chart look like an Echo speaker aside… this is a solid,
Why we love it: It’s a twist on a popular meme that Razer knows their (extremely online) audience will be familiar with. Usually, both ‘pills’
Why we love it: It’s another tight meta one-liner from The Word Man, Dave Harland. But importantly, it’s not just smart for smart’s sake –
Why we love it: Alright, so technically it’s an ad – and it’s more of a witty strapline than a joke – but this one
Why we love it: Napolina haven’t crossed our radar before, but we’re impressed by their recent experiments on social – especially this ‘Overheard in Naples’
Why we love it: By using a fact about March as a jumping off point, Lego were able to make a joke about their products
Why we love it: It’s not quite a joke – but it is a creative, scrollstopping way of presenting a bold and potentially provocative statement,
Why we love it: Fray Bentos use a topical news story (classic sitcom Fawlty Towers is coming back to our screens) as a jumping off
Why we love it: Fray Bentos have taken something they’re normally criticised for – having tins that some people struggle to get into – and
Why we love it: Giveaways can be a great way to grow your audience on social – but they’re often awkward, eggy and bland. These
Why we love it: Paddy Power are total pros when it comes to clashing multiple topical ingredients into a single piece of comedy content. This
Why we love it: There’s a longstanding feud between Aldi and M&S – largely due to Aldi’s habit of ‘borrowing’ other brands’ trademarked product ideas.
Why we love it: We’re sick of seeing bland, self-aggrandising ‘announcement posts’. Here, SURREAL found a way to show off the fact they’d won an
Why we love it: Domino’s don’t currently get masses of engagement on Twitter, so this is great going by their standards. A rival brand gave
Why we love it: At first glance, this doesn’t look like comedy content – especially to an audience who, at this point, are very used
Why we love it: Those unfamiliar with 2000 AD Comics won’t fully ‘get’ this one. But their audience absolutely did, and that’s what matters. In
Why we love it: It’s sassy, sarcastic and above all, it’s relatable. And on LinkedIn – the very platform where Natasha and her audience are
Why we love it: Surreal posts a lot of delightfully silly Entertain content. But here’s a solid, seasonally topical Teach post designed to engage their
Why we love it: This commenter beat us to it — Monzo found a stealthy way to show off one of their app’s coolest features,
Why we love it: This is a great example of how, firstly, comedy can help your Paid Ads perform better. And secondly, that relatability trumps
Why we love it: Ryanair delivers the topical comedy goods once again, jumping on a trending topic. But this time, they’ve managed to mention the
Why we love it: Like the Innocent gag, this is a succinct and relatable one-liner. But unlike Innocent, Yorkshire Tea brought it into the specific
Why we love it: Dave Harland, AKA The Word Man, is one of our favourite copywriters on LinkedIn. Here he’s using the ‘educational carousel post’
Why we love it: It’s a succinct one liner that speaks to what everyone is thinking. The only thing that’s missing, for us, is any
Why we love it: Paddy Power are always quick to react with pitch-perfect gags whenever there’s breaking news that’s relevant to their audience of sports
Why we love it: This is a great example of taking UGC (User Generated Content) and elevating it into branded content. It’s a solid gag
Why we love it: Under the guise of a ‘serious’ New Year’s Resolutions post, Adobe calls out their audience’s relatable confessions and presents them in
Why we love it: We caught this one just after it was posted, so it hadn’t yet done huge numbers at time of screenshotting –
Why we love it: We love graph gags! This one doesn’t reinvent the wheel (in fact it uses a longestablished template), but it was well
Why we love it: On the day England played France in the football World Cup, Yorkshire Tea dipped a French croissant in English tea –
Why we love it: Another one for the book nerds (it’s a term of endearment, honest). Epic Reads often post content that – while not
Why we love it: This is designed to appeal primarily to SparkNotes’ audience – who will clock the reference to ‘The Tell Tale Heart’ by
Why we love it: We’ve highlighted Halfords as a rising star before and this Teach post definitely has potential. They’re teaching a lesson their audience
Why we love it: Warhammer knows how to cater to their niche audience – with niche jokes that only that audience would ‘get’. The Bingo
Why we love it: Posted the day after Spain were knocked out of the World Cup by unlikely victors, Morocco, it made sense for Ryanair
Why we love it: Sotherans is an antique bookseller in London, and their Twitter feed is renowned for being very silly indeed. This tweet successfully
Why we love it: Graph gags often go down very well on LinkedIn – because it’s a platform where users expect to encounter visual representations
Why we love it: Do you know what’s going on here? Neither do we. (Ok, we do – but only because we watch a lot
Why we love it: We love it when brands combine announcement posts with comedy. With Spotify’s annual ‘Wrapped’ event approaching, they found an eye-catching and
Why we love it: Corporate Rebels prove that you can and should be funny on LinkedIn. This cartoon twist on the classic ‘expectation vs reality’
Why we love it: This is a great use of UGC (User Generated Content) from Nando’s. They found a tweet that expresses one of their
Why we love it: Ryanair are posting comedy across all platforms – but we love how they’ve adapted their content for each. They’ve developed a
Why we love it: Specsavers’ social team are always ready to react – so when Brits took to social media to complain that they couldn’t
Why we love it: It’s simple, it’s relatable, it’s innocent in tone. What you can learn from it: This post just goes to show that
Why we love it: Ahead of the England vs USA Football World Cup game, Paddy Power entertained their sports-obsessed audience with a ‘USA vs UK’
Why we love it: When everyone on Twitter was talking about the fact that the platform’s days could be numbered (using phrases like “if it
Why we love it: Walkers are starting to hone their comedy chops on social – and the success of this quote tweet shows it pays
Isn’t it funny how almost everyone has the same morning routine… In varying orders, everyone: Gets dressed. Goes to the loo. Feeds their pet Komodo
Crawling around my home office like a Bargain Bin Andy Serkis wasn’t my original plan… No. When I put up the green screen, it was
“New record distance 6.3km”. That’s what’s flashing up on my watch, and I can hardly believe it. I’m only recently getting back into running, and
I couldn’t throw money at this sales rep any faster. See – I’m a Gadget Guy. I hold my hands up to it… and yes,
We see it all the time. Brands ask questions of their audience because they genuinely want to understand them better. Questions like… “When you go
They call me Adam ‘Graph Gags’ Hunt. Because it accurately reflects my obsession with that particular flavour of comedy-powered social post. (I still think it’s
If your life has kids in it regularly enough, you can get away with buying Lego and pretending it’s for them. But I got bored
The secret to coming up with endless post ideas for social media is… let’s say… tasty. Have you ever heard of Intuitive Eating? It’s something
It seems managing social media accounts is much like running a farm and campsite… (And no – that’s not just my latest excuse for my
There’s blood everywhere… This guy just tripped, faceplanted the safety bar on the treadmill – thereby winning the ‘Ironic Injury of the Year’ award –
Last night I was at a comedy gig, and the compere did an amazing job of getting us excited for the acts – but only
Sweeping statements SUCK. (Every last one of them, no exceptions…) But I will say this: clean jokes ALWAYS work. If you don’t swear… You don’t
How do you repair a boiler?? is what I typed into YouTube… Because there was no way I was going to pay someone to do
With reflexes faster than a mousetrap after a triple espresso, I STOMP the brake… To avoid rear-ending the guy who just swerved right in front
Take a look at this: On the surface, it’s just a joke about marketing. But if you dig deeper, it’s more than that. It’s a
Some people think Lord Of The Rings is about power. Others say it’s about friendship. Personally, I think they’re about the importance of having a
Be kind. Share with others. Don’t put that in the dishwasher like that no look it goes like this ok jesus f****n christ it’d be
Are you caught in the value trap? I see it so often. Content creators take great care in making seriously valuable social media posts to
When we make content to drive engagement and sales for our clients… We don’t do silly dances… We don’t ram posts with #hashtags… We don’t
BANG! Zane hits his fist on the desk… …slams his laptop closed… And stomps out of the office. Mark: “Jill, what’s up with Zane?” Jill: