Comedy Marketing Case Studies
Real brands, real results: deep dives into campaigns that used humour to win attention, trust and sales.
The Smoothie Company That Talks to Its Bottles
I picked an Innocent smoothie over a dozen others because it was wearing a tiny knitted hat. The drink was identical. The personality was not. Here is the lesson.
5 November 2025 · 3 min read
The $300 Million Dollar Joke
Most businesses treat humour like a loaded gun. Meanwhile, Southwest Airlines built a $300 million company on jokes about oxygen masks and seatbelts. Here is what they understood that their competitors never did.
2 July 2025 · 3 min read
Four Brands That Turned Jokes Into Serious Revenue
Squatty Potty, Purple, Chatbooks and Poo-Pourri all grew at remarkable speed on the back of funny ads. Here are the numbers, and the one thing they share.
30 October 2024 · 2 min read
Why Funny and Relatable Beats Interesting and Insightful
One client saw impressions rise over 800% and engagement jump over 1,800% in six months. The only real change was tone: from insightful to funny and relatable.
9 May 2024 · 2 min read
The Fastest Way to Grow Is to Borrow an Audience
Building an audience from scratch is slow. Borrowing one is fast. Collaborations, and even bold public pitches to big names, put you in front of a crowd that already exists.
31 May 2023 · 2 min read
Comedy Travels. How one fashion brand 93x’ed their reach in 2019.
One product, two different Ads – the one that made us laugh has already had 93x as many eyeballs on it. And it’s almost certainly converted a higher percentage of those into sales, too.
20 December 2019 · 4 min read
The Gorilla That Saved Cadbury
In 2007 Cadbury put a gorilla behind a drum kit for 90 seconds and said almost nothing about chocolate. It worked. Here is why one funny moment is enough.
29 October 2025 · 3 min read
The Billion-Dollar Secret Behind Dollar Shave Club
Everyone thinks the Dollar Shave Club video went viral because it was funny. It went viral because of one specific type of joke that makes people buy. Here it is.
13 January 2025 · 3 min read
Why the Chatbooks Ads Went Viral (It Was Not the Jokes)
Chatbooks grew from $1M to $30M with funny ads. But the jokes were not the reason they worked. The real engine was something sitting underneath the humour.
25 October 2024 · 2 min read
The Campaign That Reached a Whole Country Without a Big Following
You do not need a huge following to reach millions. A children's literacy campaign hit 37 million impressions from a standing start, simply by building content to spread.
19 March 2024 · 2 min read
Funny Marketing: Dollar Shave Club’s Success (and Failure)
When Michael Dubin was offered a warehouse full of surplus razor blades in 2012, he had a bold idea. Once he’d had a shave, he had another, even bolder idea. He founded Dollar Shave Club. It was a str
29 July 2020 · 6 min read
How Batchelors made us buy more Mushy Peas - just by making us laugh
I often find myself wondering just how much the use of humour in advertising has changed over the years – and today, I stumbled upon an advert from 25 years ago that tells me the answer to that questi
6 December 2019 · 6 min read
Why Netflix Killed Blockbuster (and What It Means for Your Marketing)
Blockbuster had every film ever made, perfectly organised. Netflix had a fraction of the selection and made you wait days for a DVD. People chose Netflix anyway. Here is the reason, and what it means for your content.
18 September 2025 · 3 min read
How We Turned Joke-Writing Into Paint-by-Numbers
White Label Comedy turned over £982 in year one. Then we treated joke-writing like paint-by-numbers, and turnover jumped to £226,058. Here is how systematising comedy did it.
25 November 2024 · 3 min read
The Pizza Shop That Went Viral by Making People Chase Lunch
A two-location pizza shop pulled 44,900 likes by sending someone into the street in a morph suit. The free pizza was not the point. The spectacle was.
11 September 2024 · 2 min read
How to Turn Criticism Into Content Your Fans Will Defend
The complaints under your posts are not a problem to hide. Joke about them openly and you turn a weakness into content, and quietly recruit an army of fans to defend you.
2 June 2023 · 2 min read
Yorkshire Tea: A Masterclass in Social Media Marketing Damage Control
As comedy writers, we value laughter above nearly everything else. So yeah, we’ll admit it. Every now and again, we make a joke that takes aim at somebody specific — but we always think carefully abou
25 February 2020 · 5 min read
Honeypot shows that engaging content that travels > Paid Ads that doesn’t
As a marketer (and as a former single man) I’ve seen countless Dating Apps burst onto the scene with a huge fanfare telling us all that they’re the next big thing. Some of them (like Bumble and Hinge)
3 December 2019 · 5 min read