Done right (with your brand painted as the hero, and the jokes lining up with your brand message), comedy doesn’t backfire. Here are 5 reasons why you really don’t need to be scared of using comedy in your marketing mix any more.
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.
We break down the humour in Ads from four FinTech firms – to see what worked, what didn’t, and what we can all learn from their success (and their failures).
Our Free E-Book will help your brand find the sense of humour you never realised it could have – so you can turn its message into comedy content quickly, easily, and effectively.
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 question is “barely at all”. Bachelors use comedy to sell on their Mushy Peas Batchelor’s Mushy Peas first ever TV spot was only the second ever advert aired on British television – so it’s safe to say these guys have been in it from the very beginning. Back then, they had the singing superstars of their day “The Gaunt Brothers” at the piano – with a song about “Batchelor’s Wonderful Peas”. A jolly song. Not particularly inventive – but back in the 50s it was much easier to get consumers attention. We aren’t bombarded from all angles every 6 seconds like we are now. Back then, if you made an advert (any advert) and put it on TV – you could be damn certain people would actually watch it. By the mid-90s though, it had become exponentially harder to get anyone to pay attention to anything – so brands had to get inventive. Batchelor’s realised they needed a new approach. And here it is in action: Such a simple advert – and it wouldn’t have cost them much to make – but I can remember watching it back then and demanding mushy peas, so it definitely had genuine impact on sales (even if it was just that one can that I tried, hated, and never asked for again). The question is: can we break down what they did, so we know how to replicate their success ourselves? (Luckily for you, the answer is: yes. Yes we can). Here’s what they did. 1 – They found their “top-line” joke by using the oldest trick in the comedy writer’s play book – Wordplay. They started with their brand (Batchelor’s Mushy Peas), and looked for words and phrases that could be misinterpreted (or re-interpreted) in order to change their meaning. Writing comedy for brands isn’t quite as easy as writing comedy for yourself. If you’re about to jump up on stage and tell jokes – pretty much anything is fair game. You can point the jokes in any direction, even straight at yourself, if it’ll get you a laugh. Brands don’t have that luxury. They need the jokes to be pointing in the same direction as their brand message. And they also need those jokes to be inclusive, not divisive. With that in mind – while they could’ve found a fun double meaning in the world Batchelor, they were right to go nowhere near it, or they’d have ended up with a funny advert that was distorting their brand message, and pitching their product to entirely the wrong audience. They also could’ve found some aural wordplay in the word Peas (deliberately mis-hearing it as the word “Peace”, for instance). But that would’ve taken them down the wrong path too – leading them towards an advert that didn’t actually feature their product, the pea. Thankfully they made the right choice, and focused on the double meaning of the word Mushy – which is, of course, used to describe the peas they sell, but has emotional connotations too. Some people will tell you that Puns and Wordplay simply aren’t funny. They’re wrong. So wrong. BAD Puns and Wordplay aren’t funny. But when wordplay works, my god it works. And this advert is a great example of how to turn a word’s double meaning into much more than just a single, frivolous joke. 2 – They turned that seed of an idea into an actual joke – by using a technique Late Night Talk Show gag writers have been leaning on since the dawn of television. Wordplay can give you your funny idea – but it takes a little more work to turn it into an actual joke. One of the easiest ways to crack that code? Ask a whole load of questions about your brand, and answer them through the lens of the funny idea. Don’t fall into the trap of trying to make the questions themselves funny. Make them questions that someone might genuinely ask. In this case, their question was: “How do we make our Peas so Mushy?” And with our double meaning in mind, the answer is: “We remind them of the good old days until they cry”. Notice that if you combine the question and the answer, you get the beginnings of a joke. “How do you make a Mushy Pea? Remind them of the good old days and make them cry”. If that was the end of the road for the idea (if, for instance, it was one in a set of Twitter jokes we were writing) – the next step would be to sub it down, and edit the joke so that the punchline has maximum impact. Instead – because it’s being turned into a TV Ad – the next step is actually to explode the joke, and make it something bigger and better. There’s one final reason this Advert worked so well, and that is… 3 – They engaged us with something funny before trying to sell us on their brand We’re used to having people try and sell us stuff. We’re savvy. Our guard stays up, unless you find a way to bring it down – and that was the case back in 1994, too. Making someone laugh brings their guard down. It distracts them from the fact that they’re being sold to – and makes them more receptive to those key messages. Notice how the beginning of the advert features peas, but it doesn’t feature any branding, any logos, or even any verbal mention of Batchelor’s. The first time you see this Ad, you’re not just laughing before they’ve tried to sell you their product – you’re laughing before you’ve got any idea who’s products are about to be sold. \ You might not even know, for sure,
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) stick around and challenge the status quo. Others (like Carrot. Anyone remember Carrot? No – me neither – but Google says it was a thing) disappear into the night having failed to find love for their users, or for themselves. Here’s how Honeypot used Guerrilla Marketing to make their content travel for free Launching a new Dating App must be a logistical nightmare. If you’re launching a productivity tool, and on Day Two you only have one user – that user might still love it, keep using it, and eventually spread the word. A Dating App with just one user, though? They’d last all of 7 seconds before deleting you, and heading back to Tinder. To succeed in the dating space, you need to get a critical mass of single people onto your app at the exact same moment – and each one needs a whole load of the others to either live, or work, nearby. The most obvious way to do it is to throw Advertising Money at the problem. Sure, it’ll cost you hundreds of thousands right now – but in the long-run it’ll pay off. (Or at least at will if your Dating App is among the 10% that succeed, and not one of the 90% that flop). But there is another way. I first heard about Honeypot back in August, when a friend tweeted a picture of their first ever stunt – a whiteboard outside the tube, supposedly put there by a girl angry at her cheating ex boyfriend. It was funny. And believable. And it ended with a final p.s. – “You’re deluded if you think Honeypot is the next Hinge”. The picture went viral. In fact – lots of pictures of the same board all went viral. And all of them contained that tiny bit of stealth marketing: the idea that Honeypot maybe IS the new Hinge. That stunt was the first of many – and Honeypot’s founder and CEO George Rawlings has since pledged not to spend a single penny on Paid Advertising. At least, not any time soon. I reached out to ask him if he had any stats tell us how well this Guerrilla Marketing is doing – and while for obvious reasons he didn’t want to give away anything commercially sensitive, he did tell me that their most recent campaign (another whiteboard, this one pretending to be from three of his own employees, all using instagram to “quit” because they’ve found out he – their “pig of a boss” – had been sleeping with all three) cost them a total of £39.99 to run, and brought in engagement equivalent to £4,200 worth of Paid Ads. That’s an exceptional ROI. And it’s not just the stunts. Their social feeds are full of relatable jokes that celebrate the ups (and downs) of single life – which helps reinforce the message that the people behind the App really are “just like me”. There’s one thing I want you all to learn from Honeypot – and this applies whatever kind of product, service or brand you’re trying to market: You should start spending your money on engaging content that travels, and stop spending it on Paid Ads that don’t. I’m not saying you won’t need Paid Ads – you just don’t need Paid Ads that suck. If your current Ad is bringing in 500 new users a day, but you need 1,000 – don’t fall into the trap of thinking the only way to do that is double your spend. Instead – craft some content that’s actually compelling. Actually engaging. Something your audience would want to consume even if you weren’t paying to place it in front of their eyeballs. Put out five pieces, see which ones travel the furthest – and then use your Ad Spend to place those pieces in front of our eyeballs. You’ll get the results you need, without having to spend twice as much. There is one thing I think Honeypot could do better though… I’m absolutely loving their approach – and over the last few months I’ve seen it really work for them – but I do think they’re missing a trick. Honeypot genuinely sounds like a really innovative App – with a whole load of USPs that make them stand out from the crowd. The fact that it doesn’t just “feature” instagram-style stories – it’s powered by them – giving matches a taste of you right now, rather than you in those 5 carefully curated holiday pics. The focus on spontaneous dates for those who want less chat and more meet-ups. The idea of the “Honeypot” as a local area that’s full of single people, and great for meeting your match. They’ve done a great job of hiding a marketing message inside the viral content generated by their stunts – but that marketing message simply says “we exist”. They want to position themselves as the next Hinge – and they’re doing that well – but they’re more than just the next Hinge. They’re unique – and I’d love it if their stealth marketing, once unpacked, could also communicate that uniqueness. It’s easier to do than you’d think. Especially with a hive-mind of Comedy Creatives sitting in your back pocket. Speaking of Stealth Marketing – here’s a bit of ours… Thinking about using Comedy Content to boost your brand online – but not sure where to start? In our new E-Book, we’ll walk you through five foolproof ways to turn your brand message into comedy content – and show you exactly how some of the world’s biggest brands have put those methods into practice, in ways you can easily replicate. Find out which simple technique SpecSavers Opticians have been relying on to keep themselves in focus for the last two
Yesterday, the BBC unleashed its Christmas Campaign. Just after Strictly Come Dancing on BBC One – the “#XmasLife” advert got it’s debut. You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACjdP_Pxf40 Now there’s a lot about this advert I like. I like that they’re positioning Christmas as a way to “wash away” all the tensions of what we’ll all agree has been a pretty depressing year. I like the use of Graham’s “Red Chair” lever as a device that sends us forwards in time to Christmas. And I love the visuals, the wholesome family feel, and the fact that they’ve tried – as best they can – to make it fun, and funny. The problem, though, is that the piece is full of missed opportunities. From the guy who bursts into the office dressed as a tree, to Rochelle Humes in bed telling us “It doesn’t matter what time I wake up” – I must’ve counted 10 moments that felt like the set-up to a joke, but that never get resolved with any kind of punchline. It reads to me like a script that used to be loads funnier – but that got hacked apart because someone somewhere had a panic that it wasn’t going to be wholesome enough. I could be right, I could be wrong. And you know what – I fully respect the decisions BBC Creative have taken with it. When you’re being funny on behalf of a brand – especially a brand with as much heritage as the BBC – the worst thing you can do is make the wrong kind of joke. You risk alienating your audience and turning them against you. One way to avoid making the wrong kind of joke is to not make any jokes at all. Another way – the better way – is to make the right kind of jokes to begin with. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the brands that are the most successful using Comedy Content to engage their audience – and they have a few things in common. Firstly – they always start with their brand message – and they make sure each and every joke supports it. And secondly – in order to get them there in the first place – they often seem to use the same simple, repeatable methods to “find” those jokes. And they use them over and over again. Presumably because these methods are great for generating fun, funny ideas that aren’t going to backfire. My point is this: Maybe there were a whole load of jokes in there that got cut because somewhat got cold feet. Maybe there were never any jokes – because they wanted a wholesome, family-friendly advert and they decided humour was too risky from the get-go. But humour’s only risky in the wrong hands. There are millions of theories floating around about what a joke “is” – but if you’ll indulge me by letting me pitch my favourite, and then I’ll explain why. As far as I’m concerned – the only true definition of a joke is this: it’s two distinctly separate ideas coming together with the help of a twist that magically ties them together. And when you analyse it along those lines – there are loads of risk-free ways to take the content already right there in the advert (2019 + Christmas + Family + The BBC) and tie the elements together in a manner that sparks that joy and gets that laugh. I’m not saying that every advert has to be funny (although obviously I’d love it if that were the case – more work for us!) – but for a piece that’s so full of what seem like set-ups, why not go the whole hog and actually make a joke. For what it’s worth, my treatment for the #XmasLife campaign would’ve had the negatives of 2019 threaded throughout – with the joys of Christmas (and Christmas Telly) used to combat each and every one. And yes – it would’ve been full to bursting with jokes. They didn’t hire us this year – but we’ll keep an eye on our inbox in case they need us in 2020. Free E-Book – 5 Foolproof Ways to Make Your Brand Funny Thinking about using Comedy Content to boost your brand online – but not sure where to start? In our new E-Book, we’ll walk you through five foolproof ways to turn your brand message into comedy content – and show you exactly how some of the world’s biggest brands have put those methods into practice, in ways you can easily replicate. Find out which simple technique SpecSavers Opticians have been relying on to keep themselves in focus for the last two decades. Discover how Amazon recently managed to get us laughing not just with, but at them, without even the tiniest risk to their reputation. And learn how brands like Lego have been supercharging their engagement on social by jumping on-board breaking news stories fast – with their own funny twist. For your free copy, just head to whitelabelcomedy.com/free
