Here at White Label Comedy, we’re constantly on the hunt for great examples of humour in advertising – and we love it when we find brands who’ve been brave enough to use comedy content to spread their message.
Especially when the results they’ve seen are this impressive.
BauBax proves that Comedy Content Travels
BauBax makes a “Travel Jacket” packed full of genuinely impressive features. 25 at the most recent count – including not just pockets for everything imaginable, but an in-built eye-mask and neck pillow, a bottle opener and more.
When they launched their Kickstarter back in 2015 they were looking for $20,000 funding. What they got, instead, was over $9,000,000 – so it’s safe to say this was a product that the world was hungry for.
In November 2018, they released a half decent advert showcasing BauBax 2.0 – their most recently updated jacket. It got a fairly impressive 134,000 views on YouTube.
In November 2019, they released another advert. At the time of writing, it’s only been online for a month – and it’s already had over 12.5 million views.
It showcased the exact same 25 features. And sure, it was a little glossier – they’ve clearly been able to put more money on screen – but that’s not the reason it travelled so far and wide. That reason is easy to identify: comedy.
Take a look at the Ad, and then we’ll pick apart how, and why, it works.
Sidenote: I bet you just watched the whole way through. When was the last time you did that with a 4 minute advert, eh?!
Now – let’s pick it apart and see why it worked.
Firstly – it’s got a great top-line
When someone sees a video online, there are two things they’ll use to make up their mind on whether or not to invest their time in watching it: the thumbnail, and the title.
The title of the 2018 Ad was “World’s Best Travel Jacket is New and Improved” – and while I’m sure they were really proud of their new improvements, it’s not exactly doing much to reel you in.
Here in 2019, they’ve gone with “How to make airline travel not suck”. It’s perfect! The identified something we can all relate to (airline travel definitely does suck), and they’ve positioned their brand as the hero – the solution to that problem.
Making your brand the answer to a relatable problem is one of the easiest ways to find the humour that’s hidden right there in plain sight inside your existing brand messaging. (Something we talk about at length in our free E-Book “5 Foolproof Ways to Make Your Brand Funny”.)
Secondly – they exaggerate the benefits of using their jacket, AND the consequences of life without
When brands get comedy wrong, it’s because they started out simply by trying to “be funny” – instead of starting with their brand messaging, and then finding funny ways to communicate it.
Two of the easiest ways to do that both rely on exaggeration – either exaggerating the benefits of life with your brand (in this case, the jacket), or exaggerating the consequences of life without (i.e. the horrors of airline travel without their “game-changing” jacket).
And while they might occasionally get topped off with a cute, surreal twist – almost all of the jokes in this piece starts off as exactly that – simple exaggerations used to hammer home the benefits or consequences.
Finally – the brand remains the hero throughout
There’s no point creating comedy content that travels if you don’t make sure it paints your brand as the hero.
Even at the end, when the pilot tells her off for spending the whole flight selling jackets – he eventually takes over and helps sell them too.
Because in this world – the jackets really are the hero.
Comedy doesn’t just help content travel – it helps it sell, too.
We already know that funny content travels further – but it’s also more effective when it arrives, too.
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.
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.
Imagine a world where not only have you got your sales message hidden just far enough below the surface that our guard stays down and we stay receptive – the content goes viral.
Massive amplification.
That’s the world that comedy content can help you build.
About the Author
Adam Hunt is the Creative Director of White Label Comedy (the boutique Creative Agency powered by a hive-mind of Comedy Writers and Advertising Creatives). He’s also the author of the free E-Book ‘5 Foolproof Ways to Make Your Brand Funny’– which unsurprisingly he’d love you to read.
