When you see an ad that tries to be funny, does it make
you laugh? Sometimes? But does it influence your attitudes
about the ad, the product, or the business?
Ah . . . that's the question!
You may be surprised to learn that 50% of all
advertisements include some appeal to humor, and you'd think
this huge investment would be founded on a secure research
foundation that demonstrated it's value. But if you thought
this was true, you'd be wrong. The research investigating
humor in ads reveals contradictory effects that point to
additional factors, as yet unidentified, that intrude into
the experiments and ruin the results. So if you've been
using humor in ads for your business, you have cause to
be a little nervous.
Recently, the search began to identify these confounding
factors and to get a better understanding of how humor might
help us. For example, researchers have found existing
attitudes about the brand to be important. They've also
found certain types of products lend themselves to humor
better than others.
Yong Zhang, from Hofstra University, recently made a new
contribution to this effort by investigating a quality of the
people targeted to receive the advertising message, their
tendency to think when they view an ad.
We all vary in our tendency to think. Some people seek
out opportunities and consider it fun, for example, working
crossword puzzles. Other people avoid such activities.
Zhang guessed that humor would work best with the latter
group, and he was right.
Zhang experimented with 240 undergraduate business
students. He measured their intrinsic interest in exercising
their brains, then he exposed them to print ads that varied
both the appeal to humor with cartoon characters, and the
appeal to thinking by listing persuasive arguments and
product features.
People with little intrinsic interest in exercising their
brains reacted much better to humorous ads. People with much
intrinsic interest in thinking reacted much better to the
persuasive ads.
Zhang explained the findings: People react to humor
without exerting effort. A funny ad is just funny. So
people with a tendency to avoid thinking resist analyzing ads
for content. Instead, they associate the pleasant sensation
of amusement with the product and develop favorable
impressions that lead to buying intentions. Conversely,
people with a tendency to think analyze an ad's contents, but
they're frustrated by humor. It distracts them from the task
at hand and replaces the details they seek. They develop
unfavorable impressions that negatively influence buying
intentions.
The practical implication of Zhang's research is to
segment the market and direct humorous ads at the
non-thinking group and persuasive ads at the thinking group.
Now that may seem impossible, but consider yourself. You're
much more likely to feel like thinking on Monday morning
rather than on Friday afternoon. A humorous radio ad would work
better during your drive home after a hard week. You're also
more likely to avoid thinking while watching a silly
situation comedy or reading a supermarket tabloid. But a
National Geographic magazine would find you in a mood to
critically consider a persuasive ad listing product features.
Zhang's findings are fresh, and no follow up research has
been completed to justify placing humorous ads according to
these guidelines. But then, no research exists to justify
any other guidelines either. If your target is women, and
you want to use humor, catch them when they're tired and want
a break from thinking. It's something to try.
Reference: Zhang, Yong (1996). The Effect of Humor in
Advertising: An Individual-Difference Perspective.
Psychology and Marketing, 16 (6), 531-545.
Customer Psychology Findings, by James Larsen, Ph.D.
Funny Ads
An Investigation into humor reveals a new factor that helps explain its affect on advertising response.