What can brands learn from the social nature of humour? ZenithOptimedia’s head of insight, Richard Shotton, finds out.
Aleksandr the meerkat. The Dancing Pony. Damme cold beer.
Brands have known for a long time that one of the best ways to open consumers’ wallets is to make them laugh. In fact, according to Millward Brown’s databank of over 40,000 pieces of copy, half of the world’s most impactful ads are humorous; whereas only 1 per cent of the least impactful ads make us smile.
However, what is less well known is the strong influence of context and placement on how humorous a piece of copy is perceived to be. Work by University of Houston psychologists, Zhang and Zinkan, shows that the same piece of creative tends to be judged as funnier when it’s seen in a group.
Their experiment involved recruiting 216 people to watch soft drink commercials. They separated the participants into groups of one, three and six. Their key finding was that ads tended to be rated as least funny when they were watched alone.
In contrast, ads watched in groups of three were reported to be 20% funnier than those watched alone. This finding has been supported by numerous other studies.
The impact of large groups might be due to social proof – this is the psychological idea that people are consciously, or subconsciously, influenced by what others are doing around them. So if one person in the group laughs it tends to lead others to find the content funny.
This explains why canned laughter has such a long heritage in sitcoms. In fact, the idea pre-dates TV cinema or even radio. Instances of theatre impresarios paying people to sit in the audience and laugh stretch all the way back to the 16th century.
These stooges became such a part of French theatre that by the 19th century theatre managers could hire not just specialists in the art of clapping, but also rieurs, (who focused on laughing), pleureurs (who could cry on demand) even bisseurs (who called out “encore”).
So what can brands learn from the social nature of humour? The main point is that the funniness of an ad is not just a creative issue but also one of media placement. The perception of funniness can be boosted through channel selection or implementational tactics.
One such tactic is to run copy in programs or genres which tend to be watched in groups. For example films, documentaries and news are all around twice as likely to be watched in groups according to Infosys data.
From a channel planning perspective, running humorous copy in cinema is another opportunity as it will mean the ad will be consumed in much larger groups.
Millward Brown undertook research which quantified this impact. In their experiment an unnamed brand ran the same piece of copy in two regions: one region just aired TV whilst the other just had cinema. Those who saw the cinema ad enjoyed it considerably more than the TV ad – with 61 per cent saying they “enjoyed the humour” compared to 52 per cent of the TV viewers.
Applying these approaches will not elevate a mediocre ad to the heights of the meerkat but it might just give it an edge over copy bought in a more generic manner.
