Image: Braydon Anderson
This blog series is all about how you can use 6 simple ingredients to take your marketing strategies from boring to remarkable.
In our last article, we showed you how to be so outrageous, people can’t help but give their own opinion (and share your thoughts with their network in the process).
Now, let’s dive into the sometimes hard to capture but always wonderful power of hilarity.
There’s a myth about using humor in marketing strategies… that it can’t mix well with professionalism. On the contrary, people with a good sense of humor and wit are often perceived as more intelligent than those who never crack a joke.
Plus, comedy keeps people focused on your brand message for longer, because not only are they informed, they’re also entertained.
If you want your brand to truly engage your audience, there’s nothing better than a bit of hilarity. But how do you capture it?
Use your genuine sense-of-humor. Discover what makes you laugh, and follow that.
Don’t think for a second that this is limited to B2C marketing. Remember, even in B2B marketing, the decisions are ultimately being made by people with funny bones.
We talked in a previous article in this series about our “tiny hand” handouts at an inbound marketing conference. The tiny hands were such a hit, because of their humor and novelty, that we decided to do even more with them.
We created a video to go along with the tiny hands, playing off the phrase “Can you give me a hand here?”
Everybody has that coworker who’s always asking for a “hand.” In this video, we give it to him and then some.
This video was only one part of the tiny hand campaign. On the boxes for the tiny hands themselves, we included a lot of jokes targeted at marketers. Because we were at a conference for marketing professionals, we knew our audience would enjoy our tongue-in-cheek labels on the box.
If you make someone laugh, they’ll remember you. Not only that, but people love passing jokes along to their friends and coworkers. Set yourself up for word-of-mouth buzz and internet virality by sharing your own sense of humor and connecting with your audience through the “hilarious.”
Keep it playful and lighthearted. Use your own sense of humor as a guideline, but make sure you seek feedback!
Start with a simple idea. In our case, it was “tiny hands.”
It could be anything that makes you laugh: a gecko selling car insurance, beef jerky eaters pranking sasquatch, or a rabbit who is obsessed with cereal (all of these are real advertising campaigns, and who doesn’t remember “Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids”)!
Once you have your initial concept, brainstorm what could happen. What does the rabbit do to get the cereal? What happens when sasquatch catches the pranksters? Brainstorm everything, get it all down on paper, and you can narrow down what you want to keep later.
Have your team work together on any jokes or concepts, so that way everyone contributes what makes them chuckle (and points out what’s not really very funny at all).
Make your team’s favorite ideas into a script, guerilla marketing campaign, or physical item. Then, put it directly in front of your ideal audience. Wherever they are, make sure your hilarious marketing strategy shows up, whether that’s YouTube, the gram, or their favorite section of the grocery store.
Follow the fun, and soon, you’ll be drawing countless eyes to your message and generating word-of-mouth buzz, as well as a lot of laughs!
If your team has a difficult time articulating what they find funny or brainstorming spontaneously, do a group improv comedy class. It’s a great way to bond while you’re learning how comedy works.
