So Tom went to his doctor who gave him a pill and told him to take it before he went to bed. Tom slept well and in fact beat the alarm in the morning by almost two hours. He had a leisurely breakfast and drove cheerfully to work.
"Boss", he said, " The pill actually worked!"
"That's all fine" said the boss, " But where were you yesterday?"
Did you laugh?
I am sure you did, because humour is one best way to communicate messages, even to a non receptive audience ( I have experienced this as a teacher). Communicating message is what advertising is about and the use of humour as a platform to do it, with precision has been a proven formula. Light and subtle humour ,works like magic, in communicating and recall of the brand, which is the ultimate objective of advertising.
Some creatives 9for want of choice?)go overboard with the use,over use and abuse of excessive humour,which may crack among the TG and make them go haywire but the brand may get lost in the laughter. But that, some say ,is any way better than being serious all the way, and making no curves in the face of the TG and stricking no chords- They dont' loose' any humour because they never hadnt had any..
"...in the case of humorous ads, ad and brand recognition seems to be influenced by ad-evoked feelings. On the contrary, in the case of warm ads the degree of ad-evoked feelings does not influence ad and brand recognition"....argues researchers- M. Geuens & P. De Pelsmacker in their work" Feelings Evoked by Warm, Erotic, Humorous or Non-Emotional Print Advertisements for Alcoholic Beverage" in the Academy of Marketing Sciences Review..While all that high funda research stuff rest there , my common sense tells me that humour probably is the most executable of execution platforms and the most appealing of appeals...
There is a disease called entertainment that is infecting our business, said Sir David Ogilvy who also is credited to have said that People do not buy from jokers, who apparently had a disdain for any attempt to entertain the TG....
Make them laugh? No he was against it ....You have to sell and if it isnt selling it isnt creative ..Very true...
But if it is selling but in the process also entertaining..? No ..I dont find the Father of modern advertising having said something about that , anywhere...
Today a significant percent of the TG , likes to be entertained and if it is done theymay buy. Kids for instance likes humour in ads , even more than sports and film celebrity appearing in ads, as per a research done by Turner International Asia Pacific as seen in agencyfaqs recently. Isnt it an eye opener?
Well... for me... yes... I would have got carried away with the popular belief that kids could be fooled by a display of a hero -a Sachin or a Shahrukh..but this piece makes me think....
Humour makes brands, no matter what Sir Ogilvy's verdict on the matter is ,it is a fact..Even O&M recognises this..Close your eyes and line up ten ads that have clean bowled you, in the past....
How many of them are packs of laughter?
How many of them are from O&M..?
For me atleast 5 are from O&M.. the Fevicol series... the Village bus ad... the chicken and the egg ad..the pakade rahna chodna nahin...the train ad..the Cadbury's series...again a train ad...then the Amaron series- the Kumbakarna-the politician...and more...
Fevicol,in its long association with humour has bagged many an award, the latest being a silver at the Singapore Outdoor Advertising Awards for the Best Poster/Large Billboard category.
Humour has always been the hallmark of Fevicol's advertising. The brand has always stood out from the rest, and this has helped us to reap awards by the bagful at international competitions for so many years...who says so..? none other than- Fevicol senior VP marketing B.O.Mehta ...Now that is the fact...Tickling the bone, is a gambit that is worth taking..that is if you know when to make people laugh and to what extent and in the process make sure that the brand is build..
Is the product category a stumble? High involvement vs low involvement and such stuff? My research says it cannot be..Across product categories humour has made a mark- from gums to chocolates to batteries to paints to..you name it ,laughter works ....
If a funny story is built around a good core idea, then it can work, irrespective of the category and the testimony is the brands that smile in victory, they who used humour as their platform to make us laugh...
The only difference, as I see it, in usage of humour across the two broad product categories (low involvement and high involvement) ,is that in low involvement you can outrightly be humorous and make them buy in that impulse--Centershock them...and in high involvement, like for instance the Tata Indica V2 ads which really made us laugh but got the idea "more car per car" into our cluttered heads.....but it is easier said than done..the balance between being funny and being obnoxious is often delicate.
Outright, exaggerated, subtle.... it can be seen and executed in different ways but if the purpose of advertising is to build what Marketing gurus call as Brand salience- ( the brand remaining or coming to ones top of the mind recall once the category is mentioned) -then humour is also a way and a better way....
Remember Aamir Khan and his oscillations from a Jat to a Pahadi tourist guide to a gregarious Babu Moshai ,which could make us giggle...
Remember also the Sikh boy who amused us and then made us smile in the Kitply ads and the Maruthi ads..
Even across geography( and the regional differences are a big headache for advertisers), it could be made to work, provided it is thought about when it is conceived... Asian paints and the Sunil babu ads for instance-"badiya hai" in Hindi became "pramadam" in the Tamil spot ...This has to be a matter of serious ramifications in a country like India with vivid and varied cultures...Different things will be funny to different people and what is funny to me may not be funny to you...a commercial that may leave one person gripping their sides from laughter ,may leave bad taste in another persons mouth..
And one negative side of depending on humour..it can become stale pretty fast ....
"The first time the ad is funny, the second time it is acceptable and third time it is a bore”, and humorous campaigns are expensive , for the same reason...Old jokes seldom make people laugh and needless to say, sell new products to them.....
It is not easy as practitioners would vouch, Arm chair critics and academic researchers ( including me) can indulge "do this and do that " advises but there arent many takers when it comes to putting things into practice. There is always two opinion about anything in advertising and humour is not something to be left behind..
see this sample...
"What u say is more important than how you say it..”said-Ogilvy
“Execution can become the content.It can be just as important as what u say”-said Bill Bern Bach .....
Now you decide...!!!!
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