Funny is the New Serious

Seems that everybody’s talking about ‘funny’ at the moment. Seriously?

After years of more purpose-driven advertising, promoting social causes, apparently 2024 is set to be the year that brands and advertising agencies get their sense of humour back. Why?

Well, according to recent surveys, most consumers prefer funny advertising. If that’s true, then surely we should be delivering it.

Sometimes you hear ad people (especially older ones like me) saying that that TV ads often used to be better (or funnier) than the programmes. Nostalgia is never very accurate. You only remember the great stuff, and not the rubbish. But I’m betting that if you asked pretty much anybody in the street, who’s never set foot in an agency, to name their favourite ad, most of them would say a funny one. And if they remember the ad, they are pretty sure to remember the brand.

As people, we hang out with other people we like, who make us feel good. One thing that makes us feel good is laughing. So it follows, for me at least, that if a brand makes you laugh, it makes you feel good, and you just might want to spend more time with it. Not exactly scientific I guess. But that’s the thing isn’t it. As soon as you start trying to quantify and measure creativity it kind of kills it.

But what is it that makes us laugh? Funny stories. The best stories, or at least the ones we remember the most and share with friends, are the funny ones. Nobody’s ever said to me at a dinner party: “Hey, tell everybody about when your dog got run over?”

This is what we are trying to do as advertisers, tell stories that resonate with people, that they remember and share.

Of course, there’s another very good reason to make funny advertising. It’s a lot of fun to do – coming up silly, stupid crazy ideas. It makes us (as creatives) feel good. Getting paid for having a laugh. Which most people outside of the advertising industry pretty much think is what we do all day anyway. But if you do something that makes you feel good, you are probably going to do it a lot better, and in this case make better advertising.

Does that mean all advertising should be funny? No, but it might be more refreshing (and successful) if more if it were. When there are so many bad things happening in the world, we maybe need a good laugh now and again more than ever. And if brands help give us what we need, there’s a pretty good chance we might buy more of them. No joke.