The shortest distance between a brand and its audience

Humor has long been a mainstay of effective marketing. At its best, it shows the people behind a company and the humanity they bring to their work. At its worst, it reveals one of marketing’s most broken tendencies: following the herd instead of thinking creatively.

Humor is a powerful source of staying power for any message. Comedy requires the brain to slow its processing and laughter triggers the release of dopamine and other chemicals. A cascade of stimuli that makes anything funny infinitely easier to remember. I prefer to sum it up with one of my favorite fortune cookie quotes: “The shortest distance between two people is laughter.”

So, you’d like to shorten the distance between your brand and its audience using humor? Start with the subjects that mean something to you or your team—the things that get you out of bed in the morning and spark real energy in conversation. Crafting jokes without any emotional investment in the subject often leads to disingenuous or even petty comedy. Humor has the same criteria as this blog: that you care enough to have a point of view and you wish to share it. A seemingly low hurdle, but one that you may find complicated when including more than one person’s opinion. In our experience, cutting through that clutter is best done with a pointed POV. A stance that represents your identity, shows your expertise, and proves that you care enough to stake your claim. One your team can at least agree is specific and will invite discussion, even if they don’t individually agree with it.

Obviously, doing so isn’t required to be funny. Plenty of humor exists just to highlight the absurd. A POV on the human condition. But in marketing, being consistently funny in a way that builds recognition, trust, or identity requires a sharper POV.

To help illustrate this point we’ve examined a few of our favorite uses of humor in marketing and imagined what their pointed POV might be:

There was a time when the idea that insurance buyers need not be motivated by fear was a controversial point of view. Or at least that humor had no place in that calculus. Eventually, someone asked “why?” Its edge has dulled slightly, but it’s still a source of some of the best humor in marketing today.

Pointed POV: Our audience is not motivated by FEAR

Most brands don’t struggle with humor because they aren’t funny. They struggle because they don’t have anything to say. A pointed point of view doesn’t just make humor better—it makes it worth paying attention to.