Guest Post – Written by a Contributor
Business humor is a very useful tool to ingratiate your business with your potential future consumers. It’s something that can help you lightheartedly apply a form of goodwill to your business output, and this is not always easy to do. It’s not hard to assume why this can hit well. People are so used to being sold products on a daily basis. They are exposed to advertisements day in and day out, all the time and from everywhere. Subtle nudges telling them to buy product X or subscribe to service Y permeate almost every waking moment. If it’s not a product proudly brandishing the logo or name of a company, it’s a television advert, a podcast sponsor, or word of mouth being spread.
This isn’t inherently a bad thing. It’s what keeps our society bonded and wealthy, and affords you the amazing opportunity to head outside and purchase almost anything you need if you have the funds to acquire it. However, it can sometimes be a little drag on the human spirit. This is where the business humor you employ can help things become a little less sterile. More and more businesses are understanding that this is the way forward. We all know by now that advertisements are the most artificial pieces of content you could see. We’ve become excellent at blocking it out.
However, with business humor, you can once again reach that ‘fresh emotional perspective’ of someone responding to your advertisement. There are methods of doing this well, and methods less so. We’d like to help you if you consider this an important part of how you brand yourself:
In Small Doses
Of course, humor is subjective. However, one thing that almost everyone can agree on is that when it’s overdone, it can get stale. Not everything needs to be the funniest joke in the world. This can be hard to pull off. It requires restraint. However, if you’re able to do this, you maximize the impact of where the jokes do hit. For example, you might include funny phrasing in your ingredients list. It might be your automated call center hotline employs a relatively humorous and lighthearted script when redirecting the caller to the correct department.
It might simply be you keep a funny character for your advertisements and simply feature them as part of your business – but leave the humor in those marketing campaigns. For an example of this, consider the British ‘Compare the Meerkat’ campaign for ‘Compare the Market.’ The humor in the advertisements was contained there, and the only reference to that outside of those were plush meerkat toys that were included with the successful sale of any insurance policy.
Cohesive
When you begin a humorous campaign, you must also make it cohesive. What does this mean? Well, it needs to fit in with your brand. Even in small doses, it can appear from here to there in knowing nods to your audience. This allows clients to feel ‘in the know’ wherever they see these small little references. This can do wonders for your online marketing, your physical printings, your actual practices and your general business reputation as a whole.
You should also ensure that the humor fits in with your brand. This is one of the most important points on this list. Now, that doesn’t mean you have to be sensible. Kelloggs used a cartoon tiger to sell a cereal brand for the longest time. However, you need to be aware of your consumers. Who are they? What demographics are you trying to appeal to? Humor will absolutely change from situation to situation. There are things that young girls find funny and silly that middle-aged men cannot understand, and vice versa. Remember to stay true to your ‘artistic vision’ as much as possible, and you’ll often find something worthwhile here.
Well-Written
Remember that humor is not simply a means to make your firm seem more approachable and likable. It’s a marketing tactic in itself. It’s something that helps you stay true to your output and hopefully draws more exposure to you in that manner. If it’s well written, it should function as an easy and relatively cheap way of drawing a larger audience. This is not something to ignore. Hire the best writers that you can for this, or deliberate over your direction in the boardroom for a good amount of time, using focus groups to test the effectiveness of your output.
With these tips, you are sure to use business humor in the most effective manner possible.
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