An advert can try to move us and leave us feeling nothing. Usually, we move on. An advert that tries to make us laugh and fails invites a different response: we notice how hard it is trying. The awkwardness becomes part of what we remember, and the comments can be unforgiving. For brands concerned about how they will be received, seriousness begins to look like the safer choice.
Eka Kipiani, co-founder and Creative Director of Georgian creative agency Supermarket, believes that fear helps explain why so many brands hesitate to use humour. They want to be respected, they worry about the audience’s reaction, and they often feel more comfortable attempting almost any other emotion. The result, in her view, is advertising that too often forgets to entertain.
Her interest in humour begins with the things people would rather leave unspoken: the behaviour we recognise in ourselves but rarely admit, the distance between what we say and what we feel, and the small human failings that can be both painful and funny. Bringing those observations into advertising takes judgement. A joke has to survive the move from a private conversation to a public audience, then the writing, direction and design that determine how it is received.
Speaking to Marketer, Kipiani explains why a good observation is only the beginning, how the demand for absolute clarity can make an idea less interesting, and why a brand’s occasional funny post means little if its personality changes completely from one campaign to the next.
M: People who are funny in everyday conversation often become very serious when speaking on behalf of a brand. What changes, and where does their sense of humour go?
A lot of brands are reluctant to be funny. They also tend to forget that one of the most effective things communication and advertising can do is entertain the audience. Making people laugh is one of the best forms of entertainment, yet there seems to be more interest in creating surprise, moving people emotionally or working in some other emotional register.
I would also say that making people laugh is harder than moving them. And failing at an attempt to be moving feels safer than trying to be funny and not succeeding. For many brands, humour represents a risk. That applies to using it in a particular advert, but also to allowing humour to become part of the brand’s character. They would prefer to be seen as respectable.
The audience plays a very important role in this. It is not simply a matter of what personality the brand wants to have. People are much more critical of an attempt at humour than they are of a piece of sentimental advertising. I can more readily recall attempts to be funny that backfired than attempts to be serious that provoked the same kind of response.
If a serious advert does not work, people may not comment on it at all. Silence might be the worst reaction it receives. An unsuccessful joke can attract much more attention, and brands are very aware of that possibility.
On social media, humour can generate more engagement in either direction. When it works, people respond. When it fails, people respond to that too. It is the second kind of attention that brands are trying to avoid, and their response is often to stay away from humour.
M: The funniest observations often concern things we all notice but do not say out loud. How do you find those details, and recognise their potential for an advert?
Very often, the funny part is precisely the thing that is most true, but that we do not say. Absolute honesty is probably the best way to find it, and that honesty has to begin with yourself. Nobody will be as honest with you about yourself as you can be.
There may be something you do that you never admit to doing. You have to acknowledge it, bring it out into the open and see what you can build around it. Then you may realise that other people do exactly the same thing. Something you thought of as your own private behaviour turns out to be recognisable to others.
This involves looking quite deeply and honestly at human behaviour, including the parts that are not especially attractive. They may not be beautiful, aesthetically pleasing or particularly acceptable. Those are often the things we conceal. There is what we say about ourselves, and then there is what we actually do or feel.
Looking for the differences between those things can lead to very good humour. You have to be truthful about yourself and observant of other people, rather than stopping at the version of themselves they present.
There is also something interesting about how close the funny and the tragic can be. The same failing or foolish behaviour can be very sad, very true and very funny. Those qualities can exist together. As the person creating the work, you choose which register to use when you show it.
M: A joke among friends is different from a joke in an advert. What tends to get lost when it moves from one to the other?
There are jokes you have to be there to appreciate. They belong to that particular moment and that particular group of people. I might say something to you now, we both laugh, and it is genuinely funny between us. Put the same thing on a screen, or write it down, and it may no longer be funny at all.
A private conversation has a context that a wider audience does not necessarily share. It also has a relationship behind it. We might be friends, and the way we speak to each other might allow for certain kinds of jokes. That does not mean we can take those same jokes into public communication and expect them to work in the same way.
Humour is difficult, and I would not pretend to be a comedian. There is a judgement involved in sensing what might be funny and at what moment. Sometimes an author thinks something is funny when it simply is not. Enjoying your own idea does not settle that question.
We also come back to truth and surprise. How true does the observation feel, and how unexpected is the way it is presented? You are following a story, you think one thing is about to happen, and then something completely different happens. Very often, that surprise is what makes you laugh.
Comedians do this when they lead you towards a particular expectation and then suddenly take you somewhere else. If I can predict the joke, much of its effect disappears. There needs to be an unexpected turn in the story or in the thought. It can feel completely true, while still being something I did not see coming.
M: Brands often want everyone to understand the joke. What happens when every hint is explained and there is nothing left for the audience to work out?
First of all, good humour needs good writing. But this problem applies to the communication of any idea. When you underestimate your audience’s intelligence or attention, you begin explaining things too thoroughly. In doing so, you can make the work harder to follow and much less interesting.
Before deciding whether a piece of communication should make people laugh or cry, we need to remember that it has to be interesting. That is probably the most important criterion for any communication or content. Whatever else we want it to do, it must give people a reason to pay attention.
When we make decisions while developing an idea, we should keep asking whether the change has made it more interesting or less interesting. That needs to remain part of the way we judge the work. If the main criterion becomes whether everyone will understand everything at every moment, the interesting part tends to disappear.
I remember a discussion about Netflix and the idea that dialogue has to keep restating the context because viewers may be doing something else while watching. The thinking was that someone should be able to tune back in at any moment and immediately understand what the conversation is about. So the subject has to keep being mentioned.
Once that becomes a requirement, the room for writing really good dialogue becomes smaller. I think the same applies to advertising. If the demand is that absolutely everyone must understand everything immediately, the chances of creating something interesting start to fall.
Of course, the opposite can be a problem too. You cannot put an inside joke into public communication if the audience has none of the context needed to understand it. They will simply be left outside the joke. It has to be understandable, but there still needs to be something for the viewer to recognise for themselves. I want to get the joke. I do not want you to explain the joke to me.
M: So finding the right insight is part of it. How much depends on the way the joke is delivered?
Delivery is extremely important. If we are making a funny film, we need a script, and we need a director who can bring it to life. The observation behind the joke might be good and the idea might be right, but the dialogue can be badly written or the film badly directed. That is where the whole thing can be lost.
The finished piece we see consists of many components. They are all important, and they have to work together. The people responsible for bringing the idea to the audience need to understand how to convey the comedy. Having the idea is one part of the work; executing it is another substantial part.
This applies to design as well. In a static piece, what I notice first and how I then read the joke have to be carefully considered. I might write it correctly, but if the design is constructed in the wrong way, the joke can stop working. The order in which the audience encounters the information matters.
It is like hearing two people tell the same joke. One tells it badly and the other tells it well. The difference is in the execution. You cannot judge the outcome only by looking at the basic joke on the page. Who says it, and how they say it, matters enormously.
For brands, there is another question within that: which brand is telling this particular joke? A joke can be excellent coming from one brand. Coming from another, it can leave you thinking, “Why are they saying this?” The identity of the person telling it, or in this case the brand, is part of how we receive it.
M: Brands sometimes seem to force humour into communication where it does not belong. What about making fun of themselves? How effective can that be?
It can be very, very effective. There is honesty in making fun of yourself, and it can be a very good strategy. But it does not mean belittling yourself. The result should be that you come across better and that people like you more.
We should not forget a fairly basic purpose of brand communication: we want people to think well of the brand. If I make a joke about myself, I want that to make you warm to me. Self-deprecating humour can do that extremely well.
You can also joke about other things and be effective. My bigger concern with brands today is how seriously they take themselves. There is a real shortage of humour in long-term brand communication. I would not say our main problem is that too many brands are trying to be funny.
We may see more humorous content in individual posts. But sometimes a brand is very serious in everything else it does, then suddenly tries to make a joke in one particular post. That can feel very strange. The humour appears in isolation from the way the brand normally behaves.
I would like many more brands to be enjoyable, less serious, less heavy and less formal. I remember much more humour in advertising than I see now. In my view, social media and the fear of comments have helped push brands in a more serious direction. They have become worried about how people will receive the joke.
Then there is the influence of other brands. When people see a brand that is serious and effective, that example can encourage them to follow the same approach. I would like to see more willingness to use humour as a sustained part of communication.
M: How important is it for a brand to maintain one personality? Can it be funny sometimes and serious at other times?
Of course it can. You can have one personality and, within it, be a little more serious at some moments and make a joke at others. It depends on how you do it and whether the communication still makes sense for that character.
Take Skittles, for example, with the absurdity of its communication. If it suddenly produced something very earnest and inspirational, that would feel strange. Equally, a brand that has always communicated in an inspirational way might feel awkward if it abruptly started using absurd humour.
That does not mean an inspirational brand cannot make people laugh. It can. And a brand that is usually funny can become more serious about a particular subject when it needs to. There is room for those variations without abandoning the character people know.
Sometimes, though, the changes happen because different groups are making different pieces of communication. One team does one thing, another team does something else, and the brand keeps jumping between them. It has no single character. It starts to feel as though it has two or three different personalities.
A brand needs to decide what its approach is. All brands should be able to entertain, but if yours has a lighter, more humorous character, that can be the way you talk about your products and what makes them good. You can tell that story with humour. You do not need to become solemn all of a sudden and start delivering philosophical statements.
