Right now the nation could do with a bit of a lift; with Brexit uncertainty and the effects of climate change to name but a couple of our worries. We're all craving a bit of good news and there’s a real opportunity for brands to put a smile on people’s faces. Your small business could tap into this sentiment with humour marketing. Humour is a great way to connect with people - there’s nothing more uplifting than sharing a laugh with someone. In fact, studies say that people are more likely to warm to you if you make them chuckle. Injecting some humour into your marketing strategy is often a sure-fire way to generate positive brand association. And with the current climate, a dose of humour could have your business laughing all the way to the bank.

Humour can make light of a subject or situation while creating a sense of shared experience and understanding. This can be an effective way for brands to engage with individual people while reaching out to a large audience. This has been done successfully by a host of big brands, including Spotify, Burger King, KFC, Irn-Bru and Virgin Trains to name a few. For example, as part of its end-of-year round-up campaign, Spotify tapped into listeners’ data as inspiration for an advertising campaign named, ‘Wrapped’. This included ads that poked fun at users for putting together playlists like ‘I love gingers’ with 48 Ed Sheeran songs on it and even outing one user for playing ‘Sorry’ 42 times on Valentine’s Day. It was very well received by consumers and shows that when brands handle customer data in a humorous way, it needn’t be viewed as an intrusion.

Another great example is the chicken restaurant, KFC. The fast food chain faced nationwide chicken shortages in 2018 after changing supplier, which led to store closures. This of course merited a huge backlash from customers on social media. In reaction to the situation, the brand decided to do a clever play on the KFC lettering in an online ad campaign. They branded their popular chicken buckets with ‘FCK’ by way of apology for their blunder. The ad went viral on social media, proving that clever and humorous handling of a PR disaster can heal any number of problems for a business.

Lastly, Irn-Bru, the Scottish soft drinks company owned by AG Barr is famous for their tongue-in-cheek marketing campaigns. They don’t take themselves too seriously and often poke fun at themselves (and Scottish people) through their marketing and advertising material. There have been many light-hearted jokes about ginger people and the Scottish accent. This works well as the majority of their target audience is people in Scotland who understand and love this type of humour.

For SMEs and entrepreneurs who are looking to shake-up their marketing strategy or who want to create a memorable ad campaign, humour is a useful tool which must be considered. If it’s a good fit, it could reap massive benefits for your business. Don’t be scared into thinking your products are ‘too boring’ or ‘not funny’ – all the more reason to be brave and consider using humour as a method to stand out. Laughter is infectious. People want to share the good times with their friends. The right campaign could easily go viral online, gaining extra exposure for your business.

If you’d like to look at ways to inject some humour into your marketing strategy, get in touch with the team at Only Marketing today