Self admission here, I love the use of humour in persuasion. Why? Humour opens the communication target’s brain for awareness, acceptance, and retention by reducing its need for defense. It increases a sense of affinity and increases the communicator’s sense of confidence. As it does this the target becomes more accessible. In short, it creates humour bias.
Humour creates a positive bias to the message. There are a number of cognitive biases – recency, anchoring, baseline, association, and more. Add humour to the list.
While humour is useful, I also hate the use of jokes in commercials. How do I reconcile these two? Easy.
When I tell someone a joke the first time, they laugh. They might even laugh a little the second time. But their fast brain has now learned the catch, the surprise twist, the play on words that made it funny.
The third time, it just isn’t funny. After a loud laugh the first time, there is no surprise, so there is no humour. It is different with kids, as explained in the Multiple Levels of Meaning post.
Humour, on the other hand, brings a smile and a positive feeling to an idea. The Bill Cosby commercials we did for Jell-O Pudding were like that.
Cosby rarely told a joke in his stand up routing. He would do an hour of stand up and the humour would be in the stories he told and how he told them. For a deeper analysis of the development and impact of this, I included an entire case study on the Cosby advertising in Overcome AD-versity.
The Seinfeld TV show rarely told jokes, other than when Jerry was performing. They would set up a running gag as a theme, but it was usually based on the predicaments that the main characters got involved in. That was the source of the humour. Punch line gags don’t wear as well as the situations.
The more laugh-out-loud the joke is, the shorter its effective lifetime. Commercials are usually seen dozens of times so they must have content that lets them wear well. Like commercials, humour can wear out.
The warm smile coming from a situation brings a bonding to the story; it creates some empathy between the viewer and the story. That is exactly what we are looking for in a commercial – a bonding between the story we are telling about the product and the viewer of that story. We want empathy for the demonstration of the product benefit. The warm smile relaxes the flee or flight reflex of the fast brain – no danger here – and allows us to talk more directly to help convert the viewer to the idea we are promoting.
One factor that makes a huge difference in the use of humour is relevance. If the humour is not relevant to the product or its use, it can be what we call “borrowed interest” and more of a distraction than a help in communicating your message. That would create a negative bias.
If it is not relevant, it can also suggest that the source of the humour and the message are not in tune with the audience. Out of tune with the audience means that the message may also be out of tune. Recently, US Vice President Vance tried to make a joke about his ass, in reference to recent comments by Trump about another candidate’s ass. The audience missed his attempt at humour leaving his speech flopping like a dead fish on the floor. It was a signal to the audience that he was not connected with them.
Relevant humour can also reflect positively on the confidence in the message or product. Who could make fun of themselves or their message unless they were completely confident and convinced of it? Self deprecating humour is really strong.
Think of an extreme case – a politician who goes to speak at a religious conference and starts by telling a joke about a farmer, a hooker, and an elephant walking into a bar that has nothing to do with the rest of the message. It might be considered in bad taste which would raise the defense mechanisms of the audience, or more likely and more seriously it would be a strong signal to the audience that the speaker is not trustworthy. With no social connection, the speaker is not trustworthy = not credible.
Why believe anything further the speaker has to say then? The acid test for relevance is in taking the audience’s point of view on what the message says. Project empathy to them as a test of what they would feel.
Borrowed interest is the same. It diverts your audience’s attention from your selling points, an attention you may not get back.
Relevant humour, on the other hand, shows confidence and helps the fast brain lower its defenses to hear your story. The humour can also make the source seem friendlier and less threatening which also makes the message easier to receive.
Humour can help, but it must be used judiciously. It is a two-edged sword.
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