Many advertisers want to use smart ads to promote their products. Humor becomes the very next choice they take after a smart word game. So, is humor the right ad strategy?

One of the big sins in advertising and marketing is a boring promotion. Potential customers may forgive other flaws but not boring pamphlets, advertisements, or promotional videos. An ad should be something interesting to prospect. It should appeal customers not in general but the potential customers in particular.

Most small business advertisers are thinking of making something funny as their first effort. It happens because many people think that advertising is a form of entertainment. Advertising is not merely an entertainment, but it also has to sell. Getting someone to laugh when seeing your ad might make you feel good and think that it has managed to catch the attention of potential customers, but that is not the real issue.

You do not want to hear “Wow, I saw your ad. How smart (or how funny) it is.” What you really want is for people to see your ad and feel like buying the product you’re promoting.

Has humor ever worked effectively in your ad? It probably has. A viral video should be very funny or very surprising. It will make the video to spread to all corners of the internet. You can even make some sales from the video. Humor also has a place in advertising because it tends to stay longer in the minds of consumers. The humor in advertising makes the company look a bit “cooler”. But humor should not hinder the attractiveness of the ad, which is to make someone interested in buying the advertised product.

Advertisers should first try to sell the product on their ads. Once there is a strong appeal in the ads, you can think of ways to translate it in a more humorous way. But do not let humor hamper sales.

This is the danger of humor in your ads. Some people may not get the joke on the ad. If they do not get the joke, the ad will only annoy them, because they do not understand what you mean. It is also possible that a really funny humor will make the consumers notice only how funny the ad is and not how great your product is.

Your funny and dramatic product ad may help boost sales, which is very useful because if they are talking about your commercial, it means they are talking about your product. But what you surely want is for them to talk about your product instead of talking about the commercial.

What is almost universally useful in your Ad broadcast is smiling and friendly faces. They do not have to be funny, but they simply have to look happy. The prospects think they are happy because they are using the product. Unlike the online ad, on print media you have to try harder to sell humor, which sometimes cannot be translated properly. On the print media, there is no need to be funny but an ad should always sell.

You can be interesting without laughs. Do you know what the potential customers consider interesting? Anything that will make their life easier, or solve the problems that are bothering them. That’s what they find interesting.

Humor will be more successfully used on established products than new products. Overall, humor does have a positive impact in advertising but we must also be cautious because humor can give different effect to different characteristics of audience, an ad can be funny for us, but it may not be funny for other people. Humor should be used carefully in ads by conducting a prior examination of the target market segments so that the ad becomes truly effective.

source:
neuroadvertising
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