Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

If there’s one thing that wins me over in an advertisement, it’s effective use of humor. I mean, who doesn’t love a funny ad? I for one have been known to spend the better part of a Friday night looking up my favorite funny ads of all time and showing them to my husband for what’s probably the twentieth time. (It’s always funnier the twentieth time, right?)

Knowing that some funny ads might make your day a little brighter or serve as inspiration for your next project, the HOW team couldn’t help but curate a little collection below, including some old favorites, some we’ve recently discovered and some so weird you can’t help but laugh, plus a couple of vintage ads for good measure....

Comedy is one of the most effective way to advertise anything, but some brands and companies take absurd to the next level in a trend you may not realize you’ve seen called “oddvertising.”

“Oddvertising is sometimes funny and sometimes it’s just plain odd,” according to Mike Johnston.

Advertising appeared as the first dot com bubble was burning and was birthed by marketers really pushing the envelope in advertising. many of the odd pioneers were startups or smaller brands trying to stand out with off-the-wall concepts like firing gerbils into their logos.

THE RISE OF AN ART FORM

But what they made went beyond unusual into a new realm that was later coined as “oddvertising.” Things got even weirder as they had some success reaching young audiences with money to spend. Some were all business and some were just fascinated with finding out how far they could get....

Caleb Warren, assistant professor of marketing in the University of Arizona’s Eller College of Management and lead author of the research, conducted a series of experiments that found different ads can be equally humorous to consumers but have very different effects on brand attitudes, depending on the type of humor used.

The research is based on the concept that people find humor in “benign violations” — that is, material that somehow threatens their sense of well-being, personal identity or beliefs, but in a harmless or inconsequential way. For example, a comical Reebok ad featuring an “office linebacker” tackling other office workers represents a benign violation, because viewers know the violence is staged and no one is actually being hurt.

But even benign violations can cross a line, according to the research, which explored the effects of “mild” versus “severe” benign violations on brand attitudes. According to Warren, advertisers should stay away from ads that feature highly inappropriate humor, humor with a specific target or “butt of the joke,” and humor that prompts avoidance by eliciting feelings such as disgust in addition to laughter....