IMPACT OF HUMOR IN

ADVERTISEMENTS ON THE SELECTION

AND BRAND RECALL ASPECTS

A report submitted as part of course requirements for

CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR
Shubham Meena (PGP/23/175) | Suraj (PGP/23/237) | Pratyush Barua

(PGP/23/285) | Nihala Parveen (PGP/23/336) | Nikita Verma (PGP/23/403)

INDIAN INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT KOZHIKODE

TERM IV | PGP 23 (2019-2021)
 Introduction
Defining Humor in Advertisement:
On the most fundamental level, humor is all that binds all humans. Humor in advertisements can be
defined in the following ways:

● The quality of being amusing or comic in an advertisement

● Humor in ads can be classified into various kinds - pun, sarcasm, exaggeration, silliness, dark
humor, etc.
● Highly subjective perception of humor in audience depending on demographics, psychographics,
and cultural tendencies

A very significant constraint in the marketing of a business is the development of a successful

promotional message. To persuade buyers to purchase goods and services, businesses use distinct
promotional appeals. One of the sales appeals is humor. The first challenge of comedy is to draw the
attention of customers with a message that is fascinating, amusing, provocative, unpredictable, sudden,
and unforgettable. In the decision-buying process, humor helps to assist customers.

Why advertise with humor?

A significant part of human psychology is humor. It provides us a means to philter knowledge of all
sorts, from amusing stimuli to a scenario where laughter is the only realistic response because things are
complicated. Our focus is captured by laughter, which is why it is also used in advertisements.

With consumers increasingly using mobile phones or distracted by chatting to others, TV ads have more
frequently turned to comedy to draw audience interest. Once the customer is watching, the expectation is
that, in the future, he or she will like the comedy and recall the commodity.

In front of a large crowd, many businesses opt for bold, funny TV promotional campaigns, such as the
Indian Premier League or a famous show's season finale. A lengthy, satirical promotional campaign
eventually becomes part of pop culture and joins our everyday language. Think of the Amul Girl, the
Seagram’s “Men will be men” ads, or the all-time famous Fevicol ads. An enduring impact on customer
awareness can be made by injecting satire into an advertisement campaign.
Our responses to comedy make it a powerful marketing vehicle. In ads, humor:

● Grabs the attention of the viewer

● The optimistic emotion elicited from the commercial is correlated with the brand
● Makes an everlasting impact

There have been many significant milestones in the development of advertising, such as the advent of
the printing press in the 1440s or the immense influence of television. Advertising has continually had to
evolve and adjust to fit modern mediums and an increasingly sophisticated audience since its very
earliest origins, which are believed to date back to steel carvings created by the ancient Egyptians. Yet
there was one channel that had a stronger advertisement effect than anything before it:

“The World Wide Web.”

In the most astounding way, the internet has revolutionized advertisements. It has not only altered the
way commercials are transmitted, but it has changed the way people behave about them.

After the advent of the internet, the only challenge the marketers have faced overtime is to grab the
attention. With the advancement of technology, the attention of an average smartphone using individuals
has gone down significantly.

Thus, a way for companies to make an immediate bond with customers is to incorporate humor or satire
into a promotional campaign. Our emotions are tugged by humor, eliciting a positive emotion like
laughter that makes an impact. It also ties buyers to the industry itself, and likely to the goods being
sold.

The relevance of our topic:

● Humorous/ witty ads supposedly grab more attention
● The consumer tends to watch, laugh, and remember about the advertisement – higher brand
awareness and recall
● Generate critical insights to marketers and advertisers with respect to the psychological nature of
an ad campaign
● The study can be used to create the right content for an advertisement to ensure maximum impact
on the minds of the target customer

Research objective:
● Understanding types of humor in advertising and their impact on consumers through literature
review and secondary research.
● Finding a correlation between perception of humor and their impact on the different stages of the
customer journey.
● Finding a correlation between humor and brand awareness among consumers.
 Secondary Research
The secondary research mainly involved the prominent papers on the influence of humors on advertising
and thereby over the buying decision of the customers. Firstly, the research involved various
opportunities and benefits of adding humor as a stimulus in order to make the advertisement more
appealing which could increase the sales or the conversion rate of the particular brand. But this is never
an easy task, as the famous quote by David Ogilvy said, “The consumer is not a moron, she is your wife.
Don’t insult her intelligence”. Therefore, we aimed to study the usage and concepts of humor that aim to
persuade the potential customers. So, humor is defined as the phenomenon that is universal and easy to
spot as well as enjoy which often triggers laughter. Another definition given by Stem is that the term
humor breeds the confusion by confounding the aspect that is formal of the advertisement stimulus with
the response aspect of the concern customer who is been targeted. Incongruity is the most essential
element in humorous advertisement. It can be through some words, puns, events / images or even with a
word with two meanings.

There is no universally accepted categorization of the types of humor. A study done by Catanescu and
Tom in year 2001 helps to differentiate various humorous advertisements. They suggested that while
designing an advertisement campaign the marketers should always keep the categorization variable in
mind while they create a humorous content. So they categorized the humorous advertisement as –
comparison, personification, exaggeration, pun, sarcasm, silliness, and surprise humor advertisements.

Black humor – It happens when something cancels out the serious side of the social-taboo subjects like
the morality, death, sex, or illness and approached playfully. And also the advertisers need a sensitivity
and the light touch or the humor that could backfire
Unexpected and situation humor – The situation dependent on the jokes do not spring form the
imagination but they are written by a person is in perfectly normal, in everyday situation. The key factor
of the unintentional humor is the character is unprepared.

Blue humor – This humor does not has any specific joke or any of the category of humor dealing with
sexuality or even bodily functions. But the marketer uses the sexual side of the product and use that
instinct for the cases of resentment and amusing the customers.
 Primary Research
For the purpose of this study, an online survey form was floated among Indians in the age range of 18 –
40. The purpose of the form was to establish correlation between the perception of humor and various
stages in the customer journey by showing them 3 print advertisements and asking relevant questions on
a Likert Scale. The survey gathered a total of 63 responses and considering 3 advertisements per
respondent, the total data points for the analysis came up to be 196.
Observations and Analysis:
The survey asks a preliminary question to gauge how dependent are consumers on advertisements to
impact their buying behavior. The question was specifically asked for packaged foods and beverages to
narrow the categories down for the respondent and because this category falls into the lower risk
segment where humor is more likely to be effective.

One can observe from the graph, that recommendations from friends and family and
promotions/discounts on such items are the most likely to impact consumer choice, followed by
advertisements.
Following this, respondents were asked questions based on three specific print ads. The choice of ads
was made considering that humor is more suited to goods with lower risks to the customers and the fact
that these products didn’t require central persuasion to convert. The advertisements presented in the
survey are as follows:
Respondents were asked how humorous/witty they find each of these ads on a scale of 1-5 and then
regression analysis was carried out taking the perceived humor as the dependent variable and the
following independent variables that represent different stages of the customer journey:
 Motivation to compare their existing brand with given brand
 Motivation to find more information about given brand
 Motivation to buy based solely on the advertisement
 Motivation to tell others about the product
 Positive impact on the brand image due to advertisements
The results of regression analysis are as follows:

Important points to note from the results are:

 All the dependent variables have a positive correlation with the perceived humor of the
advertisement
 Impact on brand image has the strongest correlation (0.72) followed by collecting information
and (0.66) comparing the brand with existing choice (0.65)
 The decision to immediately buy has the lowest correlation which can be expected given the
stages of customer journey
 Analysis of Humorous Advertisements from the Indian Context

1. GROFERS “#WeGetIt”

Grofers is a hyperlocal mobile commerce company that delivers grocery items in India.
#WeGetIt
The debut campaign of Grofers rolls out a hilarious TVC with clever visuals and youthful tone, that adds
the appeal to the app that wants to be the neighborhood shopping app of choice.
The film highlights the features of the app in a humorous manner featuring the stand-up comedian,
Jeeveshu Ahluwalia.
Context
Wife gets home tired after work, only to find that her husband has taken care of all the grocery
shopping. Just when the woman is reveling at the news, she snaps out of it and realizes it was only a
dream.
Insight
Women find men who share domestic responsibility more appealing, but the brand submits to the
women that they ‘won’t always get what they want’ and that is exactly where Grofers steps in and gets
them ‘what they need’ - a husband who shares the domestic responsibility of lending a helping hand, all
at the convenience of the Grofers app.”
Highlight of the Ad
Type of humor used here is ‘surprise’ – the last few seconds of the ad film has a surprise element where
the wife snaps back to reality.

Launch of
campaign

Analysis of Brand Awareness

Launch of the campaign – Sep 2015 Google Trends result shows that there was in increase search for
Grofers on Google search engine after the launch of the campaign.
 2. SWIGGY “#WhatADelivery”

Swiggy is India’s largest online food ordering and delivery platform.

#WhatADelivery
The IPL special campaign of Swiggy, highlights the fact that everyone is ordering as much as they can
on Swiggy. The 15-20 seconds long ad follows a simple storyline with minimal dialogues and
commentaries that cut straight to the chase.
Context
The ad shows the argument between two roommates on who would cook the food, while the match is
on. While neither shows any intention to act, they turn to Swiggy.
Insight
Swiggy is there for you when food comes in the way of enjoying the cricketing action.
Highlight of the Ad
The ad manifests the features of the product like quick delivery or special discounts in the ad films.
Analysis of Brand Awareness

Launch of
campaign

Launch of the campaign – April 2019 Google Trends result shows that there was no significant increase
search for
Swiggy on Google search engine after the launch of the campaign. This could be attributed to the fact
was Swiggy was already a popular brand.
 3. GODREJ GOLDILOCKS “#KeepItPersonal”

India’s first-of-its-kind personal locker for everyday use by Godrej

#KeepItPersonal
The campaign uses humor to encourage adoption of home security solutions by offering innovative
reasons for using home security solution.
Context
The lady’s life mission is to stay young forever and will go to any extend to conceal her true age. She
uses Godrej Goldilocks to safeguard her passport which has her true age.
Insight
Different things are valuable to different people for different reasons and Goldilocks is there to
safeguard them all.
Highlight of the Ad
The ad is message dominant and succeeds in highlighting it well.

Launch of
campaign

Analysis of Brand Awareness

Launch of the campaign – July 2016 Google Trends result shows that there was in increase search for
Godrej Goldilocks on Google search engine after the launch of the campaign.
 4. FEVICOL “#Majboot Jod”

Another in Fevicol’s long list of extremely innovative and entertaining advertisement campaigns that
have engaged us since a decade.
#FevicolKaMajbootJod
The advertisement uses humor to keep the viewers engaged and presents normal scenarios in a different
way which interests the ad viewers.
Context
The Food stall owner is merrily breaking every egg until he cannot break a particular egg. He tries
various means of breaking it but is unable to do so. He sees the hen that had laid the egg and see that it is
eating grains from a Fevicol box.
Insight
The interpretation left to the audience is that the egg is unbreakable because of the Fevicol effect.
Highlight of the Ad
The unbreakable egg signifying the unbreakable bond of Fevicol that Fevicol has had with the Indian
audience.

Launch of
campaign

Analysis of Brand Awareness

Launch of the campaign – November 2012 Google Trends result shows that there was in increase search
for Fevicol on Google search engine after the launch of the campaign.
 5. Asian Paints “#WaterproofingKing”

Asian Paints campaign released for the Indian rains where a majority of the population faces leakage.
They have moved away from their traditional paint persona by providing an adjacent solution in the
form of waterproofing solutions.
#HarGharKuchKehtaHai
The advertisement uses humor in the form of the status quo between an husband and wife to keep the
viewers engaged.
Context
A married couple is fighting over the frequent water leakages in their roof with the wife threatening her
husband that she would leave the house. A neighbor takes pity on the husband and suggests to use Asian
Paints waterproofing solutions to avoid water leakages. The husband dances in joy in a comic manner
once he realizes that he has the perfect solution.
Insight
The ad shows that Asian Paints has a more comprehensive product line now with the addition of its
waterproofing portfolio.
Highlight of the Ad
The completeness of the Asian Paints portfolio conveyed by using a comic element.

Launch of
campaign

Analysis of Brand Awareness

Launch of the campaign – May 2020 Google Trends result shows that there was in increase search for
Asian Paints on Google search engine after the launch of the campaign.
 Limitations and Scope of the Study
 The survey wasn’t a perfect reflection of the Indian user as it lacked demographic diversity
 In-depth interviews about how certain types of ads are more appreciated by a certain audience
could have been conducted for better managerial insights
 The study can be extended to only specific categories and brands to explore how humor in
advertising has impacted their sales and brand image

Conclusion
An extensive literature review gave an overview of the various tools used in humorous or witty
advertising and what kind of goods are more suitable for employing humorous advertisements. An
analysis of Google Trends for a few of such campaigns was done that indicated the positive response
that they got to test the correlation between humor and its impact on consumer.
The primary research analysis gave us insights into the use of humor/wit in advertising and how that
impacts the major stages of customer journey. A positive correlation of humor with those attributes
helped the study conclude that humor contributes to both buying decision (finding information,
comparing brands, readiness to buy) and brand awareness (positive impact, recommending to others)
among consumers.

References
1. https://www.tintup.com/blog/history-evolution-advertising-marketing/
2. https://www.mdgadvertising.com/marketing-insights/a-brief-look-at-the-history-of-modern-
advertising/
3. https://www.inc.com/guides/2010/12/how-to-use-humor-in-advertising.html
4. https://www.advertisemint.com/why-humor-is-the-key-to-a-memorable-ad/
5. https://online.pointpark.edu/public-relations-and-advertising/humor-in-advertising/
6. http://psychologyformarketers.com/does-humor-in-advertising-help-sell-more/
7. https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2017/07/19/there-are-nine-different-types-of-humour-which-
one-are-you_a_23036626/
8. Catanescu, Codruta; Tom Gail (2001). The Use of Humor in Different Advertising Media.
Retrieved from https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1G1-76941382/types-of-humor-in-
television-and-magazine-advertising
9. Google Trends Data for different advertisements