The advertising of services: what is an appropriate role for humor?

Abstract

The use of humor is quite prevalent in the promotion of US goods and services. Estimated expenditures on humorous advertisements are in the billions and a majority of advertisements may contain some humorous elements. Unfortunately, not much attention has been focused specifically on the role of humor in the advertising of services. By using the available humor‐related literature and synthesizing it with services marketing literature, a set of logically supported propositions was determined. Specifically, propositions are offered regarding the ability of humor to attract attention, increase comprehension, effect source credibility, and enhance liking. In addition, audience factors, the nature of the service product, the superiority of humor over non‐humor, the relatedness of humor to the product and the extension of humor into the international marketplace are examined.

Exploring the value of party political advertising for youth electoral engagement: an analysis of the 2001 British General Election advertising campaigns

“…[57][58][59] Its ubiquity is likely to be a result of scholarship maintaining its superiority as a communication style, 60 and its potential for psychic release. 61 It is seen as bringing manifold benefits to the message, including arousal of mental activity, 62 enhanced attention, increased comprehension and superior liking, 63 higher recall and persuasiveness, 64 and, perhaps critical in this context, discouragement of counter arguments. 65 Given this, it is not surprising that Labour's advertising agency, TBWA, used humour as part of their strategy, notably in elements of the economic disaster ad series and their 'Wiggy' ad 6 (see Figure 3).…”

Personality or skill: a qualitative study of humorous recruitment advertising campaign on social media

“…Whether or not humour is effective in advertising also strongly depends on the context, and this study addresses recruitment advertising, which might be risky for several reasons. For example, humour has not been used as frequently in advertisements for high-involvement (thinking) products as in low-involvement (feeling) products (Weinberger and Campell, 1991), where humour's effects have reported to be stronger (Chung and Zhao, 2003;Fugate, 1998). Thus, humour could be harmful in recruitment advertising, when employment can be seen as a high-involvement issue for job seekers.…”

The impact of humorous advertising on consumers’ buying, word of mouth and recall

“…The humor does not have a clear definition as it has many dimensions; Humorous Ads (HA) become successful when the audiences have positive responses for it (Fugate, 1998).…”