For and Against of Using Humor Appeals in Advertising
Some of the most memorable ads ever made are the ones that made us laugh. Old Spice’s shirtless, smooth-talking pitchman. Geico’s talking gecko. A gorilla playing drums to Phil Collins. Humor is one of the most widely used tools in advertising, but it’s also one of the riskiest. Get it right and you’ve got an ad people share with friends and remember for years. Get it wrong and you’ve spent a lot of money on a joke that either falls flat or, worse, actually damages how seriously customers take your brand.
Let’s work through what humor appeals actually do to an audience, what the research says about when they work, and where the real risks lie.
What a Humor Appeal Is
A humor appeal is simply an advertisement built around comedy, whether that’s wit, absurdity, slapstick, exaggeration, or clever wordplay, with the goal of making the audience laugh, or at least smile, and connecting that positive feeling to the brand. It’s one of the most commonly used emotional appeals in advertising, alongside things like fear, warmth, or nostalgia.
What the Research Actually Says
Marc Weinberger and Charles Gulas have researched humor in advertising extensively since the 1980s and 1990s, including a widely cited review published in the Journal of Advertising in 1992. Their overall conclusion was more cautious than you might expect: humor’s effectiveness is highly context-dependent. It depends on the audience, the product category, the specific type of humor used, and what the ad is actually trying to achieve. In other words, there’s no guarantee that adding jokes to an ad will make it more effective.
A more recent and more formal piece of research comes from Martin Eisend, whose 2009 meta-analysis in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science pooled results across many humor-in-advertising studies. Eisend found that humor reliably increases attention, which makes sense, since funny things are naturally more noticeable than dull ones. It also had a clear positive effect on people’s attitude toward the ad itself, an effect roughly twice as strong as its effect on attitude toward the brand.
Interestingly, Eisend also found that humor tends to reduce the perceived credibility of the source, yet it still produced a net positive effect on brand attitude and purchase intention overall, mostly by putting the audience in a better mood, which then flows through to how they feel about the brand.
The Case For Humor Appeals
The strongest argument for using humor is attention. We’re surrounded by more ads than we could ever consciously process, and most of them get ignored. A genuinely funny ad has a real advantage in cutting through that clutter, since people are naturally drawn toward things that entertain them rather than things that simply inform them.
Humor can also make a brand feel more likeable and human, particularly for categories that might otherwise feel bland or purely functional. And a funny ad has a much better chance of being shared voluntarily, whether that’s word of mouth in the past or, more relevant today, being shared or reposted online, which extends the campaign’s reach well beyond what the media budget alone paid for.
The Case Against Humor Appeals
The most important risk is what’s sometimes called the vampire effect: the joke is so memorable that it “sucks” all the audience’s attention, and they remember the gag but not the brand or the product benefit it was supposed to be selling. If people can describe the funny scene in detail a week later but can’t remember which brand it was for, the humor has failed at its actual commercial job.
There’s also the credibility problem that Eisend’s research flagged. Humor tends to make a source feel less serious and less credible, which can be a real problem for categories where trust and expertise matter more than entertainment, such as insurance, healthcare, financial services, or funeral services. Nobody wants to laugh their way through a decision about life insurance or a hospital choice.
Humor also travels poorly. What’s funny in one country, culture, or generation can fall completely flat, or even cause offense, in another. A joke that relies on a specific cultural reference, wordplay in one language, or a particular sense of what’s appropriate can backfire badly if the audience doesn’t share that context. And like most creative approaches, humor wears out. A joke that’s hilarious the first time can become annoying by the twentieth repetition, which matters a lot for ads that run for months on television or social media.
A Practical Example: Old Spice’s Turnaround
Old Spice’s “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” campaign, created by the agency Wieden+Kennedy and launched in February 2010, is one of the most studied examples of humor working well in advertising. The ad used rapid-fire absurdist humor, a confident, shirtless spokesman, and surreal scene changes, and it became a genuine viral hit, spawning a wave of personalized follow-up videos responding to real comments online.
What made it work wasn’t just that it was funny. The humor was tightly built around the brand’s positioning, masculinity and confidence delivered with a wink rather than complete seriousness, so the joke and the brand message reinforced each other instead of competing. That’s the difference between humor that sells and humor that just entertains: the joke has to be built around the brand, not layered on top of it as decoration.
Why This Matters
For a marketing manager deciding whether to greenlight a humorous campaign, the research points to a few practical questions. Does this product category suit humor, or does it need to feel serious and trustworthy? Is the joke actually connected to the brand’s positioning, or could you remove the brand name and the joke would still work exactly the same way? And is the humor likely to travel across the different markets, cultures, or audience segments the ad will actually reach?
For anyone working in creative development or brand management, humor also raises a practical testing question. Since credibility can take a hit even when likeability goes up, it’s worth pre-testing a humorous concept with real customers before a full launch, particularly for categories where trust matters, rather than relying purely on internal opinions about whether something is funny.
Bringing It Together
Humor appeals can be one of the most effective tools in advertising, reliably grabbing attention and improving how people feel about an ad and, indirectly, the brand behind it. But the research is clear that humor is not a guaranteed win. It can reduce perceived credibility, it can overshadow the brand message entirely, and it often doesn’t survive being translated across cultures or repeated too many times. The campaigns that succeed, like Old Spice’s, tend to be the ones where the joke and the brand positioning are built together rather than the humor being added on as a separate layer.
Key Points to Take Away
- Humor appeals use comedy to grab attention and build a positive feeling toward an ad, which can transfer to the brand.
- Research by Weinberger and Gulas found humor’s effectiveness is highly context-dependent, while a 2009 meta-analysis by Martin Eisend found humor boosts attention and ad attitude but can reduce perceived source credibility.
- The main risk is the “vampire effect,” where the joke is remembered but the brand is not.
- Humor tends to suit low-involvement, everyday products better than serious categories like insurance, healthcare, or financial services.
- Humor that works best, like Old Spice’s “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like,” is built directly around the brand’s positioning rather than added on as unrelated entertainment.
