Entertaining and Funny Commercials
The Super Bowl Demonstrates Humor Can Be a Powerful Ad Tool
Oct 28, 2007 Carroll Trosclair
The annual Super Bowl telecast demonstrates that viewers love funny commercials, which should encourage small firms and organizations to spice up their advertising with humor and entertainment.
Humor, however, can be a tricky business, requiring some public relations review before being released.
- Humor can backfire if it challenges some group's sensitivity;
- One person’s humor can be a bore for another, especially when targeting different age groups;
- The humor can sometimes bury, or fail to communicate, the advertiser message.
Super Bowl Demonstrates Power of Humor
The Super Bowl telecast proves every year that the nation's best ad producers believe humor is a powerful advertising tool, especially in television commercials. A funny commercial generates excitement. It has a good chance of being remembered. The best ones generate the consumer buzz that advertisers now seek.
As folks attending Super Bowl television parties have observed, some viewers look forward to the commercials more than the game. They keep watching even when the game gets dull.
Funny commercials can help break through ad clutter
The demand for entertainment in commercials grows as:
- Organizations try to break out of the increasing advertising clutter on both television and the Internet. Shelly Lazarus, the CEO at Ogilvy & Mather, one of the world’s biggest ad agencies, told Fortune Magazine that "we’re living in a world now where consumers are bombarded with thousands of commercial messages. They’re everywhere you look. Unless you can cut through that and engage someone, I think you are lost."
- Consumers can view more international commercials online, increasing their advertising sophistication, as well as their expectations from local and national spots;
- As video becomes easier to use on the Internet, the World Wide Web can lengthen the shelf life of entertaining TV spots, not only on specialized websites like funny commercials.in, but also on company websites.
Entertaining Ads Get More Exposure on the Internet
Right after the game, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal now conduct polls to determine which Super Bowl commercials were most popular and which were least liked, placing more pressure on producers to stress entertainment.
A little later, the dozens of Super Bowl commercials are parked on the Internet for less-hurried, year-round viewing, some more than a half million times.
Once spoiled by the entertaining $2.6 million Super Bowl spots, ad viewers are harder to impress the rest of the year, encouraging the production of viewer-driven, rather than sponsor-driven, commercials.
Local and Political Advertisers Trying More Funny TV Spots
Local advertisers have experimented with humorous commercials for decades, with mixed success. They are apt to try more in the future because:
- They are challenged by the same clutter that national advertisers face;
- They have more technology to work with in creating commercials;
- There are more funny examples to inspire them.
Politicians Also Trying Funny Commercials
Some politicians, facing a growing weariness with both syrupy ads and attack ads, are also opting for humor in their campaign commercials, sometimes finding their humor in attacking the opposition. That was evident in the 2007 Louisiana election campaigns.
The 2008 presidential and Congressional campaigns could be a banner year for funny political commercials as the politicians try to separate themselves from the pack, reach out to younger voters and take more advantage of Internet video capability.
Reference: Fortune Magazine, September 2007
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