Brands such as Evian have made tracks in the past with humour in campaigns, for example their “Roller Babies” video advertising campaign back in 2009, depicting roller skating babies drinking their bottled mineral water, gaining more than 68 million international views to date. They recently released a follow up video, “Baby & Me,” which has now reached almost 50 million views. The key to Evian’s viral online success? The videos are enjoyable and humorous to watch, and people like to share things they enjoy, meaning all the hard work is done by the fans themselves.
And Evian are not alone in realising this fact, with thousands more examples popping up. During the last Superbowl’s rather unexpected power cut, popular biscuit brand Oreo jumped on their Twitter and quickly realised an opportunity for some good humoured promotion, by Tweeting “You can still dunk in the dark.” They soon became a trending brand when it was ReTweeted over 15,000 times. Something so simple yet so quick witted can be all you need to add some humour to your brand and marketing, and with online being so fast paced it allows us to quickly jump on current topics and the word can spread like wildfire in moments.
You may be thinking, ‘yes but we don’t have an unlimited marketing and branding budget to spend on high-end TV ads’ in regard to the Evian example, but take Oreo’s example as proof that it isn’t about the budget. Its simply about being aware of what is going on around you, and your target audience’s sense of humour. It can be done small scale and be just as successful as it is large scale, with something as simple as a witty blog post or Tweet being found funny and entertaining enough for a few people to share, and the seed is planted.
Humor is a social experience by nature, which is why people are far more inclined to want to spread engage with and spread funny stuff than anything else. Take the thousands of Facebook Pages, Twitter accounts, Reddit Sub-reddits dedicated to pointless yet funny content, and look how many people share it. Therefore a brand that has a sense of humour and shares that with their audience is much more likely to gain viral success in their campaigns than one which simply sticks to posting informative and often quite dull content.
It can be easy to go too far sometimes, with brands in the past ending up offending their core audience by trying to reach further. But the main key to being strategically humorous instead of outright foolish in branding and marketing is to know what your audience appreciate and find funny. Your audience and target market should be at the centre of everything you do as a company, and there is no exception when it comes to using humour to encourage them to spread the word and feel a connection with your brand and its personality.
Mancunian Creative are experts in branding, and we like to think we have a pretty good sense of humour too! To find out how we can help you find creative new ways to get your brand’s message across, call us for a chat on 0161 883 0843 or email hello@mancuniancreative.co.uk
Google’s latest Penguin update, dubbed Penguin 2.0, has rocked many brands to their core, in particular larger brands who have taken shortcuts in their SEO and link building strategies.
Let’s face it, all your digital marketing and the majority of your traditional marketing efforts work towards driving people to one main area, your website. It’s your main piece of entirely controlled online real estate, in that it can look how you want, perform how you want and display whatever content you choose.
Recent statistics from a survey by 
Google’s Penguin update has meant many changes are needed to be made to way we gain the trust of the search engine. Not only do we need to ensure that we are partaking in quality link building but we must now also be wary of the rate at which we increase our links and the reputation of the publications and authors publishing our links.
as always I love it!