Everyone enjoys a good laugh now and then, and humor can be an excellent element of your brand rhetoric. Determining what level of humor is appropriate and what level isn’t can be challenging, but the right humorous strategy can cement your brand’s reputation.
Why Humor is Important
Even in the most professional industries, humor is important because it conveys a personality. Humor is an elemental personal approach, striking readers in a mental and emotional place that couldn’t care less about business or politics. Inducing even the slightest hint of laughter can create a bond with your brand and your customer, associating positive feelings with your brand and cementing a personal appeal. Without humor, you run the risk of appearing static, boring, or overly bureaucratic, so be sure to include at least a little bit of humor in some of your brand language.
Fortune Favors the Bold
While it may seem like going too far with humor can be more disastrous than it could beneficial, in many cases the result is the opposite. This is especially the case with social media. Brands that crack jokes at the expense of others or those that target situations and items in popular media coverage tend to get overwhelmingly positive responses. Take a look at Oreo and Tide, two brands that made sarcastic jokes about the power outage in this year’s Super Bowl. Their account managers took a huge risk that could have caused a backlash, but instead their one liners went viral.
Watching the Line
That doesn’t necessarily mean you can just haul off and start making jokes about everything that crosses your mind. Your brand has a reputation, and how you want to maintain that reputation will dictate the level of humor that is acceptable. You never want to make jokes about public tragedies or violent events, but the line between appropriate and inappropriate is different for every company. An easy rule of thumb to make this determination is to look at your competitors and go just a little bit further than they do. This will keep you in bounds but still put you ahead of the pack.
Humor is important in nearly everything, but you have to be careful to not step on anyone’s toes.
