It’s Okay to be Funny When You Market
I grew up in a funny family. We thrived on puns, jokes,
shaggy dog stories, and word play of all kinds. We had pun contests on road
trips, filled out mad lib books by the score, and had running gags that we
still use to this day.
I find that customers everywhere love to see businesses, brands,
products, and people that don’t take themselves too seriously, and the right
kind of humor can go a long way to build a brand and a business. If your
business and your personality lend themselves to using humor to communicate
your message, then by all means don’t be afraid to be funny.
Take for example CEO Mike Dubin’s approach to marketing his
online phenomenon The Dollar Shave Club. Here’s a guy who took a boring product—razors—and
turned it into a goofy subject he communicated through a low-cost looking video; a video that went
viral with over 10 million views, and that garnered him over 200,000 club
members in about a year. Dubin followed
that up with his Dollar Shave Club member exclusive product, One Wipe Charlie.
He titled the video “Let’s Talk Number #2,” so you can guess what the product
does.
When an advertiser with an established reputation takes the right
risk with humor, it can pay off in big ways. K-Mart did just that with their “I Shipped My Pants” advertising
campaign, which not only played well to their existing market segment, but became
a viral hit that brought them new millennial customers.
One of my favorite examples of using humor to sell is Woot.com. It’s like the National Lampoon of
featured deals sites. (Think of it as E-bay and Amazon, but with copy written
by someone from The Onion.) Woot uses bad customer reviews to tout their
legitimacy, crowd sources parts of their website by inviting followers to
complete fill-in-the-blank pages they call Woot-libs, and can keep you engaged
long past your bedtime with their funny product descriptions, deals of the day,
and even their return and legal policies. (Check out their “How to Serve a Subpoena
to Woot” section.) If you sign up for their newsletter, you’ll find yourself anticipating
its arrival each week. Woot has turned this humorous approach into a
multi-million dollar business that keeps customers buying their products and spreading
the word about their site.
The biggest factor when considering using humor to market
your business is to KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE. Humor
can be used to keep your current customers loyal (making them feel like they’re
in on the joke like Woot), to open your business to a new audience (K-Mart),
and to launch a new product or business (DollarShaveClub.com). If you’re going
after a market you feel will respond well to humor, don’t be afraid to add it
into your marketing mix. It can be fun for your customers, and can make
marketing a lot more fun for you too.
