The following is an excerpt from Michael Kerr’s latest book, The Humor Advantage: Why Some Businesses Are Laughing All the Way to the Bank.
Being Outrageous Can Make Your Message Contagious
Dave Carroll’s life changed the day United Airlines broke his guitar. On his way to a gig with his band, The Sons of Maxwell, Carroll was astonished to see the baggage handlers outside his plane tossing about his prized guitar. Astonishment morphed into months of frustration and anger upon discovering the guitar was in fact severely damaged and that United Airlines wouldn’t pay for it because of what amounted to a policy loophole. So Dave Carroll sought recourse the only way he knew how. He wrote a song. In fact, he wrote three songs about the saga and produced three corresponding music videos.
The first music video went viral on You Tube (at the time of writing the first video in the series has reaped over 14 million views) and the story is estimated to have touched 100 million different people worldwide.
Yes, the song touched a nerve with disgruntled passengers and customers everywhere who salivate at the thought of meting out such sweet revenge, and yes, David Carroll and his band are great musicians so they created a catchy little ditty, but what likely made the entire video a phenomenon was the use of humor. Lyrics such as, “I should have flown with someone else or gone by car…because United breaks guitars,” and hilarious visuals retelling the story sent the video soaring.
If you want people to internalize your safety messages, embody your corporate values, understand the latest changes made to the policy manual or to finally, once and for all, figure out that it’s not 
cool to leave a festering stack of dirty dishes in the lunchroom sink, then don’t be afraid to try something a little déjà new that will help your message go viral–even if the virus need only spread throughout the 14th floor of your office building.
It’s really no shocker that humor helps grab a hold of people’s attention – there’s a reason after all, that U.S. advertisers spend between $20 and $60 billion dollars a year trying to make people laugh and why 73% of all the Super Bowl ads use humor. As ad man Arnie DiGeorge says, “In a world of clutter, you must entertain before you educate.”
And in an office full of e-mails, texts, memos, reports and endless distractions, it can’t hurt to be a little entertaining to help your messages cut through the morass. Using humor to deliver a message is akin to the sugar in the coffee syrup trick: It makes any message go down easier without ramming it down anyone’s throat.
A comprehensive review of the research into the benefits of humor in advertising by Fred K. Beard in the book “Humor in the Advertising Business,” revealed the following findings:
- Humor helps attract attention
- Humor can enhance memory and comprehension
- Humor is, in some situations, more persuasive that neutral appeals
- Humor tends to enhance the likability and credibility of the source
- How much people like ads is one of the biggest predictors of sales success (likeability matters)
Now of course humor doesn’t always work. We’ve all seen ads that have attempted to use humor and flopped miserably, maybe because they’re offensive or they’re simply not funny. So this all comes with a careful reading of the fine print. The point is that if humor–when done right–can help advertisers sell their wares effectively, it can help you deliver important workplace messages.
All of the extensive research into the use of humor in advertising agrees with one central tenant: To be effective the humor needs to be relevant. Humor for the sake of humor can certainly grab attention and make people feel good, but to be persuasive the humor needs to directly relate to the product or message. Oh, and the humor needs to be funny (go figure).
A study reported in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology found that humor can, under certain conditions, be highly persuasive when presenting a message that people may disagree with because the humor serves as a distraction. When people know they are being sold something or know they are trying to be persuaded of something they disagree with, they tend to immediately rehearse counterarguments. But distract them with humor so people don’t feel as though the message is being forced on them and they are more likely to be persuaded. And if the humor draws people in and makes them think about an issue, that too, the research shows, helps persuade people.
Of course there are many variables depending on the message, the product and the audience. A study in the Journal of Advertising, for example, came to the rather obvious conclusion that people 
with a high NFH (need for humor in their lives) respond better to humorous ads than people with a low NFH. (You too can sound like a humor researcher by asking people at your next dinner party what their NFH factor is.) Younger, well educated men tend to respond the best to humor. And smart people with a high NFH enjoy–wait for it–intelligent humor.
Now you don’t need to hire a Wall Street ad firm the next time you’re starting a workplace campaign to encourage people to wash their hands or fill out their 87-TW4s correctly. But taking the time to think outside the memo or to brainstorm a few creative and funny approaches with colleagues will likely pay off in the long run. Again, it’s about being effective, not efficient. It’s about getting results.
So when shoppers see those signs popping up more and more in stores reading: “Any Unattended Children Will be Sold to the Circus” or “Unattended Children Will Be Given a Free Espresso and Puppy” the hope is that people will smile, maybe like the store owner a little more, and get the point without having to be hammered over the head.
A simple sign that evokes a smile can do wonders, but sometimes more outrageous tactics are needed to send an effective message. In 2007 the mayor of Bogota, Columbia deployed 400 mimes throughout the city to encourage pedestrians and motorists to behave responsibly and to mock bad behaviors. The program was a huge success. (And just when you thought it was okay to start hating mimes again.)
Regardless of how serious the message is, a bit of humor can help. The Saanich Police Department on Vancouver Island, B.C. increased the number of visitors to their website by one third when they started using witty, attention-grabbing headlines such as, “The Stupid Criminal of the Month Award,” “A Mr. Bean Style Robbery,” “Who Wears a Balaclava During Summer?” and “The Chip Bandits.” Some of the press releases have even gone viral because of their humorous tone.
Going viral is of course a huge goal in cyberspace. Advertisers, product managers, aspiring rock bands, and wannabe film-producers all pray to the social media gods that their latest upload to You Tube will go viral. Humor certainly isn’t the only means of making a video or online message go viral, but a cursory scan of the most viewed on-line videos in any given year shows that people clearly have a fondness for sharing videos that are outrageously funny.
In their book, Viral Video Manifesto, Stephen Voltz and Fritz Grobe recount how numerous businesses have laughed all the way to the bank by creating outrageously contagious videos. Blendtec’s 
“Will it Blend?” series of quirky videos showing various objects being ripped to shreds in one of their blenders (ranging from a Justin Bieber doll to an iPhone) have been viewed by millions around the globe, pushing sales of their blenders up by 700%. No matter how you slice it and dice it, those are impressive numbers.
A video featuring a dancing flash mob at Liverpool train station has been viewed by tens of millions of people. At the very end of the video a brief message “Life’s for Sharing – T-Mobile” appears. What Voltz and Grobe refers to as the “light branding” by T-Mobile in this video contributed to a 22% increase in sales of T-Mobile handsets.
Before we slide to deeply into the realm of marketing and advertising (an entire topic and book unto itself), I want to loop back to the central point. Humor can clearly help companies laugh all the way to the bank when it comes to promoting their brand and products, and it’d be well worth your while to consider using either a little or a lot of humor in your next PR or ad campaign. But the broader message in terms of creating a successful culture that drives business success is simply this: If using humor and daring to be a little outrageous can help you stand out in cyberspace or during the Super Bowl, then there’s no reason to think it can’t help you achieve any of your business communication goals.
Michael Kerr, 2015. Michael Kerr is an international Hall of Fame business speaker who is known as a leading authority on workplace culture and humor in the workplace. He is also the author of 8 books, including The Humor Advantage, The Jerk-Free Workplace, and Hire, Inspire, and Fuel Their Fire.
