Selling it with a smile

Being funny as a brand is not a new thing. Fevicol, Ambuja Cement and Fogg among others have made a virtue of being humorous in their pitch. Fevicol’s The Unbreakable Egg (1996), Moochwali (2004), Joint Family (2008) or the more recent Jugalbandi ad (2024) have all played the humour card with great aplomb. For their part, Fogg’s one-line drops like “Kya chal raha hai? Fogg chal raha hai?” have become conversation starters.

If the Omnicom study is anything to go by, it’s time to give humour the red carpet treatment. The reason is not far to seek. Research highlights compressed initial reaction windows for these new age consumers — roughly 5 seconds for Gen Alpha and 8 seconds for Gen Z. Experts say that while these consumer cohorts do not necessarily have a broken attention span, they have developed selective attention and high-speed filtering mechanisms in response to digital saturation.

Mind you, this is a cognitive defense mechanism against infinite scrolling and data overload rather than a neurological deficit. “In that environment, a regular product advertisement can easily get lost. But if something makes them laugh, they are more likely to stop scrolling, watch it and share it with others,” says Vibhor Gulati, founder, Defodio Digital.

However, because these generations face immense digital saturation, traditional humour will not work. Thanks to algorithm-driven overexposure, a joke that would remain funny to older generations for years becomes “cringe” to Gen Z and Alpha in weeks, if not days.

So what’s the best way to do humour? How does a brand ensure it doesn’t make a mess like Zomato did with its 2023 “Kachra” campaign for World Environment Day, which it had to withdraw and apologise for? 

Humanising the brand

Gulati says jokes click when they are embedded in the product story naturally. A la Fevicol. The brand’s advertisements were never too long and did not require any explanation. Quite a few brands are also doing the job well.

Consider Flipkart’s Big Billion Days credential check that broke on September 24. Created with McCann, this campaign mocks brands that throw words like “rizz” or “no cap” out of context. It directs users to an interactive site to clear CAPTCHA-style tests on internet behaviour and unlock sale offers, making cultural fluency the key to a reward.

Or take the recent campaign by D2C jewellery brand Palmonas that features actors Shraddha Kapoor and Amrita Rao. The campaign draws on their association with the film Vivah and uses playful banter to bring nostalgia into a jewellery story. “It’s a good example of how a familiar cultural reference can make a product campaign more engaging,” adds Gulati.

At times, influencers and creators understand these cultural references better than traditional agencies, say experts. This is because creators can test humour at scale that copywriters are often unable to do. “Creators know what lands because they have tried it repeatedly in front of real audiences. That builds a muscle advertising often lacks. A copywriter can say, ‘I think this is funny’. A creator will say, ‘I made 10,000 people laugh with this’,” says Dhruv Sachdeva, chief creative officer and founder of independent agency Humour Me.

Above everything else, advertising agencies must go for what experts call the “zero-second” hook. The traditional setup-and-punchline ad structure cuts no ice with the new consumer because she tends to scroll away before the punchline arrives. The humour must be visual and all there from the very first frame. Even when conceptualising an ad for television the situation must be optimised for short-form platforms like YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels, where a full ad can be compressed into 5-to-5 second loops. Needless to say, the way campaigns are conceptualised by ad agencies is changing already. Brands are increasingly looking at work that is shareable and has the potential to travel on social media.