Minicast: Brand Voice - Funny

Listen along on Spotify or Anchor.

Hello friends. I asked Tracy If I could do this mini-cast on humor and brand voice. Because who doesn’t love a good laugh.

But humor is not universal. What I find funny is not what Tracy's find funny. For example, Tracy loves the dry wit of John Oliver. For me, visual humor and a good one liners cracks me up. And so Letter Kenny tops my list.

Humor can be a power tool when developing your brand voice. It is a great strategy...and it can work well. But it has to make sense and doesn’t work for everyone. But try it out. And see which kind of humor you could use?

Masterclass lists 13 types of humor. We are not going to list those here, but we will link to them here. Instead, we will break down a few of our personal faves, and companies that exemplify them.

• Deadpan comedy: This style of dry comedy evokes laughter through the intentional lack of emotion and facial expression while talking about absurd topics. We see this in the original Dollar Shave Club ads. And also in the Dropps Laundry ads on YouTube, which featured the owner railing on the shortfalls of mainstream detergents, while straight-faced…and naked.

• Farce is our second type of humor. Farce centers around exaggerated characters dealing with improbable situations. A great example of this is Mayhem campaign by Allstate. This guy was constantly attacking as an unnatural disaster, implying the need for insurance. One of our most recent faves includes Mayhem as a cat. Mayhem has been around since 2010, which speaks volumes to his effectiveness .

• Our third type is Surreal humor: Surreal focuses on absurd situations that defy logic and reason. Think Monty Python. Old Spice used this type of humor when they relaunched the brand, also in 2010 with Stephen Moore as “The Man your man can smell like”. These appeared everywhere including movie theaters. They were bizarre, funny and incredibly memorable.

• The last is Tragicomedy: Yes, Tragicomedy. I learned something new today. This combines comedic elements with serious subjects to explore different aspects of the human experience. Now, it is advisable not to push the envelope here, as there are areas of human life that are not approachable as means for humor. But, it works for brands like Frida, who sells parenting product. They take the realities of parenthood, and blatantly discuss them --- such as boogers, poop, and more. Gross. Their mission: Preparing parents for the unfiltered realities of parenthood with simple-yet-genius solutions that get the job done. Perfect.

These are just 4 of the types of humor. Try some out. Ig makes sense for your brand, then find your specific type, and add it to website content, social media posts, marketing brochures – as part your brand voice.

We'd love to hear, too! Who doesn’t love to laugh.