Not every brand wants to be funny pt. 2: Cultural differences

To pick an appropriate brand name isn't too easy itself. But introducing that name in a foreign country is another level of difficulty. We've looked at examples of brands that didn't want to be funny. These were funny because they were translated badly, or not at all. Today's examples have to do with deeper levels: Culture, pronunciation or slang terms.

Baby food producer Gerber wanted to introduce their baby food in Africa. Their jars obviously feature their logo, with a baby prominently in frame. What they didn't consider is that it's common in Africa to put the main ingredient of the product on the jar. Baby food got an entirely different meaning like this.

Humour in advertising? Its effectiveness depends, according to Ace Metrix

Humour in advertising can be effective, but it isn't always effective. Millward Brown touched on this in their study, but today we're delving deeper into that with Ace Metrix's findings.

Ace Metrix first defines the reason why advertisers use humour. Simple: Connect with viewers and make them either start buying, or keep buying your product. Despite the fact that this is so simple, it's hard to do a large-scaly study to the effectiveness of humour. Ace Metrix bypassed the intimidatingly huge scale by just tackling it. They scored all television advertisements and got a clear picture of the effectiveness.

Their study resulted in the following key findings:

• About one-in-five advertisements on television is funny
• Certain industries and brands consistently produced humorous ads
• Humorous ads tend to be light on informative content
• Humorous ads tend to get higher levels of viewer attention, increased likeability and improved willingness to watch the ad again 
• While Super Bowl ads measured three times as funny as other ads, they were not more effective than other ads in that period.

Humour in advertising? Effective, according to Millward Brown

Different companies and people have different views on humour in advertising. I personally think it makes a commercial a lot better, if it's done well. I'm not of an authority, so let's take a look at someone who is. In this case, it's not a single person, but a company: Millward Brown.

Millward Brown thoroughly analysed humour used in advertising, pulling the concept apart and looking at it from every angle imaginable. Their first conclusion makes sense: Humour is a common element in advertising. About half of all ads around the globe are considered either “funny” or “light-hearted.”