If You Want Their Money, Make 'Em Laugh
If the eye is the window to the soul, then laughter is the gateway to the wallet. Researchers and marketers alike have known for a long time the powerful effects of laughter on human bonding. Humor, done well, is persuasive.?
For decades, we’ve known that people are more willing to spend money with companies they trust. But even in a so-called “neutral environment” (as if there were such a thing) like a court, recent research has shown that the side provoking more laughter tends to win the case.?
Now, if you’re an astute reader and marketer, what I just said should have opened up a world of opportunity in your mind. But before I explain some practical tools for getting a laugh, we need to discuss some of the pitfalls.
For every good example of corporate humor, there are at least ten bad ones. If you want an example of corporate humor gone wrong, check out Quiznos’s Spongmonkeys ad. In the early 2000s, they decided to appropriate one of the internet’s first proto-memes and the results were…?
Quiznos went wrong because they were trying to be funny just to be funny. We see corporations do this all the time, particularly on TV. But you have to remember we aren’t comedians. And we definitely aren’t clowns. Making people laugh is never the end goal in sales. It’s a means to an end.
We also want to avoid falling back on dark, offensive, or disgusting humor. It’s also a good idea to steer clear of overly obnoxious humor like the Spongmonkeys ad.?
As a general guideline, short quips and self-deprecating humor weaved into your overall sales message is the way to go. We’re trying to endear people to our message, not annoy or offend them.?
Hopping from one foot to another while honking your clown nose might get a laugh out of someone, but it won’t sell more books, cars, services, or whatever you’re dealing in—well, unless you’re literally a clown. Then it might.??
Now, maybe you’re the unfunniest person to ever live and every joke you’ve ever told has been an epic flop. But thankfully, we’re not left to wander in the dark. Turns out, professional comedians have been asking these questions for a long time.?
So what triggers a laugh? To answer our question, we can turn to professional comedian Jerry Corley. He’s spent years developing the answer to this exact question. And he seems to have cracked the code. As it turns out, there isn’t just one way to get a laugh; there are nine. Here they are.
There’s no need to explain each and every one of these. Most of them are more useful in traditional comedy settings, but there are applications we can make to copywriting.?
Embarrassment, for instance. This is a great tool if you’re doing a personal before-and-after story to sell a product. For instance,
"I used to drive a beat-up old car and never knew if would get me where I was going. In fact, it was so bad that I had to pop the hood and disconnect the battery cable just to shut off the piece of crap.?It’s hard for most people to imagine the embarrassment of walking all the way to the front of your car, lifting the hood, and disconnecting the battery cable just so you can walk in to the store. And even worse was lifting the hood to get the car started again.?I was accused of stealing my own car on more than one occasion! I knew I didn’t want to live like that forever."
etc. etc.?
In copywriting, using an embarrassing situation to lighten the mood and show how you started your journey will often get a laugh. More importantly, it will build rapport and trust. There are also elements of superiority because it’s self-deprecating.??
We can also look at ambivalence. This is Dan Kennedy’s schtick. I like to employ it from time to time myself. If you read his books and get his emails, you’re probably familiar with his distaste for social media and all things Internet in general. But even he points out that he knows more than he lets on and needs to be careful not to discourage potential clients.?
Another one you may find useful is configurational humor. This is the trigger that most one-liners use. It’s a play on words designed to get a laugh. Mitch Hedberg built his career on this style of humor:
“I haven’t slept for 10 days. Because that would be too long.” - Mitch Hedburg?
I suggest you limit the use of this trigger to short-form copy like social media and perhaps email. And if you’re doing public speaking, having some jokes using configurational humor is almost mandatory.
But incongruity is probably the most useful of the bunch. One of the most popular ways to get a laugh is to draw a funny comparison or point out an absurdity between two dissimilar things.?
Jerry Seinfeld was a master of this type of humor. In his book “Is This Anything?” (which I highly recommend to anyone who wants to study humor), we find this:
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I’m wearing contact lenses now but I wore glasses at the age of 10.?
I thought I had to get glasses because I couldn’t tell what my parents looked like.?
I’d ask my mother for money and she’d always say,
"What do I look like, a bank?"
"Do I look like I’m made of money to you?"
The truth is, when you’re a kid your parents are the bank.?
Where else am I going to get money?
Am I going to walk into Chase Manhattan?
They’re going to say,
"What do I look like, your mother?"
"Beat it, four eyes…"?
- Jerry Seinfeld
There are multiple triggers in this joke. There’s the configurational trigger (also an incongruity) of literal corrective vision and seeing your mom as an unending supply of cash.
There’s the incongruity of mom and bank being confused for one another. There’s also the ambivalence of the bank’s response. And I’m sure if you spend more time on it you can discover more.?
Now, real quick, I’d like to dispel a popular myth about humor. It's easy to think that because you weren’t “born with it” (as if babies come out of the womb running their tight 5s), you can’t learn to write a funny joke.?
You have to realize that humor is like copywriting. It’s a skill that needs to be developed and honed. And based on my observations, it’s a valuable subskill of copywriting that most lower and mid-tier copywriters ignore.?
But it's also a skill that pays dividends if you take the time to learn it. I highly recommend that you look up the nine laugh triggers and experiment with ways to weave them into your copy.
Wishing you all the success in the world,
Sean Ryan
P.S. Take the guesswork out of your content and copywriting by letting me do it for you. Email me at seanryancopywriting@gmail for a complimentary copy audit.??