Using Humor in Your Content

My weekends are hardly ever anything to write about.

Recently, though, I spent a rainy Saturday afternoon assembling a credenza — an affordable piece of furniture manufactured by Sauder, a company outside of Toledo, Ohio. I purchased it online from the Nebraska Furniture Mart.

Before I unpacked the box, which had been sitting in the corner of my home office for a couple of weeks, I checked the weather one last time. The steady downpour of a Midwest drencher, along with the Weather app on my phone, told me to abandon all thoughts of the golf course.

So I turned my gaze to the box and settled in to find my Zen, on this particular Saturday, with an Allen wrench instead of a seven iron. Along the way, I would find out how effective a subtle and strategic use of humor can be in building customer goodwill.

The Task at Hand

I knew there would be some assembly required when I ordered the credenza. No big deal.

I unpacked the box and began to neatly arrange all the contents on the floor:

• 20 structural pieces, such as shelves, doors, skirts, and side and back panels
• 125 pieces of hardware, including cams, cam screws, wooden dowels, hinges, pan head screws, flat head screws, machine screws and hex head screws
• 1 tiny little Allen wrench

As I leafed through the owner's manual, I couldn't help but notice that the English language assembly instructions were 20 pages long. Normally, I don't read instructions. I don't have the patience. But I made an exception and decided that a little time prepping might make things go faster.

On page one of the instruction manual, I noticed this strange comment: "Sauder products have been engineered to be better, stronger and faster . . . well, not faster, obviously."

I wasn't quite picking up what they were laying down yet, but I soon would.

An Instruction Manual Sprinkled with Humor

It was an attractive piece of furniture. At least it suited my taste — kind of a contemporary straight-line style that mixed wood and metal. I was happy with my purchase.

But it took me — uninterrupted — three and a half hours to assemble.

Normally that might be a major "dissatisfier" for me. But not this time. In fact, spending the afternoon assembling the credenza wasn't weighing on me at all.

First, the assembly instructions were pristinely clear — thank goodness — and as a writer I admired the quality of the work. Instructions are extremely hard to write and demand a good amount of discipline.

Second, the instructions were sprinkled with just the right amount of humor — about how long it takes to assemble the product — to keep me from feeling hoodwinked or bamboozled or taken for a ride.

The instructions warned me that snacks would be an essential tool and encouraged me to have snacks and drinks ready from the get go. About halfway through, one step in the instructions told me to take a break to refresh my drink. My favorite came toward the end, when it was time to stand the unit upright:

Once I finished the credenza, I visited Sauder's website to see if they employed any humor elsewhere with their brand. I found it only in the FAQs and only with questions regarding assembly time. Question: How long does it take to assemble a piece of Sauder furniture? Answer: [. . .] Working with someone/bribery is a great way to cut down your workload.

What I Liked About Their Use of Humor

Most companies shy away from using humor, because the risk of giving offense or creating confusion can be so high. Sauder's approach, though, completely mitigated all the standard concerns.

• It was post sale. Not to be crass, but they already had my money.
• It was in print. So it would not easily spiral into social media commentary.
• The timing was right. Delivered when the customer was ready to assemble the product.
• It was minimal. The humorous tidbits made up less than .1% of the instructional content.
• It was actually helpful. Like comic relief in the middle of a dramatic movie, it helped relieve the tension.

What I liked more than anything was the honesty of it all. They didn't ignore or deny the inescapable truth that their product takes a long time to assemble. In acknowledging this truth, they showed respect for their customer and did what they could to empathize by trying to share a laugh.

Top of Funnel, Middle of Funnel, Bottom of Funnel

Most brands use humor for Top of Funnel material, to get people engaged. Dr. James Barry offers a good study of this with his article "A Typological Examination of Effective Humor for Content Marketing." Another nice overview comes from Emily Gaudette with her article "When to Use Humor in Content Marketing."

Some brands would fall flat without humor, as these two authors note — for example, food, beer and candy. Without humor, would we be making our snack purchases based on an appeal to logic? Boring. Some brands, on the other hand, should probably never use humor — for example, highly emotional brands in healthcare or expensive luxury brands.

But some brands in the B2B category could effectively employ humor to make technical subjects more approachable and to increase audience engagement with complicated stories. (That feels like a post for another time.)

While Sauder's humor was post sale, it was definitely a strategic effort to maintain a positive customer experience, diminish complaints and perhaps smooth the way to repeat sales.

I admit, even knowing what I know now, I've already ordered a lateral bookcase from them. And I look forward to working with my Allen wrench again any day now.

__________________________________________________________________________