Super Bowl Reflections: Humor Strategy in Advertising

dr behice ece ilhan
3 min readJan 30, 2024

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It is that time of the year again….AdBowl

I like writing about Super Bowl advertising — before and after the actual event. Each year, as fall approaches, the surge in traffic to my Super Bowl blogs signals the onset of agency strategists crafting their briefs. And, it is that time of the year again, as we await to see the most expensive slots of advertising. Here are snippets from my previous analyses. The strategic thinking in the blogs make them still relevant for strategists.

Below I will share another blog I have written on another platform, delving into the enduring theme of humor in Super Bowl ads. In our polarized Zeitgeist, where cultural faultlines loom large, humor becomes a tactical choice for brands navigating this landscape. This blog, penned in September 2020, challenges conventional uses of humor in advertising and proposes strategic approaches. While the examples may need updating, the core message endures. For more on Super Bowl musings, don’t miss my previous blogs — they’ve garnered quite a following. 😉

Will humor be enough to capture cultural moments in this polarized and politicized Zeitgeist? Maybe. But, I am assuming that the brands that want to walk a fine line among cultural faultlines will heavily leverage humor. Especially the brands that do not have enough cultural and political authority to tell these types of stories….

STRATEGIC THINKING: HUMOR

Humor has always been the center of attention of strategists and creatives for its powerful role in lifting important advertising metrics such as likeability and memorability. Through these metrics, humor increases awareness and becomes a strong driver of a creative’s performance and effectiveness. Yet, the ‘enigma of humor’ — as one of our clients calls it — persists due to the cultural, generational, and personal variations about what is humorous. The challenge deepens as it is not as straightforward and, at times, very messy to assess the presence and/or intensity of humor in a creative.

Humor is not only a tone or a storytelling style. It does not have to be. I want to challenge to expand and expand to challenge this commonly perceived but limited use of humor in marketing communications. In this blog, I assess the role of humor in relation to possible strategies. Humor could take various roles as part of different branding and communication strategies. Below, I identify three different roles of humor in three different strategies….

Read the rest of the blog on my Cultural Faultlines newsletter on Substack.

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dr behice ece ilhan
dr behice ece ilhan

Written by dr behice ece ilhan

Strategist. Scholar. Sherpa. Storyteller

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