EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Advertising is nonperson communication usually paid for and usually persuasive in nature about product, services of ideas by identified sponsors through the various media . Its aim is to arouse consumers’ attention to a commodity and induce them to use or buy it. But how to make the advertisement impressive is the main purpose of the advertisers. In order to enhance the appeal of an advertisement, the choice of words or phrases may make the advertisement attractive.
In advertisement there are many rhetoric features such as similar, metaphor, personification, hyperbole, repetition, contrast and humor. However, of all these features, humor is the most frequently used and loved by many people. It may leave a deep impression on people by its readability, wit and expressions.
Every year, advertisers spend millions of dollars producing ads that attempt to be humorous in order to facilitate message acceptance. Humor is often used in print and television media to sell products. How effective it is depends on how humor has been used. The below report will discuss the various types of humor used in advertising a product and how effective the ads have been on its consumers.
BACKGROUND
Advertising could be used to make the target audience aware of the existence of a product or service, and the benefit is confers to costumers. Advertising is part of promotional mix that also includes Trade promotions, sales promotions, Personal Selling and Sales Management (Clow & Baack, 2002). Everyday people are exposed to a large amount of television advertisements.
There are thousands of products in the market, and it is interesting to find out why consumers respond to certain advertisements and not others. Therefore, I thought it would be interesting to concentrate on humor which today is considered an important part in advertising one’s product.
DIMENSIONS OF HUMOR
The frequency with which humor appears and the enthusiasm of its supporters is not always justified by empirical measurement of results. The surface simplicity of humor gives way to more complex interactions when casual relationships are examined.
Nature of the product, the medium, target audience factors, communication goal, type of message and the placement of the message influence the responses of the consumer in the market place. The sense of humor is multi-dimensional and it contains the following 6 dimensions: Humor Production. A sense of playfulness. The ability to use humor to achieve social goals Personal recognition of humor Appreciation Of humor. Use Of humor as an adaptive mechanism. When advertisers use humorous advertising, it appears that they are utilizing dimensions four and five above.
In short, advertising humor refers primarily to the ability of the audiences to respond positively when one or others are portrayed in a playful manner. Humor is inherently attractive to consumers as it is a major component of our cultural value system.The above picture shows a very funny advertisement by Fevicol adhesive, so much so that it seems silly to an extent. In the above advertisement, Fevicol has continued with their ad campaign to re-enforce the Fevicol’s adhesive strength can help anything/ any person to fall off.
As we can see in the picture, the tree which has the Fevicol adhesive adverisesmtn around it has not shed its leaves, as compared to the other trees, which do not have Fevicol ads, have shed their leaves. In such kind of ads, the advertiser creates a silly situation to advertise their product/ service, while making it humorous as well. The advertiser has to keep in mind, not to overdo the exaggerated part, lest the advertisement does not remain funny & instead harms the products images. Target: The advertisement should always be essayed to the customer insights and what they feel about the product.
For instance what any prospective buyer would look for in any adhesive, something which gels so good that no one can dare think of breaking or separating it and that’s precisely which all the ads talk about. Critical Analysis: Be it the pakde rehna ads which has carpenters working in their shop while a movie is playing on the TV showing a couple hanging perilously from a rope, with a can of Fevicol kept on top of the TV, an amused carpenter looks at the can and then at the couple, while the heroine keeps shouting pakde rehna chodna nahi, as the carpenter picks up the can, the couple falls down.
The above advertisement is an examples showing Pun in advertising which uses figure of speech to create a humorous situation. In the above advertisement, a restaurant named Bursa Kebab an ethnic restaurant where they serve you kebabs on skewers. The billboard ad says that you can use it to stab your date…. The witty graphical representation of this situation will tickle anyone’s funny bone. In these categories of Ads, the advertisers create a situation which are witty & take jibe at situations, to register their product & service.
But, the advertiser has to keep the target audience in mind & keep the humor in a very general sense, so that everyone is able to understand the wit of the situation Pun Advertising is an effective way for the companies to promote their products. To gain the market among the severe competition, it is important to carry out a wonderful advertisement to show their products, and figures of speech is an effective way to achieve the purpose. Pun in English advertisement has many forms of expression such as pun on polysemy, homonymy, parody, grammar, illustration and words.
The above print ad campaign is a perfect example to show how sarcasm is used to create silly situations out of the many movies being released at that time. Amul has been exceptionally good in using sarcasm to take a jibe at the current affair situations. In the above banners they have used their brand mascot to impersonate the characters of different people and make sarcastic remarks on their situations. For example, in the bottom right corner banner, a mockery has been made of the fight between.
Through all the events taking place in the country, Amul always had a reply to it. It brings about the real mixture of extraordinary creativity and current affairs. When the first escalator in Mumbai in 1979 was started, Amul celebrated with a slogan ‘Automatically Amul’. When the city witnessed a power shortage, the Amul girl said ‘Ta ta power? Amul, Unlimited Supply’. When the Mumbai police were dealing with underworld don Dawood Ibrahim’s Sister Haseena Parkar in cases ranging from extortion to cheating and forgery in May this year, the hoarding simply said ‘Haseena Maan Jayegi? In the early ‘90s, when the colas were getting popular, the tongue-in-cheek remark was ‘Eat the Real Thing’.
When the world feared a collapse on Y2K, Amul girl interpreted the phenomenon as ‘Yes to Khana’. The Amul girl, apart from promoting a $1-billion brand, has been bringing smiles to millions. And this smile has spelt a huge success and changed the livelihood of over 2. 5 million Gujarat farmers. The sales figures of Amul butter have jumped from a few lakh rupees in 1966 to over Rs 500 crores now.
Amul ads have been the longest running ads and it still hasn’t lost its charm with it’s never – changing famous moppet in polka dotted frock and a half pony tied up. When using sarcasm as a tool in advertising your product, the advertiser has to make sure that the sarcasm is not too dominating, else the audience might not pay attention to the advertised product/ service. Also the target audience should be able to understand the sarcasm.
Silliness though if used correctly as in this ad, can be a very effective advertising technique. The key to silliness though is to carry it to almost ludicrous extremes. That’s what makes it interesting—the sweeping silliness. A stupid humor can backfire and become simply false advertising. The above commercial “Mosquito,” the award-winning TV commercial for TABASCO® brand Pepper Sauce was first aired on national television in 1998. Here Tabasco ran a simple, wordless Super bowl ad that was both entertaining and effective at communicating the brand’s primary benefit.
The Tabasco commercial shows a man sitting, eating pizza on his front porch. Before each bite, he splashes on a liberal dose of Tabasco sauce. A mosquito flies in, bites the guy on the hand, and flies off. A second later, we see the mosquito explode in a mass of flames. Cut to the guy chewing and smiling, Tabasco bottle clearly displayed on screen. The cost of making the commercial has been around $50,000 that earned the company over $25,000,000!!! {text:list-item} {draw:frame} In the above advertisement, we can see a lady who is bloated up because of gas, so much so that she is floating on the room ceiling.
His punch line of the product being sold is that they relieve a person suffering from gastric problems, very quickly. We can see humor arising from this absurd situation, to advertise the product to their advantage In these ads, the advertiser makes a silly situation to his stride to create humor while advertising their product/ service. But the advertiser has to make sure that the silliness is not overdone & remains funny.
HUMOR OVERSHADOWING THE BRAND
In the keystone light commercial, one has to agree the humor content is real good. But after watching the ad, don’t you feel what is the keystone light brand doing in it? Through this ad all I want to say is promoting your product through humor is good but one should remember humor should not overshadow your brand. The viewer may like the ad but may not associate the ad with your product which results in loss of the message the brand wanted to give to its consumers. Caution: Humor does not have to be classy all the time, but it should neither be slapstick nor such that it offends the sensibilities of a certain section of people. Also everything might not be funny for everyone.
So if an advertisement takes a pot shot at certain sections of society even though they may not be the intended target segment they ploy will backfire. So when you want to be funny stay away from sensitive topics and issues, however rib tickling they might seem. CONCLUSION Companies spend billions of dollars every year to create humorous prime time television advertisements because they feel humor is an effective way to gain attention in advertisements. Humor used in magazine, television and radio advertisements has a positive effect on audience.
Humorous advertisements normally outperform non-humorous advertisements. A really good humor ad is fun to see. These kinds of ads attract attention and are remembered for a longer time. This way the consumer will associate the message the ad is projecting with the image of the brand. Humor makes the consumer like the product in turn which improves the brand image of the company. Advertising humor works best with established and commonly purchased products. Humor in advertising works for business services, familiar items, and products we all know.
But corporate image and industrial advertising are serious business. Unknown, risky, expensive, or sensitive products are not normally suited to the lighter touch of advertising humor. Advertising humor also needs to be product specific. We have all seen funny ads we liked so much that we forgot what is being sold. Advertising humor must relate directly to ones business or products if it wants to be remembered. Advertising humor also needs to be well suited to its audience. If the customer doesn’t get the joke, then the joke will be on the product itself.
A sophisticated audience will understand your irony, satire, and puns, but a young audience may only understand slapstick comedy or a silly cartoon caricature. Inside jokes can be effective if the recipient understands that it was done for them, but nobody else will get it. Humor in essence is like spices. Add too little and the food could be bland. Add too much and it will lose its flavor. So the right promotional mix with just a dash of humor could reap big benefits. This is where one of the most humorous and effective series of advertisements to hit Indian television, the Fevicol advertisements pulls off a winner.
The humor was inseparably entwined with the adhesive properties of the product, a fact that many brands need to make an example of. Humor induced brand recall should not be vague; it should provide an association in the customers mind to what the product stands for.
REFERENCES
- http://humor. about. com/od/tvadvertisinghumor/TV_Advertising_Humor_Funny_Television_Commercials. htm
- http://srinathblogs. blogspot. com/2006/07/humor-in-advertisingnot-so-funny_22. html
- http://findarticles. com/p/articles/mi_m0FNP/is_8_41/ai_85046592/
