Picking the Right Marketing Punchlines
The better you understand your shared perspective with customers, the more likely you are to develop meaningful messaging that converts future customers.
With humor, it can seem like a love or hate response. Instead of bland communications that don’t resonate, jokes have the potential to backfire. That’s because humor can evoke some pretty intense emotions.
Ah, the double-edged sword of comedy. Hello darkness, my old friend.
Humor isn’t inherently offensive though. Offensiveness is really a matter of how extreme of a view you hold on a given matter, as well the held perspective itself. For instance, take my personal hatred of marketing puns:
Why do I hate 90% of marketing puns?
- Puns are cheap jokes, making them widely regarded as the lowest form of humor.
- Puns aren’t meaningful, which is why most people will just cringe and brush them off.
- Puns don’t position your brand as a thought leader unless your brand sells dad jokes.
I realize that I’ve probably offended 85% of email marketers. I don’t care. Sit with my words.
Holding a Strong Business Perspective
Holding a strong perspective on anything scares most marketers. That’s because the more extreme of a position you hold, the more people will love or hate you. That’s scary stuff.
As humans, we innately fear rejection. However, we also forget that indifference is a form of rejection. In fact, indifference is really the worst form of rejection because it comes without any constructive feedback.
In marketing, what matters that we agree on the topics that matter: the challenges that our products and services solve, as well as the approaches we take to solving those challenges.
To be successful in picking punchlines based on your business perspective, you have to look to your core values, which should align with those of your customers. Once you’ve determined the shared perspectives, you can develop the appropriate punchlines.
Humor can then be leveraged to either more delicately, or more powerfully, deliver your perspective to your target audiences. Remember, humor isn’t inherently offensive. Unfiltered thoughts are.
For the best results, stick with quips based on more commonly shared experiences. Of course, this is easier said than done. If it were easy, Jerry Seinfeld wouldn’t be worth $950 million.
These gems of comedic fodder are what we call ‘universally-held beliefs’. For example, we all hate delayed gratification, we all hate suffering, and we all hate traffic.
Creating Punchlines Based on Pain Points
Life is inherently annoying because pain points exist in all areas of it – inefficient business models, unfulfilling jobs, crazy relatives, aggravating colleagues – sometimes it feels like we can’t escape the madness!
That’s why consumerism exists. We buy things and experiences to allow ourselves to escape life’s unnerving frustrations – even if it’s only momentarily. For some customers, our products and services provide more long-term, sustainable solutions to these universally annoying conflicts that exist in life.
In the business world, these solutions might not be as widely regaled as the iPhone, but for the customers served, our products and services can be equally as appreciated.
You can be a superhero in khakis – just ask any accountant on April 13th.
That’s because no matter how technical or bland the solution may seem, the evoked emotion is incredibly real for the individuals dealing with that specific challenge.
For the purposes of marketing, the pain points you solve should be the main target of the punchlines you create.
Crafting Punchlines about People & Perspectives
Naturally, it’s people who cause a large majority of the pain points we experience in life.
Sometimes the pain is accidental, sometimes it’s purposeful.
Sometimes it’s caused by other people, sometimes it’s caused by ourselves.
Sometimes life doesn’t rhyme, because we don’t live in a children’s book.
Sometimes Dr. Seuss left out the full scope of life’s unexpected ‘marvels’.
This is adulthood. Welcome to uncertainty + responsibility.
The point is, when we poke fun at people and their held beliefs, it’s important to consider multiple perspectives because life is filled with conflicting information.
There are few straightforward truths in this wild world. Never forget that.
By observing an idea across multiple perspectives, we can capture a more holistic ‘truth’ by identifying the perspective that most closely aligns with all of the information available.
My dad calls it “the triangulation of data”… such a nerd.
Offering multiple perspectives also gives people an ‘out’ for their egos, allowing them to consider your perspective without forcing them to accept any singular truth. That keeps their defenses down and ears open. It also demonstrates respect.
When we try to shift perspectives in life, we create conflict in held beliefs, known as cognitive dissonance, which naturally causes anxiety and defensiveness.
*Enter the bloodied battlefield in business known as sales.*
Want to win the war? Look to comedians. By leveraging the power of humor, comedians regularly navigate the treacherous landscape of this world to offer unexpected, but often accurate truths not previously considered.
Comedians keep the energy upbeat, and in the end, they successfully shift perspectives.
Practice Creates Precision
Humor is tricky because people don’t practice it in a disciplined manner. Cracking a clever quip in a one-on-one conversation is completely different than making an audience laugh – online or live.
As a standup comic, I’ve learned this brutal truth the hard way. Over and over again.
However, through the indescribable pain of repeatedly bombing on stage, comics gain an unparalleled understanding of how to leverage language to generate laughter.
We rise from the ashes of our terribly lame jokes to produce an act worthy of maintaining an audience’s attention. It takes time. It takes patience. It takes stubbornness. It takes resiliency. It takes a degree of insanity.
Yes, you have to be inherently funny to be a comic, but my experience has taught me that the most successful comedians are just hard workers who’ve committed to mastering their craft.
Marketers have a few things going for them which makes applying humor to marketing campaigns significantly easier than standup comedy. Marketers have context, data, and very low audience expectations for humor.
If you’d like to see the true power of humor integrated into a marketing campaign, hire Bright Humor to support your copywriting efforts. Together, we can produce truly remarkable content that engages audiences, shifts perspectives, and converts readers.
By focusing on our areas of expertise, we can partner to develop thought leadership that will blow away your audiences – and your competition.
And the folks that don’t like the jokes?
Let the haters hate as you count your new customers.
