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Humor in advertising is the use of comedic content to persuade the consumer into buying a particular product. Between television, print, radio, and online advertising, the typical American now views around 120 comedic ads per day. By including humor in these advertisements, copywriters aim to both improve the audience's attitude toward the ad (Aad) and make the advertisement memorable. If both goals are met, it is likely that the consumer will feel positively toward the product's brand (Abr). This is an important factor in advertising efficacy and a successful predictor of consumer tendencies.

Humor's Impact on Effective Advertising
Humor often improves a consumer’s attitude towards an advertisement (Aad). Positive Aad increases an advertisement’s effectiveness in two ways – brand likability and brand linkage.

First, a successful advertisement will generate positive feelings toward the brand itself. According to the affect transfer theory, the way a consumer feels toward an advertisement will be reflected in their view of the brand. Thus, if humor creates a positive Aad, it is also improving the brand’s image. For instance, if a customer believes the message of an advertisement that states “restaurant x cooks a great hamburger,” then the customer will think “restaurant x is great.”

Second, an advertisement needs to create easy brand linkage. When used appropriately (see How Humor Impacts a Viewer's Memory of an Advertisement), humor can improve the consumer’s memory of an advertisement. Attitude toward an advertisement may assist in the memorization process. If step one – positive Aad – was achieved, then the consumer will identify the brand as positive, increasing the chance of him or her purchasing that brand’s products.

Humor's Impact on Aad
Humor impacts Aad in three significant ways. First, comedy can serve as an attention grabber. In the overload of media advertising going on today, simply convincing a consumer to pay attention to an advertisement is an important first step. Second, humor may improve the overall likability of an advertisement. If consumers enjoy an ad, there is a greater chance they will like the product and the brand, thus leading to an increased chance of purchase. Third, humor can enhance a viewer's memory for an advertisement, product, and brand. Whether humor adds to or distracts from a consumer's memory has been disputed since the 1960s. However, today's research has proven that when an appropriate mix of humor complexity and relatedness is used in an ad, it can serve as an effective memory enhancer.

Humor Serves as an Attention Grabber: Reducing Resistance
Humor can be used to grab a viewer’s attention and distract from the resistance inducing features of an ad. Consumers are feeling more skeptical than ever because of the overload of advertising in everyday life. In reaction to this, consumers are creating implicit walls to protect themselves from the brainwashing of advertising. Thus, simply convincing consumers to listen to an advertisement has become a vital first step in marketing. Humor helps buyers feel comfortable, as they often sense an invasion of privacy from the media overload. Humor may also improve the believability of advertisements, as many consumers feel ads have been skewed and exaggerated to sell products.

When consumers create the implicit resistance walls, their memory of the product and brand is tarnished. However when similar resistance inducing advertisements are paired with some form of humor, consumers are able to recall many more details from the humorous ads than the non-humorous, and the overall Aad is stronger.

Humor serves a similar role when paired with other emotional advertising strategies such as fear advertising. Fear ads identify the negative consequences of not using a product. For instance, a fear ad for sun tan lotion would state if the product is not used, you may develop skin cancer. Fear is a common emotion targeted by copywriters to persuade, but it has also been found to draw resistance from viewers. Consumers will tune out fear advertising or even change the channel, station, website, etc. Adding humor to a fear advertisement lessens this resistance and helps to maintain a consumer’s attention. Calculating an advertisements fear arousal identifies how strongly the ad uses fear to convey its message. Most often the Abr developed from the attitutde towards an advertisment with high fear arousal is much stronger in the presence of humor than without. In addition, when humor is absent, Abr decreases as the advertisement's fear arousal increases.

Humor Improves Likability
Humor can improve Aad in a consumer through pure likability. When consumers are presented with humorous advertisements versus non-humorous, the buyers have been found to find the humorous more enjoyable, and feel a significant preference toward the funnier ad. Likewise, when purchase decisions are examined in the short run, it is much more likely that the consumers will select to buy the goods previously advertised with humor. While this may only be relevant in the short run where consumers have not had ample time to forget the information presented to them, consumer tendencies are still important to understand for in store advertising. For instance, with the understand that humor improves likability, it can be inferred that if on a shelf two products share similar quality and value, but only one is advertised with comedy, consumers are more likely to select the humorously advertised product.

Humor Impacts a Viewer's Memory of an Advertisement
Whether humor enhances or detracts from a consumer’s memory is the most debated question in the field. Many researchers feel that if the consumer likes an advertisement, they will remember the ad. However, the majority feel that humor is actually a distraction from the message of the advertisement. They think that while the joke may be enjoyed, it will be remembered with no additional context and memory of the brand will be lost.

However, there is a scenario in which humor can be used to add likability without distracting the viewer from the brand. Two aspects of humor directly relate to brand linkage – humor complexity and humor relatedness. When a commercial contains humor with a high level of complexity and relatedness, then humor enhances brand linkage and does not serve as a distraction.

When either humor complexity, or humor relatedness is not at its highest potential, memory of the advertisement has been found to be worse for humorous advertisements than non-humorous. Yet when the highest level of humor complexity is paired with the highest level of humor relatedness, there is a significant increase in a consumer's memory for the brand, brand approval, and overall enjoyment of the advertisement.

Humor Complexity
To calculate humor complexity, comedy is sorted into three subcategories – arousal, incongruity resolution, and disparagement. Total humor complexity is then derived by how many of these subcategories a joke contains. If the humor in an ad contains all three subcategories, it contains the highest level of humor complexity. Containing only one subcategory earns the lowest complexity.

Humor Relatedness
Humor relatedness describes how closely comedy in a commercial relates with the brand or product it is advertising. If humor is used strictly for comedy sake, it will serve as a distraction. Conversely, if humor is used as a direct supplement of the advertisement’s message, it can serve as a memory enhancer.