Buying humour

David Ogilvy did not like funny television commercials. He said, “No-one buys from a clown.”
He liked to construct rational messages which drew people in with charm and wit, yes, but which persuaded them to part with their hard-earned cash by giving darned good reasons for doing so.

The trouble is, human beings aren’t really rational.
Ask any husband about his wife. Or any wife about her husband.
People do things for reasons they often can’t explain even to themselves. Often this is because there has been a huge emotional response to a situation; to a person; hey, even to an advertising message.

Coca-Cola was the first mega-brand to tap into this when it got a United Nations of teenagers to sing “I’d like to buy the world a Coke” way back in the 1970’s.
That was advertising with a big mushy heart.

But advertising can work just as effectively when it’s just plain funny.
A commercial that makes you laugh out loud is a brand saying, “We’d like you to like us. And we know we are interrupting you here so we’ll try to be as neighbourly about it as possible.”

So here are a couple of recent neighbourly ads. One from Doug Agency Toronto for the Canadian Short Film Festival and one from Forsman and Bodenfors, Stockholm, for Tele-2.