When cars ads meet comedy: driving success through humour

It’s a nice feeling when an ad you’ve worked on actually works. And, as much as I’d love to say that it was expected, the truth is that the brief to tackle the way people pronounce Hyundai filled me with dread. 

Why? The same reasons why any ad potentially ends badly; the easily angered general public; going viral for all the wrong reasons; cancel culture, just to name a few. And, let’s be honest, the UK is not a nation that takes well to being schooled. 

The truth is that the brief to tackle the way people pronounce Hyundai filled me with dread. 

That’s why we had to try to make the idea ‘funny’. Whilst humour can be a very narrow and sometime terrifying path, in our case, we took the risk. And, much to our surprise, the joke landed and ultimately paid off. 

Above: Sweeney worked on a recent Hyundai campaign that embraced comedy and was rewarded for doing so.

So, now that the fear has subsided, we can look back on all those decisions we made with 20/20 hindsight and dissect why humour actually can work well. According to recent research, from experts like Kantar and the IPA, funny ads work better. Apparently, it’s “the most powerful creative enhancer of receptivity”. Which, ironically, is the least humorous sentence ever written. 

Apparently, [comedy is] “the most powerful creative enhancer of receptivity”. Which, ironically, is the least humorous sentence ever written. 

Having worked on cars for the best part of two decades, ‘funny’ is rarely a word that I ever find on a client brief. (It did appear once, but it turned out to be a typo. What the client had actually wanted was for the ad to be ‘sunny’). When we have proof that humorous ads work better, it can be frustrating when almost all car clients just want to be taken so-very-seriously. They want to be premium, aspirational, stylish, but never funny. Car clients strive for an elevated status and fear that injecting humour into their ads might undermine the image they’ve worked so hard for. 

However, psychologists would say that this fear is misguided. Studies show that a sense of humour is a marker for intelligence and empathy, which is why we’re often more attracted to people who make us laugh. On the other hand, acting ‘high status’ can sometimes come across pompous, narcissistic and unapproachable. 

Above: Sweeney has sympathy for clients who are afraid of funny (there aren't any laughs in Surfer), but comedy isn't always about a punchline. 

There’s a measurable effect in your brain when you share a joke. The prefrontal cortex comes alive! This is the bit of your brain that connects pieces of information and is stimulated by a punchline. When you understand the joke another part of your brain becomes active. This is the ‘reward area’, which is the same area that becomes active when you enjoy all the good things in life, like chocolate. Now, I’m not saying that watching our Hyundai ad is on a par with the feeling you get after polishing off a Starbar, but I think we can all agree that it comes a close second.  

I have sympathy with clients who are afraid of ‘funny’. Guinness Surfer isn’t hilarious. There are few LOLs in John Lewis or hahaha’s in Honda Cog.

I have sympathy with clients who are afraid of ‘funny’. Guinness Surfer isn’t hilarious. There are few LOLs in John Lewis or hahaha’s in Honda Cog. But they are ‘funny’ if we understand that word through a different definition. And here’s where I quote Aristotle via Ken Dodd. “Aristotle thought that comedy was like a buckled mill wheel, something that wasn’t quite right. I think that comedy is a perception of incongruities, something slightly off-centre.”

In other words, comedy isn’t just a punchline, it’s something that makes things interesting. And being interesting is one of two non-negotiables when it comes to advertising, especially in the realm of car ads. The other is being likeable. When faced with the challenge of transforming how people perceive a car brand, it’s crucial to adopt a likeable approach.