Humor in advertising: the funniest commercials are hits on the web
Web video continues to amaze and amuse users, and the options for watching high quality content continue to expand. Now advertisers are getting in on the game, but not in the conventional (i.e. Google-run) way. Time Warner’s popular website, Very Funny Ads, highlights the best and funniest commercials from around the world. Launched in 2006 to coincide with TBS’s annual World’s Funniest Commercials special, the site gives viewers access to highly entertaining and frequently updated content while showcasing the brightest talent of the advertising world and the companies who use humor to hawk their products.
Advertising firms are well aware of the power of humor. Funny commercials make us stop and actually watch the duration of the ad. They feel more like a short film, and they are often shared around the water cooler or dinner table. Advertisers have long harnessed the power of funny during the biggest ad spectacle of the year, the SuperBowl. Funny commercials aired during the big game often spawn entire campaigns and recurring characters who become the backbone of future ad efforts.
One of the most successful of these funny ads aired during the Superbowl last year and is now featured on Very Funny Ads. This spot shows Kevin Federline, the ex-husband of Britney Spears, daydreaming of his life as a rap star while actually serving up fries in a fast food restaurant. The commercial is for an insurance policy through Nationwide, but the product seems overshadowed by the hilarious situation. The ad was wildly popular, generating thousands of news stories and millions in free publicity for the company, though whether it sold insurance policies is another question entirely. The commercial has had a second life on Very Funny Ads and YouTube, which helps keep Nationwide Insurance’s name in people’s minds. We remember it only because it’s funny, and web allows us to enjoy it again and again.
Another benefit of sites like Very Funny Ads is allowing users from all around the globe to see commercials aired overseas. This ad for Hydro, a Norwegian energy company, features daring and dangerous youngsters rerouting a train for their entertainment. The video is shot documentary style, as though one of the children is filming the incident. The captioning on screen says, “There are many young engineers. We can’t wait till they grow up.” The humor of the ad is universal, and it is a prime example of good content enabling a product to reach a global market.
While many forms of humor are universal (i.e. unexpected endings like in the Federline ad, absurdity like in the train commercial), sometimes companies who try to be funny in their commercials end up issuing formal apologies, pulling ad campaigns, losing customers, and probably firing their advertising firms. A great example of this can be found in this GM spot that was also featured during the SuperBowl last year. The commercial features a lovable yellow robot who makes a mistake on the factory floor, loses his job, and becomes so despondent that he jumps off a bridge. Alert readers will already have spotted the problem with this “funny” ad. Perhaps unemployed, depressed, and suicidal auto workers (be they human or robot) aren’t universally funny. The ad was also criticized for featuring the robot in the first place, since many auto workers have lost their jobs to automation in recent years. GM was forced to change the ending of the commercial so that the bridge jump was only a dream, but they never issued a formal statement.
Very Funny Ads streams videos and supplies links to the commercials they feature, but they do not allow downloads or embedding. Their content is updated frequently, and users are encouraged to suggest ads they would like to see featured on the site, though they cannot directly upload รก la YouTube. This forum, and others of its type, give commercials which use humor a second life on the web. Perhaps we’ll see more and more advertisers using humor to give their commercials a longer lifecycle through video sharing and hosting websites. It certainly maximizes those advertising budgets.
By Haley January Eckels
