Humor is the language of culture change, and at Cheetah we don’t do boring. So we recruited Tom Fishburne aka the Marketoonist – one of the funniest people in marketing, to deliver a session that will leave you laughing out loud, but also thinking about how you can implement cultural change to empower and inspire your team. Tom has been drawing chuckle-worthy cartoons for two decades. His experiences have shown him that humor is empathetic, honest, and can drive organizational change.
Humor in marketing during the pandemic
“In these unprecedented times,” “the new normal,” and “I hope you’re staying positive and testing negative.” A lot of marketing departments crafted incredibly similar and rather disingenuous looking messaging during the pandemic.
Most of the ads across industries during the initial lockdowns showed similar images of empty streets and brands claiming they could “help” during difficult times. Instead, marketers should, or could turn to humor to appeal to their target market and bring some authenticity back to the advertising game. This could also be applied to organizations by recognizing three abilities of humor:
- It can be an act of empathy
- It allows us to be less myopic
- It’s disarming
Change is given, and laughing about it drives organizational change
There is a tendency to tiptoe around humor, as humor can be offensive if it isn’t applied to the right circumstances. But the benefits of humor are too great to discard it due to risk. Change is happening all of the time, all around us. Tom says we are in an awkward “adolescent” phase of marketing where tech is a help and a hindrance. But laughing about these realities is much better than pretending they don’t exist, and this humor can build trust, enhance sales, and drive organizational success.
Using humor to build more meaningful relationships
As a cartoonist, Tom recognizes that ideas must be relatable in order to be understood and considered humorous. But many marketers are simply going through the safe, appropriate, and common motions. For instance, it seemed appropriate to offer support for people struggling through a pandemic regardless of the actual ability to provide that support. This is not what audiences wanted, and they saw it as a marketing ploy.
Consumers want brands to relate to them. Brands that own their own database, and have the data to deliver better, more personalized experiences can also use humor to communicate directly with consumers. This is effective in advertising and in other aspects of an organization.
“I know what to do with our third-party data suppliers.”
“When times are tough we have to cut our margins.”
