Comedy: A Surefire Way to Get Attention
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Many of us sure react to humor and throughout the years, commercials with humorous content often get the attention and this goes to show that people react well to comedy and things that make them laugh. Video is a good way to capture comedy and it is often the comedic commercials that are talked about and people even push other people to see it just for the sake of a good laugh.
Even basically unknown companies get more attention when they release a humorous video. One example is the Dollar Shave Club. They have over 24M views on YouTube and the comments are full of people saying that they had to rewatch it because it was so funny. Some even commented that Gillette may be freaking out because of the said video. That is the kind of attention that comedy gets a company if done correctly.
There is an actual science to why we actually pay attention to humorous content. Neuroscience infers that our attention is naturally guided to anything that early experience registers as potentially good or bad. Harsh noises and images of gore attract our attention because we are taught to fear them. However, negative associations don’t lend themselves well to advertising. If the purpose is to make people feel good about a brand then placing negative emotions to get them to get attention may well recoil even if it is only because the content is out of keeping with the context. In some cases, the response may be so contrary that people respond negatively to both the ad and the brand itself. In fact, this “dog breath” ad was banned by the Advertising Standards Authority in the U.K and the Republic of Ireland due to complaints that the ad made some viewers physically sick.
