Humor and Self-Image in Advertising, Research Paper Example

In America, advertising is considered to be as important as design and manufacturing when it comes to the creation of a successful product. Multimillion dollar advertising campaigns are used every day to sell new products to the public and to increase the sales of existing products. The advertising industry, as a whole, has gained an image of devious and calculated manipulation with test-studies, focus-groups, and cutting-edge psychological theories being utilized to more or less cram products down the figurative throat of the public. The average consumer is more than likely blissfully unaware of the detailed strategies and techniques that are employed by advertisers. One of the most crucial strategies used by advertisers is to associate products and services with an emotional response in their audience. The response can be hope, expectation, desire, or even fear. One of the most common emotions used to sell products is humor. Although the effectiveness of humor in advertisement remains a controversial topic, one fact is certain and that is that advertisers often use humor to indicate cultural “norms” which are then associated with the products they are trying to sell.

The most basic way that advertisers use humor is to show a person who stands apart from the cultural norm because they are too fat, or too shy, or have pimples, or bad hair. The advertiser then shows how the product that is advertised fixes that person’s problem. Ads use humor to reinforce cultural norms and conformity by associating self-acceptance and cultural acceptance with products. If the use of humor in advertisements is meant to associate products with social acceptance, then the underlying theme of the ads is not only to sell individual products but to sell the idea of material consumption as a general panacea to all feelings of unhappiness or inadequacy. As mentioned in the Daily Heraldarticle “Surfing” (2000) this is a deliberate tactic pursued by advertisers to bolster overall feelings of need and desire. The article observes that “it’s easy to grow cynical considering that the same people who created the Budweiser Lizards are the driving forces behind our media-induced feelings of material inadequacy.” (‘Surfing’ 1). This perspective suggests that it is useful to assume the most cynical of motivations are at work when dealing with the way that advertisers use humor to coerce the public to consume.

The following examination will explore some of the connotations of how humor functions in advertising. It is useful to keep in mind that the way humor in advertising functions is based on a dual impact. The first side of the impact is that humor can be used to make a person feel accepted into the cultural norm. The second side is that humor can be used to indicate that someone has been rejected from the cultural norm. Obviously, each of the approaches can be used to associate emotion with products. One emotion is the feeling of comfort, love, joy and stability. The other emotion is loneliness, fear, exclusion, and want. The product is then associated with one or the other of these emotions; in the first place to show inclusion and acceptance and in the second place to help ensure social acceptance by overcoming perceived faults or deficiencies. In order to adequately understand the way that these strategies work in advertising, it is helpful to have at least a rudimentary knowledge of human psychology particularly in the way it relates to the use of humor in advertising.

The first crucial thing to understand about the psychology of humor in advertising is that advertisements, contrary to popular belief, do not portray life as people wish it would be. Instead they portray life the way that advertisers wish life to be. For example, in a recent statistical survey reported in the article “Moms Vote for Reality” (2005) attention is brought to the fact that most mothers are unresponsive to depictions of beautiful and glamorous women in advertising. Instead, what women want to see are portrayals of real women doing real-life things. The article states that “Moms are looking for more reality and less perfection in portrayals of women in advertising; according to a Parenting magazine survey … only 5% say they can relate to the women they see in the media” (“Moms Vote for Reality” 3). If such is the case among mothers, one of the most highly coveted demographics for advertisers, then what is the pay-off for advertisers willfully giving women what they don’t want in advertising?

The answer to that question is that advertisers don’t want to celebrate people’s everyday lives; they want to create a sense of want and need in the audience. In regard to the use of humor, the key is that the “joke” in advertisement either shows the inclusion or exclusion of a person based on their having or not having a given product or service. So, for example, in a famous funny ad aimed at children such as the long-running “Coo-Coo for Cocoa Puffs” ad campaign a seemingly insignificant thing as a sweetened breakfast cereal becomes a humorous totem of social acceptance. “Sonny the Cuckoo Bird” is the object of ridicule and hilarity because he can’t get the cereal that all of the normal kids are enjoying. The message is simple and translates roughly to “Eat Cocoa Puff cereal or be the butt of every joke.” Humor is used as a way of sending kids a chilling message about the dangers of social exclusion.

This is in fact so true that the term “Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs” has emerged as a slang term for anyone who falls outside of the cultural norm or who is perceived as crazy, undesirable, or unstable. The strategy works precisely because the fear of social rejection is such a strong motivator in the human mind. By coupling humor with this sense of social anxiety, the advertiser effectively creates a problem and solution scenario, where the social anxiety that is feared by the consumer is relieved by getting the advertised product. Sonny’s problems would vanish if he could just get his own box of cereal. This particular ad campaign shows how effective and yet how delicate it is to use humor in advertising. According to Catanescu and Tom in their article “Types of Humor in Television and Magazine Advertising” (2001), “the use of humor may not be suitable for certain products or services, is thought to lead to faster advertising “wear out” Catanescu and Tom 92). This “wear out” factor may be associated with underlying social anxiety fear that is almost always being exploited in humorous ads.

The kind of deep-rooted psychological response that is associated with social anxiety fear is shown in Franz Kafka’s famous novel The Metamorphosis(1915). In this story, the protagonist is transformed into an insect. He then falls into the fringes of humanity and ultimately becomes such a burden on his family that they celebrate his death. The symbolism of the insect is meant to show that anyone who stands outside of social norms is perceived as monstrous and as a threat or burden to society. It is clear at the end of the story when Gregor is dying that one of the reasons for his death is his ostracization from his family: He soon made the discovery that he could no longer move at all … He could already hardly feel the decayed apple in his back or the inflamed area around it, which was entirely covered in white dust. He thought back of his family with emotion and love.” (Kafka). Though the humor in the story is “black” humor it still shows, clearly the way that humor and the fear of social ostracization are combined in the human imagination.

Reference to Kafka also highlights that, in normal human development, adapting to social norms of humor is, in itself, a way of forging social bonds and interpersonal identities. As Rieken and Hensel point out, “Interpersonal humor reflects the social context in which humor occurs.”(Riecken and Hensel).This is probably the most important thing to know about the way humor in advertising works. The reason that the advertisers are able to depict a world that they want to foster on the rest of us is because they are able to manipulate the psychological principles mentioned above. The basic message is that having more things is equal to having more happiness. Such a belief should be considered to be so frequent an underlying premise to narratives and cultural ideas as to be a cultural myth or fable.

For example, in the film Trading Places (1983), the basic “Prince and the Pauper” story was utilized to show the desirability of the American consumer culture. The book Reading the Homeless: The Media’s Image of Homeless Culture (1999) mentions that “Trading Places brought the plot to a comic peak when two Philadelphia businessmen ( Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche) strike a bet that a Black street hustler ( Eddie Murphy) can do better than their sniveling nephew investment broker ( Dan Aykroyd)–and of course they’re correct.”(Min 167). The plot in and of itself suggests that the highest aspiration of the common person is material acquisition – and that it is available for the very poor if they simply get a little luck and opportunity. This is obviously not the case for millions of homeless people who are left sleeping in shelters and living on limited public assistance while the rich hoard staggering amounts of wealth. It does however encourage the audience to keep on believing in capitalism even if it robs them of dignity, savings, and home.

As the preceding discussion has clearly established, humor in advertising is used as a way of manipulating psychological responses in the audience in order to create an emotional bond with products or services. Additionally, humor in advertising is one way that the human capacity for social anxiety can be exploited by marketers. The machinery of capitalism demands endless consumption. If manufacturers and owners are unable to create products that are necessary, they must resort to creating artificial need in the population which they can then fill with otherwise useless products. The use of humor in advertising is one way that advertisers use basic emotional responses in human beings to try to sell [products that might otherwise be of little interest to people.

Works Cited

Catanescu, Codruta, and Gail Tom.”Types of Humor in Television and Magazine Advertising.” Review of Business 22.1 (2001): 92.

Kafka, Franz. The Metamorphosis.www.gutenberg.org; accessed 11-18-13; http://www.gutenberg.org/files/5200/5200-h/5200-h.htm

Min, Eungjun, ed. Reading the Homeless: The Media’s Image of Homeless Culture. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999.

“Moms Vote for Reality and Humor in Advertising.”Marketing to Women: Addressing Women and Women’s Sensibilities Dec. 2005: 3.

Riecken, Glen, and Kyle Hensel. “Using Humor in Advertising: When Does It Work?” Southern Business Review 37.2 (2012): 27+.

“Surfing.”Daily Herald (Arlington Heights, IL) 27 Mar. 2000: 1.