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Nerd Alert: Should B2B Brands Use Humor?
00:08:47
Welcome to Nerd Alert, a series of special episodes bridging the gap between marketing academia and practitioners. We're breaking down highly involved, complex research into plain language and takeaways any marketer can use. In this episode, Elena...
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- [00:00]
A
Nerd Alert. Learning is important, right?
- [00:02]
B
Yes, exactly. What a bunch of nerds.
- [00:05]
A
Nerd alert, Right?
- [00:06]
B
Marketing Architects. Hello and welcome to the Marketing Architects, a research first podcast dedicated to answering your toughest marketing questions. I'm Alina Jasper on the marketing team here at Marketing Architects, and I'm joined by my co host. Rob Demar is the chief product architect of misfits and machines.
- [00:22]
A
Hello, Elena.
- [00:24]
B
Hello. We're back with your weekly Nerd Alert. Every week, I'll take a deep dive into academic marketing research and translate its complex ideas into simple, unique, understandable language for Rob, and of course, for all of you. Are you ready to nerd out, Rob?
- [00:35]
A
I am so ready to nerd out. I just pitched a fart joke for an enterprise SaaS campaign, and the room went so quiet, I could hear my own LinkedIn endorsements expiring.
- [00:46]
B
Okay, that was an odd one. Not gonna lie. Today we're talking about something that B2B marketers have argued about for a long time, which is humor. Should you be funny in your ads when you're selling to businesses? Should you be. Should you act like Rob on a podcast or not when it's associated with your company? Most marketers just don't go there. They play it safe, they stay rational. But this paper makes a case that they might be leaving something on the table. Rob, quick question before we dive in. And I had to think about this one, too for myself. Have you ever seen a B2B ad that actually made you laugh out loud?
- [01:20]
A
I mean, I. I have. I've seen a few. The fact that we're even having to talk about it, though, is probably remarkable, right? Do you remember one that actually made you laugh? But I was thinking about our interview the other week with Kimberly Storen from Zoom, and she really pushed hard at using humor in her campaigns. And I think that the. The commercials that they did with Bowen Yang and they hired the SNL staff to be able to, you know, to produce it is a good example of humor and one that wasn't humor for humor's sake. Because in the commercial, they're really tapping into the emotion people feel when they're not invited to a Zoom meeting and instead have to use teams. So I think that was really smart.
- [01:58]
B
Yeah, no, that's a really good example. And she even said that humor is risky, so she made sure to go work with professional comedians. They weren't going to leave that up to chance because, yeah, it is. If it doesn't land, it's not always great. I also think Ramp has a lot of funny advertising. I don't know if you've seen some of their B2B advertising recently, but they've got some funny billboard campaigns and I think they do a good job with it. But it's. It's not easy to think about. With B2B, I'd say it's a lot more rare than B2C. And that's what this episode is about. I read a paper titled To Humor or Not Humor, evaluating the effective use of humor in B2B advertisements. I'll include a link to the research in the episode notes. And this was by Kunal Swani, Charles Goulas, and John dismark, all professors at Wright State University. It was published in the Journal of Business Research last year in 2025. So humor is used about 32% of the time in all B2C ads. That's almost a third. But in B2B advertising, it's rare. Some content analyses have found it in as few as 0% of B2B print ads, though. Zero. The traditional thinking is that business buyers are rational, so you should be rational, too. Business buyers are buying something professional, so you should be professional as well. But the researchers wanted to test whether that assumption was actually true. So, Rob, before I get into what they found, if you had to guess, do you think humor makes businesses more or less likely to take a brand seriously?
- [03:22]
A
You know, when you meet a colleague and at work, you're like, God, they're so dang serious. They're like a robot. And then you go out to dinner, like on a work dinner or something, and you're like, oh, my gosh. They're like, funny. They watch like New Girl and the Simpsons or whatever. They're like, I really like this person. We are all that person, right? We all love humor. Humor is a part of our DNA. And that doesn't change when you go into work. You're still someone who has an appreciation for that. And we know humor is a powerful lever in persuasion. So I am a firm believer humor connects with B2B audiences.
- [04:02]
B
Well, you would be correct.
- [04:03]
A
Tell me I'm wrong.
- [04:04]
B
No, you're right. But there's some. There is some nuance to it. So what this team of researchers did was they ran four separate experiments with a total of 305 B2B buyers. So these were people with managerial roles and purchasing authority. They tested print ads using three different types of humor. Incongruity humor, which is the classic sort of setup that a twist superiority humor where someone else looks foolish, and arousal safety humor. Something I've never heard of, where you create tension and then relieve it. And they measured two main things, attitude towards the advertisement and then attitude towards the brand. So, short answer. And I kind of spoiled this. Humor works. Across their first study, buyers had significantly higher attitudes towards the ad and towards the brand when they used humor versus when it didn't. And they were more likely to say they'd seek out more information on the product. So right out of the gate, humor, it works in B2B as well as B2C. So Rob, if humor is effective, why do you think almost zero B2B brands actually do it?
- [05:03]
A
It's a risk. I open this podcast with a fart joke that probably didn't land very well. And that's a risk, right? Like that's just you are put yourself out there and humor can be more subjective than just binary bland storytelling. So it's powerful for a reason and you have to just make sure you use it well.
- [05:24]
B
You're spot on. So this research did find that this isn't as black and white as B2B. You should do humor all the time. They found three different situations where humor either helps or hurts. So first, relatedness. When the humor was actually connected to the product, buyers responded well. But when the ad used unrelated humor, like a funny joke, which had nothing to do with what was being sold, it flopped. So buyers didn't like the ad or the brand as much in that situation. So the joke has to fit. It can't just be funny for funny sake. Kind of makes sense. Second is time pressure. When the buyers had plenty of time to make a purchase decision, humor was very effective. But when they were under a tight deadline, like they needed to purchase something for their business in two days, humor actually made things worse. So the thinking is that when we're under pressure at work, we shift into more of a rational mode of buying. And people want specs, they want facts, they don't want humor. It becomes more of a distraction. And third, this was very interesting. Prior relationships. You might assume that if a buyer already knows and likes a vendor, a funny ad would land even better. But it's the opposite, actually. In B2B, when buyers had an established relationship with the vendor, they preferred the non humor ad. Researchers thought maybe it's because buyers existing relationships are more focused on evaluating a new product. They want information, not entertainment. So humor in B2B is definitely effective, but it is conditional. The study found that humor is most useful early in the buying cycle. It's great for changing how people feel about A brand making them want to learn more, but it's not a closer. If your goal in your advertisement is to drive a purchase decision directly, humor probably isn't your best tool. Think of it as sort of a door opener, not a deal signer. So for marketers, here's what I'd take away from this. Use humor if your goal is brand attitude or awareness. It works in B2B, but make sure it connects to your product. Read the room on timing. If your buyer's in crunch mode, stay more rational. If they have breathing room, give them something that they might find funny. And then don't lean on humor. If you're already in an established relationship, buyers want substance there, not entertainment. And that one, I think might be hard to do. I'm not sure exactly how in B2B you would do that. Maybe if you're a giant brand that everybody knows, maybe humor wouldn't work as well. I'm not sure, but time for our RobGPT. Humor in B2B advertising is like opening a window on a perfect spring day with nowhere to be. It's the best thing in the room. Fresh air, good mood. Everybody notices. But if you're in the middle of a deadline blizzard, nobody wants a window open. They want the heat on. The research doesn't say don't open the window. It says check the weather first.
- [07:55]
A
I'm going to create my own Rob GPT on this one. I think it sounds a lot like when you're dating. Right. Humor is great in the early stages of dating, it breaks the ice. It gets everybody talking. But if you're still cracking wacky jokes when you're trying to have a serious relationship, at some point you're going to take the other person off. Come on, I need this serious talk right now.
- [08:17]
B
Right. I've definitely experienced that. It's like, all right, now is not the time for a joke. But no, that's a better one, actually. It depends on the relationship. Yeah. And what situation you're in.
- [08:27]
A
Yeah.
- [08:28]
B
As well. Use your best judgment. That's it for this episode of the Marketing Architects. We'd like to thank Taylor De Los Reyes for producing the show. You can connect with us on LinkedIn. And if you like the podcast, please leave us a review. Now go forth and build great marketing. Marketing Architects.