Forbes: How to Add Humor to Marketing

I had a fun visit with Ekaterina Walter for her Forbes article, B2B Marketing Does’t Have to Be Boring.  She cites the Nielsen Global Survey of Trust in Advertising which found that 47% of respondents agreed that humorous ads resonated the most.  We discussed a few brands, including B2B brands, that are successfully using humor to connect with their audiences.   One of my favorite is “Mr. W.”

If you’re not following Ekaterina on Twitter already, you must in 2014.

Contagious. Why Things Catch On

Contagious.  Now Available in the large print edition.

Last month I visited The Wharton School to speak about the benefits of using humor in corporate social media. While on campus, I had the chance to interview Dr. Jonah Berger about his book, Contagious:  Why Things Catch On.  The video interview is posted in my BtoB Magazine blog.  We discussed how he’s applied science to understanding what will go viral, how B2B content marketing folks can apply his STEPPS model to improve the success of their campaigns, and how humor helps content marketing be more successful.  FastCompany posted a few excepts from the book.

Jonah also connected me to his friend Dr. Peter McGraw, author of The Humor Code and professor of marketing and psychology at the University of Colorado Boulder.  Ann Handley and I will interview him on Better Marriage Through Big Data this summer.

Photo: Andrew Hetherington, in Wired

After the gig, Steve Aguiree and I celebrated over an outstanding cheeseburger at 500 degrees.  On my next trip to Philadelphia, I’ll check out Lucky’s Last Chance, winner of this year’s Burger Brawl.

ROI on Humor in Social Marketing

I’m often asked what is the value of using humor in social media and marketing efforts.  While I can’t always make the case that a :60 YouTube comedy is going to inspire an impulsive purchase of a $100,000 piece of hardware, comedy helps corporate videos stand out and be remembered among the clutter.  NBC News reports that 72 hours of video content is uploaded to YouTube every minute, so it is becoming more and more difficult to get noticed.

Today, at the B2B Content2Conversion Conference at the New York Times Center, Michael Brenner, Forbes blogger and SAP vice president of marketing, included our valentines video as a case study.

The spot, while completely absurd and ridiculous, helped us amplify an important marketing message during a product launch over three years ago.  It earned press coverage in The New York Times, NetworkWorld and other trade magazines; and David Meerman Scott referenced it as a best practice example in his bestselling book Real-Time Marketing & PR.

And here we are, more than three years later, and it’s being presented to a group of B2B marketers and influencers, and the social buzz continues from some of B2B’s top influencers, including Ann Handley, Margaret Molloy and Marissa Pick.

I don’t think Michael Brenner sold any routers for us today, although if he did, I’m sure he’ll DM me about his commission check.

Vampire Bats at SXSW

Technically, they’re not vampire bats, which might be behind the inferiority complex.  But the 1.5 million bats living under the Congress Bridge in Austin can brag about being the largest urban bat colony in the world, as Reuters reports.  Be sure to add this to your list of  destinations while you’re in ATX.    Last year I had a fun visit with Scott Laningham and Turbo Todd Watson about some of our humor projects at IBM, including Art of the Sale, Mad Science with John Cohn and the smarter planet animation series.



The year before, David Meerman Scott and I watched the bats along the way of our aimless tour of ATX.



I hope to see you if you’re heading down this year. Ann Handley and I will record an ATX version of our new series , and I’ll tweet out when we have the session planned.   If you need help picking which events to attend, check out the Golin Harris marketer’s guide, SX Scout.