How to add humor to marketing

Entrepreneur.com has some tips how you can add humor to marketing. They always make it seem so much easier than it really is.

Don't initially set out to be humorous. That may be the most important aspect of humorous marketing. You don't want to force anything, says Linda Kaplan Thaler, whose advertising agency The Kaplan Thaler Group's clients include Procter & Gamble and Continental Airlines. The company is responsible for the Aflac duck and the Swiffer ads, where a mop and broom stalk their ex-owner and try to woo her back.

"You need to not have a preset idea that something's going to be heartfelt or funny," Thaler says. Marketing "needs to be emotional in some shape or form."

The humor should fit your product or service's personality. It sounds obvious, but even some brands that seem as if they could easily fit into humorous marketing don't--or at least as well as you might expect. Cult branding expert Bolivar "BJ" Bueno believes Miller Lite's humorous ads are lacking compared to others like Budweiser. "People drink to have a good time, and Budweiser has spent a lot of money to say, 'We're about entertaining you,'" says Bueno. In contrast, Miller Lite's message has always been that it's a lite beer. Calorie count is a serious topic to anyone concerned about weight, so wacky ads revolving around being lite don't really work in Bueno's opinion.

Humor can work in even the most unlikely places. Lately, banks have been going with gallows humor in light of the economy. Last Christmas, Denver-based FirstBank offered tongue-in-cheek gift ideas on billboards: It suggested you take photos of yourself next to the signs, which featured a picture of a seascape. Then you could frame it and send it to your friends.

The humor can't overpower the brand. The best humorous marketing ads take risks. Take Nationwide's "Life Comes at You Fast" ads. In one, a young man bumps the car of an elderly couple and apologizes. Then the elderly woman starts beating him up while a narrator somberly observes that not everyone handles "accident forgiveness" as well as Nationwide.