Humor and Persuasion

Personally, I believe humor can help in persuasion, although I will admit that other forms of pathos could help much much more. The article for the week explains that at times, humor did help the bargain because it helped relieve the stress of the buyer, and they were more willing to pay a higher amount at this point.

There are, of course, a lot of differences that need to be taken into account, if possible, before using humor to try to sell a product. The first difference, the one that the article addressed, is that of sex. Males and females generally have a different view of what's humorous and what is not. In my own experience, I find that males laugh out loud more often, but females tend to find more things slightly funny, and smile more, or laugh quietly more often. In addition, males tend to laugh at more inappropriate things, such as South Park or Toilet Humor, whereas females tend to laugh at more sophisticated comedy, like the movie The Proposal, or shows that do not involve crude humor, such as How I Met Your Mother. (There are of course exceptions to this, but I have personally found this to be true for most cases).

Perhaps one of the best places to look for humor in advertisements is just about any ad that takes place during the Super Bowl.

I know personally, this one is one of my favorite commercials to come out of the 2009 Super Bowl. It is trying to sell a diet soda to men, more specifically Pepsi Max.



While personally I enjoy diet soda as it is, this commercial is just hilarious. But I always enjoy watching other people get injured. It's the whole Schadenfreude idea, that we take pleasure out of someone's pain. This commercial uses that very well. Every time I watch it I literally laugh out loud.