Written by Jeremy Lee on Jun 12, 2024. Posted in General Interest

Hitting the Universal Funny Bone

As part of its annual reinvigoration of the Cannes Lions, organisers have introduced a new humour category into this year’s festival to celebrate the art of humour in branded communications. It may also be a reaction to the accusation of being too earnest and that some Lions winners were using brand purpose for very shallow reasons.

Work entered into a new category at Cannes Lions “should use wit and satire to provide amusement and create memorable, laughter-inducing connections with audiences.”

 

It forms part of the Lions’ mission to reflect the prevailing advertising landscape, and anecdotal evidence does suggest that humour as an advertising trope is on the rise against a backdrop of and as a reaction to the global cost-of-living crisis and unrest in the Middle East and Ukraine. But equally there has also been criticism that brand purpose had become the dominant way for brands to win a Lion – in 2022, and after years of brand purpose being in the ascendancy, a remarkable 28 of the 32 Grand Prix winners included purpose or sustainability within their submission. In short, Cannes Lions was accused of being too earnest and that some of the winners were using brand purpose for very shallow reasons.

 

Humour isn't solely reliant on slapstick; it's about tapping into truths, offering unexpected perspectives, or exploring the bizarre and surreal techniques which are frequently used in meme culture.

 

Whether humour becomes the new brand purpose is something that depends on many factors – not least on how universal “funny” is and whether it can transcend national and cultural borders to appeal to a global panel of judges in the same way that brand purpose has done for much of the past decade. So, does humour travel? And what’s more, will it travel as far as the bunker-like judging panel rooms in the basement of the Palais des Festival on the Croisette?

 

Andy Jex, the chief creative officer at TBWA\ London, who also runs global accounts, thinks that historically humour didn’t translate but that things are changing. “In the past it was commonly thought that only visual or slapstick humour resonated globally, and these types of humour often found success at Cannes,” he says. “However, I believe this perception of humour is now outdated.” Jex credits the internet – and social media in particular – for effectively shrinking the comedy world by allowing people to share and find they have more common ground than ever before – including what tickles their funny bones.

 

Why pigeonhole humour into a corner with its own category? Can't we craft beauty and hilarity in one seamless blend? Can't we be riotously funny and purposeful?

 

“With the increasing rise of memes, it's demonstrated that humour isn't solely reliant on slapstick; it's about tapping into truths, offering unexpected perspectives, or exploring the bizarre and surreal – techniques which are frequently used in meme culture. So, we now find ourselves in a world where diverse forms of humour can thrive and where audiences (including jurors) are increasingly receptive to a broader spectrum of comedic styles,” Jex concludes.

 

 

But Ian Heartfield, founder and chief creative officer at New Commercial Arts, thinks that there’s a danger that ‘humorous’ ads might still include the lowest common denominator. “Physical comedy is timeless and universal, so there will be no issue with work from across the world competing for Gold if it involves someone slipping on a banana skin,” he says. “But it’s not a level playing field. I remember working in the US and seeing an ad where a Granny was pushed out of a moving car with the driver shouting, ‘Duck and roll Grandma!’. In the UK you can’t even open a car door on the roadside when it’s parked.”

 

Trevor Robinson OBE, founder and executive creative director at Quiet Storm, points out that while humour can be universal there are sensibilities that are particular to different communities, cultures, and countries. This has informed his approach when working on the agency’s global account Haribo (pictured above).

 

He says: “I grew up in South London, and what I find funny probably wouldn’t translate in, say, Germany. For each market in Haribo’s global campaigns, we used real conversations local kids were having, rather than just working from our own idea about what would be funny. This helped the campaign resonate more deeply in those markets. The kids came up with dialogue we’d never have thought up, and this made the campaign funnier and more authentic. In Japan, we found that the children we worked with brought out the humour through slapstick antics rather than in the dialogue, so we used sumo wrestlers in the campaign to keep that focus on physical and visual comedy.”

 

The fact is that a surprising portion of the world can laugh at the same thing. We’re all human, after all.

 

The Epica Awards – a creative awards scheme awarded by journalists who write about advertising and marketing – has been handing out gongs for ads in a humour category since 2015. Its editorial director Mark Tungate says that while some local references might be lost on an international jury, universal themes on humour emerge within the confines of national generalisations, which also have wider appeal and have won awards.

 

He points out that Scandinavian agencies (and particularly Norwegian ones) have a drole, self-deprecating (slightly noir) humour – such as the Smart House (pictured top) spot for the no-frills Norwegian retail chain REMA 1000.

 

Created by Oslo agency Try Reklamebyrå, it shows a smug guy living in a smart house that responds to his voice commands. But when he returns from a visit to the dentist the house fails to understand his commands and leaves him locked out in the pouring rain. And even when he does get inside, a request to turn up the heating just results in louder music. ‘Better to keep things simple, like Rema 1000 supermarket’, is the simple but humorous message.

 

Another ad from Try Reklamebyrå, for Canal Digital uses a similar – if darker humour – to play on FOMO. The Silver Hand spot focuses on an everyman called Bjorn who finds that wherever he goes everybody is talking about the Silver Hand, a funny scene on television. To promote Canal Digital's Weekly Archive, which auto-records everything on television, the ad follows Bjorn's life as the perpetual outsider, forever punished for making the mistake of missing an episode.

 

 

Thailand, too, has a humour that appeals beyond national borders – it’s absurd and slapstick and very visual. In 2019 an ad for Thai Health Promotion Foundation (pictured above) by Leo Burnett Thailand picked up a Gold at the Epica Awards and won a Silver Lion at Cannes two years later. It was created to show that not all vegetables are available all year round – and that there’s a danger in eating those that have been grown with chemical assistance. A young woman goes in search of bok choy at the request of her ailing grandfather. A woman at the market warns her that it's out of season, but she persuades a farmer to grow some chemical plants. She returns triumphantly to fulfil what turns out to be her grandpa's last wish.

 

The 2023 Smells Blocks Socks ad by Bangkok agency Rabbit’s Tale for the apparel brand GQ Apparel uses a similarly slapstick and OTT approach to everyday scenarios and promotes its socks that are designed to eliminate food odour.

 

Tungate says: “I remember the great Thai creative Suthisak Sucharittanonta told me the word for it was ‘zab’, which means it has a tangy flavour.

 

 

Other national stereotypes ring true too, he says – the Brits excel at irony. New Commercial Arts (NCA) has entered the agency’s Nationwide spot (pictured above) into this year’s Cannes festival. NCA undertook a major relaunch of the building society last year and introduced a new brand platform that focuses on Nationwide’s commitment to keeping branches open. The television ad features Dominic West as a comically objectionable fictional rival banking boss.

 

Heartfield ponders: “Will a global jury find a blundering, out of touch, big banker, played by Dominic West funny? Or will it pass people by? He was in The Wire if that helps?”.

 

Some creatives argue that our common humanity – and shared sense of the ridiculous – might mean that putting humour into an awards category of its own risks ghettoizing it.

 

The US ad industry, meanwhile, is good at ads with a snappy dialogue with a sitcom feel to them. “All these are sweeping generalisations, but the fact is that a surprising portion of the world can laugh at the same thing. We’re all human, after all,” concludes Tungate.

 

Some creatives argue that our common humanity – and shared sense of the ridiculous – might mean that putting humour into an awards category of its own risks ghettoizing it (particularly if, as is expected, it becomes a more popular trope across categories as brand purpose and ‘sadvertising’ recedes. What’s more there aren’t Lions categories for the five other basic human emotional responses – surprise, fear, sadness, anger and disgust.

 

Shelley Smoler, the chief creative officer at Droga5, thinks that humour doesn’t and can’t sit in isolation – and could equally apply to any of the other Lions categories. “Why pigeonhole humour into a corner with its own category? Can't we craft beauty and hilarity in one seamless blend? It's high time we break free from the mundane and let humour roam wild and free!” she says. Moreover, she says humour as being the way that the ad industry can be revived among the affections of the public. “A mere category won't suffice. Let's be real – humour can rescue our industry! So, this new category? It's just the beginning of a wild comedy revival!”, she says, optimistically.

 

As for the question of whether humour works internationally, in all these years of wonderful campaigns that have delighted us worldwide, in all juries there has been no discussion of countries.

 

Others think that humour has always been a way to win at Cannes. Rich Denney, joint chief creative at St. Luke’s, thinks that it’s surprising that it hasn’t been introduced as a category sooner. “I remember when we creatives eagerly waited for the SHOTS Cannes showreel to arrive so we could see what had won,” he says. “We especially took note of the international work that was intentionally funny.”

 

Among the previous global Lions winners from distant memory – that just happened to also be funny – he cites Nissin Cup-O-Noodle Moa Ostrich spot by Japanese agency Hakuhodo, which won a Grand Prix in 1993; Little Caesars Pizza's Pleasers Training Camp, created by Cliff Freeman & Partners, which won a Gold Lion in 1996; and Leo Burnett London’s Bear spot for John West from 2000; which is credited with being one of the first viral ads – by 2006 it had been viewed more than 300 million times online. In 1997, a special jury in Cannes voted Collett Dickenson Pearce's Photo Booth for Hamlet cigars, the ad of the century.

 

Dörte Spengler-Ahrens, non-executive creative chairwoman of Jung von Matt and German Art Director Club (ADC) president, concludes: “The idea of creating a humour category is a good one, because it supports a deep need that prevails among today’s advertising audiences: light-heartedness. I have been a jury member on many international awards and my colleagues and I could clearly see that in a crisis-shaken world, there was an urgent need for work that was simply cheerful, full of humour and brought a touch of lightness.

 

“As for the question of whether humour works internationally, in all these years of wonderful campaigns that have delighted us worldwide, in all juries there has been no discussion of countries. Humour is universal and powerful, as illustrated by the example of many brands who rely on it internationally and are super successful.”

 

Perhaps using and awarding humour in advertising will, in a small way, work an antidote to the conflict and crises that are – at the moment – equally universal, as well as help build stronger brands.

 

This article appears in the Cannes issue of our makers magazine which will be widely available at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2024.

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