Next Gen endorses brands that tickle the funny bone

Humour is the social language of Gen Z and Gen Alpha use to express themselves, talk about serious issues, navigate culture and also to decide which brands get their attention

Humour is the social language of Gen Z and Gen Alpha use to express themselves, talk about serious issues, navigate culture and also to decide which brands get their attention. These findings are part of a new multi-country study by social media and messaging app Snapchat and Omnicom Advertising. For Gen Z and Gen Alpha, clubbed as Next Gen (aged 13 to 28 years), humour goes beyond entertainment to connect, communicate and make sense of the world, said the study, covering more than 6,000 social media users in the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany and India.

Next Gen endorses brands that tickle the funny bone

For India, Gen Z consumers are valuable as they will make up 27% of the country’s population by 2030 and drive $1.3 trillion in spending, according to a Redseer Strategy Consultants.

Why Snapchat and Omnicom picked humour is because it has become something much bigger for Gen Z and Gen Alpha. It is used to articulate their identity, signal belonging, deal with awkwardness and even talk about serious things, said S. Subramanyeswar, chief strategy officer, India, for Omnicom Advertising.

Ninety% of Indian respondents said humour helps them express things they might not otherwise say directly, 91 per cent admitted they pay more attention to brands that are funny and 88% are more likely to consider buying them.

“Humour has become social shorthand. A meme can communicate recognition, irony, affection, anxiety or dissent faster than an explanation can. In India, this becomes particularly interesting because humour travels across languages, regions, subcultures and increasingly through highly contextual references,” Subramanyeswar said.

Humour in Indian advertising is decades old, and it’s not a new trend, said Abhijit Avasthi, founder of Sideways Consulting. “What’s making it seem bigger than it is, is social media proliferation, the increased shareability and scale of funny videos, posts and memes and the easy access to tools that help create them. Digital media creates a sense that it’s all around us,” Avasthi said.

Humour was very much a part of traditional media advertising evident, for instance, in the iconic Fevicol ads remembered for their understated wit and sparkle. “Great humour still comes from observing life closely. That was the genius of Piyush Pandey’s work. Fevicol didn’t chase jokes. It found humour in recognizable Indian behaviour and connected it brilliantly to the product. That is why the work survived long after the media moment in which it appeared,” said Subramanyeswar.

But television humour travelled mostly from brands to audiences. “Today’s humour also travels between people, mutating as it goes. Audiences remix it, make memes, and sometimes improve upon the original. Culture moves at the speed of the feed, and the lifespan of a joke can be extraordinarily short,” Subramanyeswar said. Hence brands today need the timeless ability to understand human behaviour, and the timely ability to understand the codes through which culture is expressing itself right now, he said.

Interbrand’s Mishra said smarter brands are beginning to understand that they will need to act like meme creators rather than traditional advertisers. He cited the collaboration between e.l.f. Cosmetics and canned beverage brand Liquid Death that became a viral marketing case study. “Their unlikely partnership released a sold-out coffin-shaped makeup collection backed by surreal, edgy promotions,” he said. “These brands leverage shared, inside cultural jokes to build high-trust connections with their audience,” he added.

Subramanyeswar said he’s not listing funny campaigns because often humour doesn’t reside in an ‘ad’. It lives in the behaviour of brands, on how they post, reply, react, collaborate and participate in culture, he said.

Ad measurement has changed too as views and likes indicate if the humour travelled. “They don’t necessarily tell us whether the brand did. But I would look at a ladder of effects – did it earn attention, did people participate or share, was the brand correctly attributed, did it strengthen memory and affinity, and, ultimately. did it affect consideration or behaviour,” he added.