What Men Want - Their Brands Served Up With A Good Laugh

Posted on | January 27, 2008 |

by Carol Davies

Super Bowl 2008 presents one of the greatest extravaganzas for marketing to men. Outrageous, over-the-top, in-your-face-hilarious (not to mention expensive), Super Bowl advertising may not be your everyday approach for speaking to today’s male, but it does prompt an obvious question - why does humor sell to men?

With pundits talking about the extended adolescence of today’s men, as they delay career, marriage and fatherhood, some might hypothesize that it’s as simple as saying, “men like to be boys.” Having conducted extensive research on humor, including consulting many leading experts who both practice and study comedy, reality suggests there are other reasons - some logistical, some deeper — why humor can be an effective tool for brands to connect with men.

At the executional level, humor works for men because the type of humor men characteristically prefer -one-liner jokes with a clear punch line- fits neatly within a :30 or :15 slot on TV or on-line. By contrast,women relate better to stories, which can’t easily be compressed into such media formats.

Another reason humor works in reaching men is that, so often, it is fundamentally about power and competition. Someone is telling the joke;someone else is the butt of the joke. Often this competitiveness manifests itself in slapstick of the Larry, Mo and Curly variety, as
evidenced in commercials like the Slapping spot from Budweiser Light. Men not only feel comfortable with aggressiveness, they thrive on it. Cars, razors, after-shave, sports drinks -deep down for men, they’re all about winning, and so is humor.

Lastly, and perhaps most critical for marketers making a pitch to the male gender, humor is a way to speak truth -even if it’s politically
incorrect or socially unacceptable. Today, with the definition and “rules” of masculinity in flux, humor hurdles social sins and allows
brands to speak authentically to men. Axe, for example, sidestep female equality to speak baldly to what men really want -get the girl- because they do it with outrageousness. When the Axe guy hears a woman say, “I’ll go back to your room, but I’m not taking my high heels off,”everyone knows the Axe brand isn’t really being serious - or is it?

Carol Davies is a strategic consumer marketer with expertise transforming consumer insights into visionary and innovative business-building ideas.

Carol is Partner @ FletcherKnight
Marketing innovation consulting