Enough of the Fun: Humorless Advertising?

The Wilhelm Salber Society regularly presents a text from anders – Journal for Psychological Morphology on its website. The column by Ines Imdahl “Enough of the Fun: Humorless Advertising?” is from anders 23/2015.

Why is English advertising supposedly so much funnier? Are Germans boring and humorless? If you ask people, almost everyone wants funnier advertising. But how funny is funny actually? And how funny is an advertisement the second time you watch it? The supposedly funniest joke in the world, for example, is not really funny at all. Professor Richard Wiseman searched for it for a year in 2001 with his research team on behalf of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. More than 40,000 jokes from 350,000 people from 70 countries were collected and evaluated in the internet-based project “Laugh Lab”. Each participant entered their favorite joke and judged others. Hardly any joke received approval from more than 25 percent of people. Men laugh at different things than women, Americans at Canadians, Englishmen at Irish, Jews at non-Jews, different ethnic, religious or social groups each have a different sense of humor. It only became clear: people like to be amused at the expense of others. Schadenfreude is an amazingly well-functioning form of joke. Schopenhauer even described it as the “laughter of hell”. It makes it possible to participate in “evil, nasty and aggressive” sides without actually having to behave that way. A new study even claims that we can experience just as much joy from the misfortune of others as we can from a gift.

It relieves us when an overachiever like Thomas Middelhoff gets caught. Like the thieving innkeeper in »Tischlein deck Dich«, we also find in the case of Middelhoff that he deserves his punishment.

If the joke of schadenfreude can conjure up a superior one from a powerless situation, then drivers can laugh at traffic wardens, dark-haired women at blondes, employees at bosses. Logically, Germans find it only half as funny to laugh at Irish people as English people do.

Ultimately, the “funniest joke in the world” was the following: Two hunters are walking through the forest when one suddenly collapses. He looks like he's not breathing anymore, and his eyes are glazed. The other pulls out his cell phone and dials the emergency number. “My friend is dead,” he gasps, “what should I do?”. “Take it easy,” says the man on the other end. “First we need to know for sure if he’s dead.” Silence, then you hear a shot. The other man picks up the phone again and says: “Okay, now what?”

The joke is probably only a real knee-slapper for a few. The punchline is almost predictable. Hardly anyone is offended. Only the probably not-too-large fraction of hunters could feel targeted. Accordingly, it is difficult with the advertising joke. It is a possible advertising medium, but not a panacea. And: nothing is more boring than a joke you already know. From a psychoanalytic point of view, a joke lives on the fact that “a preconscious thought is left to unconscious processing for a moment and the result then reaches consciousness”. In other words: For a moment, the joke reveals a structural connection to our psyche that we don’t always think about or experience in our everyday lives. For example, with the double meaning of words. When a member can only be a man or a medical assistant has to make compromises in their job.

In advertising, such a connection can be the reference to implicit cultural meanings. Something that we have unconsciously “agreed” on. “When I grow up, I want to be a conformist too” shows how attractive being a conformist can be today. Usually used as an insult, security and a solid home are primarily emphasized here. The advertising joke made this previously hidden side clear. The conformist saying thus showed a surprising, unexpected connection. If the surprise is missing because you know or anticipate the punchline, the joke is usually pointless. One reason why we are quickly annoyed by a constantly repeating joke in advertising. On the other hand, many people still smile at the little girl's career aspiration. But a smile rarely lasts that long. Because it is hardly ever so successful to pick up current values, trends and the zeitgeist with an advertising joke and find a twist to the rather unconscious structures. The compatibility of rebellious individualism and stability-giving orders is still very popular. That's why we still smile when it comes to being petty. In addition, the connection to the advertised product was also correct here. Building society savings were - at that time - somewhat out of fashion, but LBS showed in a charming way that a house symbolically fulfills the longing for order and security in a special way. Compulsively looking for a joke doesn't help much in advertising. And humorless advertising can even work well. Because it can use the principle of the joke through fairy tale analogies: By addressing existential themes and living conditions, it should establish and show connections that we have not yet seen. For example, when it comes to the respective other sides of cultural settings. Or about how even a small person can become very big. The child in the LBS advertisement mentioned also actually pursues a fairy tale analogy in the joke: The wish to become a small conformist is the princess's wish - out of the punk life that is rather off-putting for her into a penthouse castle. The depth psychological structure goes far beyond the funny itself - that's the only reason this joke works. Without a meaningful, fairy-tale-analogous, contemporary and product-use-specific context, funny advertising is pointless. A worldwide study like the one by Richard Wiseman shows this impressively, but it would not even be necessary. Depth psychological studies that follow the morphological approach allow the structures of a joke in advertising to be analyzed. Whether a culturally relevant topic, such as community and security or, alternatively, a significant life theme such as growing up, is moved and thus touches people can be conclusively revealed. Seen in this way, English advertising is hardly funnier than ours. We wouldn't find it funny at all. In England as in Germany, the joke in advertising only works by highlighting culturally or life-relevant themes - as happens in fairy tales. Advertising does not have to be funny - it must have relevance for the psyche.