Incorporating Humour in Your Marketing Strategy for The Year

Humour works in marketing because it creates instant connection, boosts memorability, increases shareability, and humanises your brand, making it more relatable and approachable to the audiences you're trying to reach. But using it well requires understanding your audience deeply enough to make it genuinely relatable rather than forced, measuring its impact through engagement, traffic, and conversion data, and knowing which contexts it should never enter. This article covers why humour is one of the most underused tools in brand marketing, how to make it land, how to track whether it's working, and the situations where it should be avoided entirely.

According to research by Melottimedia, 48% of customers believe they have no relationship with a brand that doesn't make them laugh or smile. If nearly half your potential audience can't connect with you, converting them becomes significantly harder. A well-placed joke breaks through barriers and establishes connection faster than almost any other tool in marketing, and in 2026, capturing attention requires more than a polished product and a clever tagline. It requires genuine connection.

Why Humour Works Wonders in Marketing:

Humour works in marketing for four specific reasons: it creates a shared experience that signals your brand understands its audience, it makes messages significantly more memorable than neutral content, it makes content inherently shareable because people pass on things that made them laugh, and it adds personality that makes brands feel human and approachable rather than corporate and distant.

• Instant connection: humour creates a moment of shared understanding. It says, "we are always thinking of ways to make you feel better".
• Enhanced memorability: people are more likely to remember something that made them laugh; the message sticks long after they've scrolled past.
• Increased shareability: funny content travels. People share things that made them laugh with friends and family, extending your reach organically without paid amplification.
• Humanising your brand: humour shows that you don't take yourself too seriously, and that quality, more than almost anything else, makes brands feel relatable and approachable.

How do you make humour actually relatable in marketing?

You make humour relatable by grounding it in your audience's specific pain points, daily struggles, and shared experiences, not by making random jokes. The key is understanding your audience well enough to use humour that acknowledges what they're going through and positions your product or service as the relief.

Humour is subjective: what one person finds funny, another might find offensive or simply flat. The solution isn't to avoid it; it's to make it specific. Know your audience's pain points. Know what they appreciate. Then use humour to address those pain points rather than to perform cleverness for its own sake.

Example: If you're selling productivity software, instead of a dry features ad, create a short video showcasing the relatable struggle of juggling multiple tasks, endless emails, and impossible deadlines, ending with a visible sigh of relief after using the software. This acknowledges the audience's real frustration (feeling overwhelmed) and offers a humorous solution. The joke works because the audience has lived it.

Infuse humour into your brand storytelling, not just your captions, it's more powerful when it runs through the narrative of what your brand does and why, rather than appearing as a one-off post.

How do you measure whether your humorous marketing is actually working?

Measure the impact of humorous marketing through four key metrics: engagement (likes, comments, shares, and social media interaction), website traffic (referral traffic driven by humorous content), brand mentions (social media monitoring for campaign-related references), and sales conversions (whether humorous campaigns are leading to actual purchases or sign-ups).

Tracking these consistently tells you two things: what kind of humour resonates with your specific audience, and where it's most effective, because some platforms and demographics respond to it far more readily than others. That data tells you where to invest more effort and where to adjust your approach.

When should you avoid using humour in marketing?

Avoid humour in marketing in three clear situations: when dealing with serious or sensitive topics (tragedy, illness, social injustice), in formal or professional contexts where it risks undermining credibility, and when it doesn't align with your brand's established image, because forced humour feels worse than no humour at all.

If your brand has built a very serious or professional identity, introducing humour inconsistently can feel jarring and out of place. The test is whether the humour serves the audience and the brand at the same time; if it only serves one or neither, leave it out.

FAQ

Why does humour work so effectively in marketing?

Four reasons: it creates a shared experience that signals brand understanding, it makes messages significantly more memorable (people recall things that made them laugh long after neutral content fades), it increases organic shareability (funny content gets forwarded), and it humanises brands in a way that formal messaging can't. Research by Melottimedia found that 48% of customers feel no relationship with brands that don't make them laugh or smile, which makes humour one of the most direct paths to brand connection.

How do you know if your audience will respond to humour?

By understanding their pain points, daily struggles, communication style, and the kind of content they already engage with and share. Audience research, reviewing comments, social engagement patterns, and the content they share organically, tells you far more than demographic data alone. Humour that addresses a specific, shared frustration lands reliably; generic jokes rarely do.

What types of humour work best in marketing?

Relatable, observational humour grounded in your audience's real experiences consistently outperforms other styles. Self-deprecating humour (brands not taking themselves too seriously) also builds strong connection. Avoid humour that relies on cultural stereotypes, targets groups, or trivialises serious topics, these backfire reliably and the reputational cost outweighs any short-term engagement gain.

How do you measure the ROI of humorous content?

Track four metrics: engagement rate (likes, shares, comments) compared to your non-humorous content baseline, referral traffic to your website from that content, brand mention volume during and after the campaign, and conversion data showing whether humorous campaigns are producing actual sales or leads. Comparison against your baseline is more useful than absolute numbers, it tells you whether humour is specifically driving performance improvement for your audience.

Can B2B brands use humour in marketing?

Yes, and it's often more effective than B2B brands expect, because the buyers they're targeting are people, not job titles. Humour in B2B marketing works best when it's dry, observational, and rooted in the very specific frustrations of the professional context (procurement processes, endless meetings, software that doesn't talk to each other). The key is that it still needs to reflect genuine audience understanding rather than a generic attempt to seem approachable.

Where should humour never be used in marketing?

Three clear situations: when the subject matter involves tragedy, illness, grief, or social injustice (even adjacent humour reads as insensitive); in contexts where your audience expects formality and professionalism (legal, financial, and medical communications, for example); and when the tone is inconsistent with your established brand identity. Forced or incongruent humour does more damage than no humour at all, the goal is to deepen connection, not undermine the credibility you've built.

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In 2026, capturing audience attention requires genuine connection, and humour, when used strategically and thoughtfully, can be the bridge that gets you there. It doesn't require a large budget or a dedicated comedy writer. It requires a deep enough understanding of your audience to know what will make them smile, and the confidence to use it consistently.

Don't be afraid to make your audience laugh. It might just be the breakthrough your brand marketing needs this year.