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Comedy is a powerful marketing tool, and many ad world mavens have long understood its intrinsic value as a clutter buster, brand builder and attention grabber.
And in 2024, the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity finally got hip to the rib-tickling genre, after at least a decade of handing out hardware disproportionately to weighty, purpose-driven work. The coveted Oscars for commercials even added a humor subcategory for the first time.
Comedy in its many forms never left, yet it came roaring back at the recent conference, enough to give 2024 an unofficial name: The Year of the Laughing Lions.
There was “a massive swing toward more humorous winners,” according to System1’s post-Cannes study, which found 75% of U.S. and U.K. winners used humor, up from 52% in 2023. (Meanwhile, only 13% of this year’s winners were identified as purpose-centric ads.)
“Humor is firmly back on the advertising agenda and juries are taking note,” per Jon Evans, chief customer officer at System1, who said that such campaigns “tend to be more effective” with consumers.
But how do they rate with real-life comedians and comedy writers? ADWEEK posed the question, gathering insight from folks who are well-equipped to gauge if a piece of content is funny haha, funny strange or simply not funny at all.
Among the critics for the half-dozen award-winning campaigns we chose to dissect:
- Steph Barkley, director-comedian and CEO of Two Socks, a creative production house in L.A. specializing in comedy
- Kimmy Dubé, video editor at Cosmo Street Editorial and go-to collaborator for comedy-centric indie agency Party Land
- Zoe Kessler, ADWEEK Creative 100 alum, stand-up comedian by night and group creative director at Johannes Leonardo by day
- Matt Buechele, award-winning writer-comedian from The Tonight Show, with viral ads for Netflix, Bose and Apple Arcade on his CV
- Tom Scharpling, writer, producer, podcaster and director
- Vinita Khilnani, actor, writer and content creator
Read on for their insights.
CeraVe “Michael Cerave” by Ogilvy PR New York
Scharpling: “Perfect use of Michael Cera. A celebrity playing themselves in a spot that felt fresh—not easy anymore. Love how it ends on a minor note. Good showcase of the product.”