I Stole My Best Marketing Ideas From the Advertising Greats

Does funny marketing actually sell?

Yes. Long before anyone coined the phrase "funny marketing", the giants of advertising were saying entertaining sells. Ogilvy, Sugarman and Collier all built empires on the idea that humour lowers resistance and makes a message stick. Modern research agrees: humorous ads are remembered more and hold attention longer. Comedy is not a gimmick, it is a proven persuasion tool.

The greats said it first

I would love to claim we invented the idea that comedy plus marketing equals more money. We did not. Far from it.

David Ogilvy, the godfather of advertising, said it directly: "The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible."

Joe Sugarman, who built a nine-figure direct-response empire, agreed: "Humour is one of the most effective ways to sell." Which rather explains why his ads were busy making millions while everyone else was putting prospects to sleep.

And Robert Collier, who wrote the book on persuasion, put it best: "Make them laugh, and you've paved a path to conversion."

But they left out the how

Here is the catch. These heavyweights all agreed that the best marketing was entertaining marketing. They just never really handed over a "how to".

And there is a very specific way to add comedy to your marketing successfully. Get it wrong and you are just being funny for the sake of it: plenty of engagement, precisely zero sales.

The right way to add comedy

Done properly, humour is not decoration. It is doing a job.

The right kind of jokes make the pain your audience feels more vivid, without negging them into submission. They make the solution you are offering feel bigger and more enticing, without resorting to bro-marketing tactics and inflated claims. And they make people actively seek your marketing out, because you are selling to them through ads and content they genuinely enjoy consuming.

That is the difference between "funny" and "funny that sells". The joke has to carry the argument, not distract from it.

What the research says

It is not just long-dead admen, either. The evidence is blunt.

The Journal of Consumer Research found humorous ads are 23% more likely to be remembered than non-humorous ones. Nielsen Norman Group's eye-tracking studies found humorous ads hold attention 37% longer. As Rory Sutherland of Ogilvy puts it, "The best marketing doesn't feel like marketing."

Attention, memory, and lowered resistance, all pointing the same way. If you want your business to thrive, your marketing needs to stop interrupting and start entertaining.

Meet Brian

Knowing that entertaining sells is the easy part. Doing it reliably, on demand, for your own business, is where most people come unstuck. That is exactly what Brian, our AI Comedy Marketing Machine, is for.

Brian is built on the same principle the greats spotted a century ago: strategic humour that makes your message land, using the exact frameworks our writers use, so your marketing entertains and sells at the same time.

Take Brian for a spin and put a century of proven wisdom to work in your marketing.