Humor in Cross-cultural Advertising: A Content Analysis and Test of Effectiveness in German and Spanish Print Advertisements

Abstract

Humor preferences depend on the cultural background of the respondents. Designers of international advertising campaigns thus need to know how to adapt ads to the target market. The present paper runs two studies to test (1) whether marketers actually adapt the type of humor to the culture of the target market and (2) whether different types of humor elicit different effects in different cultures. Both studies use the example of Germany and Spain for cross-cultural comparisons. Study 1 analyzes 418 Spanish and 748 German print advertisements. The results indicate that marketers apply humor in Spain more frequently than in Germany. The type of humor differs across the two countries: Comic wit which builds on incongruent elements is more frequent in Germany (low-context, individualistic, masculine culture) than in Spain (high-context, collectivistic, feminine culture) while Spanish ads contain more sentimental humor. This humor type transports warmly messages without including incongruent messages. Study 2 examines whether the cultural dimensions of individualism and femininity affect attitude towards sentimental humor ads and sentimental comedy ads. The latter type of humor combines warm elements with the principle of incongruity- resolution. The study shows that Spanish respondents rate sentimental humor significantly more positive than German respondents. In contrast, German subjects evaluate sentimental comedy most positive. Implications for managers and future research are derived.