Abstract
Classic and social marketing research has described some of the benefits of using humor. However, while these studies have strongly recommended the strategy, little has been reported on why practitioners have, or could, leverage humor to reach campaign goals. Addressing this need, the use of humor in 15 social marketing campaigns was investigated. Three of these campaigns were selected, aiming to promote water-efficient behavior, and examined in greater depth to highlight findings. Campaign planners were interviewed to understand their choice in strategy, objectives of their campaigns, and results achieved. Results show humor has been leveraged to target a variety of behaviors in the areas of health, social equity, environment, and education. The examples followed many recommendations within previous research. However, newly described applications of humor in these campaigns included minimizing the competing behavior, endearing an audience to the messenger, and reducing tensions around a contentious issue. This article concludes with a discussion of how these applications can be successfully leveraged and potential associated pitfalls and ethical issues that may arise from the use of humor.
Published Version
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