Laughter is the best effectiveness medicine in advertising. Humour doesn’t just entertain, it reveals.

As Orlando Wood, System1’s Chief Innovation Officer, explains, humour engages the brain in ways that straightforward messaging cannot. It allows audiences to feel clever and involved, ensuring the message resonates deeply. Humour rewards viewers for their participation in closing the gap between what’s shown and what’s meant.

While there are numerous types of happiness that work in favour of driving long-term brand building as well short-term sales potential, they have varying degrees of effectiveness. Research from System1 shows that amusement is a type of happiness that is strongly linked to advertising effectiveness.

Award-winning animation studio Aardman knows that funny business is good business.

System1’s extensive database of more than 150,000 global ads reveals that campaigns made by Aardman vastly outperform the average ad. We dug deeper to uncover the secrets to Aardman’s success, sharing the insights in our joint book Putting On a Show.

Principles of humour in advertising

In his book Look Out, Orlando Wood identifies five principles that can help advertisers incorporate humour effectively by finding the inherent drama in their product:

• Repetition: Leveraging familiar patterns or phrases to create recognition and anticipation, building comedic momentum.
• Inversion: Flipping expectations or assumptions to create surprise and delight.
• Overlapping Beams: Combining unrelated ideas or concepts in unexpected ways to highlight contrasts and connections.
• Exaggeration: Amplifying a situation, trait, or idea to absurd levels for comedic effect.
• Transposition to a Different Key: Placing an idea in a new or unexpected context to reframe its meaning humorously.

In addition to the above principles, there are other considerations for marketers. Will you leverage slapstick, satire or another form of comedy? Will your character be the butt of the joke – leaning into schadenfreude – or will they be spared personal humiliation to deliver humour in another manner? Whichever route you take, make sure your audience connects with the comedic tone to drive the greatest commercial impact.

Making serious topics approachable

Research from System1’s Jon Evans, eatbigfish’s Adam Morgan and Peter Field has found that the most common response to advertising is neutrality. Dull ads that fail to captivate audiences can cost brands millions of pounds annually in additional media spend, all whilst achieving fewer results.

Aardman have a proven ability to reduce neutrality and boost emotional engagement, making it a powerful tool in combating the cost of dullness. Often this is accomplished through humour. Humour has a unique ability to transform how audiences perceive even the most serious or traditionally dull topics. By disarming viewers, humour makes challenging or complex messages feel accessible and memorable.

A prime example of Aardman’s ability to take a potentially dry or uninspiring subject and transform it into something engaging is the work with Heat Electric. Featuring a delightful Claymation tortoise, the ad humorously explores the concept of 'Creature Comforts' in a way that feels familiar and cosy to viewers.

The ad uses audio recordings from real-life interviews centred around what people value about the company’s heating. The animation and the decision to have a tortoise deliver the messages make them easier to digest and engage with. The regional accent and unscripted language of the interviewee make the animated tortoise incredibly relatable and charming. And the juxtaposition of a tortoise talking realistically about his busy lifestyle, explaining that all he needs from his heating is to make his home cosy and to be “easily turn off- and on-able,” creates humour through inversion, evoking happiness and amusement.

The campaign achieved a ‘Strong’ Star Rating of 4.6 in System1’s testing, indicating it has long-term brand-building potential, even more than 30 years after its debut. And it highlights how Aardman’s distinctive storytelling, character design, and humour can transform a traditionally dull topic, like home heating, into something memorable and emotionally resonant. By applying these techniques, Aardman turned a functional message into an entertaining ad, demonstrating how brands can use charm and creativity to avoid the costly trap of dull advertising.

Humour is incredibly powerful at driving intense, positive feelings of happiness, specifically amusement. Characters and clever storytelling can both be vehicles for delivering humour. And all types of brands – B2B included – can leverage humour to get their messaging across to audiences.

Putting On a Show is System1 and Aardman’s joint book that celebrates the magic of advertising with character, story, humor, and craft – and shows how putting on a show, as Aardman so often does, delivers lasting business impact.

For more information about System1, the Creative Effectiveness Platform, visit system1group.com/. For more information about Aardman, an independent, multi-Academy Award® and BAFTA® award-winning studio, visit aardman.com.