When SNL UK was first announced back in April 2025, the reaction was… mixed. “Will Saturday Night Live spin-off make Britain laugh?” people wondered.

Fast forward 13 months and Sky already seems to have its answer. Not only has the show racked up 86 million views across social media platforms, but its early success earned itself an extended second season before the first had even finished. But perhaps most importantly, it played out well in the group chat.

That’s the thing people need to understand about humour today. The funniest moments aren’t simply about polished, written scripts. They’re moments people want to share with their friends immediately - moments that we can share and expand on with our own friends and our own in-jokes. The videos that get clipped up into viral memes, nonsense voice note impressions in the group chat, the throwaway line that somehow enters your friendship vocabulary for the next six months.

And honestly, that shouldn’t be a surprise to us. This country has always loved sketch comedy. Monty Python, French and Saunders, Mitchell and Webb. Generations of comedians all understand what it took to send audiences into hysterics.

Today, you only have to look at the popularity of Last One Laughing - with the first three episodes of season two attracting 4.2 million viewers in its opening week - to see that viewers’ appetite for unpredictable comedy, waiting for people to break character, reacting in real time. The funny part is often the realism of it all.

These are the standards that the world of entertainment is being held to now. And brands are recognising this too.

Audiences find a new funny bone

For years, brands have treated humour like a performance, desperate to find the perfect punchline and get that viral moment. The formula remains the same, with celebrity cameos and cinematic visuals prioritised in the hope that they’ll deliver cultural relevance.

There’s no denying the effectiveness of humour. It makes campaigns more memorable too, with research showing that 90% of people are more likely to remember an ad if it's funny.

The problem is that while comedy has evolved, many brands continue to operate on the basis of an outdated understanding of what audiences actually find funny or entertaining.

But audiences - particularly younger ones - are gravitating to something a bit messier than previous years.

No longer is content that’s a little rough-around-the-edges considered a sign of unprofessionalism. Humour online has become its own language. One emoji can carry an entire conversation. Weird memes, half-finished thoughts, blurry screenshots - that’s friend lore.

Platforms such as Snapchat have long reflected this for years. Championing spontaneous, uncut and unfiltered content over polished perfection - less “campaign”, more captured moment. And in a feed full of noise, that kind of authenticity cuts through because it makes people feel something. Content that feels human enough to send to a friend.

Today, participation is the name of the game. For Gen Z - an audience of social media natives which prioritises instant conversations over refined communication, spread humour through meme culture and immediate reactions - this behaviour is especially pronounced.

It’s not enough to simply perform

The fact that audiences won’t laugh at just anything anymore may give some brands pause for thought - but I think the opposite. This is an opportunity to learn about your community and identify what really makes them crack up.

Audiences want to be surprised and delighted - even if that means embracing a degree of absurdism.

That’s exactly why Duolingo’s unhinged social presence works so well. The brand stopped behaving like a traditional advertiser and started acting more like an internet character audiences could play along with. The giant owl turning up at concerts, threatening users over missed lessons or inserting itself into trending moments was participatory, weird and deeply online.

However, not all success requires such a drastic leap. Keeping one foot in reality allows brands to come across more grounded and authentic - which, for 93% of consumers, is a stepping stone to building trust.

The key here is to balance humour with recognisable everyday moments and behaviours. This was the approach for McDonald’s and Lime, which brought their brands to life through Snapchat’s “Little Joys” campaign: strapping your takeaway safely into the passenger seat or taking a celebratory selfie after finding a Lime bike when you need it most. Neither felt overly scripted because the humour already existed in real life. The brands just recognised it.

And maybe that’s the bigger shift happening here. The role of brands in humour culture is changing from performer to participant.

In on the joke

As SNL UK wraps up its first season, brands should take a breath and reflect on the way that comedy (and culture) is shifting. Right now, audiences are gravitating towards humour that feels shared rather than staged.

Because the best humour has never really been about “content”. It’s about connection. It’s about the feeling of sending something to a friend with no explanation and knowing they’ll immediately get it.

Brands don’t need to script every laugh. They just need to understand what people actually want to share.