Humor In Advertising

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The techniques and practices used to bring products, services, opinions, or causes to public notice for the purpose of persuading the public to respond in a certain way toward what is advertised. Most advertising involves promoting a good that is for sale, but similar methods are used to encourage people to drive safely, to support various charities, or to vote for political candidates, among many other examples.

In the ancient and medieval world such advertising as existed was conducted by word of mouth. The first step toward modern advertising came with the development of printing in the 15th and 16th centuries. In the 17th century weekly newspapers in London began to carry advertisements, and by the 18th century such advertising was flourishing. The great expansion of business in the 19th century was accompanied by the growth of an advertising industry; it was that century, primarily in the United States of America, that saw the establishment of advertising agencies. The first agencies were, in essence, brokers for space in newspapers. But by the early 20th century agencies became involved in producing the advertising message itself, including copy and artwork, and by the 1920s agencies had come into being that could plan and execute complete advertising campaigns, from initial research to copy preparation to placement in various media. In many countries advertising is the most important source of income for the media (e.g., newspapers, magazines, or television stations) through which it is conducted. In the noncommunist world advertising has become a large and important service industry.

There are eight principal media for advertising. Perhaps the most basic medium is the newspaper, which offers advertisers large circulations, a readership located close to the advertiser's place of business, and the opportunity to alter their advertisements on a frequent and regular basis. Magazines, the other chief print medium, may be of general interest or they may be aimed at specific audiences (such as people interested in outdoor sports or computers or literature) and offer the manufacturers of products of particular interest to such people the chance to make contact with their most likely customers. Many national magazines publish regional editions, permitting a more selective targeting of advertisements. In Western industrial nations the most pervasive media are television and radio. Although in some countries radio and television are state-run and accept no advertising, in others advertisers are able to buy short "spots" of time, usually a minute or less in duration. Advertising spots are broadcast between or during regular programs, at moments sometimes specified by the advertiser and sometimes left up to the broadcaster. For advertisers the most important facts about a given television or radio program are the size and composition of its audience. The size of the audience determines the amount of money the broadcaster can charge an advertiser, and the composition of the audience determines the advertiser's choice as to when a certain message, directed at a certain segment of the public, should be run.

The other advertising media include direct mail, which can make a highly detailed and personalized appeal; outdoor billboards and posters; transit advertising, which can reach the millions of users of mass-transit systems; and miscellaneous media, including dealer displays and promotional items such as matchbooks or calendars. For an advertisement to be effective its production and placement must be based on a knowledge of the public and a skilled use of the media. Advertising agencies serve to orchestrate complex campaigns whose strategies of media use are based on research into consumer behavior and demographic analysis of the market area. A strategy will combine creativity in the production of the advertising messages with canny scheduling and placement, so that the messages are seen by, and will have an effect on, the people the advertiser most wants to address. Given a fixed budget, advertisers face a basic choice: they can have their message seen or heard by many people fewer times, or by fewer people many times. This and other strategic decisions are made in light of tests of the effectiveness of advertising campaigns. There is no dispute over the power of advertising to inform consumers of what products are available. In a free-market economy effective advertising is essential to a company's survival, for unless consumers know about a company's product they are unlikely to buy it.

In criticism of advertising it has been argued that the consumer must pay for the cost of advertising in the form of higher prices for goods; against this point it is argued that advertising enables goods to be mass marketed, thereby bringing prices down. It has been argued that the cost of major advertising campaigns is such that few firms can afford them, thus helping these firms to dominate the market; on the other hand, whereas smaller firms may not be able to compete with larger ones at a national level, at the local level advertising enables them to hold their own. Finally, it has been argued that advertisers exercise an undue influence over the regular contents of the media they employ–the editorial stance of a newspaper or the subject of a television show. In response it has been pointed out that such influence is counteracted, at least in the case of financially strong media firms, by the advertiser's reliance on the media to convey his messages; any compromise of the integrity of a media firm might result in a smaller audience for his advertising.

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Of all the criticisms leveled at manufacturers, those against their advertising probably have been the most vociferous. Advertising is necessarily vulnerable to these attacks: it is experienced by everybody, its products are on show for a long time, and its purposes are materialistic. Although the major purpose of company advertising, which is to attract members of the public toward buying a particular product, is fairly straightforward, the methods employed in this process have become increasingly complex. As business has become more competitive, so has the advertising that sells its products.

Coupled with this increased competition has been the development of more powerful media–the most important of these being television. From the consumer's point of view, the basic criticism of advertising is that it leads him to purchase goods that he has no wish to purchase by presenting misleading and untruthful statements or by creating wants, needs, and desires in his mind that might not otherwise exist. In the first instance it is accepted that the consumer, of his own volition, has a need that is filled by the description of the advertised product (but not necessarily by the product itself), whereas in the second the need is artificial and is stimulated entirely by the media. From an economic viewpoint, critics of advertising point to the enormous amount of money involved–money that, they state, does not benefit the consumer although he is compelled to pay it. A second criticism is that advertising restricts competition because only large companies can afford expensive, nationwide campaigns, thus limiting freedom of entry of new firms into an established market.

A definitive answer to these questions is obviously impossible. Regarding the first, it might be fair to say that economic growth and the creation of wealth might come about far more slowly without the aid of advertising. The development of national rather than regional brands–and the economies of scale implicit in this development–might be retarded. For all its drawbacks, advertising informs the consumer and enables him to make not only a choice between products but also a choice between the stores at which he can buy those products. For the manufacturer it justifies a heavy investment in capital and manpower in that it assures (to some degree at least) the quick development of sales. Regarding the second major criticism–that advertising encourages the concentration of industry–there is no doubt that this is true. But not everyone agrees that industrial concentration necessarily acts against the interests of the consumer, particularly in the absence of outright monopolies or cartels. In some countries, such as the United States and Great Britain, anti-trust or monopoly laws act to restrain the more flagrant abuses of industrial power. Other countries, especially some in western Europe, have established monopolies boards, which monitor or oversee activities of large corporations in the field of takeovers and mergers.

The advertising industry has for many years been aware of the various criticisms and has accepted the need for some control over advertising methods in addition to the provisions of statutory regulations that exist in many countries. The country with the most stringent advertising standards is usually thought to be Great Britain, where, for example, all advertising on independent radio and television is controlled by the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA), the commercial counterpart to the British Broadcasting Corporation. The IBA lays down controls on advertising, banning the use, for instance, of subliminal advertising (methods by which the listener or viewer might be influenced without his becoming aware of it) and of advertising that plays on fear and on the minds of the superstitious. The IBA has a further list of unacceptable products and services. Advertising is not allowed, for example, on behalf of cigarettes or betting, and political or religious advertising is prohibited. Other regulations involve methods of reproduction, the wording and advertising of guarantees, and the enforcement of prices and other offers; furthermore, special conditions exist in specific cases–the listening or viewing child, the employment of children in advertisements, and the advertising of certain products such as medicines and drugs and also financial services. Advertising time is sold by production companies appointed by the IBA, but advertisers may not sponsor programs. The general character of governmental and private controls over the claims and methods of advertisers may be said to be one of considerable laxity. It seems likely that this situation will be changed not so much by the introduction of more stringent codes as by challenges to particular advertisers by consumer interest groups within the framework of existing legislation regarding truth in advertising.

Advertising includes all forms of paid, non-personal communication and promotion of products, services, or ideas by a specified sponsor. Advertising appears in such media as print (newspapers, magazines, billboards, flyers) or broadcast (radio, television). Print advertisements typically consist of a picture, a headline, information about the product, and occasionally a response coupon. Broadcast advertisements consist of an audio or video narrative that can range from short 15-second spots to longer segments known as infomercials, which generally last 30 or 60 minutes.

Advertising agencies are responsible for initiating, managing, and implementing paid marketing communications. In addition, some agencies have diversified into other types of marketing communications, including public relations, sales promotion, interactive media, and direct marketing. Agencies typically consist of four departments: account management, a creative division, a research group, and a media planning department. Those in account management act as liaisons between the client and the agency, ensuring that client needs are communicated to the agency and that agency recommendations are clearly understood by the client. Account managers also manage the flow of work within the agency, making sure that projects proceed according to schedule. The creative department is where advertisements are conceived, developed, and produced. Artists, writers, and producers work together to craft a message that meets agency and client objectives. In this department, slogans, jingles, and logos are developed. The research department gathers and processes data about the target market and consumers. This information provides a foundation for the work of the creative department and account management. Media planning personnel specialize in selecting and placing advertisements in print and broadcast media.

There was a certain resistance to advertising in magazines, in keeping with their literary affinities. When the advertisement tax in Britain was repealed in 1853 and more advertising began to appear, the Athenaeum thought fit to say: "It is the duty of an independent journal to protect as far as possible the credulous, confiding and unwary from the wily arts of the insidious advertiser." In the United States many magazines, such as Harper's, took a high line with would-be advertisers until the 1880s; and Reader's Digest, with its mammoth circulation, admitted advertisements to its American edition only in 1955. Yet today some sectors of the magazine industry are dominated by advertising, and few are wholly free from its influence. Magazine advertising economics in the United States Cyrus Curtis showed what could be achieved in attracting advertising revenue with the Saturday Evening Post. He bought the magazine for $1,000 in 1897, when it was on its last legs, and invested $1,250,000 of his profits from the Ladies' Home Journal before it finally caught on. But when it did, through an appeal based on well-founded stories and articles about the business world, a prime interest at the time, its success was enormous; by 1922 it had a circulation of more than 2,000,000 and an advertising revenue in excess of $28,000,000. It was a classic demonstration of modern magazine economics: as circulation rose in the initial phase of low advertising rates, money had to be poured in to meet the cost of producing more copies; but, as soon as high advertising rates could be justified by a high circulation, profitability was assured. Conversely, when high rates are maintained on a falling circulation, it is the advertisers who lose, until they withdraw their support. Once circulation figures became all-important, advertisers naturally asserted their right to verify them.

The first attempt, made in 1899 by the Association of American Advertisers, only lasted until 1913, but fresh initiatives in 1914 created the Audit Bureau of Circulation. Though resented at first by publishers, it was eventually seen as a guarantee of their claims. Interest in circulation led publishers into market research. The first organization for this purpose was set up by the Curtis Publishing Company in 1911; but such research did not become general until the 1930s. Reader research, to ascertain what readers wanted from magazines, was also developed in the 1930s and proved to be a useful tool, though no substitute for editorial flair. As was once observed by the features editor of Vogue: "If we find out what people want, it's already too late”. Thus the popular magazine in the United States, expanding with the economy, became part of the marketing system. By 1900 advertisements might form up to 50 percent of its contents; by 1947, the proportion was more often 65 percent. A proprietor was no longer just selling attractive editorial matter to a segment of the public; he was also selling a well-charted segment of the public to the advertiser. Though the process was most pronounced in the United States, a vast country where, in the absence of national newspapers, national magazines had a special function, the same principles came to apply, in varying degrees, in Europe.

The effects of advertising on the appearance of the magazine have been, on the whole, stimulating. At the turn of the century, advertisements began to move forward from the back pages into greater prominence among the editorial matter, and this was often regretted by readers. At the same time, advertising agencies were developing from mere space sellers into copywriters and designers; their efforts to produce work of high visual appeal forced editors to make their own editorial typography and layout more attractive. The use of color, in particular, was greatly fostered by advertisers once they discovered its effectiveness. In the 1880s color printing was rare, but, after the development of the multicolor rotary press in the 1890s, it steadily became more common. By 1948 nearly half the advertising pages of the leading American magazines were in two or more colors. The effect of advertising on editorial content is harder to analyze. Advertisers have not been slow to exercise financial pressure and have often succeeded in suppressing material or modifying policy. In 1940, for instance, Esquire lost its piano advertisements after publishing an article recommending the guitar for musical accompaniment; six months later it tried to win them back with a rueful editorial apology. Yet many magazines, notably the Saturday Evening Post, Time, and The New Yorker, have persistently asserted editorial independence. Something like a balance of power has come into being, which can tip either way. What can safely be said is that advertising pressure as a whole has been a socially conservative force, playing on conformity, inclining magazines to work on the principle of "minimum offense," and holding them back from radical editorial departures until they are clearly indicated by changes in public taste. This has tended to make the large-circulation magazine an exploiter rather than a discoverer of fresh talent or new ideas. Yet in the last analysis, advertisers have been forced to recognize that magazines, like newspapers, cannot forgo too much of their independence without forfeiting the loyalty of their readers and hence their value as an advertising medium.

1.2 Advertising has evolved into a vastly complex form of communication, with literally thousands of different ways for a business to get a message to the consumer. It could be said that cave paintings in some way represented the first forms of advertising, although the earliest recognized version of what we know as advertising was done on papyrus by the Egyptians. And in Pompeii, the ruins suggest that advertising was commonplace.However, today the advertiser has a vast array of choices. The Internet alone provides many of these, with the advent of branded viral videos, banners, advertorials, sponsored websites, branded chat rooms and so much more.

Fortunately, every single tactic available to the advertiser falls into one of the following buckets. Although a few of these are relatively new to the field, most go way back to the very beginnings of modern advertising. A wise man once said, "The person who saves money by not advertising is like the man who stops the clock to save time." In today's fast-paced, high-tech age, businesses must use some form of advertising to make prospects aware of their products and services.

Even a famous company like Coca-Cola continually spends money on advertising to support recognition of their products. In 1993, Coca-Cola spent more dw $150 million to keep its name in the forefront of the public's eye. So the question isn't whether or not you can afford to advertise, you simply must if you want your business to succeed.

Every advertising medium has characteristics that give it natural advantages and limitations. As you look through your newspaper(s), you'll notice some businesses that advertise regularly. Observe who they are and how they advertise their products and services.

More than likely, their advertising investment is working if it's selling!

Almost every home in the United States receives a newspaper, either by newsstand or home delivery. Reading the newspaper is a habit for most families. And, there is something for everybody–sports, comics, crosswords, news, classifieds, etc. You can reach certain types of people by placing your ad in different as: sections of the paper. People expect advertising in the newspaper. In fact, many people buy the paper just to read the ads from the supermarket, movies or departitient stores.

Unlike advertising on TV and radio, advertising in the newspaper can be examined at your leisure.A newspaper ad can contain details, such as prices and telephone newspaper.

From the advertiser's point-of-view, When it comes to advertising, a lot of people really don't know what they wtnt, where to get it or what to do with it after they have it. This publication will help you learn to determine what type of advertising media is best for you. It also provides guidelines you can use to obtain the advertising exposure you need and will help you identify ways to make your advertising i-nore cost efficient.

Advertising is an investment in your business' future. And, like any investment, it's important to find out as much as you can before you make a decision. You'll be able to use this publication often as a reliable reference tool in the months and years to come. Newspaper advertising can be convenient because production changes can be made quickly, if necessary, and you can often insert a new advertisement on short notice. Another advantage is the large variety of ad sizes newspaper advertising offers. Even though. You may not have a lot of money in your budget, you cin still place a series of small ads, without making a sacrifice.

Advertising in the newspaper offers many advantages, but it is not without its inherent disadvantages, such: newspapers usually are read once and stay in the house for just a day.

or the page size of a newspaper is fairly large and small ads can look mintisctile and you're not assured that every person who gets the newspaper will read your ad. They may not read the section you advertised in, or they may simply have skipped the page because they were not interested in the news on it.

Radio is a relatively inexpensive way of reaching people. It has often been called the "theater of the mind" because voices or sounds can be used to create moods or itnages that, if crested by visual effects, would be impossible to afford.

You can also negotiate rates for your commercials, or even barter. Stations are often looking for prizes they can give away to listeners, so it's possible to get full commercial credit for the product or service you offer.

Television reaches very large audiences – audiences that are usually larger than the audience your city's newspaper reaches. The area that a television station's broadcast signal covers is called A.D.I., which stands for "Area of Dominant Inffluence."

So, print media has always been a popular advertising option. Advertising products via newspapers or magazines is a common practice. In addition to this, the print media also offers options like promotional brochures and fliers for advertising purposes. Often, newspapers and magazines sell the advertising space according to the area occupied by the advertisement, the position of the advertisement in the publication (front page/middle page, above/below the fold), as well as the readership of the publications. For instance, an advertisement in a relatively new and less popular newspaper will cost far less than an advertisement in an established newspaper that has a high readership. The price of print ads may also depend on quality of the paper and the supplement in which they appear. For example, an advertisement in the glossy (and popular) supplement of a newspaper costs more than one in a supplement which uses mediocre quality paper.

Outdoor advertising is also a very popular form of advertising. It makes use of several tools and techniques to attract the customers outdoors. The most common examples of outdoor advertising are billboards, kiosks, and also events and trade-shows organized by the company. Billboard advertising is very popular.

However it has to be really terse and catchy in order to grab the attention of the passersby. Kiosks not only provide an easy outlet for the company's products but also make for an effective advertising tool to promote the company's products. Organizing special events or sponsoring them makes for an excellent advertising opportunity and strategy. The company can organize trade fairs, or even exhibitions for advertising their products. If not this, the company can organize several events that are closely associated with their field. For instance a company that manufactures sports utilities can sponsor a sports tournament to advertise its products.

Broadcast advertising is a very popular advertising medium that constitutes several branches like television, radio or the Internet. Television advertisements have been very popular ever since they were introduced. The cost of television advertising often depends on the duration of the advertisement, the time of broadcast (prime time/lull time), sometimes the show on which it will be broadcast, and of course, the popularity of the television channel itself. The radio might have lost its charm owing to new age media. However it remains the choice of small-scale advertisers. Radio jingles have been very a popular advertising medium and have a large impact on the audience, which is evident in the fact that many people still remember and enjoy old popular radio jingles

1.3 Advertising services provide a way for a company or person to inform the public about a product or service they want to sell. Advertisers hire companies, such as advertising agencies or marketing companies, selling a client’s product or service to the most likely buyers. Advertising services may be consulting, creating and producing the ads, media placement and account management.

The varous forms of advertising including print, broadcasting, online and direct marketing. Print advertising includes newspaper, magazine, and periodical advertisements and commercial printing, including brochures and leaflets. Broadcast advertising include television or radio advertising commercials. Online advertising includes ads on Internet sites or blogs, e-newsletter e-postcard sent to a database of email addresses, and viral marketing as Twitter or other social media posts. Direct Marketing includes flyers, postcards and / or promotional letter sent to a database of home or business addresses. Full advertising often starts with defining an advertiser’s target audience, or the demographic profile of consumers most likely to buy their type of product. These statistics usually include age, sex, education level, location, type of job, income, and family living situation. Knowing these facts makes more bodies to come up with a plan to sell the product to a specific audience. This up-front work eliminates wasting time and money on advertising to people who would be interested in the product. After determining the consumer profile, a campaign concept is created and the house or sub-contract agency employees using promotional skills to determine what media best when the client’s customers. Media time or space is purchased by the agency for the advertiser. Media planners and buyers find the best TV and / or radio channels, Internet sites, or journals that will support the campaign aims to reach customers. Today’s media choices are more numerous than ever because of the prevalence of Internet use.

Persuasion is not the same thing as coercion.If you held a gun to someone’s head and said,“Do this, or I’ll shoot,” you would be acting coercively. Besides being illegal, this approach would be ineffective. As soon as the authorities came and took you away, the person would stop following your demands.

The failure of coercion to achieve lasting results is also apparent in less dramatic circumstances. Children whose parents are coercive often rebel as soon as they can; students who perform from fear of an instructor’s threats rarely appreciate the subject matter;and employees who work for abusive and demanding employers are often unproductive and eager to switch jobs as soon as possible.

Persuasion, on the other hand, makes a listener want to think or act differently. Attitudes do not normally change instantly or dramatically.Persuasion is a process. When it is successful, it generally succeeds over time, in increments, and usually small increments at that.The realistic speaker, therefore, establishes goals and expectations that reflect this characteristic of persuasion.

Communication scientists explain this characteristic of persuasion through social judgment theory- this theory tells us that when members of an audience hear a persuasive appeal, they compare it to opinions that they already hold.

The preexisting opinion is called an anchor, but around this anchor there exist what are called latitudes of acceptance, latitudes of rejection, and latitudes of noncommitment.

People who care very strongly about a particular point of view (called “highly ego-involved”by communication researchers) will have a very narrow latitude of noncommitment.People who care less strongly will have a wider latitude of noncommitment.Research suggests that audience members simply will not respond to appeals that fall within their latitude of rejection.This means that persuasion in the real world takes place in a series of small movements. One persuasive

speech may be but a single step in an overall persuasive campaign.The best example of this is the various communications that take place during the months of a political campaign. Candidates watch the opinion polls carefully, adjusting their appeals to the latitudes of acceptance and noncommitment of the uncommitted voters.

Public speakers who heed the principle of social judgment theory tend to seek realistic, if modest, goals in their speeches.

Those statements that are left would be the listeners’ latitude of noncommitment.

Social judgment theory suggests that the best chance of changing audience attitudes would come by presenting an argument based on a position that fell somewhere within the listeners’latitude of noncommitment—even if this isn’t the position that you ultimately wanted them to accept.If you pushed too hard by arguing a position in your audience’s latitude of rejection,your appeals would probably backfire, making your audience more opposed to you than before.

Arguments are not won by shouting down opponents.They are won by changing opponents’ minds—something that can happen only if we give opposing arguments a respectful hearing and still persuade their advocates that there is something wrong with those arguments. In the course of this activity,we may well decide that there is something wrong with our own.

Even in public communication, both speaker and audience are active.This might be manifested in the speaker taking an audience survey before a speech, a sensitivity to audience reactions during a speech, or an open-minded question- and-answer period after a speech.

Even when they understand the difference between persuasion and coercion, some people are still uncomfortable with the idea of persuasive speaking.They see it as the work of high-pressure hucksters: salespeople with their feet stuck in the door, unscrupulous politicians taking advantage of beleaguered taxpayers, and so on. Indeed,many of the principles we are about to discuss have been used by unethical speakers for unethical purposes, but that is not what all—or

even most—persuasion is about. Ethical persuasion plays a necessary and worthwhile role in everyone’s life.

It is through ethical persuasion that we influence others’ lives in worthwhile ways. The person who says,“I do not want to influence other people,”is really saying,“ I do not want to get involved with other people,”and that is an abandonment of one’s responsibilities as a human being. Look at the good you can accomplish through persuasion: You can convince a loved one to give up smoking or to not keep a firearm in the house;you can get members of your community to conserve energy or to join together to refurbish a park; you can persuade an employer to hire you for a job where your own talents, interests, and abilities will be put to

their best use.

Persuasion is considered ethical if it conforms to accepted standards.But what are the standards today? If your plan is selfish and not in the best interest of your audience members, but you are honest about your motives—is that ethical? If your plan is in the best interest of your audience members, yet you lie to them to get them to accept the plan—is that ethical? Philosophers and rhetoricians have argued for centuries over questions like these.

Besides being wrong on moral grounds, unethical attempts at persuasion have a major practical disadvantage: If your deception is uncovered, your credibility will suffer. If, for example,prospective buyers uncover your attempt to withhold a structural flaw in the condominium you are trying to sell, they will probably suspect that the property has other hidden problems.Likewise,if your speech instructor suspects that you are lifting material from other sources without giving credit, your entire presentation will be suspect. One unethical act can cast

doubt on future truthful statements.Thus, for pragmatic as well as moral reasons, honesty really is the best policy.

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While Potato' and Tomato' were having a race, Tomato spun out of the track and crushed his car. Potato stopped his car and said to Tomato, "Catch up." By this example, short humor, whether funny or not, the brain orders the body to create chemical reactions that make people happy and stimulates facial muscles to move. Besides, inappropriate jokes that ridicule or even insult someone can give side-effects. The power of humor is just like double-edged sword, thus, leading us to consider the appropriate role of humor not circumscribing only in relationship among people but the social function of humor.

Humor therapy is generally used to improve quality of life, provide some pain relief and reduce stress. Researchers have described different types of humor. Passive humor is created by observing a comic film, or reading a book, for example. Humor production is a type of humor that involves creating or finding humor in stressful situations. It is thought that being able to find humor in everyday events can be helpful. Our world is full of good and bad things. People who focus on the bad things experience higher levels of unhealthy stress. People who amplify the good things and find humor in the bad things that happen every day, tend to be healthier and a lot more fun to be around.

First and foremost, funny jokes that are cynical commentary on society are called Satire' can give people a breather if not too offensive. In short, satire is a genre that is composed of various aspects for criticism. Majority of people might remember Charles Spencer Chaplin, an actor and movie director who was well-known for his satire, criticizing mechanization that lacks humanity by "Slapstick" routines. Furthermore, by using humor, many comedians have ridiculed high-ranked officials and dictator without any limitation or censure against them. In fact, the reason why parodies and satire were effective compared to books and articles, is their brevity, popularity and amusement that has fascinated ordinary people. Difficult problems in our society such as political scandals or repression of the media are easily treated as a topic of comedy, resulting in many people, even those who are ignorant of politics, could laugh and think about the truth inside. As satire is popular, comedians have used more and more jokes to satisfy the audiences' complaints against modern society. Satire, for sure, is still being used as a way to chastise inappropriate events occurring in modern society that people do not often laugh. As is often the case, it is one of its most important roles that unveil distorted truths with euphemism and laughter.

However, it is a misjudgment to believe that every joke is fine in any situation. Humor can lubricate the serious condition to create a lighter atmosphere if the person who makes a joke considers the audience. Humor that does not respect other people such as sexual discrimination or offensive jokes provoking racism can never do good within conversation. Humor that is based on an open state of mind and respects for others will not only create a comfortable atmosphere but also make she or he witty and smart. Laughter can reduce stress, promote good health, and enhance the quality of life. Humor has physiological effects that can increase pleasurable feelings, stimulate the circulatory system, respiratory system, immune system, and other systems in the body.

The medical profession considers happy humor to be safe, when used as a complementary therapy, although some people have complained that their sides ache after too much great comedy entertainment. The physical effects of laughter on the body involve increased breathing, oxygen use, and heart rate, which stimulate the circulatory system. Many hospitals and ambulatory care centers have incorporated special rooms where humorous materials, and sometimes clowns or comedians, are there to help make people laugh. Materials commonly used include movies, audio and videotapes, books, games, and puzzles. Many hospitals use volunteer groups who visit patients for the specific purpose of providing opportunities for laughter. There are endless opportunities for humorous entertainment outside the hospital setting. Laughing out loud seems to be even more effective than mere intellectual amusement.

Humor has been used in medicine throughout recorded history. One of the early mentions of the health benefits of humor is in the book of Proverbs in the Bible (“A merry heart doeth good like a medicine”). In the 13th century, some surgeons used humor to distract patients from the pain of surgery.

 Positive images and expectations often lead to positive results, while negative thoughts can in the worst case produce depression, despair, unhealthy stress and eventually death. In Love's Labour's Lost, Shakespeare wrote: “He made her melancholy, sad, and heavy; and so she died; had she being light like you of such a merry, nimble, stirring spirit, she might ha' been a grandma ere she died; and so may you, for a light heart lives long.” Humor has also been widely used and studied by the modern medical community. Perhaps the most famous 20th century application of humor therapy involved Norman Cousins, editor of the Saturday Review. Cousins claimed that he cured himself from a serious illness with his own regimen of laughter and food supplements. 

A person's physical / mental reaction to a potentially stressful situation is not dependent entirely on external events and stimuli, but also depends very much on the perception / interpretation of the event, and the meaning given to it. How you view a situation determines if you will respond to it as threatening or challenging. Will it produce unhealthy stress or motivation to improve the situation. Perception is far more important than reality. Happy optimists are NOT realists, but they do generally live longer, happier, healthier more joyful and productive lives than those who focus on negative, depressing realities of life. Humor gives us a different perspective on the many challenges of our complicated lives. If we can make light out of the situation, it is no longer a threat to us. We have already discounted its effect. With such an attitude of detachment, we feel a sense of self-protection and control in our environment. Bill Cosby is fond of saying, "If you can laugh at it, you can survive it."

It's sometimes difficult to force a laugh in tense situations. But that's precisely when we need a sense of humor the most. One trick for finding humor in the worst of situations is to exaggerate things absurdly out of all proportion. When your mental perception escalates to the point of being ludicrous, you have no choice but to smile and react in a healthier way. Laughter helps put a bad situation in a more positive, constructive perspective. Now you can calm down and begin to deal with the problem and think creatively about a superior solution.

2.1 In studies of humor's communication effects, humor has generally been treated as a unidimensional construct. This has been the case even when individual researchers acknowledged the limitations of the "unidimensional" approach.

This custom of treating humor unidimensionally is partially explained by the fact that no experimentally and theoretically appropriate multidimensional model of humor response has been available to communication and advertising researchers.

Since the remainder of this chapter will attempt to define what humor is, it is important—at least broadly—to clarify what humor is not. Humor research can focus on three different aspects of humor:

(1) the formal characteristics of humor stimuli,

(2) those mental events related to the processing and appreciation of humor, or

(3) those ludic behaviors frequently associated with humor response.

Humor should not be confused with properties (like irony and incongruity) that characterize many humor stimuli . Since irony and incongruity also occur in nonhumorous contexts (including tragic irony and paradoxes) and since it is not certain that either is required to produce all humor, irony and incongruity are neither necessary nor sufficient causes of humor and should not be automatically associated with humor (much less equated with it).

Similarly, humor should not be directly linked to laughter, smiling, arousal or other responses , which often result from humor. Laughter and smiling can arise from other causes, such as, nervousness, a desire to conform or influence, nonhumorous pleasure, arousal, or even habit .

Even when these behaviors are related to humor, the level of physiological response may not correspond to the level of humor appreciation . Although some research has recently distinguished between the physiological characteristics of humorous and nonhumorous smiles), laughter and smiling still cannot be interpreted as per se evidence of humor appreciation.

Nor should humor processing be confused with associated mental activities, such as, creativity, discovery, problem solving, schematic elaboration, pleasure seeking, play or judgment. Humor may share certain characteristics with each of these, but humor is not the same as discovery, puzzle solving or play. A complete explanation of humor must link humor to associated processes and distinguish it from them.

Nor is humor the same as satire (which is an atypical and socially complex form of humor), or wit (which refers to mental quickness or any demonstration of that quickness—humorous or otherwise) or comedy (which is a subspecies of humor) or a host of other concepts with which it is frequently equated. Much of this confusion arises from the use of terminology which is drawn from everyday language and therefore subject to the vagaries of nonscientific usage. Despite such problems, this researcher has elected not to altogether abandon common terms. Rather, he will retain certain terms (such as, humor, wit, and comedy), but each term will be carefully redefined and additional "labels" will be associated with each term in order to maintain theoretical distinctions. Hopefully, the use of familiar terms will assure readability, while the use of specialized codes will assure conceptual rigor.

Social scientists engage in several kinds of humor research, including research into the creation of humor, the developmental aspects of humor, various humor response processes (recognition,

comprehension and appreciation), and humor's communication effects. Each of these areas is potentially relevant to marketing and advertising.

Recognition, comprehension and appreciation represent successive phases in the overall humor response process. In order to develop a general model of humor response, this chapter draws on research from all three areas. Research on "humor recognition" is closely related to research in humor- and play-cue theory. Work in this area draws on research in learning theory and developmental psychology. Research on "humor comprehension" is closely related to research on information processing, problem solving and incongruity-resolution. Work in this area is based on cognitive and information processing traditions.

Research on "humor appreciation" is closely related to arousal and involvement research. Reference group, social judgment and prejudice studies both in social psychology and sociology are relevant. Previous studies of humor's communications effects have mainly focused on the cognitive aspects of humor comprehension. Cognitive approaches to the study of humor generally date from the 18th and 19th centuries. Early theorists include Beattie (1776), Priestley (1777), Kant (1790), and Schopenhauer (1819). All of these writers felt that incongruity is central to humor. While Schopenhauer felt that incongruity alone was sufficient to account for humor (classical incongruity theory), Beattie suggested that humor required, not only incongruity, but a resolution of perceived incongruity (classical incongruity-resolution theory). Kant felt that humor required a combination of incongruity and relief. For reviews of classical and contemporary cognitve humor theories, the reader should consult Keith-Spiegel (1972), Morreall (1983, chap. 3), Rothbart (1977), Suls (1983) or McGhee (1979, pp. 10- 14). The work of these early writers established the importance of perceived incongruity, questioned whether incongruity is a necessary condition for all humor (Beattie), and questioned whether incongruity is a sufficient condition for humor (Beattie and Kant).

Modern incongruity theories. Modern incongruity theorists represent an assortment of theoretical perspectives, yet in one way or another they agree with Schopenhauer that humor requires that expectation be disconfirmed by perception. Maier (1932) proposed a gestalt model. Supposedly people begin to order the humorous material in one way but suddenly perceive an unexpected configuration that replaces the looked for meaning with unlocked for meaning. This

perceptual displacement, often precipitated by a punchline in verbal humor, is—according to Maier—the essence of humor. Other configural theories are offered by Schiller (1938), who proposes that jokes are a variety of problem-solving, and Bateson (1953), who views humor appreciation as an instance of figure-ground reversal. In Bateson's view, those structural elements which are initially perceived as being background suddenly become the center of focus (figure) and those which are initially perceived as being central become part of the background.

In 1964 Koestler proposed his theory of 'bisociation.' According to Koestler, humor and other bisociative processes require that an idea is perceived in two mutually incompatible associative contexts. Bisociation occasions abrupt shifting from one thought matrix to another, and the pleasure of humor is largely the delight associated with these mental leaps.

To put it differently: people laugh because their emotions have a greater inertia and persistence than their thoughts. Affects are incapable of keeping step with reasoning; unlike reasoning, they cannot change direction at a moment's notice.

More recently, Nerhardt (1970, 1976, 1977) has argued that humor is "a function of divergence from expectations" and "the greater the divergence of a stimulus from expectation . . . , the funnier the stimulus" (1976, pp. 57, 59). Nerhardt and others used several ingenious experiments involving weights to explore whether mirth responses and perceived humor are directly related to perceptual divergence . Although work by Nerhardt and others suggests that incongruity alone may account for some forms of humor, most researchers in the cognitive tradition would agree with Suls that among adults "most humor, particularly of a verbal form, has an incongruity-resolution structure" (1983, p. 47).

Within this framework, humour appreciation is conceptualized as a biphasic sequence involving first the discovery of incongruity followed by a resolution of the incongruity. The mechanism of resolution is apparently necessary to distinguish humour from nonsense.

Whereas nonsense can be characterized as pure or unresolvable incongruity, humour can be characterized as resolvable or meaningful incongruity.

2.2

While it's used frequently, humor in advertising remains controversial. On the one hand, humor has been credited with calling attention to an advertisement , increasing comprehension of the ad, contributing to the positive attitude toward the ad and enhancing the positive attitude toward the advertised product . On the other hand, the use of humor may not be suitable for certain products or services, is thought to lead to faster advertising "wear out" , may offend some members of the audience and may result in the so-called "vampire effect," where the humor sucks attention away from the advertised product/message .

When deciding whether to use humor, therefore, it's important to think about your audience, your message, your medium, your product and, last but not least, the type of humor. This last component has been overlooked in most of the research previously done on advertising in the media, but could prove helpful to decision makers. Varying types of verbal humor are used liberally by comedy writers to spice their work.  You will probably be familiar with some of the word plays making their hearers laugh. I hope though there are enough 'new' types here to add variety to your laughter menu. The next time you write, trying adding a pinch or two of something different to add zest and zing.

Humor comes in many flavors, any of which may appeal to one person but not to another, and which may be enjoyed in alternation or in combination. Here are names and descriptions of the varieties of comic expression:

1. Anecdotal: Named after the word anecdote (which stems from the Greek term meaning “unpublished”); refers to comic personal stories that may be true or partly true but embellished.

2. Blue: Also called off-color, or risque (from the French word for “to risk”); relies on impropriety or indecency for comic effect. (The name probably derives from the eighteenth-century use of the word blue to refer to morally strict standards — hence the phrase “blue laws” to refer to ordinances restricting certain behavior on the Sabbath).
A related type is broad humor, which refers to unrestrained, unsubtle humor often marked by coarse jokes and sexual situations.

3. Burlesque: Ridicules by imitating with caricature, or exaggerated characterization. The association with striptease is that in a bygone era, mocking skits and ecdysiastic displays were often on the same playbills in certain venues.

4. Dark/Gallows/Morbid: Grim or depressing humor dealing with misfortune and/or death and with a pessimistic outlook.

5. Deadpan/Dry: Delivered with an impassive, expressionless, matter-of-fact presentation.

6. Droll: From the Dutch word meaning “imp”; utilizes capricious or eccentric humor.

7. Epigrammatic: Humor consisting of a witty saying such as “Too many people run out of ideas long before they run out of words.” (Not all epigrams are humorous, however.) Two masters of epigrammatic humor are Benjamin Franklin (as the author of Poor Richard’s Almanackand Oscar Wilde.

8. Farcical: Comedy based on improbable coincidences and with satirical elements, punctuated at times with overwrought, frantic action. (It, like screwball comedy — see below — shares many elements with a comedy of errors.) Movies and plays featuring the Marx Brothers are epitomes of farce. The adjective also refers to incidents or proceedings that seem too ridiculous to be true.

9. High/highbrow: Humor pertaining to cultured, sophisticated themes.

10. Hyperbolic: Comic presentation marked by extravagant exaggeration and outsized characterization.

11. Ironic: Humor involving incongruity and discordance with norms, in which the intended meaning is opposite, or nearly opposite, to the literal meaning. (Not all irony is humorous, however.)

12. Juvenile/sophomoric: Humor involving childish themes such as pranks, name-calling, and other immature behavior.

13. Mordant: Caustic or biting humor (the word stems from a Latin word meaning “to bite”). Not to be confused with morbid humor (see above).

14. Parodic: Comic imitation often intended to ridicule an author, an artistic endeavor, or a genre.

15. Satirical: Humor that mocks human weaknesses or aspects of society.

16. Screwball: Akin to farce in that it deals with unlikely situations and responses to those situations; distinguished, like farcical humor, by exaggerated characterizations and episodes of fast-paced action.

17. Self-deprecating: Humor in which performers target themselves and their foibles or misfortunes for comic effect. Stand-up comedian Rodney Dangerfield was a practitioner of self-deprecating humor.

18. Situational: Humor arising out of quotidian situations; it is the basis of sitcoms, or situation comedies. Situational comedies employ elements of farce, screwball, slapstick, and other types of humor.

19. Slapstick: Comedy in which mock violence and simulated bodily harm are staged for comic effect; also called physical comedy. The name derives from a prop consisting of a stick with an attached piece of wood that slapped loudly against it when one comedian struck another with it, enhancing the effect. The Three Stooges were renowned for their slapstick comedy.

20. Stand-up: A form of comedy delivery in which a comic entertains an audience with jokes and humorous stories. A stand-up comedian may employ one or more of the types of humor described here.

Although available scientific evidence does not support claims that laughter can cure cancer or any other disease, it can reduce stress and enhance a person’s quality of life. Humor has physical effects because it can stimulate the circulatory system, immune system, and other systems in the body. Humor therapy is generally used to improve quality of life, provide pain relief, encourage relaxation, and reduce stress. Researchers have described different types of humor. Passive humor results from seeing prepared material, such as watching a funny movie or stand-up comedy or reading an amusing book. Spontaneous or unplanned humor involves finding humor in everyday situations. Being able to find humor in life can be helpful when dealing with cancer.

The physical effects of laughter on the body include increased breathing, increased oxygen use, short-term changes in hormones and certain neurotransmitters, and increased heart rate. Many hospitals and treatment centers have set up special rooms with humorous materials for the purpose of making people laugh, such as movies, audio recordings, books, games, and puzzles. Many hospitals use volunteers who visit patients for the purpose of making them laugh. Some cancer treatment centers offer humor therapy in addition to standard treatments.

Humor has been used in medicine throughout recorded history. One of the earliest mentions of the health benefits of humor is in the book of Proverbs in the Bible. As early as the thirteenth century, some surgeons used humor to distract patients from the pain of surgery. Humor was also widely used and studied by the medical community in the early twentieth century. In more modern times, the most famous story of humor therapy involved Norman Cousins, then editor of the Saturday Review.According to the story, Mr. Cousins cured himself of an unknown illness with a self-invented regimen of laughter and vitamins.

Available scientific evidence does not support humor as an effective treatment for cancer or any other disease; however, laughter has many benefits, including positive physical changes and an overall sense of well-being. One study found the use of humor led to an increase in pain tolerance. It is thought laughter causes the release of special neurotransmitter substances in the brain called endorphins that help control pain. Another study found that neuroendocrine and stress-related hormones decreased during episodes of laughter. These findings provide support for the claim that humor can relieve stress. More studies are needed to clarify the impact of laughter on health.

2.3 Humor response

Modern theories of humor response generally fall into three major schools: incongruity theories, superiority theories and relief theories. Together these three approaches address the cognitive perceptual, affective-evaluative and psychodynamic dimensions of a subject's humor response.

Question: "Why did the cookie cry?"

Answer: "Because its mother had been a wafer so long."

There are two elements of incongruity, the fact that cookies don't cry and the initial incongruity or surprisingness of the answer to the riddle. The answer contains its own resolution—the phonological ambiguity of 'a wafer' (i.e., away for), but also adds the incongruity of a cookie having a mother. (Rothbart and Pien 1977, p. 37)

Accordingly, these authors conclude that the cognitive aspects of humor should be seen as a function of (a) the number of resolved incongruous elements, (b) the number of incongruity elements remaining unresolved, (c) the degree of incongruity in each element, (d) the difficulty of resolution, and (e) the degree of resolution. Increases in the first three factors should lead to increase in humor appreciation, while the difficulty of resolution may be curvilinearly related to

humor . . . (Rothbart and Pien 1977, p. 38)

The matter of complete versus incomplete resolution aside, it should be clear that these incongruity-resolution theories differ significantly from incongruity theories. While incongruity approaches emphasize interruption, perceptual contrast and playful confusion, incongruity-resolution approaches emphasize reintegration, insight and the discovery of meaning. For this reason, incongruity-resolution theories are frequently based on information processing models.

Suls' incongruity-resolution theory (1972, 1977, 1983) resembles information processing, problem-solving and schematic processing models. Strictly speaking, it is a theory of humor comprehension, not a theory of humor appreciation. According to Suls, a humor-perceiver moves through two distinct stages. First the perceiver attempts to interpret the humor stimuli in a straightforward manner, but his expectations about the joke stimuli are disconfirmed when he

encounters an incongruous element (often the punch line) which could not be predicted from the narrative schema that he initially formulated. Second the joke-perceiver "engages in a form of problem solving to find a cognitive rule which makes the punch line follow from the main part of the joke and reconciles the incongruous parts" (1972, p. 82). Joke-processing is then a special instance of (1) information processing, (2) problem-solving, and (3) textual interpretation. In an iterative process, the joke-perceiver tests various semantic, logical and experimental operators and compares the resulting transformed schema to the incongruous outcome. When correspondence is achieved, the joke-perceiver 'gets' the joke. If the necessary rule or operation cannot be found, the incongruity remains unresolved and the joke-perceiver remains puzzled. If, however, the joke is understood, there are two distinct pleasures implied by Suls' model: (1) the pleasure of raised arousal brought on by the first stage, and (2) the pleasure of lowered arousal associated with the second stage.

Suls' model generally parallels those offered by Shultz and Jones. These two-stage models of incongruity-resolution have been strongly supported by several streams of empirical research. Berlyne's (1969, 1972) neurophysical research into arousal mechanisms provides some support for a two-stage pattern of 'arousal boost' (rapid rise) and 'arousal-jag' (rapid decline) related to the processing of 'collative' elements in humor stimuli. Further, humor studies in lateralization (reviewed in McGhee 1983) indicate that for normal populations left- and right-brain processing styles differentially perform incongruity recognition (left hemisphere) and incongruity-resolution (right hemisphere).

Shultz and Horibe conducted a number of studies that directly tested the two-stage incongruity-resolution model by using several forms of humor stimuli (forms with elements needed for both

incongruity and resolution, forms which produced incongruity but not resolution, and forms which produced resolution but not incongruity).

Shultz and Horibe found that for adults and children above the age of seven, the greatest humor was associated with the form that contained both structural elements (incongruity and resolution). This finding was constant across several forms of humor stimuli: cartoons (Shultz

1972, 1974b), children's jokes (Shultz and Horibe 1974) and humorous riddles (Shultz 1974a). Shultz does not claim that an incongruityresolution structure exists in all humor, but he does suggest that it accounts for "vast samples of humour" (1976, p. 14).

The work of Wicker, Thorelli, Barron and Ponder (1981) provides evidence of a different sort in support of the two-stage incongruityresolution model. By factor-analyzing the perceived dimensions of humor stimuli, Wicker and his colleagues determined that both incongruity and resolution are necessary for most humor, and that the influence of affective elements, such as painfulness and anxiety, is "mediated by incongruity-resolution mechanisms" (p. 367).

Finally, an older line of research represented by Zigler, Levine and Gould (1967) and McGhee (1971, 1976, 1977, 1979) empirically investigated the importance of cognitive challenge and mastery in humor appreciation. Generally, these authors conclude that humor appreciation not only requires comprehension, but that it also requires a level of cognitive challenge appropriate for the cognitive development, style and experience of the perceiver. According to this view, maximal enjoyment accompanies optimal cognitive challenge (not too hard, but not too easy). Although these finding do not directly support the two stage incongruity-resolution model, they do provide additional evidence that the pleasure of humor is at least partly linked to problem-solving processes.

Developmental-cognitive theories of humor. The theme of maximal cognitive challenge is evidenced in much of the work on the developmental aspects of humor response. Shultz (1976) summarizes his own research which associates developing humor appreciation with the transition from Piaget's period of pre-operational thought to Piaget's period of operational thought, and a child's increasing ability to recognize ambiguity. Shultz concludes that:

Infant smiling is generally characterized by the mastery associated with normal assimilation, but that infant games (peek-aboo, tickling games and chasing games) "possess a biphasic sequence involving arousal and the reduction of uncertainty" (1976, p. 34).

Children from 18 months to 7 or 8 years, a period that approximates Piaget's preoperational period, are "able to appreciate pure incongruity without having to first resolve it" (1976, p. 26).

Older children and adults prefer humor with an incongruityresolution structure and the "appreciation of the resolvable aspects of jokes coincides with the development of concrete operational thought at about 7 years of age" (1976, p. 34).

In summary, two distinct models of cognitive humor response are supported by the literature: an incongruity model (such as Nerhardt's) and a two-stage incongruity-resolution model (such as Suls'). The incongruity model generally applies to humor appreciation before the age of seven, although Pien and Rothbart (1977) report incongruityresolution among four- and five-year-olds. The incongruity-resolution model generally applies to adults and children over the age of seven,

though McGhee and Zillmann argue that we never lose our ability or desire to respond at more primitive levels.

The social/sociological approach to humor is represented by several distinct streams of research (see review articles by Martineau 1972, Zillmann 1983, Chapman 1983, Fine 1983 and Apte 1983). Three research streams are relevant to this discussion: conceptual works that outline the social functions of humor, conceptual and empirical works on disparagement humor, and studies concerned with the facilitative effect that contextual cues have on humor response.

The social functions of humor. Influenced by functionalist approaches from sociology and anthropology, several authors have advanced models which describe the variety of functions humor can have in different social settings (Martineau 1967 and 1972, Giles, Bourhis, Gadfield, Davies and Davies 1976, Bourhis, Gadfield, Giles and Tajfel 1977, and Kane, Suls and Tedeschi 1977).

The model by Kane et al. (1977) focuses exclusively on humor initiation rather than humor response. The model offered by Giles et al. (1976) combines several approaches (motivational, arousal theory, incongruity-resolution and relief), including the social motives that underlie a person's decision to use humor and the social dimensions surrounding a listener's response. Briefly, Giles and his colleagues suggest that encoders generally employ humor for four reasons: to create or maintain in-group solidarity, to assert superiority or to attack, to gain the decoder's approval, or to divert the decoder's attention.

Those models offered by Bourhis et al. (1977) and by Martineau (1967 and 1972) are broader and concentrate on structural variations in the social setting, as these variations occasion different uses for humor.

Nonetheless, his model does provide a robust framework for discussing the social aspects of humor. Instead of directly addressing the the social uses of humor, Martineau identifies some conditions under which the functions of humor can be further specified.

Although much humor concerns large group affiliation (nationality, race or sex) or formal group affiliation (occupational pecking order), much everyday humor pertains to and symbolically comes to characterize small group relationships. Fine (1977, 1983) terms "the localized culture of a group its ideoculture," which is the "system of knowledge, beliefs, behaviors and customs shared by members" (1983, p. 170). Ideoculture humor can occur in various contexts: at home, in recreational associations or at work.

Frequently, it expresses itself in what Apte (1983) calls "joking relationships." For instance, Pilcher (1972) studied joking behaviors demonstrated by a community of longshoremen from Portland. Although their mutual workplace jests were characterized by insults, obscenities and cursing, these were clearly understood as signs of affection and apparently served as a mechanism for releasing tension and channeling aggression during hard and sometimes dangerous tasks.

Humor has long been viewed as a mechanism that allows relief from some kind of strain or the release of some pent up emotion. Shaftesbury (1711) reasoned that comedy allows free-spirited men to escape from various constraints which would otherwise imprison and control them. Shaftesbury's view combines Hobbesian superiority theory with the idea of 'relief from constraint.' Kant's (1790) famous description of laughter as "an affection arising from the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing" underscores the role of relief, as well as incongruity. These early works still exert a profound—if indirect—influence on modern research. For instance, Pollio's (1983) work demonstrates a Shaftesburian perspective, while Rothbart's (1973, 1976, 1977) closely parallels Kant's idea of general relief. Spencer (1860) was the first to propose an 'excess-energy' theory of humor. According to Spencer, laughter serves as a safetyvalve, channeling off surplus energy generated by the humor experience

Although all of the theories touched on here involve the central idea of relief, significant differences emerge once one asks what it is that humor is supposed to relieve. For Kant (1790), relief is relief from an expectation. For Spencer (1860), it is relief from surplus energy. For Freud (1905), it is relief from the exertion of energy ordinarily required to repress socially unacceptable feelings. For Berlyne (1960, 1972), relief is relief from uncomfortable levels of arousal. For Rothbart (1973, 1976, 1977), it is relief from the fear and anxiety which often accompany arousal.

Modern writers (Berlyne 1972 and Morreall 1983, chapter 4) conclude that the original 'energy release' hypothesis is not viewed very favorably nowadays, mainly because the underlying notion of a quantity of pent-up "nerve-force," "energy," "excitation," or "tension" that demands release

receives little support from our present knowledge of how the nervous system works. (Berlyne 1972, p. 52)

Berlyne proposed that three types of stimulus properties contribute to the arousal potential of any stimulus: psychophysical properties (such as size, duration and intensity), ecological properties (including the associative value of various stimuli for specific individuals) and collative properties (like novelty, incongruity and complexity).

Researchers from all three traditions conclude that another ingredient—variously referred to as play cues, play signals, humor cues or a joking context—is absolutely required before humor response of any sort can begin. Humor cues are not part of traditional incongruity, superiority or relief theories, yet no model of humor response can be complete without taking them into account.

Play signals allow people to shift out of an ordinary processing mode (where incongruous phenomena are dealt with using 'reality assimilation') into an unusual processing mode (where

incongruous material is subject to 'fantasy assimilation'). While reality assimilation can pressure an individual to alter his cognitive schemata or expectations regarding perceived stimuli, fantasy

assimilation is symbolic play and does not result in schematic change.

Instead, it allows one to temporarily ignore the usual rules for matching events to schemata. These source related signals can be as involuntary as a smile, as simulated as an exaggerated gesture, or as conventional as a stock introduction. There is, consequently, no assurance that amusement will come from witnessing disparagement under the most appropriate dispositional circumstances. Such basal insight is of enormous consequence. It shows, essentially, that disposition theory proper is a theory of enjoyment, not of amusement and humor . . . . It shows that the unamended theory is incomplete as a theory of humor, (pp. 97-98)

3.

Examination of broadcast and print advertising suggests that humor is a widely accepted form of commercial appeal. In television, for example, it is estimated that some element of humor can be found in up to 20 percent of all commercial spots (Cantor 1976; Kelly and Solomon 1975). Radio's use of humorous advertising is similarly pervasive (Lubalin 1977). Underlying this popularity is the belief that humor improves advertising effectiveness. Of obvious interest to advertisers and agencies alike is whether the presumed positive impact is supported on both theoretical and empirical grounds. To evaluate this assumption properly, empirical investigations must (1) address specific communication goals, (2) draw from theories that describe the humor influence process, and (3) operationalize humor to account for individual differences. This paper discusses each of these requirements and reports relevant findings from an empirical study on humorous advertising effects.

While communication goals of humor-laden commercials may be stated in terms of any stage of McGuire's (1969) information processing model, they typically focus on comprehension and persuasiveness (Sternthal and Craig 1973). Published findings on humor's effect on persuasiveness have generally shown humorous messages to be no more effective than serious versions of the same communication (Brooker 1981; Kennedy 1972; Kilpela 1961; Lull 1940; Pokorney and Gruner 1969). In contrast, Delozier (1976, p. 105) notes a general effect of humor in gaining attention to an advertising message and in enhancing comprehension and subsequent recall. Thus, to the extent that humor is positively perceived, its presence may be expected to aid the learning of advertising content. While previous studies have failed to substantiate Delozier's position (Cantor and Venus 1980; Gruner 1965; Markiewicz 1972; Murphy et al. 1979; Taylor 1964), serious questions can be raised about the generalizability of these results. Cantor and Venus (1980) point out that the type of humor (satire) manipulated in several of these studies is inappropriate for mass market advertising. In addition, the studies have not controlled for the degree to which individual subjects perceived communications to be humorous.

Thus, still unresolved is whether humor can improve audience comprehension and subsequent recall of a commercial message. Missing also is an empirical test of alternative theoretical frameworks available to explain humor's hypothesized influence.

By what process can humor affect advertisement learning and comprehension? Two theoretical frameworks appear relevant (Cantor and Venus 1980; Peter and Nord 1982; Phillips 1968), each postulating a different mechanism to explain humor's influence. Information processing theory assumes a consumer who makes decisions following the acquisition, integration, and evaluation of information (Bettman 1979; Zaltman and Wallendorf 1983). In terms of McGuire's model (1969), humor's potential for improving message comprehension depends on its ability to first stimulate audience attention and learning. Two explanations support humor's influence on this hypothesized attention _ learning _ comprehension sequence. Helson's adaptation-level paradigm argues that stimuli will attract attention when perceived as different from previously established stimulus norms (Helson 1947, 1959). Thus, humor unique to an advertising context (e.g., product category or sponsor) or perceived as exceptional will be noticed. Unique advertisements in general are learned and remembered better than ordinary commercials (DeLozier 1976, p. 65). Also pertinent to humor's influence on message attention and comprehension is its role in shaping the listener's "reception environment" during advertising exposure (Tyebjee 1978). As defined by Tyebjee, the reception environment "is represented in terms of the level and type of arousal it engenders in the receiver and the opportunity it provides to process message stimuli" (p. 174). Humor that generates "arousal to process information" should stimulate comprehension and recall.

Operant conditioning theory offers an alternative explanation for humor's effect. Operant conditioning "has occurred when the probability that an individual will emit one or more behaviors is altered by changing the events or consequences which follow the particular behavior" (Nord and Peter 1980, p. 38). Unlike information processing theory, operant conditioning views humor as a reward for listening to the advertising message (Phillips 1968). A humorous, and therefore rewarding, advertisement should be better understood and recalled than a similar non-humorous advertisement. Kassarjian (1977) and Rothschild and Gaidis (1981) have argued for the application of operant learning principles to explain advertising effects in low involvement settings. As yet, however, operant learning has not been adopted to explain the impact of commercial humor.

The perception of humor is personal: what is funny to one individual can be uninteresting or even irritating to another. Earlier marketing studies have not measured humor as a perceived variable, however. [An exception is Gelb and Pickett (1983).] Instead, experimenters (e.g., Cantor and Venus 1980; Murphy et al. 1979; Shama and Coughlin 1979) have attempted to control degree of humor, using panels of Judges (researchers or advertising professionals) to select the humorous commercials employed in their investigations. Though manipulation checks are made to ensure that humorous treatments are rated as funnier than serious versions of the same advertisement, experimenters have implicitly assumed that all subjects exposed to a given humorous commercial will perceive it as equally amusing. The present study questions this assumption by reporting results separately for manipulated and perceived humor.

To be effective in an advertising context, humor must be geared to communication goals, nature of the product, selected media, target audience, and message complexity. Duncan (1979) suggests that sophisticated forms of humor (e.g., satire, irony, puns) may be inappropriate for informational commercials containing multiple selling points. Stansfield (1969) argues for pertinent rather than extraneous humor. Humor used in this research followed both guidelines. A one-line joke was integrated into a 60-second radio commercial for a hypothetical new men's hair care product called "New Wave." The advertisement was written by a professional copy writer and produced at a local television station.

The basic commercial was administered in four different versions, as part of a single factor, after-only experimental design (each version being an experimental treatment). Each version contained four primary selling propositions (PSPs) presented in this order:

1. New Wave makes men attractive to women.

2. New Wave is safe to use.

3. New Wave has been tested by over 100 men's hair stylists.

4. New Wave is sold only in better stores and hair salons.

Each of the four versions was the same in factual content and approximate length, but different in structure. Version A (reproduced in the Appendix) presented the humor stimulus first, followed by each of the four PSPs. Version B introduced the humorous stimulus after presentation of the first three PSPs but before the fourth.

Version C was identical to B except that subjects heard all four PSPs before exposure to the humor. Version D, the serious version, was worded and structured to be identical to C except that the one-line joke was deleted. This omission caused the fourth version to be 12 seconds shorter than the other three.

The four commercial versions are useful in evaluating information processing and operant conditioning as competing theoretical explanation's of humor's effect on comprehension. Rumor at the beginning of a commercial (version A) or before at least one PSP (version B) is consistent with an information processing explanation. By gaining audience attention and stimulating "arousal to process information," humor should lead to greater comprehension of the information that follows. On the other hand, operant conditioning presumes a humor-after sequence. Humor following the presentation of one or more PSPs (versions B and C) should reward audience members for listening and thereby improve their understanding and subsequent recall of presented material. [This study uses aided recall of (three) specific PSPs as a measure of message comprehension. Because each PSP is brief and simply stated, it is quite likely that recall reflects message comprehension. In other advertising settings, such as print advertisements with extensive information content, recall of PSPs may be a poor measure of comprehension. See Jacoby and Hoyer (1982) for an alternative measure of comprehension/ miscomprehension.]

One hundred and fifty-seven male undergraduates enrolled at a large Western university completed the experiment during a three day period. Student subjects were used because they represented a primary target market for the advertised product.

At scheduled 45 minute intervals, participants arrived at a classroom adjacent to the behavioral laboratory where the experiment was conducted. They received a page of preliminary instructions introducing the study and requesting subjects to refrain from talking to each other while waiting for the experiment to begin. Individual subjects were then taken to one of six, randomly assigned, listening rooms. Each subject was seated at a desk located directly below a ceiling speaker, adjusted to the same tone and volume as speakers in other rooms. Printed instructions on the desk informed subjects that approximately 15 minutes of pre-recorded radio programming would soon begin. Instructions also told subjects to relax and listen to the programming as if they were at home or in their car. The recorded programming itself contained spliced excerpts of actual radio broadcasts, including a professional announcer who introduced each musical selection and coordinated the components of the broadcast.

An experimenter in a master control room initiated all programming. Tapes began and ended simultaneously in each listening room and were identical except for the four versions of the New Wave commercial (hereafter referred to as treatment A, treatment B, treatment C, and treatment D).

At the conclusion of the experiment, selected subjects were debrief ed to determine if they had guessed the purpose of the research. Subjects then signed a payment voucher and were requested not to discuss the experiment for three full days. Results of the debriefing process indicated that subjects did not guess the purpose of the study. However, it was necessary to remove eight subjects from data analysis because of response deficienciesCeither large numbers of item non-response to the Likert statements or an extreme tendency to select a neutral response. Responses for the remaining 149 subjects produced a coefficient alpha for the perceived humor scale o f O . 66 . The two judges scoring the aided recall responses (as either correct or incorrect) produced a composite reliability coefficient (Holsti 1969, p. 137 ) of 0.89. Convergent validity of the aided recall dependent variable was supported by a correlation of .61 between the aided recall and unaided recall measurements.

Findings contradict earlier studies reporting little or no effect of humor on advertising comprehension. Taken together, Tables 3 through 6 show strong support for a perceived humor- aided recall relationship. The ratio of mean recall scores for high perceived humor groups to mean recall scores for low perceived humor groups is roughly from 1.5 to 2.1:1 (depending on groups involved in the analysis). One explanation for the discrepancy between these and previous findings is that prior investigations failed to account for individual differences in humor tastes. This conclusion finds support in the comparison of manipulated humor effects (with perceived humor effects .

If humor does improve commercial comprehension, what is the underlying mechanism that explains its effect? Both the information processing and operant conditioning explanations receive support; that is, humor before PSPs and humor after PSPs appear equally effective. Further testing of both paradigms is needed to confirm or refute either theory as the basis for humor's effect on comprehension. Such research should investigate the effect of repeated exposures on the efficacy of the two theories. The cross-sectional nature of this study provides only a weak test of the operant conditioning paradigm which links probability of response with a schedule of reinforcement. One might anticipate that late humor's reinforcing effect on attention would increase as advertising exposures increase,to a point. Future research might also employ physiological measures of attention and perceived humor as alternatives to the self report procedure used here.

Study findings indicate that even when attempted humor fails, it promotes recall as well as does a serious version of the same advertisement. This unexpected finding raises additional questions. What is the nature of the cognitive response elicited by failed humor? It is possible that unsuccessful humor distracts and, in some instances, irritates target listeners. Irritation, in turn, may lead to consumers disliking the advertisement and, ultimately, the product itself. Bartos (1981) notes the absence of research linking advertising irritation with brand image. However, Mitchell and Olson (1981) show that attitude toward an advertisement (part of which was a measure of irritating-not irritating beliefs) mediates advertising effect on brand attitudes. Further, Greyser (1973) and Gelb and Pickett (1983) report that liking of an advertisement is a strong influence on liking of the product and product use.

Future research needs to establish if unsuccessful humor attempts produce irritation among large segments of target audiences. If this irritation exists, how does it influence commercial effectiveness? Two general hypotheses might provide direction. Greyser suggests that "very pleasant and very unpleasant ads are more effective than those in between." A competing hypothesis of interest is that irritation might work well for achieving lower order communications objectives (attention, recall) but be negatively associated with higher order effects (attitude change, intention to buy, purchase).

3.1

Today, humor is an integral part of advertising. It’s almost impossible to listen to the radio or watch television for more than an hour without encountering at least one commercial that uses humor to deliver its sales message.Whether the jokes in today’s commercial are skillfully integrated into a story that’s part of the commercial’s concept or spoken by a comedic announcer, over 30 studies in marketing literature have examined the effects of comedy in advertising and determined that humor is one of the most commonly employed communication strategies. According to one paper published in The Journal of Advertising Research in May 1995, researchers estimated that 30 percent of all radio advertising used humor. That same article cited a survey conducted in 1984 among advertising research and creative executives in the top 150 U.S. ad agencies in which radio was found to be the best medium (contrasted to television, print, and outdoor) for using humor. The study also determined that there was increased recall of both the subject and the execution when humor was used in a radio commercial.

Findings in the study also concluded that the use of humor unrelated to the subject and used only to grab attention was a risky strategy.What advertising researchers have confirmed in pages and pages of analysis, creative people have always known instinctively: Humor, when used appropriately, can increase the recall of advertising messages, raise the level of favorability toward the ad, and improve the impact of the ad among its target audiences.

In an article that appeared in Back Stage magazine in September 1989, journalist Arden Dale asked a group of advertising creative directors their opinions about humor in ads. They concurred that “really funny advertising was scarce,” that “most attempted ad humor failed,” and that for humor to be successful it must be “rooted strongly in a concept” related to the product. According to the creatives who were in the discussion, the airwaves were “clogged with people trying to be funny and failing.”The same issues that researchers noted—relevancy, appropriateness, risk taking, and recall—were played back by the people responsible for creating and approving funny commercials. Said David Fowler, the creative director responsible for the humorous Motel 6 campaign,“What better thing to give the audience than a couple of laughs on behalf of your client?” But radio commercials weren’t always allowed to be funny.

Throughout its history—from the medium’s early beginnings in the late 1920s until the early 1960s—radio advertising was serious business. In the early days of live radio broadcasting, sponsors considered the copy in their commercials to be sacred, untouchable, and strictly business—not funny business. Early radio program sponsors, such as General Foods, American Tobacco, General Motors, Texaco, and Canada Dry, did not broach any humor in their commercials. Actors and announcers in the live radio studio broadcasts had to read the copy exactly as it was approved by the sponsor and cleared by network censors.

When American Tobacco aired commercials for their various cigarette brands, slogans such as “L/S/M/F/T—Lucky Strike means fine tobacco” and lines like “so round, so firm, so fully packed” were delivered with the utmost seriousness.When two actresses in a radio soap opera discussed their complexions in a radio commercial, they spoke with the seriousness of a grave health problem; when pitching a commercial for Wheaties breakfast cereal, the announcer’s audible “smile” was 100 percent wholesome and 0 percent humorous.

Even as late as the mid-1950s, advertising agencies, on behalf of their clients, treated copy as “sacred as the Bill of Rights,” according to Stan Freberg, the legendary Father of Funny Radio.There were advertising leaders, such as Claude Hopkins in 1923 and Rosser Reeves in 1960, who asserted that no one would buy anything from a clown.

David Ogilvy, founder of Ogilvy & Mather, claimed that copywriters should avoid the temptation to entertain using humor (though he changed his mind in the early 1980s).When humor was used in an ad as late as the early 1960s, it was considered risky and dangerous.

Humor was a hotly debated topic among critics of advertising in the industry and in the popular press. Humorous approaches were first regarded as groundbreaking when they were successful, and even as humor gained acceptability, it was still confined to “fun” lifestyle products such as beverages, deodorants, and household cleaners. It was only in the late 1970s that humor was acceptable for more serious advertisers, including banks, life insurance, and Time magazine.

One reason ads were not humorous had to do with the extreme level of control that agencies exerted over every aspect of the presentation. In the early days of commercial radio, many of the top radio programs were packaged by the leading advertising agencies as single-sponsor vehicles for their major clients (e.g., General Foods, General Motors, Lux Soap). This gave sponsors and their agency representatives tremendous power over everything, from the content and personalities in the shows to the ads. One ad agency producer from Young & Rubicam had to get clearance for every word in every commercial from a vice president at his client company. Naturally, this level of control by the sponsors irked many of the more iconoclastic creative performers.

Fred Allen, one of the more famous American radio comedians, compared his sponsors and their agencies to “a bit of executive fungus that forms on a desk that has been exposed to a conference,” according to an article in ASAP magazine in November 1999. His antipathy toward advertisers and their controlling power often made sponsors and their commercials the target of his jokes.The parodies of advertising agencies he created for his program’s Mighty Allen Art Players were some of the funniest, and sharpest, of all his skits. Allen was not afraid of the power of his sponsors and their ad agencies; like Allen, Ed Wynn was also a radio comedian who spoofed his sponsor,Texaco. As the serious announcer read the copy about the service stations and its gasoline,Wynn would often interject, “That so?” and other side comments. Humor made the sponsor more memorable, and Wynn salted his shows with jokes about Texaco and their gas stations wherever he could. While Wynn and Allen might have joked about their sponsors from time to time, another comedian became known and hailed for the same technique. In fact, if there is any date that marks the moment when radio advertising first became funny, it is 1932, the year that one of the greatest radio comedians, Jack Benny, made fun of his first sponsor, Canada Dry beverages.

According to Milt Josefsberg, in his biography, The Jack Benny Show: The Life and Times of America’s Best Loved Entertainer, “Jack Benny was . . . the first . . . to kid his sponsor’s commercials by making them humorous and integrating them into the body of the script” (Josefsberg, p. 321). Prior to Benny, comedians and radio shows would stop the story line and jokes for the sponsors’ commercials. Media critic Leonard Maltin wrote in The Great American Broadcast that on the comedy program, The Fibber McGee and Molly Show, “announcer Harlow Wilcox would suddenly—and peremptorily—appear in the midst of the week’s story, and though he was not a character in the town of Wistful Vista, Fibber or Molly would engage him in a conversation that would lead to a message for Johnson’s wax . . .” (Maltin, p. 161).

Benny’s genius was that he “conceived his comedy offerings with continuity as a dominating factor . . . and . . . popularized . . . the comedy commercial,” wrote Josefsberg. Benny’s style of comedy was based on what we now think of as situation comedies, in which the comedy is integral to the context of the story, rather than the vaudevillian routines that were translated from the stage to the radio studio.To maintain that continuity, Benny insisted that his staff of writers incorporate his sponsors’ names and products as jokes into the body of his show.

The first time Benny did this was for his first radio sponsor, Canada Dry, the giant beverage bottler. By today’s standards, the joke is quite tame. Benny read a telegram that reportedly came from a representative of Canada Dry who’d found eight tourists lost in the Sahara Desert without water for a month. The soft drink rep rescued the tourists, giving them each a glass of Canada Dry soda pop. “Not one of them didn’t like it!” was the punch line. The audience loved it, as evidenced by letters and fan mail. But after 78 Canada Dry–sponsored shows with huge audience ratings, the sponsor canceled Benny’s contract because it didn’t like being the butt of Benny’s jokes. Other sponsors clamored to step in and take over the show by 1933. Benny settled on Chevrolet, but after he kidded the car manufacturer in his typical style, someone at Chevrolet objected, and despite a huge audience rating, Benny’s contract was not renewed. When the company later realized its mistake, a senior executive at Chevrolet attempted to get Benny back, but General Tire had already signed him. Benny later switched sponsors again, from Jell-O to Grape-Nuts, but he had the audience support and creative savvy to craft a half-hour script about how he’d switched sponsors once more. Josefsberg notes that “. . . Jack’s kidding of the commercials became a high plateau of humor on his programs, and the public looked for it as eagerly as the rest of the show.” Rather than thinking of commercials as the cue to leave the room, Benny’s listeners eagerly waited each week to see how he would tease his sponsor. It was no small task for Josefsberg or any of Benny’s many writers to come up with new ideas each week. They had opera singers pitch a product’s selling points in satirical arias.

They wrote commercials in phony Shakespearean language and had dramatic actors read them. Benny incorporated jokes about his hefty announcer sidekick, Don Wilson, by referring to his girth as the six flavors of Jell-O (alluding to one of Benny’s most famous and highly recognized long-running sponsors). Benny’s success even earned him the license to spoof one of the most feared and dictatorial sponsors, George Washington Hill, president of American Tobacco Company, with numerous gags about Lucky Strike’s famous slogan, L/S/M/F/T, “Lucky Strike means fine tobacco,” and “Be Happy—Go Lucky!” To prove that humor had a positive effect, the Young & Rubicam ad agency conducted national research to determine whether listeners could identify the sponsor of the Jack Benny program. Benny’s was the only radio show on the air to score a 91 percent immediate sponsor recall—a record that had never been bested. It was proof that humor was a powerful tool in helping sponsors communicate their message.

Mary Livingstone Benny quoted from an article in McCall’s magazine in which the Algonquin Hotel Round Table pundit and writer Heywood Broun wrote that radio audiences were becoming sullen about advertising interruptions to programs and that the American sense of humor wouldn’t stand for the awed reverence with which announcers spoke the names of the products they were advertising. Broun ended the article by hoping that “in the days to come a grateful people would erect a statue to Jack Benny, with the simple inscription: ‘In memory of the first man to take the curse off radio commercials!’ ” (Benny, p. 59). Benny established a precedent for using humor in an appropriate context for radio advertising. Other radio personalities from the 1930s and 1940s—including Fred Allen, Arthur Godfrey, and Harry Morgan—also began to add humor to the sponsors’ messages on their programs. Though it has taken more than half a century to make humor a mainstream tool for radio advertising, radio copywriters everywhere owe a debt of gratitude to Jack Benny.

3.2

Humor in advertising is a delicate method of attracting a viewer's/listener's attention to the client's product. Done right, it achieves success. Doing it right means not only engaging the prospect but getting them to remember the product.

On a national level who can forget the Budweiser Frogs and Wendy's "Where's the Beef" on television. The VW Bug intro campaign was a great one in print.
Advertising & Marketing Review decided to explore the art of humor in advertising with some locally successful people. We invited Tom Evans, Creative Director at Morey-Evans to talk about humor on radio. The agency is responsible for the Good Times Burger spots. Don Stroh has been successfully creating direct marketing cartoon humor and addresses that issue. David Emrich of Post Modern, approaches the subject from the production standpoint. Enjoy their comments and learn more on the art of humor in advertising. What is funny in radio is a question that should be preceded, as when evaluating any creative medium, with another question. One very good reason is that two other common approaches, direct information (announcers) and musical entertainment (jingles and the like), are both so inherently a part of the existing programming of radio that commercials utilizing those tactics often disappear into the sea of clutter fomented by the medium itself. 

What real chance does a rock-n-roll beer commercial have to stand out between a gazillion-selling cut from The Rolling Stones and a gazillion-selling cut from Big Head Todd?
Humor, on the other hand, is rare. So rare, it stands out. It engages completely. And, (pay attention because this is really important) as long as the laughter it generates is relevant to your intended audience and messaging strategy, humor has undeniable power in the radio medium.

While true humor is rare, attempts at being funny, unfortunately, are not. It's kind of like trying to jump over the net after a tennis match. If you make it, you're golden. If you don't, you're gonna catch a foot and flip on your head and look like an idiot (funny as that may be). In other words, as much as funny radio is effective and appreciated by listeners, unfunny radio that's trying to be funny is, well, annoying as hell. An undeniable tenet of broadcast writing was shared with me once by a tipsy creative director during a three-martini lunch (this wasn't recently). "A funny script is an accomplishment, but a funny commercial is a miracle."

I'll give you an example. I remember a spot a few years ago written by John Rabuse, a freelance radio writer in Minneapolis. It featured a guy talking on the phone to a nurse at an urgent care facility. The guy was trying to explain to the nurse that he needed medical help because a lobster had clamped onto his tongue. The actor read his half of the dialogue while literally holding his tongue out of this mouth. (Try it.) I never saw one person listen to that spot without laughing out loud. Not just a smile, an all-out laugh. Granted, the technique was about as high-brow as The Three Stooges playing polo on Shetland ponies. Nonetheless, when John sat down to think about that job, he knew the minute it hit him that a guy talking while holding his tongue would make people laugh. Of course, speaking to all the writers out there, the hilariously funny hold-your-tongue-while-you-talk idea has now been taken.  But a lot of other ideas haven't.

Ideas that leverage the absolute superiority of radio to generate humor. You can be funny in print, outdoor, television and, so I've heard, direct mail. But when it comes to really spinning out a laugh, radio offers the most tools of any medium.

Character, timing, disconnection from reality, timing, dialogue, slapstick, timing, grandiosity, minimalism, timing… you name it, radio lets you leverage it (just remember humor almost always relies on timing). You often get a full 60 seconds to pull it off, too. Which, in a world that's seeing more and more 15-second TV spots, is a real luxury.
How would you like to increase your direct mail conversion rates by 25, 200 or even 1,100 percentage points? All it takes is the kind of courage a man displays entering the reddish-purple retail womb of Victoria's Secret for the first time to buy an undergarment for his woman.

After 30 years in the ad business, I've often seen the look in a client's eyes when the creative director says, "Maybe we should try a humorous approach." It's like a badger began eating the Ann Taylor pumps off the client's feet beneath the placid surface of the conference room table. "Humor?" she says. "There's nothing funny about our business!" There's nothing funny about war, either. Just ask Joseph Heller, or read Catch-22. Why does using humor terrify us so? Perhaps it's the fear of falling flat, of "dying on stage." No one wants to be "not funny," so using humor feels as risky as roller-blading in a tutu down Denver's 16th Street mall.

But the other side of risk is opportunity (lights, camera, action!), as in the aforementioned conversion rate increases I've experienced in direct marketing campaigns for clients who braved the use of a humorous approach. Is there something logical about why everyone seems to respond to humor? No! That's the point. People respond to humor with their emotions, not with their reason, so as a marketer you can slip past their left-brained defenses and launch a guerilla assault on where they really live and experience life. Doing so requires a little (ugh!) discipline, however.
Think of anything you've found funny and you'll discover a key element of humor-surprise. A man walking down the sidewalk slips on a banana peel, or your client says "My son just took Driver's Edge," and you can hardly contain your laughter. But to serve the interests of your marketing program, the surprise must be relevant to what you want to sell-to your product or service or company.

Relevant humor is an attention-getter that draws your prospect closer. It's a whisper in the ear that says "I like the butterfly tattoo on your buttocks because I've got moose antlers tattooed on my knee." It's an invitation to come out and play, which in a business relationship is surprising in itself.

Are there rules to using humor in direct marketing? Is there life after death? You decide, but consider the following 10 dos and don'ts as guidelines:

1. Don't over-analyze a humorous idea. It's funny, or it's not. As Mark Twain said, "Trying to figure out why something is funny is like dissecting a frog. You'll come up with answers, but the frog always dies."

2. Don't use humor for its own sake. Make it relevant to your objective.

3. Don't use humor to deceive or tell a lie. It's a scientific fact that humor intensifies positive physical and psychological reactions; deceit will undermine these good feelings and supplant them with anger and resentment.

4. Do use humor to entertain. People love to be entertained. (What do you do in your free time?)

5. Do use humor to be thought-provoking, but not offensive.

6. Do test humorous concepts, not techniques. Slapstick, irony and word play are techniques, but what is the idea you want to convey?

7. Do let your reader/listener/viewer experience the joy of "getting it." You'll make a friend.

8. Do engage the imagination of your customers. Theirs may be even bigger than yours.

9. Do the homework on your customer, and I don't necessarily mean formal research. A renowned copywriter from the early days of advertising called research "putting on my hat and going out to talk to people." Humor comes from knowing your audience inside-out.

10. Don't forget that rules are meant to be broken. The best humor comes from the edge, where there are no rules.

It is hard to stand out from the crowd in advertising. There is such a cacophony of sights and sounds on television and radio to compete against. Comedy is perhaps the best way to be memorable to an audience. People definitely talk more about funny spots than they do call-to-action or image spots.  For the work Post Modern does, we have to think differently depending on whether we are editing for comedy or other genres. All genres depend on timing and pacing, yet the pacing decisions for comedy are the most critical: how much time does it take to register a joke? This is one reason that test screenings are used so extensively for features and sitcoms. 

There is also a difference between radio and television comedy. Visual humor can be developed much quicker than dialog-driven humor. You can see funny faster than you can hear it. Therefore, in general, pacing becomes even more critical in radio advertising. 
Where TV advertising is usually "gag" oriented, radio advertising is "joke" oriented in design. Gags work well in TV, especially given the relatively short 30 second and 15 second lengths of spots. 

Radio, on the other hand, is all "joke" oriented. (There aren't a lot of visual gags that work on radio.) Radio also has the advantage of being able to have an element that is traditionally called "Theatre of the Mind." Snappy dialog, sound effects design and character voices all play a part in this style of radio advertising.

Locally Fred Arthur was a master of this style in the 70s, 80's and early 90s. Bert Berdis Comedy Radio in LA was a leading figure in this style throughout the same timeframe nationally. 

Gag oriented TV ads can be funny and even eye-catching, but they might not always do their job as advertisements. Right now one of my favorite TV spots is one where two guys are attempting to knock a hornet's nest into a garbage can, and everything goes wrong. The voice-over then goes on to identify the advertiser. The first dozen people I asked remembered and liked the spot. However, none of us could remember who/what the spot was advertising. It is almost a generic gag with an interchangeable tag line. It could advertise just about any product or service. We like the spot, but maybe it's not good advertising. Somehow the gag has to be solidly tied to the advertiser.

I always think of comedy as the spark between two incongruous worlds when they come together. The laugh is caused either by the surprise of that spark that was hidden from us, or the anticipation of the spark when the "victims" don't see it coming. I think that advertising rarely has this spark. Most of what we see today in advertising, (and in sitcoms like Seinfeld for instance) is cleverness, not comedy. It may make us laugh, but even if we don't, we see some truth in it. Advertising today is full of this ironic sense of humor and can be quite effective. 

But there is not much farce, parody or satire in current spot design Perhaps working with these latter styles is the direction things should take to make our work stand out from the crowd.

Comedy is more of a state of mind than a genre. We are all funny, smart people, but we may not all be comedy writers. I think somewhere along the way we lost the idea of an audio production company: a company that an agency hires to build onto the agency's ideas, much as film and video production companies do.

3.3

The narrative format is on the top of the formats used, thus proving that beer positioning does not point out the product quality, but the consumer’s involvement in a story. Moreover, this observation emphasizes the unitary perspective upon commercial creativity on both the international and Romanian advertising markets. Problem-solution, animation and special effects, testimonial or song and dance seem to be almost equally used for creating commercials dedicated to beer brands. These percentages explain a common strategy of putting the commercial idea across, no matter the geographic and cultural space the consumer belongs to.

On the other hand, a comparison between these variables reveals several important differences. Fantasy and association are very well exploited in 26% of international cases, while, on the local market, the percentage reaches only 4%, referring to the level of commercial connotations. Brands like Budweiser, Guinness, Bud Light use this pattern, visual metaphors being the main creative strategy. This means that brands are very well perceived on the market and they have got over the simple informative level for a long time.

The informative level within commercials can be linked to the demonstration format which is mainly used for a young market that needs to be informed about brands. Covering 14% of the whole Romanian sample, demonstration helps brand to appeal to consumers by sensorial means. As for the satire and humor, Romanian commercials gained their supremacy with the same percentage, 14%, in comparison with only 4% for international brands. In our opinion, this aspect is strongly connected to the advertising specificity, regarding the way people enjoy making jokes, having an ironic perspective upon life and a detached perception of events. The Romanians’ use of jokes within beer commercials comes as a strategy of resistance against the Romanian communist regime when people were not allowed to express their feelings or ideas without being afraid.

Actually, satire is the most often used TV format whose role is to individualize Romanian mentality regarding some issues, such as: Romanian integration into UE, economic downturns, traffic jams or inappropriate changes that democracy brought upin 1989. In international spots, there are only two examples (Budweiser – Night and Stella Artois – Paper Boat) that use another type of humor understood as a confusion or as a comic situation. In this case, we are talking about different ways of approaching life problems by finding unexpected solutions or disturbing a peaceful situation. Incomparison, the Romanian humor focuses more on language means and not on visual devices/ techniques, this format being combined with the slice of life, because family and friends form the appropriate social environment where people like telling jokes and having fun at someone.

In conclusion, choosing a suitable TV format for beer commercials implies analyzing two different aspects: (1) the brand image and its stability in the consumer’s mind, and (2) the consumers’ insight that personalizes each advertising market. According to the first dimension, the more famous the brand is, the more abstract and creative the commercials are, because the product becomes only a pretext for a creative show.

Generally speaking, people watching TV enjoy stories, created on a specific background. Specificity may be illustrated in this case by creating TV commercials heroes and making a connection between the product and their portrayals. Beside, each product develops a kind of an aura around it, resulted from preserving some stereotypes and archetypes on purpose. Either we pay attention to the international beer commercials or to the local commercials, there is no doubt that a dominance of male authority can be observed despite the geographical market of advertising. Obviously, there are common features of a male beer drinker, but at the same time, they highlight a specific behavior due to the local life-styles.

4

This study aims to demonstrate the way humor appeals to consumers in order to make them more receptive to brand image and product benefits they are interested of. This research focuses on the Romanian market, due to a matter that really deserves further consideration: the necessity of discovering the specific and original features of local commercials. At first sight, advertising is mostly seen as a creative field; however, the most important question this study is trying to address is the way local brands reflect the Romanian spirit. Globalization is based on preserving the same pattern and creative tools regardless of the space the consumer belongs to. Hybridization consists in weaving global with local features in order to better attract the target audience. For this reason, international brands get closer to customers by borrowing their way to live and to enjoy life.This research intends to outline humor types and to bring to light a few profiles of commercial heroes who help consumers identify with them and associate products with a relaxed mood. We aim to make a connection between humor types, product categories, advertising formats, commercials topics, and protagonist portrayals. The research method we are going to use is content analysis, applied in qualitative and quantitative manner. The study is carried out by the previous criteria (humor types, product categories, advertising formats, commercials topics, and protagonist portrayals), which lead us to reveal humor features and its role in local advertising. The sample consists in 50 TV commercials broadcast on Romanian channels in the national language, belonging to global or local brands. We chose to analyze TV spots because visual language enriches verbal communication and, obviously, diversifies humor approach. The classification of humor relies on two perspectives: first, on the cognitive processes that generate humor, which are incongruity-resolution, confusion, humorous disparagement, and, second, the taxonomy of these types based on humor devices such as parody, sarcasm, irony, satire, wordplay, stereotype, or casual jokes. Our main hypothesis is that each cultural space is represented by some specific humor types that describe local consumer’s profile, their lifestyle and society values shared by Romanian commercials. We also think that humor helps global brands become more familiar to local customers, and that this strategy reflects the way the glocalization phenomenon works.

Considering that each brand belongs to a specific country which has its own culture, history, language, mythology, legends, and folklore, we are interested to see whether beer commercials preserve these features or deconstruct them in favor of global aspects available everywhere. Therefore, the research sample includes international commercials broadcast all over the world, either standardized campaigns (the same messages regardless the distribution country) or local campaigns. Lots of changes may happen during a brand history and this is the reason for which we think that the following definition of a country (Johansson et al. 1985: 389) may help us in dealing with this problem of brand paternity.

Country of origin is defined as the country where the corporate headquarter of the company marketing the product or brand is located. Though we recognize that the product may not necessarily be manufactured in that country because of multinational sourcing, we assume the product or brand is identified with that country.

An example which may support this definition is the history of Budweiser, initially an old Czech beer called Budweiser Budvar, then known as one of the most successful Americanbrand, even though the business belonged to a German family that immigrated to U.S. in 1857. Now, there are not so many who know that Budweiser was first manufactured in Europe and then became a success in USA. The ads point out only the American lifestyle, the old European slogan, “the beer of kings”, being transformed into the American slogan, “the king of the beers”, and the name is sometimes shortened as Bud. So, in this case, we decided that the country of origin is USA, the product being manufactured there, and the campaigns relying on American values. Hence there is no doubt that each advertising campaign should carefully bring to light different types of possible relationships between the global and local aspects that can be analyzed according to a reading grid having the following variables: national brands focusing only on national identity; national brands focusing on the combination between local and global; international commercials focusing on the general strategy of the brand; international brands adapted to local consumer. Tightly connected with this reading grid, the beer campaigns can be

analyzed according to the model mentioned by Moriarty, Mitchell and Wells (2005: 548-568). This model includes the following variables:

– standardization. It focuses on consumers similarities from everywhere in the world, without any specific issue.

– localization. Sometimes named adaptation, it consists of considering many other important coordinates of each market such as: lifestyles, cultural, economical and political particularities.

– combination. It means amalgamating both previous directions in order to produce a more effective advertising by preserving the general brand strategy and translating it for local customers. There is a new concept that describes this advertising hybridization, namely glocalization.

Usually, this classification is more available for international and regional brands and less for local ones, but we think it can be adapted to any kind of ads or commercials.

The balance between the global and local features revealed by beer campaigns will be established relying on three important coordinates of any ad/ commercial: the country of brand origin, the country of product distribution and the advertising agency which may be local or multinational. In terms of criteria selection, we tried to find commercials for a beer broadcast mostly in various countries, less in the origin country of brand, except, of course, the Romanian beer brands. The main advantage of this condition consists not only in better emphasizing the glocalization process, but also in positioning since the consumer’s mind is always different, despite drinking the same product. As De Mooij (2010: 5) claims global market does not change a specific target: “There may be global products, but there are no global people. They may be global brands, but there are no global motivation for buying those brands”.

4.1

Content analysis is the method used for checking out and supporting our hypothesis (TV formats help to better analyze the distance between local and global features in beer campaigns). The most important advantage of this method is that it approaches the research problem from many perspectives, usually interdisciplinary ones. The second advantage lies in the possibility of applying it in many research fields including communication studies. This method works in two directions that highlight its efficiency: the quantitative analysis and the qualitative one. We used the first one as a basis for the second one, as we are interested in how beer format underlines the connection between the country of product distribution and the genuine brands features.

The quantitative approach relies on the frequency criteria which gives the opportunity to quickly reach a conclusion based on the number of registrations. The evaluative criteria are useful in the present research due to the opportunity of establishing connections between the topics of the commercials, in this case, and the values they involve.

In this study, we will use Ph. Mayring’s mechanism of analysis (in Agrabian 2006: 111) which has a twofold part: (1) summarizing the content analysis reflects how the essentialinformation can be differentiated from non-essential one, how similar paragraphs can be organized according to the same criteria; (2) structuring the content analysis helps a lot in providing an appropriate structure to the symbolic and subjective representations.

Our research corpus consists of 100 TV commercials for beer. They are equally divided between five international brands (Heineken, Stella Artois, Guinness, Budweiser, BudLight) and other five Romanian brands (Timisoreana, Bucegi, Bergenbier, Ciuc, Ursus).The first part of this corpus includes worldwide brand names famous for their Europeantradition and history (Heineken – the Netherlands, Stella Artois – Belgium, Guinness –UK, Budweiser and Bud Light – USA), while the second part focuses on Romanian brands.

The term “local” stirs many discussions. In a note of an article on beer campaigns in Germany and in United States, Williams J. Adams (2006: 193) provides four possible meanings to the term “local”: Does local mean 1) brewed from local raw materials? 2) brewed in a local brewery? 3) packaged in a local plant? 4) brewed and packaged by a locally owned company? 5) associated by name or advertising with a particular locale?

We will use the last meaning of the term “local” in our study because Bucegi and Ciuc belong to Heineken and the name directly sends the consumers to Romania, while Bergenbier belongs to Interbrew with no connection with the local language. Timișoreana und Ursus are two brands brewed and packaged by a locally owned company, very well appreciated and locally distributed. The essential thing is that the international selected commercials were broadcast worldwide, not only in their production country. This is the reason for which the local and global features are embedded in the commercials.

The next assumptions regard the way in which we come to terms with all the theoretical aspects mentioned above:

– The formats for beer commercials is very generous regardless of the local or global brands.

– Positioning types reveal global and local features within every commercial.

– Most commercials (for local and global brands) do not remind the consumers of the origin country of brand, but of the consumer country, thus adapting to the cultural background.

– Individualism is as much represented in commercials dedicated to beer, as team spirit is.

– The heroes depicted in commercials display various social and cultural profiles of men as beer consumers.

4.2

We want to show that the TV commercials for beer are generally created by using a common strategy that is individualized and enriched by local specificity. In this case, what we try to prove is that Romanian beer commercials can be compared withinternational ones as the format is concerned, but without losing their local features.Applying the same criteria of classifying the commercials, we chose several important TV formats, consisting of story line, problem solution or suspense, slice of life, dramatization (which represent the narrative structure of commercials), testimonial and spokesman (which are based on a single character), fantasy and association (which describe metaphorical and fictional scripts), animation and special effects (referring at creative means of emphasizing a brand), demonstration and song and dance (mainly assimilated to a musical show), satire and humor (related to the commercial atmosphere and tonality).

Moreover, this observation emphasizes the unitary perspective upon commercial creativity on both the international and Romanian advertising markets. Problem-solution, animation and special effects, testimonial or song and dance seem to be almost equally used for creating commercials dedicated to beer brands. These percentages explain a common strategy of putting the commercial idea across, no matter the geographic and cultural space the consumer belongs to.

The informative level within commercials can be linked to the demonstration for which is mainly used for a young market that needs to be informed about brands. Covering 14% of the whole Romanian sample, demonstration helps brand to appeal to consumers by sensorial means. As for the satire and humor, Romanian commercials gained their supremacy with the same percentage, 14%, in comparison with only 4% for international brands. In our opinion, this aspect is strongly connected to the advertising specificity, regarding the way people enjoy making jokes, having an ironic perspective upon life and a detached perception of events. The Romanians’ use of jokes within beer commercials comes as a strategy of resistance against the Romanian communist regime when people were not allowed to express their feelings or ideas without being afraid.

Actually, satire is the most often used TV format whose role is to individualize Romanian mentality regarding some issues, such as: Romanian integration into UE, economic downturns, traffic jams or inappropriate changes that democracy brought up in 1989. In international spots, there are only two examples (Budweiser – Night and Stella Artois – Paper Boat) that use another type of humor understood as a confusion or as a comic situation. In this case, we are talking about different ways of approaching life problems by finding unexpected solutions or disturbing a peaceful situation. In comparison, the Romanian humor focuses more on language means and not on visual devices/ techniques, this format being combined with the slice of life, because family and friends form the appropriate social environment where people like telling jokes and having fun at someone.

In conclusion, choosing a suitable TV format for beer commercials implies analyzingtwo different aspects: (1) the brand image and its stability in the consumer’s mind, and(2) the consumers’ insight that personalizes each advertising market. According to the first dimension, the more famous the brand is, the more abstract and creative the commercials are, because the product becomes only a pretext for a creative show.

Generally speaking, people watching TV enjoy stories, created on a specific background. Specificity may be illustrated in this case by creating TV commercials heroes and making a connection between the product and their portrayals. Beside, each product develops a kind of an aura around it, resulted from preserving some stereotypes and archetypes on purpose. Either we pay attention to the international beer commercials or to the local commercials, there is no doubt that a dominance of male authority can be observed despite the geographical market of advertising. Obviously, there are common features of a male beer drinker, but at the same time, they highlight a specific behavior due to the local life-styles. the analysis of international beer brands provides a variety of positioning, the Romanian beer brands focus only on five positioning types.

Positioning based on consumer is very well represented by all international brands and Budweiser and Bud Lighti are on top. For local beer brands, the niche positioning dominates, Bucegi being the leader with 8 commercials where the niche positioning is used. The great use of these positioning types reveals the fact that Romanian brands build their image not by using specific attributes or benefits, but by associating them with internal values, such as history, politics, integration into Europe, tradition. For example, Bucegi (a local brands created by Heineken in Romania) developed two layers of this niche strategy: firstly, it is the nostalgia for the old communist age where beer was a compensation for poverty (no TV, no electricity in the evening), and secondly, it is the sapid irony every time people speak about the rules demanded for the integration into the European Union (cultivating melons of specific dimension and weight, building bigger chicken coop).

The symbolic representations of international brands offer global aspects, such as cowboy image (not for American beer, but for Guinness), Dove pigeon (for Stella Artois), the creation tree, Cupidon, while Romanian beer appeals to geographical or cultural references such as the Carpathian Sphinx (Bucegi), or the famous violinist Ciprian Porumbescu (Timișoreana).

In conclusion, positioning types of Romanian beer brands (national or created for the inside market) do not cross the borders of mentality and respect the way consumers like to locally think. Another explanation might be the use of these brands only inside the country and there is no effort or intention to regionalize them, like Baltika did, despite its communist nostalgia.

As the international brands are concerned, most commercials belong to the second meaning of the term “global”: astronomical phenomena (a Bud Light commercial entitled Asteroid), religious aspects (Stella Artois – Dove – Christmas celebration), ormerely saving the world.

As the Romanian beer brands are concerned, many commercials do not bear any specificity, describing universal situations that might happen all over the world. The local aspects emphasize, as expected, traditions, historical events, or culturalpersonalities. The diversity of local elements is predictable for international brands as long as they belong to so many places. There are a couple of visual stereotypes specific to the American world: cowboy, sky-scrapers, The Liberty Statue, many black people, language. Those have been used by all five international brands included in theempirical data for the commercials broadcast for the American market.

Both the global and local aspects involve the necessity of adapting to the market and of preserving the brand history. Brand identity is very well protected by Stella Artois which preserves French language (sometimes the accent, names or only a single world) in commercials broadcast on the English or Irish market by weaving it with local humor orcustoms. Local beer commercials use a simple strategy to promote this double perspective as it is the case of Bucegi and Ursus: the verbal connection with Europe and the visual references to Romania. For example, in one commercial, the message Ursus sends is the following: We brought Europe closer to you. As we have already mentioned, Bucegi developed a rich campaign based on bantering the European rules whose impact was not so pleasant for Romanians.

Concluding, the balance between the global and local aspects in beer commercials highlights the power of the consumers’ market and the brand authority for international beer brands, on the one hand, and the integration into European Union, for Romanianbrands, on the other hand. Some brands decided to create local messages, ignoring the origin country. For example, none of the beers belonging to Heineken Romania reveal any kind of connection with the country of brand origin, which, actually, is not a surprise, considering that other Heineken commercials included in our empirical data have no specificity.

This way of thinking lies on the following syllogism:

P1: Men usually drink beer.

P2: Many heroes in commercials are men.

Conclusion: Many heroes in commercials drink beer.

This syllogism helps us in analyzing the consumer behavior within the entire corpus weselected, considering that the represented heroes act like a beer drinker. We are veryinterested in the relationship between individual and collective behavior, and in the heroprofiles identified in the selected commercials.

According to Hofstede (2010), there are five dimensions of national culture: power distance, individualism/ collectivism, masculinity/ femininity, uncertain avoidance andthe long/ short-term orientation. Hofstede considers that we face two types of society: individualistic cultures or (“I” cultures) and group acting cultures. Analyzing the beer commercials, the results provide a similar balance between individualism and collectivism, for both international and Romanian brands. The frequency criterion reveal that individualism is dominant (33 commercials dedicated to international beer brandand 22 to the Romanian beer brand), while collectivism is less present (17 for globalbeers and 22 for the local ones). Most of the discursive markers are verbal: the first person (my Guinness beer, my dream). There are also visual markers, when the hero is not surrounded by other beer drinkers, but he deals with a conflict on his own. Groupacting is more visually suggested, by men participating in same action at the same time,and achieving the same result, available for everyone. Even if those cultures are maybe not individualistic from other points of view, the beer drinkers belong to this “I” world, because they consider the product as a top priority and they fight for it.

The study reveals different kinds of heroes and the drinker behavior was the main criterion used to integrate them into a category: The creative, The winner, The dreamer, The hero (saver), The dare-devil, The Cupidon, The adventurer (DonQuijote), The hat-trick (Hermes), The star, The greedy-guy , The faithful guy, The outcast, The optimist, The ambitious, The business man, The childish man, The irresponsible, The expert, The ecologist and The responsible.

The optimist is the most frequent profile used in beer commercials and it registered th highest frequency in Romanian beer commercials. In the second position there are two profiles: the creative man and Cupidon. Whereas the international commercials representing beer drinkers focus on success, competition, profession, or love, the Romanian commercials represent the local characters as having fun and looking for adventure.

CONCLUSIONS

Considering the relevance of narrative formats, we may say that beer commercials invest a lot in action in order to create a strong profile for drinkers. This explains why the positioning based on consumers has drawn attention: they are often invested with dynamic representations. The story line and the slice of life formats allow to identify every diverse personality profiles of people involved in daily life. Either they are ordinary people, or successful business men, they deal with problems and associate beer with a form of power or entertainment. Individualistic behavior makes them more interesting and drinking beer becomes not an ordinary fact, but it means adopting a lifestyle.

Briefly, there are two portrayals of beer drinkers easily to be distinguished:

– The first one, the ambitious prototype, is concerned with responsible work, and he is involved in business, striving for success and beer motivates him to act more efficiently. Most of the time, this profile corresponds to expensive brands, and the character is not involved in family business, but in professional ones.

– The second one likes to be a joker, to organize parties and enjoy being surrounded by friends, and beer is his means to have fun, to become popular, as long as it is associated with spending free time. Unlike the previous one, the goals of this beer drinker do not imply so much responsibility.

International commercials promote their beers by representing the first profile, and using global features, taken into consideration the fact that a successful man or a winner should have the same qualities. In this situation, the commercial model is standardization or, sometimes hybridization. When it comes to Romanian commercials, the creative strategy lies on the localization or hybridization model, leaving aside standardization.

Coming back to the issue of choosing the best format, Sandra Moriarty (1991: 76) considers that an advertising appeal can also be viewed as something “that moves people, speaks to their wishes or needs, and excites their interests”. For this reason, commercials focus on ways to highlight informational or rational appeals, on the one hand, and emotional appeals, on the other. Both categories can be illustrated by choosing different TV commercials, according to their message and the target insight. Belch and Belch (Belch, Belch 1998: 266-268) clarify the meaning of these categories, considering that rational appeals “focus on the consumer’s practical, functional or utilitarian need for the product or service”, while “emotional appeals relate to the consumer’s social and psychological needs for purchasing a product or a service”.

Therefore, the international commercials appeal to a rational consumer, preoccupied by his economical status, while the Romanian commercials emotionally address to the beer drinkers. Obviously, this conclusion relies on the quantitative data provided by the analysis of the 100 international and Romanian commercials.

Summing up, beer campaigns offer the chance to identify the consumer profile, based on its homogeneous behavior, rational or emotional, but the way a brand supports its image and values is heterogeneous. Even if beer is a very homogeneous product, whose qualities and components cannot be an issue for differentiation, its drinkers, in comparison with other alcoholic drinks like wine or whiskey, belong to so many heterogeneous classes. Romanian advertising industry creates more campaigns for middle-class, and, therefore commercials would rather prefer humor or men enjoying life.

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ANEXA

Our study is based on some research questions (RQ) which have a twofold role: (1) to organize the quantitative data by using the frequency criteria, and (2) to help us check the above-mentioned assumptions.

RQ1: Which are the main TV formats for local and international beer commercials?

RQ2: Which are the positioning types emphasized by beer commercials?

RQ3: Which is the balance between the global and local features in the beer commercials

under analysis?

RQ4: What profiles do the main heroes of the beer commercials represent?

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