Humorous Appeal: Adding Amusing Messages to Your Sign

Adding humor is a great way to break through the clutter via effective signage, and there are solid reasons why. It is believed to be one of the most powerful tools in gaining attention, engaging consumers and aiding recalls.

Does humor work best for all?

No it doesn’t. As the same rule can’t be applied to all, so can’t humor.

Humor appeal is largely determined by what you are selling. What works best for others, may not work well for you. For example, a company campaigning for breast cancer awareness with a humorous appeal, may negatively influence the sentiments of the people struggling with cancer.

Creating an outstanding sign 

Before leaping onto why it works, here are some of the most commonly used techniques by companies to sell their products.

Comparison: Technique with the involvement of putting two or more components together to develop a humorous appeal. Best to use when the focus is to provide solutions to an existing problem.

Personification: This technique works best when you try to achieve positivity by attributing human characteristics with things to attract youth.

Sarcasm: This technique involves usually promoting embarrassing situations, habits of a person etc to target the core audience. Making them seem funny and enjoyable is the objective.

Silliness: Simply put, silliness refers to a ridiculous situation, incident or occurrence.  Making signs seem silly on purpose to make people laugh is an art of advertising. Highlighting the silliness in advertisements/signs, especially to market luxury or personal use products, is very popular tactic among marketing gurus.

Exaggeration: Exaggeration technique refers to the extension of any given situation in order to focus on one key element. ‘We sell the best’ slogans are made using this technique.

Adding humor to your signs: Benefits

Competitive Advantage Over Others: Adding humor to your signs makes it easily distinguishable from the clutter, with a greater impact. It provides you with the competitive advantage your product needs to sell more.

Source of Instant Entertainment: The most important advantage of humorous signs is that they attract instant attention. This is how it works. Humor triggers your memory to feel something. It enables you to laugh, giggle, or be amused, arousing a response, thus increasing the likelihood of the product to be remembered.

Aids Comprehension: Sometimes adverts are so overly decorated with messages that it becomes difficult to pick out what the product actually wants to deliver. This leads to failed advertising and ultimately a failed product. Humor on the other hand, is simpler to grasp and understand. Humorous signs may increase the likelihood of the consumer to buy your product as it creates a positive vibe and a more personal connection.

Conventional outdoor advertising is losing its spark in today’s world. In order to regain visibility of our business, it is important to come up with innovative ways that are easy to attract and encourages buying decisions of the consumers. Humorous advertising, if done correctly, can reap fruitful trophies for your business.

Research Study Reveals Digital Billboards are Attractive

Owing to the growing glamour of “digital billboards” around the United States and the world at large, the Outdoor Senior Research Architect- OAAA commissioned Diane Williams from Nielsen in 2015 to do an on location survey that would justify to media sellers or advertisers that digital billboards create a positive impact on consumers. Nielsen conducted exactly 1,256 online surveys with residents age 18 and over from five major cities in the US. The study outlined the straightforward benefits of using digital billboards to advertise businesses through benchmark research. The following were the findings of the research:

How Often Do Travelers Notice Digital Billboards?

Nielsen conducted the research in a busy market for a month where digital billboards are widely seen. The researchers mapped the signage in the test market and screened the survey respondents that noticed the billboards.

After the survey, three-quarters of the travelers reported that they recalled digital billboards that they saw in the past month and 6 in 10 respondents recalled seeing those digital billboards in the last week. This wasn’t all. Of the respondents who recalled the digital survey, 55% also also noticed the message displayed on the screen.

Can Viewers Recall Some Specific Ads On Digital Billboards?

According to the research, the answer is yes. For the benchmark study, Nielsen tested about 30 billboard campaigns, in which six brands with regular rotating ads on the billboards for each market were picked. The survey showed that 80%, 77%, and 89% of the local travelers of Atlanta, Phoenix, and Tampa respectively, noticed at least one of the six tested ads in the past months. The ads featured a sports television broadcast, a local casino, and a local lottery in their messages. Other markets were also targeted in the research.

In a nutshell, the findings revealed that the most of the respondents noticed particular messages as opposed to digital billboards that they saw in the last month.

Do Digital Billboards Engage Consumers?

Some of the subjects of the study showed results that weren’t even expected as much as they showed up, or more explicitly, ended up as “Breaking News”. Over 50% of the total respondents were asked about the effectiveness of digital billboards, and they responded with statements such as “cool way”, “good way to learn”, or “visually appealing”. Boom!

As far as consumer engagement is concerned, the study showed that about 36% of the people who noticed digital billboards in the past month either passed the information on to their acquaintances or recommended them after actually visiting the business, restaurant, or store that was advertised. It’s not only that people attended the event or visited the venue but they also followed the suggestion and made a purchase.

The study also showed that although digital billboards are an offline medium from the consumer’s point of view, they actually do prompt viewers to take online action, as around 16-18% of the digital billboard viewers in the last month actually visited the businesses’ websites. This shows that digital billboards are not only trending these days but also bring real-world benefits in the long run.