Aha over Haha: Brands benefit more from being clever than from being funny

Abstract

We examine whether the cleverness of a brand’s humor attempt affects consumers’brand attitudes and engagement. A clever humor attempt is any humor attemptwherein the consumer feels she must make mental connections to solve the joke(e.g., understand a cultural reference, understand the dual meaning of a pun).Across five studies, we demonstrate that as the cleverness of a humor attemptincreases, consumers report higher brand attitudes and are more engaged with thebrand. This effect is mediated by perceptions of brand warmth and competenceand moderated by consumers’ need for cognition.