Humor works for B2B too

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📝 Context

Topic: Messaging & Copy | Ads | Social Media
For: B2B
Research date: August 2025
Universities: Wright State University

You’re putting together a campaign for a new version of your accounting software, and are struggling between two concepts:

• An ad laying out your key features and what gives you an edge over competitor software.

• A funny ad comparing using your software to overworked accountants drowning in mountains of paperwork and receipts

You might think your target audience - finance and procurement departments at large companies - prefer the first. But science says humor can have a big impact on B2B buyers too.

P.S.: 🧑‍🎄 Next week we will be off for a short break to recharge our batteries 💪 See you again in 2 weeks, and make sure you recharge yours too!

P.P.S.: Using humor to grow your brand? Make sure to review these important insights we’ve covered in the past:

• Clever humor boosts your brand

• Tease your customers

• Take advantage of rude complaints

📈 Recommendation

Use humor in your B2B ads, and make sure it’s related to your product (e.g. a cold storage company joking about battling through an obstacle course to make sure perishables arrive fresh from farms to grocery stores). 

People will like your ad and brand more, and will be more likely to want to know more about your product.

🎓 Findings

• B2B buyers like ads and the advertised brand more when the ads use product-related humor.

• As part of 4 experiments with B2B buyers across construction, hospitality, retail, and tech, researchers found that:

  • When a construction adhesive company used funny ads (“Tighter than the middle seat on a discount airline”) vs regular ads (“Have you tried GHENDA?”), the funny ads led to:

    • 19.9% better attitudes towards the ad

    • 17.9% better attitudes towards the brand

    • 8.6% higher chances of people searching for more information

  • When a cleaning service used a funny ad (“Your neighbour, Bob, uses a different service. He’s now cleaning up after them so he couldn’t play pickleball with you. Poor Bob.”) people who weren’t in a hurry had 19.3% better attitudes towards the brand compared to when a non-funny ad was used (“The Kleanup Crew has just finished cleaning your rental unit.”).

• The effect: 

  • Works when the humour is related to the product and not ‘random’ in nature

  • Strengthens when people aren’t in a hurry

  • Disappears if they are already customers of the company (e.g. it’s an existing vendor)

🧠 Why it works

• As with B2C brands, when we see a brand using humor that’s relevant and supports their message, it makes us like the brand and the ad more.

• This also makes us more interested in their product, and makes us want to find out more about it.

• We also recall ads with humor related to the product better than other ads.

• However, if we’re in a rush, we’re focused on rational arguments, instead of jokes, making humor less impactful.

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✋ Limitations

• The research was tested on print ads only but it’s likely the effect carries to other mediums (e.g. TV, Meta ads).

• The experiments were only conducted on participants in the US. It’s likely other cultures respond differently to humor.

• The study didn’t look at whether different genders react differently to humor by brands, though other research suggests some types of humor, like violent humor, put off female audiences.

• The research used fictional brands only. People may react differently to humor from established brands they know.

👀 Real-life example

Finance and HR platform Workday uses humor in its campaign making fun of corporate executives calling themselves “rockstars” 

❌ Issue: Though they use humor to satirize the trend, they don’t directly relate it to their product.

✅ Solution: Workday could increase the effectiveness of these ads by:

• Relating the humor in their ads more directly to their brand. For example, instead of just mocking corporate executives for calling each other rockstars, they could highlight features of their software that make people seem like rockstars to their coworkers (e.g. processing payments twice as quickly as others).

• Making sure their ads are targeted towards people who aren’t likely to be busy (e.g. airing on weekends or after working hours).

• Ensuring their video ads are 10 seconds or shorter, to maximize their engagement and drive more traffic at lower costs.

• Using frequency caps online, and limiting their TV ads during a single show or event to 3 times or less, to ensure their ads don’t annoy viewers and cause a backlash.

P.S.: Someone who does this really well is my friend Tycho, to promote his B2B marketing agency Dapper (fun fact: we studied marketing together in Rotterdam several years ago). 

After huge dedication and testing, they managed to crack an approach to funny B2B content that is working. Here are some of my favorite sketches:

• Wolf of Wall Street, B2B marketing version

• Pulp Fiction, B2B marketing version

• B2B Marketing Therapy

🔍 Study type

Online experiments.

📖 Research

To humor or not humor buyers? Evaluating the effective use of humor in B2B advertisements. Journal of Business Research (August 2025)

🏫 Researchers

• Kunal Swan, Wright State University. 

• Charles S. Gulas, Wright State University. 

• John Dinsmore, Wright State University. 

Remember: This is a new scientific discovery. In the future it will probably be better understood and could even be proven wrong (that’s how science works). It may also not be generalizable to your situation. If it’s a risky change, always test it on a small scale before rolling it out widely.

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