Tease your customers

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📝 Intro

Imagine a customer making a mild complaint on social media about your shop closing early on Sundays. 

Should you be apologetic? Or maybe it’s a good chance to turn to humor and tease them a bit about being such a fan they need a 24/7 tap supply of your coffee?

While teasing may seem risky for brands, when done right, it can create a powerful connection with your customers. 

Here’s how to do humor right, according to science. 

P.S.: If customers are being mean and rude on social media (e.g. “F**k you and your s**t products”), you can use a similar technique to make other people who see your response more likely to buy from you.

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Use friendly humor to create stronger customer-brand bonds

Topics: Social Media
For: B2C. Can be tested for B2B 
Research date: August 2024
Universities: Duke University, HEC Montreal

📈 Recommendation

Use social and friendly teasing (e.g. playful jokes about customer behaviors like always coming in at the last minute before closing) to increase people’s social media engagement with the brand.

Avoid antisocial and mean teasing that targets sensitive traits (e.g. calling consumers “cheap” or making fun of bad customer experiences) as it can backfire.

Playful, well-executed humor boosts the sense of customer-brand connection and the likelihood of engaging with your content (and increasing your reach).

🎓 Findings

• Playful and non-offensive jabs at clients (e.g. tweeting a meme back at a light-hearted client complaint) boost consumer engagement and strengthen brand attachment. 

• Scientists ran 5 experiments and analyzed over 1,000 Tweets and TikToks and found that:

  • Teasing ads (compared to simply funny or neutral ones) were viewed as 17.8% and 32.2% more “human” and increased people’s connection to the brand by 11.5% and 22.2% 

  • When Wendy’s “roasted” (teased) people on both “National Roast Day” and regular days, the more teased the people felt, the more likely they were to engage with the content (e.g. reply and comment)

  • The more teasing people perceived Ryanair TikTok videos to be, the more likely they were to view and like them

  • Teasing ads for a food and grocery delivery service Postmates made people consider the brand more human.

• The effect backfired for mean, anti-social, and provocative content, such as

  • Negative ads (e.g. a plus size shop ad with the caption ‘savings as big as you are’), on average, were associated with negative feelings 79.5% more than a positive ad

  • When people thought Wendy’s #NationalRoastDay tweets were provocative

🧠 Why it works

• Anthropomorphism is the idea of non-human things (e.g. a brand) taking on human qualities (e.g. fun, cute, playful).  

• Unpredictable or novel brand behaviors (such as teasing) increase our human-like perceptions of it.

• Brands teasing feels fun - it gives us a sense of playful, human interaction.

• Prosocial (positive) teasing is also humorous, which feels enjoyable.

• When teasing creates positive, human-like feelings, it enhances our self-brand connection because we perceive the brand as relatable and engaging. 

• On the other hand, when teasing is antisocial, it activates negative feelings, leading to lower engagement. 

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✋ Limitations

• The research was done primarily on a US audience. Some cultures might be more sensitive to teasing and view it negatively. For example, a teasing brand campaign that works in the U.S. might offend customers in more collectivist or context-specific cultures like Japan, where harmony and face-saving are important. Unlike the US Wendy’s page, the Japanese one does not use teasing.

• For brands that are not known for a playful image (e.g. Tesla, Barclays, Nivea) or have a very conservative client base, the effectiveness of teasing may backfire. People may also become desensitized or find the tweets inauthentic if they do not fit the brand image. 

• The study did not investigate the effects on brand credibility and quality perceptions. While young customers find “roasting” funny, older and more introverted customers may perceive it as unprofessional. 

• The research did not measure the effect on willingness to buy from a company, so it’s unclear whether this would convert to higher sales.

🏢 Companies using this

• Wendy’s, Ryanair, FlixBus, and Duolingo are all well known for their teasing humor as part of their social media marketing strategy. 

• However, they purposefully avoid topics likely to elicit high levels of provocation (i.e. safety, race, religion, identity) - they only engage in prosocial, lighthearted teasing. 

• With the rise of social media and the popularity of memes, more brands are taking on a more lighthearted stance and engaging their users in conversational, friendly ways. 

Ryanair’s TikTok account is particularly famous for its use of memes and jokes that take jabs at both themselves and their customers.

⚡ Steps to implement

• Decide whether teasing fits your brand, its voice, and the industry you operate in. Highly conservative products (e.g. an old, well-established corporate accounting company) may not be a great fit for humorous communication. 

• Use playful, light-hearted teases, especially on social media, that poke fun at minor consumer behaviors or preferences without offending them (e.g., “A date that’s almost as cheesy as you are!” for a pizza ad). 

• Ensure the humor is timely, inclusive, and friendly. Remember that while clever humor boosts your brand image, generic humor does not work. 

• For serious complaints, limit yourself to one informative reply that shows empathy, then take it private (e.g. email, phone).

• When launching humorous campaigns, consider pre-testing the ad with a focus group to make sure people will not find it negative. Antisocial teases are those that:

  • Touch on sensitive domains (e.g. weight, mental health)

  • Touch on personal qualities (e.g. ethnicity, identity)

  • Talk about strong negative emotions (e.g., disgust or anger)

🔍 Study type

Online experiments and market observation (analysis of 961 Tweets from 7 different brands and 234 TikToks from Ryanair)

📖 Research

Brand Teasing: How Brands Build Strong Relationships by Making Fun of Their Consumers. Journal of Consumer Research (August 2024)

🏫 Researchers

• Demi Oba, Duke University 

• Holly Howe, HEC Montreal

• Gavan Fitzsimons, Duke 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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