Emotional appeals in advertising : how humour is used for promotional purposes

Abstract

The main focus of this literature review is to show how psychology interacts with communications to create something which human beings want to watch, read or listen to. Many advertisements are skipped and ignored due to lack of creativity. Despite the vast amount of advertisements that are being produced everyday (Smith & Yang, 2004; Smith, MacKenzie, Yang, Buchholz & Darley, 2007), there is lack of innovative research in the advertising field. If the creator tries to get inside the audience’s shoes, advertisements are more likely to be read, seen and heard. There are various appeals through which advertisements can make themselves stand out. Within these appeals, emotional appeals are said to be one of the best ways to gain an audience’s attention. Particularly, this study focuses on humour in the advertising field. Humour is a natural method which causes laughter and spreads joy. However, there are various types of humour which can be used for an advertisement to be aimed at different audiences. Carrying out research based on different studies about humour, specifically humour in advertising, it is found out that one type of humour cannot reach and have the same level of enjoyment for everyone at the same time. The different countries and societies the studies are done in also makes a difference to the results achieved about humour in advertising. This review is being done using scholarly articles, journals and books which were written and conducted within the field of humour in advertising. Moreover, it contains a mixture of studies taken from older and more recent times to see the contrast in thoughts and also what is similar. This review is being done using scholarly articles, journals and books which were written and conducted within the field of humour in advertising. Moreover, it contains a mixture of studies taken from older and more recent times to see the contrast in thoughts and also what is similar.