Selling with humor

Big Spam, Little Spam

/ Flickr Photo Courtesy of Tom BKK

(MoneyWatch) What part does humor have in selling? If you have a sense of humor, you have a God-given gift and you should use it to your advantage.

Ignore those snobs who say humor has no place in sales and marketing, that prospects don't buy from clowns, or you should never poke fun at your own brand. They do not understand the likeability factor of humor.

Just look at Hormel Foods. Back in 2001 the company watched helplessly as "spam," the name of its iconic canned meat product, entered the Oxford English Dictionary as a word for unsolicited email messages.

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Sure, Hormel had ignored all the jokes through the years about that mystery meat in a can. Which part of the pig is the Spam? Actually it is spiced ham and pork shoulder meat, a product originated in the Great Depression and one that had a heyday back in World War II.

But now Spam is enjoying a renaissance after years of negative associations with its brand name. Spam decided to become part of the humor rather than the butt of the jokes. The turning point might have come in 2005 when Hormel did not unleash a legion of lawyers with cease and desist letters, but instead helped promote the Broadway musical "Spamalot," written by Eric Idle of Monty Python fame. The comedy troupe had long made fun of the stuff in the blue and yellow can. If you haven't seen the old Monty Python skit about the bloody Vikings ordering Spam at a diner, do yourself a favor and YouTube it.

Other clever marketing ensued. Hormel prints very funny postcards. A buddy of mine even won a national Spam cook-off, done up with the pomp and ceremony of a true culinary competition. Actually, her Spam Fajitas are quite delicious.

Having a sense of humor paid off for Spam. According to Hormel, the company sold 122 million cans of Spam last year - an 11 percent increase from 2009 - and that was the third straight year of strong growth.

A Hormel exec said; "I think of it like Old Spice: It's gone from dad's brand to a hip young brand."

Speaking of Old Spice, that brand did well with humor too. Wieden + Kennedy created a special ad for the 2010 Super Bowl for their client Procter and Gamble. The ad featured former NFL athlete Isaiah Mustafa in a video-centric marketing campaign that combined both traditional and social media.

Entitled "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like," the ad featured Mustafa reciting a monologue about how "anything is possible" if a man uses Old Spice. In a single uncut shot, Mustafa transitions from a bathroom to a sailboat to riding a horse on the beach, all without pausing his monologue or breaking eye-contact with the camera for more than a moment. The punchline of the commercial is Mustafa's non sequitur final statement: "I'm on a horse", delivered as the camera zooms out to reveal to the viewer that Mustafa is now sitting atop a horse.

Last year Old Spice launched a new campaign on YouTube featuring a challenge between Mustafa and pitchman hunk Fabio entitled Mano a Mano in el Ba?o. Mustafa said he wasn't worried, even though Fabio has been "the epitome of the sex symbol as a pitchman." Mustafa emerged as the winner.

But the real winner was Old Spice.

To recap Old Spice's humor laden blockbuster: A total of 40-plus million views on YouTube, with Facebook fan interaction soaring by 800 percent and Twitter followers up by 2,700 percent. Old Spice enjoyed a 107 percent increase in body wash sales within 30 days of campaign launch.

Old Spice, as the old saying goes, is laughing all the way to the bank.

[SalesLoft]

Sales is transitioning to an era of transparency. The more human you are the better you will connect with your buyer. Gone are the days of making sure everything is all buttoned up and perfect. Humor is important if it is part of who you are and if your buyers don't like the real you, you should get a new job. At http://SalesLoft.com, we're giving information to sales reps to help them connect with buyers in a more sincere and warm way. Using humor is a great way to knock down barriers and build worthwhile buyer realtionships.

[SalesLoft]

Sales is transitioning to an era of transparency. The more human you are the better you will connect with your buyer. Gone are the days of making sure everything is all buttoned up and perfect. Humor is important if it is part of who you are and if your buyers don't like the real you, you should get a new job. At SalesLoft.com, we're giving information to sales reps to help them connect with buyers in a more sincere and warm way. Using humor is a great way to knock down barriers and build worthwhile buyer realtionships.

[Bald Bry]

As a Stand-Up Comic and Advertising/Broadcaster, I've found that clients like the use of humour, but most times they don't know how to use it. They say make a funny ad, so you do up one ad for them, they buy it and run the hell out of the one ad. This is like when someone comes up to you as says "Stop me if you heard this joke" and 2 seconds into the joke you say, "Yup, heard it" and you kind of tune out. Same thing goes with a humorous ad. Once you've seen or heard it you know the joke and you turn off. Old Spice did it right...they kept rotating different humorous ad's. IMO humour has big impact but a very short shelf life.