PROMOTIONAL COMMUNICATION AND HUMOR - PERSPECTIVE OF POTENTIAL CONSUMERS

Abstract

In today’s age, the average consumer is too exposed to marketing materials to pay attention to each one, and billboards can be an expensive investment for companies and can easily go unnoticed. The average consumer uses tools that would reduce his exposure to advertising materials, but the results of this research indicate that even though consumers are overexposed to advertisements, they still believe that humor on billboards is not present enough and that they would like to see it more precisely for the reason that research has shown that the use of humor is rated as likable by consumers. Starting from the basic definition that humor is a form of communication whose goal is to make the interlocutors laugh and cheer up, the aim of this paper was to investigate the opinion of different publics about humorous billboard advertising solutions and to determine the connection between the use of humor as a tool in billboard advertising, the intention to purchase the advertised product /services and raising awareness about the organization and the advertised product/service. The chosen research method is a survey, and it was conducted with an online survey questionnaire, which enabled the quick and easy collection of a larger number of respondents needed for the implementation of the research task. A wide and heterogeneous sample enabled an insight into the opinions of different members of the population, given that they are all exposed to the advertising (humorous) appeal that is the subject of this research. The obtained results indicated a positive effect of using humor in advertising through billboards, more precisely in increasing the visibility of the brand, i.e. the memory of the advertised product, as well as a generally positive opinion about the use of humor in advertising. Most of the respondents confirmed that humor is a good method of attracting their attention and that they like the humorous approach to advertising through billboards. What are the humor preferences of different groups of people, what is the correlation between humorous advertising and brand building, what type of humor attracts the most attention for a certain brand or economic niche, are just some of the possible research topics and directions. Considering the few and scarce literature in this area, the results of this and similar research can bring useful and practical guidelines to professionals in practice for more precise and effective management of advertising campaigns in the future, and to the scientific community a better understanding of the phenomenon of consumer thinking, i.e. a clearer insight into the connection messages and consumer behaviors of the product or service. This work was created as part of the research for the diploma thesis at the university graduate study of Communication Studies, student Ivona Marenić at the Catholic University of Croatia, 2023.