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Is Humor More Important to Advertising's Future Than Ever Before?
Martin Agency hosts Comedy Lab in NYC
Comedy is making a comeback in advertising—at least that’s the hope for The Martin Agency. The creative ad shop partnered with the New York Comedy Festival for the inaugural Comedy Lab held yesterday at the Hard Rock Hotel in NYC’s Times Square.
Dubbed as a playbook for marketers, the half-day program gathered marketing professionals, data leaders, case studies, filmmakers, content creators and comedians to discuss the power of humor in engaging consumers—and why marketers must harness it more effectively in their ads.
Martin chief brand officer Elizabeth Paul led the shop’s effort to create the event, after Experiential Strategies CEO Rob Gregory sparked the idea.
According to Paul, research shows that 91 percent of brands want to incorporate humor, but are too gun shy without a guarantee that it will work.
“My main goal is to advocate for and champion the power of humor in marketing, in the industry, and hopefully to give marketers and their partners—be it Martin or other agencies—what they need to take smart risks,” she says.
Her shop is widely known for its comedic spots, ranging from its legendary Geico commercials to the “Snoop Dogg Goes Smokeless” campaign for Solo Stove.
Luana Bumachar, Solo’s CMO, was on hand to deconstruct the campaign. Critical to its success was letting Snoop be his authentic self, rather than the brand dictating how the ad narrative should unfold, thus “moving from Snoop as influencer to Snoop as creator,” she said.
In looking at the stats, Solo raked in $100 million in earned media and generated 19.5 billion impressions over five weeks.
Another session examined how smaller brands often take bigger risks than their big, historied counterparts. Soyoung Kang, CMO of Eos Products, detailed the “Bless Your F*ckin’ Cooch” campaign that originated with a Tik Tok content creator. This launched the brand into the stratosphere.
Matt Bruhn, CMO of Olipop said he believes that 2025 “will be a seminal year for American advertising” given the mood in at least half of the country post-the U.S. presidential election and world events like the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
Added Paul: “Comedy, not just in advertising, but in general, is having a resurgence, because people are looking for things that make them feel good in a world that feels bad. There’s got to be something that breaks up our doom scrolling.”
