Happy April Fool’s Day! Remember to take everything you read today with a grain of salt; you might find an announcement that’s meant to elicit laughter instead of, or in addition to, press coverage. The best uses of humor can make a positive, memorable impression, but the worst can turn people away.

How to Use Humor in PR

If you’ve weighed the risk against the reward and think humor could be a good strategy for you to increase awareness and reception of your PR content, there are a couple of tips to consider to ensure your work successfully lands with target audiences:

• Use humor to expand and sharpen your brand messages. Humorous content is often more memorable and sharable than a standard press release. Humor can engage an audience more effectively and result in content being shared more broadly on social media. To use the power of humor to elevate your brand, make sure to align your content with your company’s brand promises and messaging and make sure they’re cohesive with your marketing/PR program.
• Consider your audience. The perceptions and demographics of your target audiences, and their relationships to your company, can impact if they find something funny or in poor taste. An audience of retirees might not view a joke in the same light as recent high school graduates.
• Boost your company news with humor. While April Fool’s Day may not be the best time to make real announcements, pairing a crowd-pleasing spin with company updates may help the content spread further and attract more journalists. For example, check out Dollar Shave Club’s funny and viral introduction to the shaving industry.
• Avoid attacking other brands. Self-deprecating humor is less likely to push customers away or spark defamation lawsuits from competitors. Using lighter, approachable humor like self-deprecation can indirectly differentiate your brand from competitors and drive interest from new customers.

The Elements of Humor

To explore the use of humor in PR and offer some best practices, we need to first explore what makes something funny. According to an opinion piece about what makes things humorous from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, “humor occurs when things seem safe, playful, acceptable, or benign,” and laughter corresponds with motor inhibition and muscle weakness, changes associated with being in a safe environment. This can potentially make a brand seem to be on your side, leading to increased trust.

However, creating a funny PR campaign is a skill and one that can be tricky to do successfully. Humorous things can include wordplay, physical comedy, irony and many more strategies, but the most consistent element of humor is the defiance of expectations. Dubbed ‘benign violations,’ humor occurs when something is an affront to someone’s wellbeing, identity, understanding of the world, or communication and social norms, especially with illogical or aggressive undercurrents. Importantly, while they go against expectations and beliefs, these attacks are actually safe, playful, or impermanent. This results in conflicting or ambiguous interpretations with no real harm to the audience.

Here are a handful of ways to make something funny:

• Inversion. Flip the idea backwards, upside down, and drop it somewhere new. Example: Amazon Alexa’s 2018 Super Bowl Commercial.
• Repetition. Build tension and expectations by referencing or forming a pattern and then breaking it. Example: Tide’s 2018 Super Bowl Commercial.
• Exaggeration and hyperbole. Intensifies an aspect of a character, condition or company to reflect strong feelings or intentions. Example: The Most Amazing Press Release Ever Written.
• Puns. Deliberately confuse similar words or phrases based on homonymy, polysemy or metaphors. Example: Reese’s 2020 Super Bowl Commercial.

April Fool’s Day Announcements

When it comes to April Fool’s Day announcements, some brands have taken approaches that have brought adoration. However, using humor in PR and sharing joke announcements must be approached thoughtfully.

A joke made in poor taste can cause damage to a brand’s reputation. Approaching a sensitive subject, like abuse, race, disability or illness, can cause your humor to bomb and for people to be offended.

If your timing is off or if it’s not clear that an announcement is a joke, like Volkswagen’s fake rebranding to ‘Voltswagen’, journalists may take it seriously and share untruths about your company. This mistake can make journalists look bad and lead them to not trust your company or chose to report on your news again. In the case of Volkswagen, this also brought up other times they lied to the public and these statements from reporters and advertising leaders:

• “Now we know the rebrand was nothing more than another lie from a company that’s become known for something else: lying.” – Sean O’Kane (The Verge)
• “This is the most pressing challenge of the auto industry, ‘Can you go electric?’ It’s an odd thing to be joking about. Choosing to joke about it undermines their commitment.” – Tom Morton, chief strategy officer from NY advertising firm R/GA.
• “Media outlets, including CNBC, reported it as news after it was confirmed by unnamed sources within the company, who apparently lied to several reporters.” – Michael Wayland (CNBC)
• “Several outlets, including this one, were hoodwinked. This outlet is removing the name of, and descriptions of, whatever it is the company was trying so hard to market.” – David Matthews (New York Daily News)

• And more from PR Daily: Volkswagen cops to name-change stunt—and reporters share their fury

My coworkers have written about April Fool’s Day announcements in the past; for more information: PR Guidance for April Fools’ Day.

Whether you want to use a pun in a headline, exaggeration in your social media, or share a joke press release, make sure that your humor is aligned with your brand, funny for your audience, and inspires people to laugh with you, not at you.