“In these times,” blah, blah, blah

Brands are still trying to find their COVID voice, so to speak. So many of the ads you see that reference COVID look and sound exactly the same, and this may be a missed opportunity for brands to break the mold and use some (appropriate) humor.

The copy writer Vikki Ross argues that if you are a brand that typically uses a humorous brand voice, you shouldn’t turn away from that now. Not everything has to be serious. She points to Tesco, which has modified its brilliant “Every little helps” tagline to “Because now more than ever, Every little helps,” as an example of a brand that is trying too hard to be serious and, in those efforts has lapsed into being trite and predictable (with ghastly punctuation, to boot).  

This Marketing Week webinar from the business cartoonist Tom Fishburne reminds me of our Matt Hancher’s review of the book, Inside Jokes. Some brands have invited criticism for using humor to make themselves relevant during COVID, but as Fishburne points out the problem is lack of empathy, not the use of humor, per se. He describes four different types of humor, two that are empathetic, two that are not. If you stick to empathetic humor, you should be OK. 

In fact, running the same bland ads with the same visuals of empty streets, mournful piano music, and talk about “These difficult times” is, in a way, demonstrating a lack of empathy because you clearly don’t understand all the nuances of what your consumer may be experiencing.

Fishburne then describes a number of brands that have been successfully using humor. One is a small brand called Emily Crisp, a UK snack maker. They made a big outdoor ad purchase, which was timed to hit just when no one was on the streets. But they didn’t pull the ads. They used humor to make light of their plight. The ads (one of which is pictured above) shows a commonality between the brand and its consumers and has garnered it a huge amount of earned media. 

Here is a collection of COVID-19 ads from Ads of the World. You can judge for yourself which brands are communicating effectively, and which are doing the same old boring thing that most everyone else is doing.