How To Use Humor Successfully In Your Business Communications
For generations people have been saying that laughter is good medicine. And now the scientists have taken an interest it turns out great-grandma was right. The boffins have discovered that laughter releases helpful goodies in the body which boost your immune system. In fact the therapeutic benefits of laughter are now being harnessed by academia and the business community into laughter workshops and other formalized chuckle sessions. Get the workers laughing and you raise productivity, so it seems.
However it is extremely easy to get humor wrong. And a joke that’s sent to someone who doesn’t see the funny side will create more ill health through raised blood pressure than a few laughs could ever cure.
So what’s the answer? How do we harness humor and make it work for us, not against us?
People often say that the internet’s international nature makes it an unsuitable environment for humor for fear of it not translating across national boundaries - and inadvertently causing offense. But there are a couple of simple rules which - although not universal panaceas that always work - can help you use humor without risk.
Use humor about situations, not people. If you think about it, the butt of many jokes and other humor is a person or group of people, so it’s hardly surprising that offense is caused. The more extreme types are obvious - mother-in-law jokes, blonde jokes, women jokes, men jokes - but there are many more subtle ones too.
Then there are the nationality gags. I remember in one year hearing exactly the same joke (in three different languages) told by an American about the Polish, by a Canadian about Newfoundlanders, by a French person about Belgians, by a French-speaking Belgian about the Flemish, and by a Flemish person about the Dutch.
Obviously most humor is going to involve people in one way or another. But as long as the butt of the joke is a situation or set of circumstances, not the people, you’re far less likely to upset anyone. And there is an added advantage here. Whoever they are and wherever they come from, people will usually identify with a situation. Take this one for example…
Some people are driving along at night and are stopped by a police car. The officer goes to the driver and warns him that one of the rear lights on his SUV isn’t working. The driver jumps out and looks terribly upset. The officer reassures him that he won’t get a ticket, it’s just a warning, so there’s no problem. “Oh yes there is a problem,” says the man as he rushes towards the back of the car. “if you could see my rear lights it means I’ve lost my trailer.”
As the butt of the joke is the broken rear light and the loss of the trailer, not the policeman or the driver, no-one can be offended. And most people can identify with how that would feel.
The other key issue with humor is wordplays, puns, and anything else that’s based on figurative speech, slang, or jargon. The short answer is they don’t work internationally. However if the play or double entendre is in the concept rather than the words, it probably will work.
These may be funny to us, but would not be understood by anyone who is not a good English speaker because there is a play on the words:
* Deja moo: The feeling that you’ve heard this bull before.
* The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.
These, however, probably would be understood because the humor is in the concept, not in the words themselves:
* You don’t stop laughing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop laughing.
* The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was.
Overall, I think it’s wise to use humor as a spicy condiment in your business comms. And just as you would with the chili powder, use it in moderation if you don’t know the audience well … and if you know they have a very sensitive palate, don’t use it at all!
Canadian-born Suzan St Maur is an international business writer and author based in the United Kingdom. In addition to her consultancy work for clients in Europe, the USA, Canada and Australia, she contributes articles to more than 150 business websites and publications worldwide, and has written twelve published books on business writing, marketing, publishing and humor. Check out all her current books here.
To subscribe to her free biweekly business writing tips eZine, TIPZ from SUZE, click here.
(c) Suzan St Maur 2003 - 2005
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Business Opportunity Shills and Proposed Rules to Prevent Fraud
It has been observed that often business opportunity sellers use shills to promote their products or business opportunities in advertising. Perhaps you seen this before when someone on TV was obviously a very skilled actor will swear by certain product or business opportunity in an infomercial. They claim that they’ve made all kinds of money in this new investment and business opportunity, yet often this is totally fraudulent.
You see, often the person stating what a great business it is; is only an actor they are not in the business nor have a meeting the money doing anything for the business other than being an actor for the video.
You see, the Federal Trade Commission is now onto this and they have proposed a new set of rules to prevent this type of fraud, as it is disreputable and misleading advertising and misrepresents the truth. Below is an excerpt from the Federal Trade Commission’s report on their new proposed set of rules for business opportunity disclosures;
Proposed section 437.5(q): Shills
“Proposed section 437.5(q) would address one of the most pernicious practices common in fraudulent business opportunity sales - the use of shill references to lure unsuspecting consumers to invest. The Commission has brought many actions against business opportunity sellers who provided prospects with the names of individuals they falsely claimed were independent prior purchasers or independent third parties, but who in fact were paid by the seller to give favorable false reports confirming the seller’s claims, especially their earnings claims. The use of paid shills to give false reports induces prospective purchasers into believing that the opportunity is a safe and lucrative investment.
To address this deceptive practice, proposed section 437.5(q) contains two related prohibitions. First, it would prohibit any seller from misrepresenting, directly or through a third party, that any person “has purchased a business opportunity from the seller.” This would prevent a seller, for example, from claiming that a company employee, locator, or other third party is a prior purchaser of the opportunity, when that is not the case. Second, the provision would prohibit a seller from misrepresenting that any person - such as a locator, broker, or organization that purports to be an independent trade association - “can provide an independent or reliable report about the business opportunity or the experiences of any current or former purchaser.” Providing a prospect with a list of brokers who are paid to give favorable reports, for example, would violate this provision because any statement a person on such a list makes would fail the “independence and reliability” test.”
Now then, you can obviously see how this problem can do totally out of hand and perhaps you are wise enough to know a shill when you see one, however there are a lot of snakeskin oil, fast talking, fraudulent business opportunity sellers out there in the use trying to get rid of them sold out the ethical practitioners of business opportunities can run their honest businesses with out all these negative in dishonest people in the marketplace. Consider this in 2006.
Lance Winslow
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Funny Ads CBS Egg Logos And More
Imagine preparing your breakfast in the morning - bacon eggs toast and right there in front of you, a reminder to watch The Amazing Race on CBS. It can happen. CBS plans to advertise its fall line-up on wait for it EGG SHELLS! CBS egg ads - sounds funny, doesn’t it?
CBS will imprint its logo and eye-catching egg related taglines for three of its shows on 35 million eggs. The eggs will be sold through one grocery store chain on the east coast.
Unique and funny ads normally do well, not really from the actual advertisements, but from the media publicity that it generates. With that in mind, here are some other weird and funny ads that have been done:
- Internet casino, GoldenPalace, won an eBay auction to place a permanent ad on the forehead of a man named Brent Moffatt.
- Haagen-Dazs, in partnership with the Austrian Postal Service, had put images of Haggen-Dazs dessert on postage stamps.
- Ben Rogovy, a Seattle-based entrepreneur, created “bumvertising,” a system of paying “bums,” otherwise known as street beggars, to display ads on their cardboard signs.
- In Dubai, speed cameras on highways are sponsored allowing companies like HP to put their logos on them.
- Million Dollar Home Page sold 100,000 10×10 pixel ads on their internet website. A 10×10 pixel link is super small. But all 100,000 spaces sold out and the website received millions of hits.
Weird and funny ads, just like the CBS egg logos, are great for entertainment value and a lot of them work, if only for the free publicity. I can’t wait to see what’s next. Perhaps, one day soon, someone will figure out how to put their company’s logo on the face of the moon.
Please visit http://www.trade-pals.com. Tino Buntic created TradePals to provide free advertising to business professionals, entrepreneurs, trades people, freelancers, and salespeople across The United States and Canada.