The 3 powerful ways humor connects you with your audience
“Open with a joke.” You hear that advice all the time about public speaking. And it’s not bad advice.
It’s just not very good advice.
Will dropping a joke into the beginning of your message help you communicate well?
Not if you stop there.
When you want to connect with your audience, one of the most compelling ways to to do that is with humor. And humor is more than just jokes.
humor is a powerful communications tool
And not just for live speeches and presentations. However you communicate with an audience — website design, print materials, videos, social posts— humor can convert skepticism and even boredom, into interest, empathy and retention.
It’s such an incredibly subtle and passionate way of relating to people. Your sense of humor communicates what you are, your approach to life. — David Cronenberg*
(*Yes, that David Cronenberg.)
humor is a flavor of communication
It’s related to comedy, but different.
Comedy is an entertainment genre with a simple goal: the laughs. (Simple, yes. Easy, no.) It’s a straightforward metric — laugh or no laugh. And comedians are free to use language and concepts that might alienate your audience and damage your business if you used them. So the distinction between comedy and humor is important.
Humor is a multi-layered approach that you can apply to all your messages and deliveries. It’s more than just plugging in jokes. It’s a holistic way to tell your story.
If you can make your audience laugh out loud once or twice, that’s great. But keeping them smiling and nodding throughout your entire presentation is a better way to form a real connection.
humor supports your three core communication goals
Whenever you communicate with your audience, in whatever format, you want three things to happen:
You want your audience to listen to your message
You want your audience to understand your message
You want your audience to remember your message
Here’s a few examples of how humor helps with that:
listen
Humor helps your audience listen by generating interest in your message.
In the movies, there are three ways that screenwriters can make their characters interesting. They can make the character a good person, they can make them highly competent at what they do, or they can make the character funny.
Goodness and competence can take time to demonstrate. But funny shows up right away. Take a look at TV and web commercials. They don’t have much time to get your attention, so a lot of them use humor.
understand
Humor helps your audience understand your message by literally overclocking their brains.
Researchers at the University of Madgeburg in Germany found that the part of your brain that works on sorting and storing memories gets a boost from a surprise. That’s possibly why some events seem to happen in slow motion: there’s more to recall when you think back on it.
And humor can supply that jolt — it is, after all, inherently surprising.
a joke is essentially a question with a surprise answer — Hannah Gasby
You don’t need big bursts of laughter. Just the occasional, steady buzz of humor will help your audience concentrate on your message.
remember
Humor helps your audience remember your message by giving them more reasons to do so.
When you see a movie or a show that you like, what are the parts that you tell your friends about the next day? Usually, it’s the funny parts.
Humor helps your audience want to remember your message so that they can repeat the humorous parts to their friends and coworkers. They’re fun to revisit, and everyone enjoys making their friends laugh. So humor encourages your audience to start a conversation about your message.
humor is you and what you love
If humor isn’t comedy, then what is it? Well, the best humor is you sharing you and what you love. That could be your interests. It could be your relationships. It especially could be your work and your message. Just with some exaggeration and juxtaposition to find the humor in the truth.
An award-winning example of successful corporate communication using love, exaggeration, and juxtaposition is the “Jack Box” advertising for Jack-in-the-Box restaurants. The commercials are about a man who loves his job, loves his family, and loves his products. He is always happy and proud to talk about what his company does. And he just happens to be an otherwise normal businessman with a giant spherical clown head.
The plainly inhuman clown head is juxtaposed with the normality of the rest of the person and setting. And the ads exaggerate his excitement, commitment, and love for the message. The concept has been highly successful, running since 1994.
Show your love for your message, share your experiences, and accept your audience. This gives your audience the space and the reasons to accept you and your message in return.
