The Tandem of Humour and Being Moved Employing Humour and the Emotion of Being Moved in Narrative Advertising in a Commercial Setting

Abstract

Narrative advertising is an effective marketing strategy that has a high persuasive potential because of its ability to psychologically transport its audience. Two of the most employed elements in narrative advertising are humour and the emotion of being moved, which respectively provide two forms of well-being: pleasure and meaning or hedonia and eudaimonia. This study uses evaluative conditioning to explore the influence of humorous, moving or both humorous and moving stories on brand attitude towards commercial brands. The experiment (N = 214) used a within-subjects design with four levels (humour, moving, humour-moving and neutral) and additionally explored a 2(humour condition: high humour vs low humour) x 2(moving condition: high moving vs low moving) design, also within-subjects. Brand attitude was measured in likeability, appeal and attractiveness. The results showed that stories which contained both humour and the emotion of being moved produced a more positive brand attitude than humorous or moving stories alone, but that humorous or moving stories alone did not produce a more positive brand attitude than neutral stories. It was found that the effect of humour and moving stories combined was mainly due to the humour component. It is suggested that adding the moving element was needed in order to provide a proposed contrast effect between the two. These results suggest that marketeers should employ humorous narratives with moving elements in their marketing techniques in order to gain in brand attitude. The findings provide guidance for marketeers in the commercial spheres on how to improve their marketing strategies.