Marketing – Aggressive or benevolent: what kind of humor should be used on social networks?

Brands are increasingly using social networks to communicate with their customers and with other brands. Most often, they use humor to interact with their competitors. But is this strategy, which aims to create a positive buzz around the brand, always beneficial? What criteria should marketing teams consider to ensure that a joke deemed inappropriate does not have the opposite effect?

Most of us have seen this type of exchange on social networks, where one brand comments on another’s publication in a humorous way.

In 2018, McDonald’s promoted via Twitter its new strategy of using mostly fresh beef in most of its restaurants. Among all the comments posted, mostly by anonymous users, one in particular stood out. Fast food chain Wendy’s – one of McDonald’s main competitors in the US market – stepped into the middle of the comment section to poke fun at McDonald’s.

This example shows how brands can greatly benefit from using humor against their competitors on social networks.

The begnin violation theory

However, humor can be a double-edged sword. While it can have positive effects when used appropriately, it can also have very negative consequences when misused.

Anyone who regularly uses humor can remember a time when a joke fell flat and created an awkward moment. Thanks to psychological research, we have a better understanding of why some situations are perceived as funny and others are not. This is because humor is a benign violation.

According to the benign violation theory, the mechanism of humour is based on three elements. First, something has to be considered a violation. There are many examples of violations, ranging from a video of someone falling to the posting of an embarrassing photo on social networks. A violation is something that threatens our normal perception of our environment. Second, the situation must be perceived as benign, meaning that it is considered acceptable, harmless, and not serious. Finally, the violation and the benign situation must occur simultaneously.

Let’s take a concrete example. If you are walking down the street and one of your friends suddenly falls, this action is a violation because your friend should not fall while walking down the street. The benign violation theory explains that this fall will make you laugh if you simultaneously perceive it as benign, i.e., if your friend does not get hurt. In this case, people tend to laugh at this kind of situation. But if your friend is seriously injured in a fall, you will not see it as funny and it will not make you laugh… unless you are the worst friend ever!
That is why we make sure our friends are okay after a fall before we start laughing about it. We are just waiting for confirmation that the fall was benign.

Teasing or aggressive jokes?

How does this relate to our story about McDonald’s and Wendy’s? In our research, as in the fall example, we looked at when humor in this competitive context is perceived as a serious or benign injury. We wanted to understand the conditions under which customers perceive the use of humor against another brand as appropriate or inappropriate. To answer this question, we conducted a series of experiments in which we asked a panel of participants how they reacted to different humorous stimuli in a context similar to that of McDonald’s and Wendy’s.

In our first study, we compared people’s reactions depending on whether the brand used affiliative or aggressive humor. Affiliative humor is all the forms of humor you use when laughing with someone. Teasing, puns, and lighthearted mockery are classic examples of affiliative humor. Aggressive humor, on the other hand, is any form of humor used to make fun of someone. Aggressive humor includes sarcasm, mockery, and malicious jokes.

Our results show that participants prefer brands that use affiliate humor to make fun of other brands. They tend not to appreciate aggressive forms of humor in this context.

When aggressive humor pays off

This conclusion seems counterintuitive considering the example of Wendy’s, which had great success against Mac Donald’s by using a decidedly aggressive tone in its humor. We decided to conduct further studies to better understand when aggressive humor becomes as effective as affiliative humor.

In our second study, we examined whether the use of aggressive humor was more or less appropriate depending on whether a brand was mocking its competitor or a non-competing brand. Is it more interesting for Wendy’s to mock its competitor McDonald’s or to mock an insurance company or a bank? Our results confirm that participants are more likely to accept the use of aggressive humor when a brand is targeting its competitor. Panelists understand that aggressive humor is a malicious act of rivalry where the brand is trying to put the other brand down. When the other brand is a direct competitor, they feel that this disparagement is more justified: the brand is simply “playing the competitive game”.

Aggressive humour is considered a benign violation when it targets competitors, as most people consider it normal to mock and discredit one’s competitor.

In our example, Wendy’s aggressive humour worked perfectly because it was aimed at its main rival, McDonald’s.

Humour and power dynamics

Finally, we tried to understand whether the power dynamics between the two brands played a role in how people perceived the humor. Brands are not equally powerful in the marketplace, with some being leaders and others being challengers. Research shows that people evaluate humor differently depending on the relative power position between the sender of the joke and its target. People tend to be less offended by aggressive humor when it is used by a superior against his or her subordinates, rather than the other way around.

We conducted another study to test this power dynamic between two brands. We used fictitious brands and told our participants that the jokes they were about to read came from either a leader brand or a challenger brand. Again, we found contrasting effects for the use of affiliative versus aggressive humor. When we told participants that the brand was a leader, they rated its use of aggressive humor more positively. The logic here is similar to that of the supervisor-employee dynamic. A position of power somehow protects brands from deviant behavior, making aggressive humor a benign transgression. Conversely, panelists judged the challenger brand more harshly when it resorted to aggressive humor. The use of this form of humor against a strong brand appeared to be a malicious transgression. For challengers, affiliative humor appears to be the least risky approach.

In conclusion, does it make sense for brands to use online humor to poke fun at other brands? Yes, but there are certain rules that need to be followed. Our findings strongly suggest that brands prefer affiliate humor as the safest strategy. Aggressive humor in an inappropriate context can easily turn into bad buzz and backfire.