Congruency of humour and cultural values in print ads: Cross-cultural differences among the US, France and China
Michel Laroche
Concordia University
Marcelo Vinhal Nepomuceno
ESCP Europe
Marie-Odile Richard
SUNY Polytechnic Institute
Introduction
Humour in advertising is a double-edged sword. What is funny for some might be offensive to others. Thus, the use of humour in advertising must be done with care as it may offend some audiences (Beard 2008). Nonetheless, humorous ads involve expensive bets. Estimates put advertising spending at $157.2 billion for 2013 in the United States alone (GroupM 2012), and roughly 10–30% of the total number of ads are...