What's So Funny? The Use of Humor in Magazine Advertising in the United States, China and France

The literature includes extensive research on the role of humor in advertising. Few studies, however, have compared how humor in advertising is used in different countries.

What's So Funny? The Use of Humor in Magazine Advertising in the United States, China and France

Michel Laroche, Marcelo Vinhal Nepomuceno and Liang Huang

Concordia University

Marie-Odile Richard

University of Montreal

INTRODUCTION

The average American is exposed to 600 advertising messages a day (Media Matters, 2007), but declining attention to advertising owing to clutter has been documented (Rotfeld, 2006). To reverse this trend, some marketers have used humor in creating advertisements. The use of humor in advertising has increased considerably in the United States. Estimates of the number of television advertisements that have relied on...

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