Yeah. So Joanna asked me to talk about humor copy writing since this is your advanced copy week. And I was like, how do I translate everything that I know love and teach in two twenty minutes?

I gave can’t, but I will try. And so I wanna quickly go through, like, why you would consider writing funny your copy or adding humor to your copy. Where you should do it and then a couple ways to start doing it easily. If that sounds cool to y’all.

So like real quick. Why do we do this?

There are multiple different kinds of benefits of funny copy cognitively. They can have some beneficial effects for how you process information.

Socially, it’s kind of like that, you know, breaking the ice, making people feel good about being around you, and emotionally, obviously, like, humor is a coping mechanism. There’s a lot happens emotionally, with humor.

So brief overview, we all know that funny is shared funny is good, funny builds affinity. Here are some links if you don’t believe me. I will send the slides to you after this or they will.

And why does this work? It’s just built into us as humans. Right? We’re just ingrained to look for funny things, enjoy them and share them.

And I’m gonna go really fast because like I said, I have hundred slides. I’ll slow down when it gets more interesting.

But broadly, This is important because we like people and brands that make us laugh. And as you know, when people like you, they give you money. And you need money to live because we still live under capitalism.

So in your brain, humor can actually help you solve problems. I like to think of this as the improv brain where you are looking for solutions outside of the normal, like very linear ways the problem solving that we’ve been taught. So you are more likely to go outside the box and think of different options for solving a problem.

Can actually help people remember information. If you make a funny joke around a piece of information you want them to remember, they will associate that joke with the information and be more likely to remember it, which is really useful.

And it helps people make connections. Right?

I can’t remember what the cognitive research says about how this works like neural pathway wise.

I’ll look it up later if you are interested.

And that it also helps us support more effective planning and judgment.

So if you are Planning to do something.

Can you bring a humorous lens to it and say like, what is the worst that could happen here. Like if I were to completely forget what I wanted to say for this bullet point in this presentation, what is the worst that would happen? And the worst that would what happened is that I would just keep going, right? And maybe it would come to me later. That may or may not just be what happened.

Emotionally and socially, We all use humor as an icebreaker to relieve tension. We use it as an affiliation. So, like, feeling like we belong in a group, we use it to tie together a group in the of challenges or danger. This is all very like if we were facing down a saber tooth, Tiger, and somebody cracked a joke, we’d be like, guy has my back.

And it helps us cope with adversity, which is where we get gallows humor, right? Like, if we can laugh in the face of death and saber tigers, then, we can probably deal with challenges at work.

I wanna say terrible things that happen in the world, but I don’t have any jokes to be made about what’s going on, in foreign countries right now. So we’ll move past that.

And it helps us save face and assuage awkwardness.

So if you especially if you tend toward a more self deprecating style of where, if you kind of poke fun at yourself, that puts other people at ease because it helps them know that they’re not gonna be the target. Right? Like, they can laugh at you with you. And while it’s not good to do that all the time because it destroys your authority, if you lean too heavily on it, it is a useful tool to whip out to again build that affiliation with people. I’m already spending too much time. We can also sue conflict with humor, make a joke, defuse tension, bring down right? If you’re fighting with your partner or someone at work and you make a joke, that can be sort of the bridge that you need to start rebuilding.

Cool. Right? Everyone’s like, alright, I’m sold.

Rick and Baugherty is a style of humor that we can talk about later.

So where Should you bring humor in in your copy? I have a rule of thumb that I tend to apply, which is how deep into the customer journey? Is your reader.

Are they on like a deeply embedded landing page that they can’t get to unless they’ve been through your entire email funnel? That’s a great spot. To use humor because it means you know a lot about them and you probably know what’s gonna make them laugh. If you zoom out or back up a little bit.

On your website, main landing pages, sure, depending on how daring you wanna be, in your hero section headline on your homepage very risky. Right? So, like, the colder someone is, the less they know you, especially if you’re just getting started with humor or you haven’t built brand around it. Probably wait and ramp it up as you get to know them. So, emails are a safe place landing pages if you know something about their stage of the funnel stage of awareness, sure.

General homepage, derral website and homepage may be a little riskier. Right?

That’s one rule.

Quickly other ways to think about where to use humor. There’s a theory of humor called arousal theory, and arousal theory works for other things in life, not just humor and comedy.

But basically it states that when we get physiologically aroused in some way. Like our heart’s pounding. Our skin gets a little electric. We get flushed and like maybe a little blood goes to places we mention.

That is what is known as arousal. It can be positive or negative. So you can be like really attracted to somebody and like really laughing at their jokes and be positively aroused or you can have someone jump out at you and scared to be Jesus out of you and be negatively aroused.

And interestingly enough, there is a straight linear correlation between how much people enjoy laughs and joking and humor and how much their body reacts.

So it doesn’t actually get unpleasant, which is why you can pee your pants laughing. Like you can think something is so funny that you, your body will just pee. At which point, I assume it then gets unpleasant. Luckily, this is happened to me.

This is all such nerdy stuff, so that’s why I’m blazing through it.

If we’re laughing, we’re enjoying something emotionally, but we can also rate something as funny without, laughing. So cognitively, you can be like, That’s really funny, which is what a lot of seasoned comedians do if you watch them watch each other stand up. They’re like, that’s good. That’s really good. Just very grimly cognitively, appreciating the joke.

There’s another theory called relief theory, Sigmund Freud was a fan of this one that says humor is like a pressure release valve for tension.

So think about arousal is tension based in the body like pent up energy and relief theory says we can make somebody laugh and relieve a little bit of that pressure.

Or if they’re nervous, if we’re asking them, like, hey, spend ten thousand dollars on this course or this product, and they’re like, oh my no model. A laugh placed appropriately can defuse that and make them less anxious, build affinity, help them get ready to buy.

Help this is all making sense. It makes sense in my head. I feel like a mad scientist right now with like the red stream.

So The takeaway that I want you to think about between these two theories is that you can pump somebody up in any way that you want. Which for example could be like, Hey, I have really bad news.

And they’re like, oh god, and you’ve gotten them physiologically aroused. And then you can use humorous tangically to relieve that tension, build a relationship with you or push them into action.

So you can use humor to be like, It’s chill, here’s a joke, take a deep breath, or you can choose to keep that tension and push them toward a CTA, right? Like, Hey, if you’re really worried about this thing because I’ve just built this whole problem up in the copy, click this button and I’ll solve it for you or click this link and I’ll solve it for you.

So what should you do? You can take, anything in any copy asset in your customer journey or you can zoom out and look at the journey as a whole and start mapping the sort of emotional arousal journey of people and how you want them to feel at various stages. When should they feel really excited and amped up? When should they feel kind of relaxed and chilled? When do you want them to feel anxious because you’re pushing them to take action? And when could you potentially use humor both in an individual copy asset like the ride of a page or throughout the entire journey because you are driving right? You get to use humor strategically, to to make people feel certain ways.

So I that’s my challenge for you. Map out either a page, an email, even a social media post could be a tiny little roller coaster ride and decide how you want people to feel where and where you might use humor. So that’s the where.

Let’s see. How many minutes are we in? I think I’m like blazing through this. Which is great. There’s so much more. So now we’re getting to the how.

How do we think about humor? How do we decide on what kinds of jokes and styles of humor are appropriate for us. How do we pick the topics of things to joke about and how do we actually come up with jokes? Which is the gigantic three part promise of section three.

So I like to think about humor as five different types of humor or senses of humor.

There’s a great book called Design Funny, by Heather Bradley, where she has a lot of visual examples of these kinds of humor.

But one is lowbrow and crass. So like dumb and dumber. This is where we find hoop and sex jokes. This is where find violence and people falling down and getting hurt, slapstick, and then stereotypes. It’s like Jeff Foxworthy like if it’s you know you’re a redneck if it doesn’t take a lot of work to get this and it can appeal to our base senses.

So you might have a little bit of this. Everybody has a mix of these five senses. You probably have more of one than of the four, but you probably have a mix.

So here’s Shyna is a brand I love, doing lowbrow, humor, and actually making fun of their customers who are offended by it.

They get emails that are like, this is offensive and crude. I do not wish to see it nor have my children be exposed to it. Like, we hate to hear that you found our catalog under your kid’s mattress. Oh, Masterbase joke about children. That’s about the lowest lowbrow you can get.

Sign up for Sex Ed is their CTA button.

Shiny state. Here’s another. Yeah. They do a lot of like Venus related jokes, which I think is hilarious. It’s who they are as a brand. This is again, this is literally ball the wall.

I won’t play this for you, but if you want this clip, I will send it to you later. It’s just a guy farting into the customer service phone at Costco, and it’s very loud.

It’s hilarious.

Here’s a nut butter. I think this is Joy, j o I. It says, thanks for nothing.

Again, kind of a joke.

What is the opposite of lowbrow humor? High brow humor. So here’s Schrodinger’s cat into a bar and doesn’t, highbrow humor requires you to have some sort of prior knowledge, and that knowledge makes you feel smarter, better, or somehow more superior to the other people around you.

So, you can recognize highbrow humor if it’s making literary or scientific references. There’s some sort of understanding required to get the joke.

Sophisticated word play or portmanteau. Yes, that is how you pluralize portmanteau.

And it’s probably subtle.

So, here’s an example of a high brow tweet fell through the roof of a French bakery in a lot of pan right now.

And means bread in French, you have to know French to get the joke.

Here’s Moose Jaw, which is a great brand that leans on high brow sometimes.

MC Hammer came to me in a dream and told me that too legit to quit was based on Khan’s categorical imperatives. So there’s that. It’s not even a joke. They’re just like, We’re funny. And if you like can’t, then you should buy our camping stuff.

Stacy’s like, this is it for me. So Stacy is high brow. I’m guessing. Lots of high brow in there.

And here is a really, really rare mix of high and lowbrow.

So, Cronitor is like a cron job monitoring plugin. This is a developer thing. Jobs that have to run repeatedly on schedule and cover your back end.

So back end is obviously a butt joke, which makes this low brow. But the sort of wink wink nudge nudge subtlety of it makes it highbrow. This is a very rare combination.

So I wanted to show it to y’all.

There’s also dark and morbid humor, right? Dead baby jokes, Michael Jackson jokes, anything that makes you go like, oh, that’s That’s dark.

Usually these jokes are about death and dying, destruction.

They get the response like that’s sick. They’re sick.

They think of death as funny and they take on taboo topics.

So for example, here is a this was not a real ad. This was a mock up by a designer, but like imagining what would have happened if none of these people had been born because, their fathers used a condom.

Like the worst people in the world, visually doesn’t need copy, but pretty good. Right?

Here is, I can’t remember the brand.

All of y’all, all of your faces are in the way.

The copy on this plush toy, which would usually be like, he’s so squishy. He’s so fun. Like, give him to your kids. Everyone will love him. The copy is he’s with you in the morning. He’s with you at night.

And when he’s really ruining your life, you can pick him up and slam him to the ground or put him in the closet or ring his little neck as a reminder that this is your life and not his identity.

Didn’t have to go that far. With this copy, very dark, a little bit lowbrow and crass because we have that swear, the profanity, but like I’m showing you this because I feel like all different humor styles get pigeonholed into certain kinds of brands, like cards against humanity is always gonna be balls to the wall super brass and profane, but there are there is room for different styles of humor in every industry.

And the more unusual you can be plugging in funny where it’s not expected, the more you will stand out, which is why I really love writing funny copy for super technical, very dry soft businesses because no one expects it and the the rewards are all that much greater.

And Another style of humor, just like forges straight ahead, nonsense humor. This is like the what up boy frog on a unicycle style of humor.

It takes longer to get because what’s happening in your brain is your brain is noticing an incongruity Like what I expected? What’s happening? There’s a gap here. Your brain is trying to solve that problem and the answer is that there is no solution.

There is no joke to make you go, and that moment of realization itself is the punchline. You it’s almost like you become the punchline with absurd humor.

There’s nothing to get. That’s funny. I’m the punchline. Non sequiturs are a great, style of absurd or nonsense humor. And then just making outlander statements as fact.

If you happen to enjoy nonsense or absurd humor, you are probably smarter than the average person and you probably are more liberal liberal politically, which I found really interesting.

So think of the inverse of this if your audience is very conservative or like kinda dumb nonsense humor is probably not gonna resonate with them.

So here’s cards against humanity.

Dear horrible friends. As you know, we’re crazy about Black Friday. We never fail to more the occasion. We’ve taken down our entire store and we’re asking you to give us five dollars. They actually made money on this because people just love this diversion from the norm. Like we’ve all seen the Harmon Brothers and sandwich videos that are like funny ads, but at the end of the day, they’re still trying to sell us something. Cards against humanity is like, give us money for nothing and people did.

Arena Flowers is another great follow on Twitter, which I will never call X.

Think of a number, double it, well done. You’re now in charge of the economy. Don’t mess it up. Like these massive leaps and reasoning another hallmark of nonsense humor.

And finally, the most accessible, most loved style of humor is wholesome humor. So it doesn’t hurt anyone. Everyone gets it.

It makes a joke about something that we can all see in serve instead of about me, which can be a little like awkward and self deprecating and like uncomfortable or about you, which can be offensive. What’s the difference between hippo and a Zippo? One is quite heavy. The other’s a little lighter.

This is where cute animals and babies fall in. This is where like most reaction, gifts, and memes fall in.

Yeah, harmless physical comedy. It might be people falling down, but it’s clear that they don’t get hurt. Dad jokes, simple puns belong here, and this is gonna be the style that I recommend starting with. If you’re just starting to dip your into funny humor because, again, it’s the most accessible.

So here is Brooklyn saying dive under the covers, they sell sheets. Get it, like book covers and bed covers, they explain the joke. Another kind of hallmark of, wholesome humor is explaining the joke, just what a dad would do.

I can’t remember what this brand is. Let’s see donuts, long ear donkey legendary email dude, light emitting diode, today’s mega deal is definitely one of those. And notice like, this isn’t a joke. This isn’t a knock knock who’s there, like, has a defined punchline joke. This is just a fun way of approaching your copy.

So even if none of your jokes actually make it into your final copy, this can be a really fun way to loosen up. Also why I recommend that everybody in the world picks an improv class because, again, that strengthens your ability to think outside the box and make weird connections, and that’s where fun lives.

Another way to think about humor. I’ve mentioned this a couple times. There’s so many lenses and dimensions that you can use to think about humor.

One of them is styles that are affiliative and enhancing, which tend to be like healthy for us as humans. They’re adaptive ways of co with our situations. And then on the flip side, we have aggressive and self defeating humor. So, like, again, making fun of other people or making fun of ourselves to the point where it’s like, yikes.

So two more lenses if these resonate with you. I just wanted to offer those up.

And I like to think of humor as scale. So the five senses of humor that we’ve just gone through going from like wholesome lighthearted accessible to everyone to definitely gonna offend an enormous proportion of people. Where on that scale do you or your client wanna fall in the copy. This can be a really helpful referential tool. And I’ll give you a couple more of those, later as we start to talk about writing and what to write about and how to write about it. I just wanted to to put these on a scale for you.

So takeaways of the humor style section go for wholesome humor. When in doubt, if you’re not sure if it’s funny, if you’ve come up with something, ditch it. We’ll talk about this a little bit more when we talk about editing.

Editing in and out humor. And then like consider your reader what they find funny. Are they smart? Are they conservative? Will nonsense humor resonate with them if that’s something you wanna write.

Oh, and I have this, humor quiz, which is best if you are an English speaking American, because that’s what I am. So a lot of the references and shows that I have in that quiz, won’t resonate if you like grew up in Sweden or Thailand, but, it’s still useful to figure out what your balance of wholesome high brow low brow dark and absurd is. It’ll give you a percentage based on your answers. So if you want to take a little fun quiz, I would recommend it.

Finally, at long last, I think we’re like twenty minutes in already. I should probably stop talking.

But if you want to quickly go into how to make some jokes, we can do that.

I’m just waiting for somebody to be like, no, shut up. Let’s get to the MA.

But I’m gonna keep going.

So, we know why we’re joking.

We know where we’re gonna make a joke. We kind of know what style of joke we’re gonna make. And now what should we joke about? We’re at the point like, okay, I’m bought in.

Ready to make a joke. I think it’s gonna be wholesome. I think it’s gonna be at a place when I wanna relieve tension and build affiliation with my reader. What do I joke about?

And surprise conversion copywriters here. We love customer research.

So ask your readers what they think is funny.

And we are actually gonna do that really quick.

I’m gonna put a link in the chat.

I can find the chat again.

I have a little worksheet for y’all to be working through. You can do this now or you can do this later.

But humor starts with introspection.

Getting to know your sense of humor starts with introspection. So have you ever actually taken a deep look at the kinds of things you think are funny and then figure out what all those things have in common.

Probably not. Right? You’re just like, Oh, I like this comedian. Oh, this is my favorite show.

Oh, I think that movie was really funny. Well, if you put them all together, are they mostly eyebrow? Are they mostly dark? You know, how can we analyze your own sense of humor to know what style will come most naturally to you to write You might already know this if you are a funny person or if you write jokes or if you tend toward absurd or dark or whatever.

But it’s worth doing. There’s a link in the chat to make a copy, I think, of the worksheet.

Maybe not. I’ll put another link in. Just in case. If you want the direct copy link, that will be here, or you can just make a copy from that first link that I gave you.

So that is a fun little thing to do.

I’m gonna share again.

Dive back in. Are gonna have to watch this. Like, if people are watching the recording, you’re gonna have to watch on, like, point seventy five speed.

I think.

What are some other things if you’re not getting anything from your customer research? What are some other things you can joke about?

The other guys, right? Or the problems that your reader is having, the that your client is having or your client’s client. Whoever you’re writing for. Joke about the problem in a way that makes them feel like you’re on their side and you get it. So it’s basically just like problem copy that’s like, hey, we get you but with some jokes thrown in jokes about the other guys because they’re the worst. Right?

So like, don’t name names, punch up, consider the amount of power and status that you have versus the person or thing you’re being fun of and try not to make fun of people or things with less power or status than you.

And then you can make fun of the other ways do a certain thing. If you’re not if you don’t want to name names, if you don’t even want to describe, other people or brands, just make fun of alternatives to the solution. Like you could spend hours with a pen and paper, you know, doing your taxes or scratching rooms into a clay tablet or you could use fresh books, like whatever it is.

Making fun of yourself, one of my go tos, always good to show that you’re a fallible human because in certain doses, this makes people trust you, right? Like, oh, Leanna is a great copywriter, but She’s also gonna listen to me if I have a question about this line in the copy. She’s not gonna just like dismiss me or take my money and run. So that’s kind of how I tend to think of self deprecation. Like again, we’re we’re here. Everybody poops, you know, it’s not that serious. Make fun of yourself.

And then what’s around you. We’ve talked about building affiliation through observational humor. So poking fun at something you can all see. I sometimes do this when I go to speak if I pay attention to the room or the like ballroom that I in and something weird is happening or something weird has happened that day at the conference. I will call that back on stage and I don’t even have to make a real joke about it. I can be like, hey, remember when that thing happened? And everyone’s like, yes, I was there.

So another fun way to build affiliation.

Second most easy way to start adding humor is gifts, memes, and visual humor because they do the work for you. You don’t have to write. It’s also a really nice way to build in visual breaks.

So if you are like, this is a wall of text, I can add more sub headers, but I’ve already added so many.

What if I had a visual here? Add a GIF.

And this is my GIF adding process.

Kind of like an editing sweep. You zoom out. You’ve already identified where people are feeling like on edge where you might need to relieve tension with a joke or a visual like a gift.

You’re looking for those feelings. Right? So this is callback, arousal theory, where do you need to lighten the mood or add levity? And like, where could you also just use to, where could you also just break up a wall of text?

So you’ve picked your spot. Read the sentence of the copy right before that spot. And then right after you read it, which you can read it out loud.

Respond to it, like talk back to your own copy. Make a little sassy comment back at your own copy. I know this is a very weird thing to advise you to do.

So here’s here’s what that would look like.

Trying to think of a product that I’ve written about recently.

I don’t know.

This CPAP machine is, you know, come through will fit comfortably on your face. I haven’t written for a CPAP machine, but for some reason that came to mind.

And if I read that out loud, if it’s like, okay, this thing will fit comfortably on your face.

I might go, I sure hope so or it better like, oh, if it didn’t, what then? So that’s kind of my reaction to the statement of the copy. So two to three word phrase. You having a conversation with a copy, then you go to Giffy or Jiffy dot com. We’re not gonna have this bite.

Type in that phrase and see what comes up. You will get this sort of conversational gift, that works perfectly inside your copy and it’s much better than just sort of searching for like funny gift or like person saying this. If that’s I don’t know how y’all are looking for gifts, but this is my my process. And then couple of rules of thumb for picking one. Pick one that people can get even without knowing the show or the movie that it’s referencing.

Pick one that’s high res.

Pick one that doesn’t last too long because you don’t wanna somebody stuck on watching the gif over and over or watching it for a really long time and it takes them out of the flow of reading the copy.

So like the first one that stands out not too distracting. It isn’t inappropriate if you don’t want inappropriate, and it’s large and high res enough to be easily clocked. That’s probably the right one.

That make sense?

Yes. I think cool.

Now I have a billion joke writing formulas for you. They’re not formulas. Of them aren’t formulas, but, here’s one. Here’s the easiest formula of all time. You already know this if you’re a copywriter.

Put the funny thing last.

You’re like, wow, groundbreaking.

It works because we’re waiting for it. You have to rearrange your sentence, or you cut away any of the trailing excess. So what does that look like?

Swimming is good for you when you’re drowning especially, and swimming is good for you. Especially when you’re drowning.

Can you hear how we’re just waiting to land on the word drowning?

Like the joke is just funnier the second way. I think we can all agree. Right? So if you’ve written a joke and you’re like, oh, it’s kind of flabby. It’s right. I can’t figure it out. Try rearranging or cutting pieces off the end of it to land on a funny thing for last.

Here is a real sentence written by one of my students in my course, a couple years ago. I was at over this question when the answer hit me like a stack of amps falling out of the sky. The funniest part of this is stack of amps and it’s also got this sort of closiveness linguistically.

So it is just funnier if we say I was agonizing over this question when the answer hit me like a stack of amps.

Right? Yeah. Cool.

There’s so much more about like the linguistics of funny that we don’t have time for because we’re already over time.

This is my nightmare.

I’m having a great time.

Another way to write a joke or trigger joke writing in your head, set yourself up for it. So thing one is like this because there’s something unexpected that they have in common. Like zoom out far enough that you find the unexpected commonality.

So you can also add more unexpected commonalities if you come up with two. Or more.

So for example, doing comedy for the first time for me was very similar to losing my virginity.

Pause. Don’t read the punchline. Imagine we have two columns. We have doing comedy and losing my virginity and then we’re just brainstorming associations with each of those things and then we’re picking the funniest associations and connecting them together.

So it was awkward It was uncomfortable, but I did get a lot of laughs. Like, two things that are real and true and not funny for both and then two things that are real and true and funny or one thing that’s real and true and funny. I did get a lot of laughs. Pretty good.

I wish that was my joke. So for example, This election is like Black Friday. We have election in this column, Black Friday over here.

No matter how many emails they send, I’m not buying their bullshit. So in that list of associations, we might have put like lots of emails.

Feels kind of scammy and sleazy. They want me to do something and then turns into they send a lot of emails and they’re all full of shit.

Or, but at least when I stand in line for hours on Black Friday, I go home with something useful. Voting.

You know, it’s a sham.

It’s not. I believe everybody vote voting is important. I’m just disappointed, in our world.

Anyway, another way to add humor is by taking a list of unfunny things, you are copywriters. You all know the power of a rule of a group of three So just add one funny thing to the end of your group of three. Hopefully that doesn’t fit the pattern of the group of three. And if you can make it really, really strange, like, ducks, geese, swans, and my late Uncle Herberts, dementia medication That’s those are very different things. Right?

There’s no joke involved in that. I’m just like spitballing.

But here’s a joke.

We’ll go back to that. America, the land of the free, and the home of the brave, and Bob Hope.

So he’s going lofty and large and then coming back to himself in a very funny kind of clunky way.

I’m not giving this the, pay attention it deserves because I think we have we’ve run out of time.

But this is a useful trick for when you have to actually present information in your copy, but you still want to end with something fun. So, like, if you’re talking about a very technical product, or you wanna convey information and not be too jokey, give the information and then add a joke to the end as a fun surprise for anyone who’s still paying attention. This is my other rule of thumb, hiding jokes and body copy, and in captions, and in easter eggs rewards the people who are paying attention, and they feel like I’m gonna keep looking for those. I’m gonna open all of her emails to see what other secret things she might have for me.

Okay.

I think we have to stop. Do we have to stop with somebody in the chat?

I think it’s fine. It’s fine.

I think so.

Abby, anyone else?

We’ll keep we’ll keep going. I don’t know.

Just briefly. And again, I will make sure you get these slides if you want them.

Here with me making a list of my cat’s names. This is all factually true. Space ghost bank, smokey Rocky Sierra and holy fuck she has too many cats. Right? True.

Oh, no.

Word play. Oh, this is a this is a weird one. If you’re not good at puns, it is absolutely a muscle. If puns don’t come naturally to you, I will warn you once you start exercising this muscle, you will lose other areas of your brain that you actually need.

Like I can’t get anywhere without Google Maps. I can come up with a dumb pun almost instantly pretty much like ninety percent of the time. So you make these sacrifices.

But if you want to reverse engineer, the pun creation process, start with the word, free associate again kind of like we did with those two, handles.

This is a reference to joke building. Free associate a list of terms, and then see if your word contains any other words. And doing this out loud is really helpful. So like wanted to make a pun on the word confirm. I split it into two words, con, firm, and then I wrote a very, very ham fisted setup.

So Con could be like a con man, a firm, it’s like a group of lawyers. What do you call an organized group of criminals, a con firm?

So dumb, right? But technically, yes, it is a joke.

Technically, I will allow it.

There are multiple different kinds of wordplay. Some might come more easily to you than others.

Double entendre usually happens with sexy stuff.

This is Kristin l France, who I adore. She said, don’t let a bad experience in the back end taint and otherwise great relationship.

Subtle, but joke.

I don’t I don’t wanna get too deep into these types of wordplay. I will send this to you if you want examples.

But You can do if you want to make a pun around a theme or a bunch of puns around a theme like Boomerang is doing here. Again, you just free associate a list of related words. So the theme is dog. Words are hounding, rough. You could do pause, what a fur, and then see if you can push those words in somewhere or make puns around those words to do puns on a theme.

Okay. Let’s see. I’m skipping all these because I wanna get to the end.

Oh, I love this one, though. I like a girl with a head on her shoulder because I hate next.

Okay.

Okay. Timing and pacing. People ask me this all the time. How funny should my funny copy be? If you are writing copy that is just like full of bangers and you cannot bear to cut a single one, then send it to me because I’d love to read it.

But my general rule of thumb is no more than one joke per paragraph Otherwise, you risk, making the copy more about the jokes than about the copy, and you’re probably writing it for a reason to get people to pay or to buy things.

So no more than one joke per paragraph if you have that many.

And that is all I have for you today.

I think apart from that worksheet.

Do we wanna talk about any of this stuff?

No. Resounding no. Okay. I love that for me.

Keep going, say some people, keep going, don’t stop, keep going. Yay. When I try to come up with a pun, I can’t. Worst time to be funny.

And then I can’t read the second word in this because the reaction thing in Zoom, they fly out of my mouth. Oh, yes. Yeah. Yeah.

No. I can’t stop myself. For making dumb puns. But when I need one on demand, like, right now, there are nowhere to be found.

So I get that, Jessica.

Cool y’all. Do you have questions? I know I just like threw so much stuff at you. It probably makes a lot more sense in my head how it all ties together, but I hope that you got a few useful things out of it, and what questions can I answer for you?

Zero.

Hi.

I have a question, actually.

Great.

Have you ever dealt with humor across cultures? Because, people from different countries have very, very different senses of of humor, and it doesn’t often translate beyond just wordplay, which is obviously a sticky area.

That is the most common question that I get, and that’s a great question.

I have and I tend to avoid trying to play at another culture’s humor because I’m just not versed in it.

I have worked with a fair number of Australians who are very funny I find and they tend to be more lowbrow than Americans. So I can play in that zone. I can play in like the UK humor zone, but there are just things that are funnier in other cultures that I don’t know about or I’m not familiar with. And so I usually say like, Hey, you know what? I’m gonna connect you with someone else. And sometimes that’s like, Hey, I know a Canadian copywriter or like an Australian copywriter who’d be better for this.

I will say the universal, humor appeals of cute animals, babies, and wordplay are the safest to translate across cultures.

I hope that answered your question.

If not, please clarify more questions.

Anyone else?

You can ask me anything if you want.

You don’t have to.

Since we can ask you anything, just, can you give some examples of, I I hadn’t known of you before today. So tell me how you do you teach humor? Do you actually write humor as copy yourself?

I’m just curious what you do.

Yeah. I probably should have introduced myself.

I yes. I teach humor. I have run a course a couple times. I’m in the process of ever grading it.

It’s been live. The two times that I’ve run it, it’s called conversion comedy. And so it’s it’s like I basically tried to condense conversion comedy, which is a six to eight week course with live tracks, into twenty minutes, which like, why? Why did I try that?

I write funny copy that converts for mostly software businesses and online stores. So SaaS and e commerce are my zones.

Anybody who wants to use humor to build a relationship or convert, they tend to be great clients. That’s the other thing about writing funny and being more authentically yourself in your client communications and stuff, like you just get to work with more fun people. I don’t have the patience for like a really, up to sort of jargon filled business email anymore. Hate LinkedIn.

I just wanna write funny stuff that makes money.

But yeah, that’s that’s who I am. This is my whole job. Punchline copy dot com is my website.

Thank you.

Yeah.

I have a question. Do you think it’s an important to be, like, consistent with the type of humor. Like, because, like, my humor that I use is kind of, I guess, quite, like, innocent, more, like, that kind of quirky cute humor. But then some, like, when I saw your story on Instagram the other day, I, like, pissed myself.

I figured I was like, Oh, the one, of the you got the the message from the the guy, and then you, like, Drew, like, Dick’s going into his mouth. And I was like, this is the stuff that I share with, like, my close friends on Instagram, but I would never share it, like, publicly. Then my Instagram content, like, completely bores me so much. I have someone else doing it, and I’m like, ah, so I’m like, can do you think you you need to be consistent, or can you just, like, switch to be, like, try it on, like, kind of, like, oh, I’m gonna have, like, a dark humor kind of flavor today and then sort back.

I think for yourself, definitely play around.

If you wanna experiment, like, go for it. No one can tell you what your sense of humor is and your sense of humor evolve.

When you’re writing for clients, this is something that I’m thinking about a lot lately actually. It is much easier to just be known as the person with this sense of humor and I will apply my sense of humor to your copy.

That’s not what I offer.

I work with clients to figure out their sense of humor or the brand’s sense of humor and then write in that voice, but it’s a lot harder. Right? So I’m like, in the interest of making my business easy as possible. What if I just stopped doing projects in other people’s senses of humor and like stopped codifying those for them? And was just like, this is how I write. Take it early that Mhmm.

Yeah.

Yeah. So, I mean, so for my brand, you think it’s okay to just, like, change up. That doesn’t need to be in, like, consistency.

I mean, it’s whatever feels right to you. And if you wanna experiment with dark humor or crass humor, like, go for it.

For what it’s worth, my mom replied to that story. Someone sent me an inappropriate reply to an email, which happens often, and it’s always an older white man. And so I screenshotted his profile picture and drew a bunch of penises on it and put it on Instagram because you’re gonna be weird to me, I’m gonna be weird at you, but that is like, that’s very unbrand for me and my mom was like, that’s so rude. That’s so true.

Yeah. So, like, play with the line. If it feels like you’re wearing a mask, then it’s probably too far.

It’s for your brand. It’s really good that you know. You tend to go for those like lighthearted cutesy things, and you know that’s your strength. Maybe you identify a couple other areas that you wanna shore up. And you start watching comedians reading humor pieces that are in that zone.

Oh, thank you.

Yeah. Good question.

Can I ask a quick question?

You talked about how you might research the type of humor that you could use. And you said, I think, just ask them what they find is funny. But I imagine if I asked, I don’t know, the seven or eight people I might interview, what they found funny, I What if there’s no crossover or, like, what if there’s no clear type?

Like, how do you I’m just kinda one wondering how you experience and have have run, results like that?

That is a great question.

I tend to work with where I have one point person who’s responsible for the voice. So that’s it’s usually them if they’re the founder. But if you’re working with teams, you can ask things like, what kinds of, like, what’s the tone of the slack? What kinds of reaction gives to people put in Slack. What do y’all tend to joke about if you’re standing at the water cooler, whether that’s virtual or not, to get a sense of where everybody’s sense of humor over lapse.

Another question that I like to ask in this works for both individuals and teams is what brands do you find really funny? Like who if you could emulate anybody in the world? Who would that be? Or is there an email list that you’re on where you open every single one that makes you laugh? And if you collect all of that data from six to eight people, guaranteed there will be places that overlap, even if it’s just as broad as like, okay, they like wholesome humor. That makes everybody feel good.

Okay. And then, yeah, yeah, perfect sense.

And then I suppose, like you said, you you can fall back on wholesome humor.

Like, if in doubt, kind of do do your wholesome humor.

And also, everybody will have different answers to, like, what problem are you solving or how do clients talk about their problems. Like if we’re looking for topics of humor, getting a bunch of different answers from everybody on a team gives you more ammunition to write jokes with.

So it’s not just about the sense of humor, but like what should we joke about?

And then you get to decide what style of humor those topics work best with.

Got you. Okay.

I I had one other question as well.

I think I I think you kind of answered it later, but I just wanted to double check. You said that you can use it in a moment of tension. You could use a call to action or humor.

And human is used you use that to relieve attention. It that’s even exchange for, a closeness to bit of a reader and increased, a better relationship, a better, yeah. Is is that right?

Yes. So you have to decide what do you want them to do with the tension? Like, if you’ve if you’ve successfully created tension which you have because you’re advanced copywriters.

Do you want to build that relationship with them right now and ask them to do something later, whether that’s later on the page or later in an email funnel funnel or later in the journey or whatever, or do you want them to do something right now and click?

I sometimes like to blend this approach.

If I’m asking them to click a button, and I know that they’re gonna be like, I don’t know. Like, what’s on the button? You all know how to write good button copy. Right?

It’s compelling. It shows what’s gonna happen after the click. It makes them feel safe, right, lowers friction. You can do that with humor.

You can add a little click trigger copy, underneath. That’s like, you know, we do ask for your credit information, but that’s only because we have a lot of online shopping to do.

Or like, click this button to rescue a kitten. Like, I wrote a a sales page recently where the button was, every time you click this, a spreadsheet gets murdered. It was like an anti spreadsheet software solution. So, like, make them wanna click it and funny if you can.

That’s clever.

So kinda yeah. When you if you’re doing just humor, you’re not you’re not trying to transition that into a call to action.

You’re you’re using Humana to to I don’t know, improve your your audience’s pos perception of you to to increase your the strength of your relationship with the reader. Right? Like, you’re you’re I don’t know. You’re you’re making self deprecating humor.

You’re showing me. You understand that. Their world. Your so there’s not a direct moment there.

It’s just along the the funnel your your yeah, improving a relationship with the reader. Is that is that right? Like, if you’re just using humor.

If I’m just using humor, it’s definitely like this is the primary goal of this copy is to build relationship.

Yeah. Okay.

I’m not asking them to do anything. This is where that sort of like slider bar of clarity versus clever comes into play or clarity versus humor, right? Like do we want to be funny at the expense of messaging and action probably not, but maybe sometimes, you know, if it’s an email and a flow that’s like, you’ve sent them five meaty information pack emails and you send them one that’s just from you and it’s one paragraph. And it’s like, Hey, I know I’ve said you a lot. Like, here’s a funny dog gift or a joke. Like, see you next time.

I think yes. I will also say that I like to blend humor and calls to action in my own stuff.

I am more careful about that with most clients because while clients are terrible at reporting back about data, the data usually supports that the simpler CTAs that are like join the membership now, you know, work a little better than the funny ones.

That’s interesting.

Oh, that’s interesting.

Yes. Yeah.

Cool. Okay. Thanks. Thank you.

Yeah. Yeah. Great questions. Anyone else?

I have another question. Do you have any specific questions that you ask yourself, to determine whether something is going to land or not besides does this seem funny or not? Because I remember a distinct time when I was working at Monday, and the CEO came up with this commercial and retested it, and it was it was really bizarre. No one understood it, and he was like, all gung ho for it.

So do you have any of those, like, like, check yourself kind of questions that help to Yes.

Sorry. Sorry? No. I interrupted you saying what a great question.

I I do have those, those things. I also wanna know your cat’s name. I’m gonna share this with you.

Here are two ways to decide on the balance of jokes and clarity. You can look at them separately.

So first, look at the copy and the messaging. Second, look at the humor. And then third, like, can I cut anything? And then will everyone get these jokes? And if they don’t get it, is anything lost.

Second way is start broad and big and work into specifics. So like kind of the editing sweeps that Joanna teaches like structural level editing. Does this flow? Is it clear line level and then word level?

Have I added jokes where I need them, have I used the funniest words and numbers? And then other ways, the mom test would my mom find this funny would she get it? And you can use your avatar client or your customer or whoever you are writing a copy for as this person. Hopefully you know them.

Like, and this this brings back in your cultural question. Like, is this a reference to a show that didn’t air in this country?

Is this a taboo topic to joke about in this culture?

So there is some like Do I know this about my reader? Can I find this information out and when in doubt should I just cut it or replace it with something, less potentially distracting or hopefully not harmful?

Is that helping? Okay.

Well, I can also share this with you. This is also from my course. Oh, I was going through the course today and I was like, wow.

I did a lot of work on this.

It’s not funny when you’re like, good for me, but I also need to know your cat’s name.

Her name is Dusky.

Dusky?

Yeah. With a a k, Dusky.

Adorable. I love her. Cool y’all. We have more time.

Sure. I have no question then.

Like, or, like, more like a kind of a ramble my way to the question, if that’s okay. Like, so, like, when when you’re saying, like, like, I’m a big fan of agitation, but then I I tend to use, like, humor when I agitate so it feels less hard but then I was just thinking about what you said about kind of using humor to alleviate the anxiety. And I’m thinking, like, does it, like, would that be, like, the wrong time to use it? Because then you’re alleviating the anxiety and the point of agitated is to kind of, like, heighten it. I just wonder if you had, like, any thoughts on that.

That’s such a good question. I think so I tend I do also use humor in the agitation. We’ve talked about making fun of problems that someone can have, which belongs in that that section of the copy.

I don’t think it’s bad to relieve a little bit of that anxiety because it can be a way to prove that you’re a real person. Like, if you think about traditional direct response copy that’s like, you’re fat. You’re terrible. You’re stupid.

You’re never gonna be anything. And this is all your fault and it’s terrible for all these reasons and here’s five sections of copy about the worst parts of your life. Like Jesus, can we get a little lightness in there, please? Like first of all, I’m not all that.

And second of all, I’m much more likely to believe you if you, like, add a joke here and there, like, Okay. I get it. You know, it’s it’s a lot. Even if you’re saying like, look, I know I’m throwing a lot of problems at you, I don’t wanna make you feel terrible.

So here’s a raccoon riding a pink scooter. Now let’s continue with what’s wrong with you.

I do think it can work in the agitation section and it is doing sort of affinity building and trust building.

You don’t want to do it too much, right? Cause you do want them to be anxious enough to want to make a change.

I think if you’re doing it in a way that feels natural and conversational, the balance is probably right.

Yeah. I’m just thinking about, like, conversions, like, whether I need to, like yeah. Yeah. I don’t know. It’s just like a whole balancing, isn’t it? Because sometimes if you are to stay harder, you will get more conversions, but, like, I will And if you’re making people shitty, then that doesn’t feel good. So what’s the point?

Please. This is why I will never be a world famous direct response copywriter I just don’t I’m not willing to make people feel so shitty. I only want the customers that are like perfect for the thing. I don’t ever want anyone to like, well, I don’t know, but okay. Like, and then they’re disappointed.

Oh, thank you for sharing your thoughts.

Yeah. Yeah. Such good questions y’all.

I’m gonna drop my email address in the chat. If you come up with anything else, feel free to email me.

And then I guess I can hand it back to Nicole and Michael.

Question mark.

Yeah. There’s really not much else to say at that point if we’re all wrapped up here than, just so I wanna thank everybody for joining us again today. Always a pleasure.

Yeah. Thank you.

Sorry. Go on.

No. I was just gonna say thank you. I was just it was really great. And, the the I would have liked even more slides. It was really, really, helpful. Thanks.

There are so many more slides, Johnson.

Thank you for for sticking with me through that, I I realized it was a very frenetic, presentation. I just get really excited about this, and I wanted to share a lot of stuff with you. So if anything was unclear, or one of several moments at which I was like, I don’t know. What am I saying? If you want clarification, please email me. Because I am on the internet.

Thanks y’all.