The Snapchat-Omnicom study, How to Laugh (and Win) with the Next Generation, finds that 91 per cent of India’s Next Gen pays closer attention to brands that are funny. The commercial implications are equally striking: 88 per cent say they are more likely to consider buying from a funny brand, while 93 per cent say they would tell others about it. For a generation that uses humour not merely for entertainment but to express itself and navigate culture, humour has become a particularly powerful form of social currency.
But there is another number in the same study that makes the picture more interesting. Four in five respondents say brands online can feel like older people trying to joke with them. That raises a question that sits slightly beyond whether brands should be funny: when everyone is speaking the language of the Internet, what makes one brand sound like itself?
The joke is no longer the differentiator
There was a time when a brand’s humour could be identified almost as quickly as its logo. Fevicol’s comedy, for instance, was never simply about making people laugh. Its films turned the product proposition of strength and bonding into a universe of musical Indian exaggerated situations. Pidilite’s own annual report describes how Fevicol was transformed from an industrial product into a brand that became a metaphor for strong bonds, while its newer campaigns continue to carry that creative lineage into digital-first formats. Cadbury Dairy Milk, too, has historically operated from a different emotional territory. Its advertising has repeatedly returned to relationships, shared joy, friendship and togetherness, allowing humour, warmth and everyday situations to sit inside a broader emotional world.
The Internet has changed the speed at which brands communicate. A meme or a topical joke can travel across platforms before a conventional campaign could even reach its first media burst. But the speed of the medium creates an interesting contradiction: the easier it becomes for everyone to participate, the harder it becomes for anyone to be recognisable.
Navin Muralidharan, Founding Member & Executive Creative Head, The Script Room says, “Memes are like emojis. Just because someone made them first does not mean others can’t use them; context and use case can change the game.” The format itself is therefore not the problem. Memes, like catchphrases before them, can be shared across brands without necessarily making the brands identical, explains Muralidharan. The distinction comes from what a brand does with the format, the context it brings to it, the cultural observation it makes and the execution it creates around it. “Relevance and context can always change the game,” he highlights.
This is where the difference between ‘using humour’ and ‘having a sense of humour’ becomes important. Sudharshan Anandkumar, Founder, TING, argues that brands can move between humour and other personalities without losing their identity, “A person can be funny, serious, or emotional on different days and still be recognisably the same person. Brands work the same way.” The mistake, he suggests, is allowing humour itself to become the entire personality. The implication, he says, is clear. A brand needs to know who it is before it decides what joke to make. A meme may be borrowed; a point of view cannot be. Anandkumar points to Animal Planet, a brand managed by TING. The joke for the brand works because it comes from the animal world the brand owns, not from a generic gorilla joke.
For new-age brands, the pressure to participate is now almost constant. Darshana Shah, Brand & CX Strategist and Founder, Darshana Shah – Advisory & Consulting, echoes the same distinction through the lens of brand memory. In her view, humour may win attention quickly, but its value lies in making that attention distinctly the brand’s own. “If every brand is simply reacting to the same meme or Internet format, the format may be remembered while the brand gets lost. The opportunity is to use cultural moments as a starting point, but translate them through an ownable brand voice,” she adds.
The brands that built a world
This is exactly where older brands offer an interesting lesson to the meme economy. Sandeep Tanwani, Chief Marketing Officer, Pidilite Industries, shares, “Humour has always been an important part of how Pidilite builds brands, but it has never been humour for humour’s sake. At Pidilite, we believe that every brand needs to have its own distinctive world and personality. The medium may evolve with culture, platforms and consumer behaviour, but the brand should remain distinctive within that changing landscape.” Even across brands, the same approach cannot simply be copied. Fevicol draws on Indian culture and Roff using quirky, exaggerated and situational humour. “If every brand speaks in the same language, ‘funny’ can become just another communication,” he adds.
Building that kind of recognition takes time, something that can be difficult to reconcile with the speed of the digital world. “Pidilite or Mondelez built theirs over years by staying consistent in insight and tone until audiences could recognise it without a name attached. Brands can still do this today, but it takes patience, and most brands want the laugh this week,” adds Anandkumar. Chasing every trending format may drive short-term engagement, but a distinctive humour code is what can create long-term brand memory, reaffirms Shah.
Memes evolve faster than brands
For new-age brands, being part of the cultural conversation is no longer an occasional creative choice. They have built communication around the speed of social media, responding to memes and moments as they happen. The challenge, then, is how they can make that participation feel unmistakably theirs. Zepto, for instance, sees cultural relevance as part of how it reaches a generation that expects brands to speak in the spaces where conversations are already happening.
Vaidika Parashar, Director, Internal and External Communications & Branding, Zepto, a new-age brand shares, “Gen Z isn’t necessarily harder to reach; they’re harder to interrupt. Having grown up with infinite choices in what they watch, buy and engage with, they value relevance over mere visibility. At Zepto, this means showing up where culture and conversations are unfolding — across social, creators and media — in ways that feel native to the moment and authentic to the brand.” Also, humour itself has always evolved with culture. Sitcoms gave way to mockumentaries. Then came memes and then reels. Each generation found new ways to make people laugh. Muralidharan observes, “If we stay on track in terms of who we’re talking to, a particular language of humour will always be there for grabs.” The opportunity for brands may not lie in holding on to one particular format, but in carrying a recognisable point of view across formats.
The joke gets attention. The brand has to stay
Yes, humour is commercially valuable. But with humour becoming a bigger part of brand communication, the focus should turn fleeting moments of humour into something more lasting. The solution should be wrapped in consistency. It needs clear guardrails, a distinctive brand world and a strong sense of context and relevance. The joke can be borrowed; the brand’s lens has to be earned. And perhaps that is why the most interesting question for the next phase of humour-led advertising is not ‘Who made the joke first?’ It is ‘Who could have made that joke only that way?’
The Internet will keep supplying the jokes. But the harder question is what brands do with them. Whether ‘funny’ becomes just another medium to stay present, or it can build a recognisable voice that outlives the meme itself, depends on how the brand is turning just a passing joke into something only it could own.
