What Makes People Laugh and Buy (6 Comedy Ad Lessons You Need to Know)

What's up, Marketers! This is Aazar.

This newsletter is about leveling up your paid growth marketing skills by analyzing the best brands' paid strategy, tactics, positioning, and value props.

This newsletter is divided into:

• Sharing what I've learned

• Sometimes sharing some other performance marketers’ lessons with you (this issue)

• And I analyze & compare the best ads on the internet

BEST LINKS OF THE WEEK (on popular demand)

My favorite finds

• Lessons learned after spending $10,000,000 on influencer marketing

• 💎 HOOK HACK

• This is a phenomenal ad. Credit to this guy.

Comedy ads are hard.

Not because humor is hard.
But because most ads are trying too hard to be funny without knowing what actually makes people laugh and buy.

So I recently took a course called Mastering Comedy Ads by Greg & Nate. This course broke it all down.

Here are the biggest takeaways I got from it—and if you want to make or write comedy ads, these are worth knowing.

1. Merge the hook and problem right away

The best ads don’t just start with a hook and then get to the problem. They use the problem as the hook.

It’s one punch. One line. That does both.

Why? Because nobody’s waiting around. You’ve got maybe two seconds to say something that feels both entertaining and relevant.

At most, you’ve got 2–3 lines after the hook to introduce the problem.

Any longer, and you risk losing the viewer’s attention.

When you lead with something like,

“Why do I always look like a dad on vacation?”

You’re not just being funny.

You’ve introduced the problem (style insecurity) and made it relatable and attention-grabbing.

This hook grabs you with the problem of getting in shape (plus his energy makes you stop scrolling).

If you can write one line that checks all three boxes, attention, emotion, and problem, you’ve got yourself a real hook.

2. What’s Actually Funny? Flaws.

Here’s the truth: perfect people aren’t funny.

We laugh at people who mess up. People who overreact. People who turn small problems into big drama.

Not because we’re mean. Because we’ve been that person. We’ve been that kind of mess or at least seen one.

• The guy who gets dramatic because his protein bar melted.

• The friend who acts like it’s the end of the world when the Wi-Fi drops.

• The person who cancels plans because they “have nothing to wear” and spirals into a fashion crisis.

It’s the little flaws. The tiny meltdowns. The moments we try to hide but secretly know we all do.

Push those just far enough, and they become hilarious.

And if your product comes in as the “fix” for that chaos? It’s like cherry on top.

3. Relatable > Clever

Most brands try to be “clever.” But clever doesn’t stick—relatable does.

If your ad makes someone go, “LOL that’s literally me,” they’ll keep watching. Maybe even rewatch or share.

That happens when you show something relatable.

The below ad is a great example of how they’ve taken the relatability of sweating in summer and made it fun.

You don’t need to write punchlines. You just need to show a moment your audience has lived through.

Like:

• Struggling to open the packaging and pretending it’s fine.

• Wearing the same shirt 3 days in a row and hoping no one notices.

• Pretending to listen during a Zoom call while scrolling on your phone.

Stuff people do but don’t always say out loud.

For example, in this ad, the robbers (and later the police officers) just fall asleep on the mattress.

Funny doesn’t mean random or weird. It means real, slightly uncomfortable, and just exaggerated enough to feel like a sketch of real life.

You don’t necessarily need a joke. You need a “yep, been there” moment.

4. Make the Whole Scene Instantly Familiar (Archetypes)

When you use archetypes (the overconfident boss, the jealous friend, the gym bro who won’t stop flexing), you tap into people’s memories.

They’ve seen these characters before. They know how they act. So you can skip the boring setup and go straight to the funny part.

But the background matters just as much.

If the setting doesn’t grab people, they scroll. And to do that, one hack is to make the background feel familiar. And you do that with details.

For example, a classroom isn’t just desks and students.
It’s:

• A faded periodic table on the wall.

• An old-school clock.

• A cheesy poster that says “Never stop learning.”

These little things tell the brain, “This feels real.” And that buys you attention.

This ad is a great example of starting with the setting of a library and going on with the script.

The same goes for offices, gyms, living rooms—anywhere. Make the scene detailed enough to stop the scroll. Then let your characters and writing do the rest.

Thanks to our partners who support this newsletter.

5. Selfishness and Obliviousness Always Win

Nice characters are… boring.

They’re polite. They do the right thing. And they’re not that fun to watch.

If your ad feels too bland, inject some selfishness.

Make someone in the scene act in a way that’s almost too real:

• A friend who clearly wants the product for himself but won’t admit it.

• A roommate who eats everyone’s snacks, then says “We’re out of food.”

• A guy who borrows his friend’s shirt gets compliments all day—then refuses to give it back

Selfishness is funny.

The same goes for being oblivious.

The dad who doesn’t realize that people are giving fake laughs at his jokes
The friend who keeps talking and doesn’t notice everyone else left the room.
The guy who’s so into his own idea that he doesn’t hear what anyone’s saying.

These flaws—being self-absorbed, unaware, or just a little shameless—are funny.

And when they’re exaggerated, they become comedy.

For example, in this ad, the client is portrayed as selfish and they’ve exaggerated reactions with a horror effect.

So if your characters are feeling too safe or too “perfect,” make them act a little selfish or a little clueless.

That’s where the laughs come from.

This ad is another great example.

6. That magic edit moment matters more than you think

You ever watched an ad and thought, “Okay… that was actually perfect”?

That’s not just the script, it’s the edit too.

The part where the music cuts perfectly, or the zoom hits just as the character reacts. Or when a dramatic moment gets instantly undercut with a dumb punchline.

This ad is a masterclass in editing. They’ve used very few lines but done the magic with editing.

The right kind of editing makes the ad look cooler and funnier.

When you’re showing the product in action, give it that magic moment—the kind that makes people go, “Whoa.” Like someone putting on a shirt and instantly looking more confident, cooler, even a little irresistible.

If you're not thinking about how the punchline lands visually, you’re missing the moment people remember.

That’s what makes a line go from “huh?” to “omg I need to show this to someone.”

If you’re thinking that these don’t apply to paid social, here are some funny ads that actually worked for these brands:

• True Classics

• Bushbalm

Footnotes:

I have to give some credit to Mastering Comedy Ads with Greg & Nate because I learned concepts like selfishness, magic moments, and archetypes from their course.

Want learn more about funny ads? Check this blog

How to make any ad funny

Happy Growing with Paid Social,

Aazar Shad

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