Research consistently shows humour improves recall, engagement and brand preference in B2B marketing. Most B2B marketers ignore the evidence because their organisations treat seriousness as a proxy for credibility. The gap between what works and what gets approved keeps widening.
The B2B industry has convinced itself that being boring is the same as being professional. The data says otherwise.
Marketing Week published a piece this week on the effectiveness of humour in B2B marketing. The evidence is not new, but the gap between what the research says and what B2B marketers actually do remains one of the widest in the industry.
The data is consistent across multiple studies. Humour improves ad recall by 2 to 3 times compared to straight informational messaging. It increases brand preference. It drives higher engagement rates across every channel from LinkedIn to email to events. Oracle and Gretchen Rubin's 2022 study found 91% of people prefer brands that are funny, and 72% would choose a humorous brand over the competition.
The problem is not awareness. Most senior B2B marketers have seen this research. The problem is organisational. B2B purchase decisions involve multiple stakeholders, long sales cycles and significant risk. In that environment, the people approving creative default to the safest option. Safe means serious. Serious means forgettable.
Of people prefer brands that are funny. In B2B, most brands still choose to be forgettable instead.
There is a category effect at play. B2B brands that use humour effectively (Slack, Gong, Monday.com, Atlassian) tend to be technology companies with consumer-grade products and marketing teams drawn from B2C backgrounds. Traditional B2B categories like manufacturing, logistics, professional services and enterprise software remain overwhelmingly humour-averse.
The risk calculus is asymmetric. A humorous campaign that falls flat is visible and attributable to the person who approved it. A serious campaign that underperforms is invisible because it looks like everything else in the category. Nobody gets fired for being boring.
Why it matters
For Australian B2B marketers, this is a competitive advantage hiding in plain sight. The Australian B2B landscape is dominated by safe, interchangeable messaging. Every consulting firm, SaaS company and professional services brand sounds the same on LinkedIn. Differentiation through tone costs nothing and is available to anyone willing to accept the internal political risk.
The effectiveness evidence is not marginal. Humour does not improve results by 5%. It improves recall by multiples. In a market where most B2B content is scrolled past without registering, that difference matters.
What to do about it
The safest B2B marketing strategy is also the least effective one. The brands that figure this out first will own a disproportionate share of attention in their categories.