Hello my nerdy friends,
My copywriting professor back in university had one rule for us: no puns.
Let's see if the science actually supports it!
The study:
Researchers tested 25 advertising posters using eye-tracking technology.
Some posters had puns in the headlines (in a translated example, "I'll cover you" for a blanket ad, where the phrase means both "protect you" and literally "cover with a blanket"), while others had straightforward headlines.
55 participants viewed the ads while cameras tracked exactly where their eyes went and for how long. They were also asked to rate the ads (Konovalova & Petrova, 2023).
🧪What they found:
Ads with puns were rated as more attractive, original, effective, and positive compared to straightforward ads.
People also remembered both the text and images better when the ad had a pun.
Why?
Our brains remember things better when we have to work a bit harder to process them. This is called "desirable difficulty."
When you read a pun like "I'll cover you," your brain first reads it as a familiar phrase meaning "protect you." Then the image of a blanket makes you realize it also means literally covering someone with a blanket.
Our brains get a small reward (a feeling of "getting it") when we connect the meanings. This positive feeling transfers to how we rate the ad overall.
Caveat
This only tested phrases with double meanings that are related, not single “pun“ words like “Lettuce celebrate“ (my old prof probably might still be right about those being ineffective, because they don’t really give us the same feeling of “getting it“, they just feel cringy).
💡Takeaway
Use pun-phrases that combine literal and figurative meanings in your headlines, that are connected and feel satisfying to connect. Make them easy to get. The small mental effort makes people enjoy ads more.
Stay awesome my friend,
Ksenia (the biggest nerd)
P.S. one of my clients has been testing out this reddit marketing tool for a month. Pretty good results: they got 8 free trials for their SaaS so far, 1 converted to a paid client. In case you wanted to test Reddit as a traffic source.
