Journal of Business & Economic Policy

Humor In House Advertising: Positive Effects of Wordplay
Andrea Wischmeyer

Abstract
This paper looks at advertising from an entrepreneurial and linguistic point of view, and more specifically, house advertising in agencies is analyzed. This is a kind of hyperadvertising and it includes more linguistic phenomena than business to business advertising (Janoschka, 2004). Especially, the linguistic phenomenon of humor has often been found within these advertisements. In the literature, few have looked at this topic any further, which is why it makes sense to keep an eye on humor and wordplay in agency advertising, in the business to consumer context. The intention of this paper is to analyze the reason wordplay is used so frequently in agency advertising. To date, humor in advertising has been analyzed in the literature often. However, humor in agency advertising has not. Here, humor is employed in a test-in-process manner, without knowledge of the basis for it or for its ultimate effects. This indicates there may be more choices of linguistic phenomena that can be used, but that are not employed simply because they are not known. The specific effects of humor in agency advertising and the ways it can be used for more effective advertising are key findings. This work contributes insight into a subject that has heretofore been unknown.

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