Observed Signal · Jul 23, 2026 · Playbook · Source: Toms Marketing Ideas · Impact: 1/5 · Sentiment: Positive
Creative & Production Services Market: How to Be Funny in Marketing
This playbook-style newsletter explains why humor is a high-value marketing skill that remains difficult for AI to replicate. It outlines the psychological basis for humor (Benign Violation Theory), two golden rules for marketing humor (be specific to your audience; be surprising), and a practical step-by-step approach for testing and scaling funny content. The piece includes case studies and examples — Ahrefs’ Letaido (an AI tool) used to diagnose traffic drops, a viral LinkedIn 'Viral Post Generator' (2M+ users, acquired two weeks after launch), and Wiz’s April Fools’ 'CISOtopia' stunt (110k+ visitors and a 15–20% uplift to Wiz.io). It also lists high-impact marketing surfaces for humor (social, ads, email, 404s, careers pages, swag) and cautions about sensitive topics, punching down, and overuse.
Practical how-to guidance and marketing case studies useful for creatives and marketers but not a sector-wide platform, policy, or technology change.
Key Takeaways & Evidence Grounding
- Ahrefs introduced Letaido, described as an AI tool that runs analyses using Ahrefs’ live data.
- Ahrefs’ CMO tested Letaido on a case where ClickUp’s blog lost 97.6% of its traffic.
- The author’s Viral Post Generator was used by more than 2 million people and was acquired two weeks after launching.
- Wiz’s April Fools’ 'CISOtopia' prank website received more than 110,000 unique visitors and coincided with a 15%–20% uplift in traffic to Wiz.io for the month of April.
- The author reports building audiences of 95k+ on Substack and 40k+ on LinkedIn, and creating a side-project app that reached 1 million+ users in a single day.
Connected Companies & Entities
10 Entities mappedProfessional social platform for hiring, advertising, sales and learning.
“Build solid audiences both here on Substack (95k+) _and_ LinkedIn (40k+), in just a few years....”
Fiverr
Marketplace for freelance services, business tools and seller promotion.
“Apparently, Fiverr’s funny titles drove +91% page views....”
ClickUp
Work management software unifying tasks, docs, chat and AI.
“Ahrefs’ CMO tested it on a brutal case: ClickUp’s blog lost 97.6% of its traffic....”
Ahrefs
SEO intelligence and web analytics software for marketers and agencies.
“Letaido, Ahrefs’ new AI tool, will change your life....”
Search, video, adtech and cloud giant within Alphabet.
“Consistently ship funny things for my job at Google that make my bosses love me....”
Mailchimp
SMB marketing automation and email platform owned by Intuit.
“Think of Tinder’s “Swipe Night,” Mailchimp’s high-five animation when you send, Waze’s celebrity voices, or Android’s hidden gingerbread-man...”
Slack
Enterprise team messaging and workflow collaboration SaaS platform.
“Think of Tinder’s “Swipe Night,” Mailchimp’s high-five animation when you send, Waze’s celebrity voices, or Android’s hidden gingerbread-man...”
Tesla
Electric vehicle and energy systems maker with software upsell revenue.
“Tesla’s “Master of Coin.”...”
Tinder
Swipe-based dating app with subscriptions and in-app purchases.
“Think of Tinder’s “Swipe Night,” Mailchimp’s high-five animation when you send, Waze’s celebrity voices, or Android’s hidden gingerbread-man...”
Wiz
Cloud security SaaS for code, cloud and runtime risk.
“At Wiz, we decided to take a non-traditional approach that no one expected - the launch of CISOtopia, the first-ever toy store designed for ...”
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