By Jason Panudy, Creative Director at Goldbug. Jason leads creative direction and strategy across employee engagement and brand campaigns.
If you’re about to go out with a campaign with the objective of being ‘funny’ then stop what you’re doing right away and read this.
One of the most debated insights from Goldbug’s Engagement Index 2025 is whether making people laugh equals better engagement.
Because the answer, according to the robust methods we used, is…hardly at all.
Out of 50 moments analysed for the report, an IKEA brand video featuring employees and customers doing a throwback of the Harlem Shake was voted most amusing.
And yet it did not feature when it came to the most engaging moments, which is based on a blend of different diagnostics.
In fact, not one of the top 10 most engaging moments were there because of humour.
Hope, love and happiness were the three leading emotions in the most engaging content, out of 15 different emotions that people felt when viewing the content.
Amusement was in 10th place – below ‘fear’.
With our famous British sense of humour it can be hard to admit this simple truth about comms – emotion wins and happiness beats just being funny.
We’re not saying for one moment that you should stop using humour in your comms.
Making your audience laugh is a powerful tool.
But amusing them without a reason, without a drive to action, means potential missed engagement or worse – backfire.
Humour is hugely subjective. On the inside or outside, it can go horribly wrong. So as a guide, ‘being funny’ should not be a regular feature on a comms brief.
Our index shows it’s a better strategy to focus on giving people a warm feeling inside and get them thinking that way.