The Last Laugh: How Humour Took Back the Brief in 2025

As 2025 has drawn to a close, funny marketing is in noticeably better health than it has been for much of the past decade. 

The shift feels like a reaction as much as a renaissance: years of purpose-led advertising, at its best inspiring and at its worst self-serious, appears to have tipped into something a little too worthy for audiences who are juggling real-world pressures and don’t particularly want to be lectured between videos of cats.

Industry tracking has put numbers on that mood change. System1 noted that, at Cannes Lions, 75% of US or UK winners used humour, up from roughly half the year before. 

With Cannes Lions also introducing and expanding humour-focused award elements, the incentive to make judges laugh has become more formalised – and, crucially, the work has started to feel fun again. 

Cannes Lions and the Return of the Human Body

One of the most striking things about the funniest work celebrated this year is what it keeps circling back to: the human body. Not the airbrushed, aspirational kind, but the inconvenient, chaotic, real one – illness, sex, embarrassment, urgency, the sort of stuff that makes humans human and algorithms look faintly confused.

A standout example was New Zealand’s deliberately provocative “Make New Zealand the Best Place in the World to Have Herpes”, a campaign that used humour to tackle stigma head-on and drew major attention at Cannes. 

The audacity wasn’t just shock for shock’s sake; it was an argument that the quickest way to defuse shame is often to puncture it.

Then there was IKEA’s “U Up?”, praised for doing something rare: using tech without making it feel gimmicky, joyless, or bolted on because someone demanded a “digital element”. The premise leaned into late-night messaging culture with cheek and confidence – a little chutzpah, a little wink, and a clear understanding of the world it was entering. 

And in a cash-light world where many people barely touch banknotes, a film for India’s Steadfast money-counting machine turned an old-school product into a very modern piece of storytelling. Set in a frantic betting parlour, it follows a bookmaker hit by a sudden stomach emergency, desperately trying to reach the toilet – funny, tense, and unmistakably physical. 

The shared lesson is simple: humour is often at its sharpest when it’s grounded in bodily reality – because it produces a bodily reaction. A laugh is physical. A grin is visible. In a year thick with Artificial Intelligence talk, the biggest laughs have doubled as a reminder that audiences are still made of skin, nerves, and awkward moments. 

Beyond Cannes: The Summer of the Billboard “Anti-Ad”

Outside the festival bubble, humour also showed up in bolder, scrappier places – particularly out of home. Cluely’s billboards became one of the stories of the summer, sparking chatter that various commentators labelled “anti-ads” and meme-bait. 

But strip away the trendy labels and another truth emerges: it was also classic cost-signalling. 

The sheer act of buying premium space and owning it loudly suggests confidence – the brand equivalent of walking into a room and paying for the band. As Rory Sutherland has argued, advertising itself can function as a signal that the manufacturer believes in what it’s selling – like an owner backing their own racehorse. 

Cluely’s wit did the rest. It cut through the noise not by shouting harder, but by being unmistakably different.

A PR Scandal Turned Into Gold

If 2025 had a case study in tactical humour, it arrived courtesy of Astronomer. After the company’s CEO became embroiled in a viral “kiss cam” moment at a Coldplay concert and subsequently resigned, Astronomer moved quickly to steer the narrative away from gossip and towards its actual business. 

About ten days later, the company released a deadpan video featuring Gwyneth Paltrow as a “very temporary” spokesperson, calmly acknowledging the sudden public interest while staying stubbornly on-message about data workflow automation. 

The casting wasn’t random celebrity frosting; it was contextually relevant (Paltrow’s connection to Coldplay made the joke land). The result pulled in tens of millions of views and became a textbook example of converting a PR mess into brand attention without pretending the internet hadn’t noticed anything. 

It also delivered a small cultural surprise: Paltrow, often treated as a punchline in her own right, came across as dry, game, and genuinely witty – a reminder that the right script and the right moment can reframe even a well-worn public image.

Where “Funny” Still Goes Wrong

For all the good news, two tired habits continue to drag humour down.

First is the “celebrity = comedy” shortcut – paying a famous face a mountain of cash and assuming the audience will laugh out of gratitude. Too often, the result is glossy self-congratulation that lands with a thud. 

However, the Paltrow example worked precisely because it had relevance and timing; it wasn’t a star parachuted in to make peanut butter seem hilarious.

Second is the wacky-as-funny school of thought: make someone do something odd – a strange haircut, a random dance, a surreal moment – and assume that equals humour and, therefore, sales. 

Social feeds are full of this, and big brands fall into it too. The problem is not that “weird” can’t be funny; it’s that weird without meaning becomes spray-and-pray entertainment, detached from what the product actually does.

Looking Ahead to 2026

If 2025 proved anything, it’s that humour hasn’t “returned” so much as been allowed back into the room. Cannes has signalled it wants more of it, brands are increasingly brave about it, and audiences seem grateful for ads that don’t take themselves quite so seriously. 

The likely winners in 2026 will be the ones that keep humour human: rooted in insight, connected to product truth, and confident enough to be simple. The losers will be the ones that treat comedy as a costume – something to throw on after the strategy is finished.

Conclusion

At the end of 2025, funny marketing is no longer a guilty pleasure or a nostalgic throwback. The evidence from Cannes and beyond suggests humour is regaining status as a serious creative tool – one that cuts through, travels fast, and reminds audiences they’re watching messages made for real people, not just metrics. 

The best work of the year leaned into the physical and the human, used technology without gimmickry, and proved that smart relevance beats random weirdness every time. If brands take that lesson into 2026, there should be plenty more to laugh about – for the right reasons.