Social Cause Videos: Why Humor Works

If You Are Creating Social Cause Videos Here Are Some Reasons Why Humor Can Be Your Best Method of Choice

We see them all the time. Videos dealing with human rights issues, animal abuse, malnourished children in developing countries, and every other problem under the sun. We see them at charity events, as PSA’s on television, and promotional pieces disseminated through social media. Social cause videos are everywhere, and the competition for attention is fierce.

Attention = money, which means the more attention and thus funds an organization can collect for their social cause, the more good they can in turn create. So the bottom line is, when creating a video to highlight any sort of cause, getting the most eyeballs to pay attention should always be the end goal.

With so many issues to chose from, it is often difficult to know what you should really care about. What you should invest your own time and hard earned money into supporting. By being an organization that stands out from the pack, through whatever means necessary such as through unique social cause videos, it can be very beneficial to the social cause itself.

Humor is a way to draw people in. It is a way to make a far reaching issue more relate-able. It is a universal language. Check out how these organizations below created social cause videos with the use of humor, in two very different instances, to shed more light on their issues.

The $#^! Kids Say (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children)

The title itself drew me in. It make me think back to the days when Bill Cosby starred as the host of Kids Say the Darnest Things. The start of the video began just the same way, with children saying absurdly cute things; “all pigs are pink even boy pigs”, “I was six on the 50th of November”, and “do babies’ mommies teach them how to laugh”?

But the humorous observations from the children quickly take a different tone. The outlandish comments soon turn into ones that make the viewer think. The humor is launched into a tool in order to zero in on the video’s true message. Do we sometimes take the funny stuff kids say as nothing more than fluff? Is there a deeper meaning there?

Follow The Frog (Rainforest Alliance)

This video takes a much different approach. They use humor full and outright. But they too use it as a tool.

Follow the Frog follows a delightfully misguided and ambitious young man who quits his job and leaves his family in order to pursue, and make right, the injustices that are happening to the rainforest. Through the crazy and adorable trials in his journey, the voice-over tells us all of the things that we as the viewer “aren’t going to do”. At the end of the video, after we have followed the guy on his failed attempt at doing something to help the rainforest, we learn ‘what you can do is follow the frog’.

This brilliant video turns a very important issue into a social cause video that people want to share. Even people not necessarily interested in saving the rainforest can enjoy the humor throughout this video.

In both instances, humor was used as a powerful tool to draw in the viewer. In the first video for the NSPCC, humor was utilized simply as a tactic to draw viewers in and create a sharp juxtaposition against the fact that certain off-beat things that children say should be taken more seriously. While in the later video created for the Rainforest Alliance, humor is the deciding factor which makes it such a success. It is funny because we can relate to it, yet on the same hand it is so far fetched.

When creating your next social cause videos, consider adding a dash of humor to the mix.

Social Cause Videos: Why Humor Works