Humor in Digital Marketing Through Cognitive and Discursive Mechanisms of Persuasion

Abstract

Humor has become a prominent persuasive strategy in contemporary digital marketing, particularly within social media environments characterized by multimodal communication and participatory audience interaction. However, the mechanisms through which humor influences consumer cognition and engagement remain insufficiently integrated across cognitive, discursive, and multimodal perspectives. This study examines how humor functions as a persuasive strategy in digital advertising by analyzing its cognitive mechanisms, discourse practices, and multimodal configurations. The research is based on a corpus of 180 humorous digital advertisements across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and branded meme campaigns. A triangulated methodological approach was applied, combining cognitive-linguistic analysis, discourse analysis, and multimodal semiotic analysis. The results show that incongruity-based humor is the dominant cognitive mechanism, facilitating audience attention and message recall by resolving unexpected conceptual contrasts. Conceptual blending and metaphorical integration further enhance humor by combining multiple conceptual domains to generate creative interpretations. The findings also indicate that humor reshapes brand–audience relationships by promoting conversational communication styles and participatory engagement within digital platforms. Moreover, humorous advertising relies heavily on multimodal coordination of visual, textual, and auditory cues to amplify persuasive effects. This study concludes that humor functions as a multidimensional persuasive resource that strengthens cognitive engagement, emotional resonance, and interactive communication in digital marketing environments.