Of course silly messaging works, say some of the best marketing minds on the planet. Example: David Meerman Scott wrote about how Tim Washer uses comedy at IBM. (Side note: apparently the days of the blue suit are long gone at IBM, and Tim Washer is a breath of fresh air — go check him out.) It’s a welcome respite from the inexplicably dry stuff that hits your inbox every day. Buyers are not buyers, they’re people. And people respond predictably to silliness.

There are a lot of examples where silly messaging has worked for B2B companies, but you have to do some digging. For every one Tim Washer video, there are maybe a dozen or more consumer-targeted videos that are deemed bigger successes. Still, despite the overwhelming majority of funny videos being consumer-targeted, silliness certainly seems to be effective in some B2B applications.

Example 1: HubSpot’s Foursquare Cops video series

What HubSpot has accomplished here is remarkable. I don’t mean to be too critical here, but the videos themselves aren’t of particularly high quality, they’re moderately well-acted, and the writing, while good, probably won’t win any awards. What is remarkable about these videos is that they are silly. The premise is silly, the scripts are silly, the actors themselves are silly. The draw of these videos is their jocularity. And the return is good — one assumes that the minds over at HubSpot wouldn’t keep the series alive for four episodes if it wasn’t increasing traffic to http://foursquare.grader.com.

Example 2: SolidWorks’s 3 Dudes Gone 3D video series

This is a bit more branded take on the silly theme. The production qualities are maybe a bit higher, and the acting might be a bit more professional, but the silliness remains the same. What’s different is that these videos are clearly made by SolidWorks, and there’s at least one product plug in every video. That’s not necessarily a bad thing — again, these videos probably cost quite a bit to produce, and you have to assume that if there isn’t a return the project would be cut. (Someone from SolidWorks is welcome to comment on the return of this campaign to validate or refute that claim, of course.)

Have you seen a silly B2B campaign that worked? How about one that didn’t use video? Share your experiences below!

A friend of mine wrote a blog post for his company that attempted to explain why his company charged for a premium subscription. The post, in part, described why the company was forced into recouping at least some of the money they spent providing a (pretty kick ass) free product to the masses. Here’s a line from the first draft:

“[$15 per year is] just about enough to keep the lights on at [our company], with a little bit left over in case something terrible happens. Like evil pirate-ninjas stealing our laptops in the dead of the night.”

Now, there’s something to be said for keeping it light. But “evil pirate-ninjas” is downright absurd. If this was a B2B company, this kind of copy would be verboten. But this is a consumer brand, which gives it a bit more leeway, doesn’t it?

I suppose that is a question that is best left for the debates. So have at it! Do silly messages work for consumer brands? If so, under what circumstances? And if they do work, do they ONLY work for consumer brands? What silly messages have you seen that work? Have you seen any that fell flat? Post them here and we’ll include them in this week’s debate.