If your ad sounds like your homepage, you have a problem.
I see this all the time in B2B software. A brand raises money, the pressure goes up, and suddenly every video starts sounding like a board slide. The script is full of acronyms. The dashboard shows up in second one. The voiceover tries to explain everything. The team feels safe. The audience feels nothing.
I learned this lesson the fun way.
Years ago, I couldn’t sell my Nissan Altima. So Chris Hau and I made a parody car commercial for it. The video blew up. It got picked up by major outlets and brought in over 100 offers for the car. Same car. Better creative. Better story. More attention.
That lesson never left me.
I’ve been filming since I was 14. I started with skateboard videos on MiniDV. Then I filmed weddings. Then I shot a fishing show that aired on TV. Then commercials. I’m a filmmaker first, entrepreneur second. I think in scenes. I think in characters. I think in moments people remember.
And here’s what I think now more than ever: B2B software brands need to end the jargon-heavy marketing and use humor instead.
Jargon Is Making You Blend In
If you’re a VP of Marketing or CMO, you already know the pressure. You’ve got budget to deploy, a board watching, and a target on your back. You need pipeline. You need attention. You need the market to remember your brand before your competitor grabs the same buyer.
That last part matters a lot.
Research from LinkedIn’s B2B Institute says up to 95% of business buyers are not in-market at any one time. So most of the people seeing your ads are not ready to book a demo today. Your video is there to build memory first.
That changes the job of the creative.
Gartner says complex B2B purchases usually involve six to 10 decision makers. Another Gartner report says buyers spend only 17% of their purchase time with suppliers. When several vendors are being compared, any one rep may get only 5% to 6% of the buyer’s time. Gartner also expected 80% of B2B sales interactions to happen in digital channels by 2025.
So ask yourself something simple. If your buyer sees you for a few seconds in a feed, and then has to explain you later to six other people, what helps more? A dense line of jargon? Or a clear, memorable story?
I think the answer is obvious.
A champion inside the company needs something easy to carry upstairs. That’s one reason I’ll often write free scripts for a marketing lead before the budget is approved. They need something their CEO can read fast and say, “Okay, I get this. This is smart. Let’s do it.”
Jargon usually dies in that room.
Buyers Remember What They Feel
This is the part a lot of B2B brands forget. Your buyers are still people. They are serious people, sure. They are busy. They are cynical. They are tired of ads. But they are still people.
Research from Oracle found that 91% of consumers prefer companies that are funny rather than formal, 95% of business leaders fear using humor, and 90% of people are more likely to remember ads that are funny.
That gap is wild.
The audience wants more personality. The brand team is scared to give it to them.
And dull creative has a real cost. Data from System1 says around half of consumers feel nothing when they watch advertising. In B2B, the problem is even worse. More than half of US B2B ads generate emotional neutrality.
Neutrality is brutal.
If people feel nothing, they remember nothing.
On LinkedIn itself, decision makers were 40% more likely to consider purchasing when the ad was seen as creative. That should wake up every B2B marketing team.
This is why I push humor so hard. Humor gives the brain something to hold onto.
Humor Makes Complex Software Easier to Understand
I work mostly with B2B SaaS, AI, cybersecurity, sales tech, and customer experience brands. A lot of these products are complicated. I’m usually not the domain expert when the project starts. I’m not a cybersecurity engineer. I’m not a RevOps leader. I’m not a contact center operator.
That’s fine.
I just need to know three things. What problem are you solving? What makes you different? And who are we talking to?
Once I understand that, I can start translating the product into a human scenario.
With Lavender, we turned bad sales emails into real life. That’s where Lavender Joe came from. He was this awkward salesman saying things like “Do you want to explore synergies?” to strangers in a park, or getting dragged away by the email police for sending too much spam. Salespeople got it right away. They commented that they used to be Lavender Joe. People recognized the character by name. He was recognized at Collision in Toronto. He was even recognized in Italy. That’s brand recall.
With AskNicely, I took customer feedback software and put a host in a park asking strangers to rate their experience sitting on a bench from one to five. Same product idea. Way more watchable.
With Aligned, I used a dating scenario. A guy on a date asks, “So, what are next steps?” Then he pulls out a PowerPoint on what their future relationship could look like. If you work in sales, that lands immediately.
With HockeyStack, the insight was that sales and marketing are always fighting over attribution. So I built a hockey referee who gives penalties for “high dissing.” That line sticks because it speaks the audience’s language while still being playful.
We create funny videos out of complex products.
And I still make sure the real industry language is there when it needs to be. If your buyer cares about pipeline insights, compliance, vulnerabilities, or CI, I can get that language into the script in a clever way. It doesn’t need to sound like a whitepaper.
I also don’t think every detail belongs in the first touch. For top-of-funnel brand ads, I want to capture the problem, create a laugh, and make the brand memorable. Then, later in the funnel, you can retarget with a more detailed explainer. That’s where the product UI and deeper features can really breathe.
The First Three Seconds Should Buy Curiosity
This is where most B2B video goes wrong.
Teams feel this urge to explain the whole product immediately. I think those first three seconds should buy curiosity. That’s the job. You want the viewer asking, “What’s going on here?” or “Who is this person?”
System1 found that around 80% of impressions receive no active attention. The same report says ads need about 2.5 seconds of active attention before memory can begin to form.
So yes, the opening matters. A lot.
Sometimes I use an absurd, chaotic visual. Sometimes I use a really beautiful cinematic image.
For Replicant, I opened on a rainy diner at night. The lights flicker. Two people sit in a booth. It feels dramatic. It feels premium. It feels like a movie. Their campaign was called “Turn On the Lights,” so we used power outages and light coming back on as a visual metaphor for gaining customer insight. That’s a much stronger opening than a generic product tour.
For Lavender, I shot scenes in an abandoned house with moody lighting so the ad felt like a David Fincher movie. The viewer could genuinely wonder, “Wait, am I on Netflix or am I on LinkedIn?”
For Maple, I convinced the team to do a bold opener with a confident naked man covering himself with an open laptop while romantic music plays. Then the record scratch reveals he’s speaking to a telehealth doctor. That kind of hook stops the scroll because it creates instant curiosity.
I want the front half of the ad to be less dashboardy. I want a hook. I want the audience leaning in. Then I can bring the brand in at the end with a tagline, or a quick product reveal, or both.
If a client really wants the solution shown, I’m fine with that. I’ll often make two versions. One ends clean with the tagline. Another adds a quick four-second product moment at the back. Then you can test both.
Humor Only Works When It Feels Under Control
The biggest fear I hear is simple.
“What if the joke falls flat?”
Fair question. Humor is hard. Art is opinion, not fact. You’re never going to get every person on earth to agree on the same joke.
So I de-risk it.
I always start by listening. I have clients fill out a content doc before we write anything. I want to know how they describe the brand as a person. I want the single-minded message. I want to know who the audience is and what brands they admire. That work matters.
Schoox is a good example. In their onboarding, they described the brand personality as fun and magical. That gave me the magician idea right away. It didn’t come out of nowhere. It came from them.
Then I build a range of ideas. Some are safer. Some are bolder. Some are a little unhinged. If leadership is nervous, I’ll keep writing until the room is excited. I do that a lot with internal champions who need approval from a CEO or founder.
I also make sure the scripts map to real pain points. If the client solves five key pain points, I can spread those across a batch of videos and test different hooks. That helps the humor stay useful. It’s still strategic.
Casting is another big one. A joke can die with the wrong actor. For AskNicely, I wanted a host who felt awkward and deadpan, kind of like a character from The Office. We auditioned a bunch of people and picked carefully with the client. That one decision changes everything.
And I keep a hard creative boundary. I don’t want humor that punches down or makes fun of specific people. Bold is good. Mean is lazy.
I still pitch risky ideas. I have a cybersecurity concept called “practice safe tech” that plays with the language of safe sex before revealing the computer-security joke. One founder liked it. An older investor didn’t. That happens. You test. You learn. You move on.
If your leadership wants a safer brief, I can do that too. I’m collaborative. But I’ll usually push for at least one bolder cut in the batch so you have something real to test.
One Campaign Beats One Lonely Explainer
I don’t really care for the old one-and-done model.
One ad is rarely enough. One explainer is definitely not enough. And I hate ad fatigue. Seeing the same commercial again and again drives me nuts.
That’s why I built CinemAds around volume.
We can shoot 10 to 15 short commercials in one day by staying in one location, keeping the scripts tight, and planning hard in pre-production. I visualize the commercials in my head before we shoot. That’s probably my biggest asset. If I think a script is too complicated for the day, I change it before the cameras roll.
That model lets me bring the cost down a lot. A typical package is around $30,000 for 10 high-quality commercials. So you’re looking at roughly $3,000 per TV-ready ad. Traditional agencies often charge way more for way less.
And because we shoot in batches, you get options. Different openings. Different hooks. Different edits. Horizontal, square, and vertical formats. I still think 16:9 is the best because it feels cinematic, but I know the world runs on phones too, so we deliver all three.
This also helps you de-risk the campaign. You’re not betting everything on one concept. You’re testing across a range.
With Lavender, that approach turned into a long-term machine. We ended up producing over 300 videos across a year-long retainer for under $120,000 Canadian. That only happens when the idea has legs and the audience keeps responding.
And this is where funnel thinking matters. I like using humorous, cinematic top-of-funnel ads first. Then I retarget people who watched more than half the video with deeper explainers that show the UI and features. You get the best of both worlds. Brand memory first. Product detail second.
I just handle the bucket of video. Your paid team still needs to distribute properly. I can’t guarantee your results. Nobody honest can. But I can tell you that some of our cinematic brand videos have outperformed traditional direct-response ads, and one Replicant CTV campaign recouped its production investment from a single sale within six months.
That’s why I like CTV so much for B2B. A funny or cinematic ad hits much harder on a 65-inch screen than in a tiny LinkedIn feed. You get TV-level attention with digital-style targeting. And you get premium perception fast.
My wife and I watch the 15 to 30-second ads on our basic Netflix plan. If the ad is funny, we watch. Sometimes we repeat the joke to each other. That’s attention. That’s memory.
AI Can Help, but Human Timing Still Wins
I use AI. I’m open about that.
I use it to brainstorm. I use it to help with scripts. I think it’s great for testing and for early-stage startups.
But AI doesn’t solve boring. It just helps you make boring faster if you don’t know what you’re doing.
An arXiv study found that more than 90% of 1,008 ChatGPT jokes were the same 25 jokes. That tells you a lot. Generic comedy is easy. Original comedy is hard.
And then there’s the human side. A campaign has weeks of discussions before any shoot happens. There are Slack messages, approvals, revisions, casting choices, wardrobe choices, location choices. Then you get to set, and a real actor gives you something unexpected.
I had one cybersecurity therapy scene where an actor put his hand out and looked at the therapist in this tiny, funny way. It was subtle. It was human. It made the moment. That kind of nuance still matters a lot.
The same goes for lighting, lenses, blocking, timing, and all the little choices a crew makes on the fly. There’s that human nuance that AI doesn’t have.
If AI masters all of it one day, I’ll direct the AI. I’m fine with that. But right now, real people still make the better work. And as feeds get flooded with AI content, I actually think human-made commercials will stand out even more.
My Advice to You
Kill the acronym parade.
Pick one pain point. Turn it into a human scenario. Open with a bold visual. Make the viewer curious. Make them laugh, or at least smile in their head. Then land the message cleanly.
Your buyer does not need another boring explainer in the feed. They need a reason to remember you later. They need a story they can repeat internally. They need a brand that feels alive.
Safe ads will lose over time. The best marketing wins.
So make something worth watching.
Make a commercial that looks like a movie. Make a CinemAd.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I prove the ROI of humor-led campaigns to a board demanding immediate pipeline?
Stop defending the creative and point to the math. Boring ads waste budget. System1 found brands need an extra $189 billion to match emotional creative. Humor isn’t just a vanity play. It’s exactly how you drive higher ROI and capture the attention that neutral, jargon-heavy ads lose.
Will hyper-technical buyers like CISOs dismiss cinematic ads as irrelevant fluff?
No. CISOs are still humans scrolling on their phones. They are cynical and tired of feature-bloat advertising. Oracle showed 91% of people prefer funny brands, still 95% of business leaders fear using humor. That gap is your unfair advantage. If you respect their intelligence with sharp, insider humor, you win.
How does a jargon-free narrative help our champion sell to a complex buying committee?
Complex purchases involve six to 10 decision makers. Your champion only gets a fraction of their time. If your marketing is a dense wall of acronyms, it dies in that room. A clean, memorable metaphor is portable. It gives your champion an easy, sticky concept to carry upstairs and get quick consensus.
Does replacing technical jargon with emotional storytelling actually lower our CPA?
Yes. When you blend excess share of voice with high emotional response, market share grows. On LinkedIn, buyers are 40% more likely to consider purchasing from creative ads. You get more clicks, longer watch times, and better recall, which directly drives down your CPA.
How do we transition from a high-level cinematic hook to the dense technical specs buyers eventually need?
You split the funnel. The first touch shouldn’t be a dashboard tour. Its only job is to buy curiosity and build memory. Once they watch that cinematic hook, you hit them with a retargeting layer. That’s where you deploy the dense, UI-heavy explainers. Brand memory first. Product detail second.
