Did you hear the one about the copywriter who created hilarious direct mail packages…?

If you said no, don't feel left out of the loop. Humor is one of the classic taboos of DM copywriting, a tactic felt best left to general advertisers and late-night talk show hosts. While some marketers — like the political magazine The Nation — have been able to get a giggle and a response, the traditional mantra that funny does not equal money remains.

“Humor is an adjunct, not a selling weapon. It gets attention, so it's good for an opening, but it's not good for selling,” says Herschell Gordon Lewis, DM copywriter and consultant. “People take their purchases very seriously.

“How would you react to a salesperson who made every sales point a joke?” continues Lewis. “I've had any number of e-mails in which the subject line attempted to be cute, clever or overly bright. People begin to react to that negatively because it's a giveaway. It's just not good salesmanship. In DM, there's no need to use [humor] to gain attention. The offer has to be paramount over the technique.”

“One of the first things any copywriter starting out in this business is told is ‘Don't be funny. This is no place for humor,’” says Ken Scheck, a Chestertown, MD-based copywriter.

“That's odd when you stop and think about how much humor there is in consumer advertising, but not when you consider how different the roles of the two media are,” notes Scheck. “We're trying to get a sale, an impulse, get someone to stop what they're doing and read us. Whereas people doing commercials for something like beer are just trying to plant the memory of their product in a person's mind and create a good feeling about the product. We don't have that luxury.”

Often, humor isn't used even where one might expect it. New York-based Corporate Comics creates comic books for clients to use as promotional tools and mailing pieces. But even in “funny books” like these, humor is a rarity, utilized more to make a point about the client's competition rather than as a main theme.

“People don't really care about making something funny,” says Joe Kolman, publisher of Corporate Comics. “They care about making something that sells.”

Those who delve into humor also need to take care not to look silly, cautions Lewis. “People who depend on humor for impact often lapse into foolishness, talking dogs, desperate novelties. These are attention-getters, but they are poor salespeople,” he says. “The relationship between gaining attention and actually marketing is one of stopping somebody on the street and actually selling them something. It's an introductory proposition.”

But it's a proposition some marketers are willing to accept, if they know their audience well. “If people accept you, that's a different story altogether,” says Lewis. “But in that case, why have they accepted you? Have they accepted you because you've been funny, [or] because whatever you offered turned out to be what you promised? Injecting humor into that is a dangerous ploy, because it was the integrity that sold them in the first place.”

“Humor is very subjective, and if [your audience] doesn't get the joke, or it annoys or offends them in some way, you've really done damage,” agrees Scheck. “It's hard enough to get people to read direct mail, and if you annoy or offend them, you're making a hard task even more difficult.”

As for clients, they don't usually welcome the idea of humor. “You have to hit the nail pretty well, and then sometimes you have to sell the idea,” says Scheck, because the campaign is very serious to them. “They don't want you writing jokes.”

“Fear is a more persuasive way of getting attention than laughs,” says Kolman. He thinks that once a marketer has “established some sort of rapport” maybe then humor can be tried. But marketers need to be careful, because humor can be perceived as distracting from the seriousness of the client or customer's problem.

Still, the direct mail landscape isn't completely devoid of chuckles. The Nation, a magazine of political opinion with a progressive/liberal bent, has successfully tested several direct mail packages with a humorous element, says circulation director Art Stupar.

“I think [the topic of] politics makes it easier because there's a tradition of humor and politics,” says Stupar. “Humor is a subjective thing. For example, it's easy for us to make fun of what's going on in the world these days given the state of our politics. On the other hand, if we were something like a fishing magazine, I suppose it would be very different.”

While The Nation's long-running control package is fairly serious and issue-driven, almost all of the magazine's tests have an element of fun. A recent mailing offered a poster of a popular cover featuring a caricature of President Bush depicted as Mad Magazine mascot Alfred E. Neuman, complete with a “Worry” button on his lapel. Another, which outpulled everything else this season, showed a silly drawing on the outer envelope of the president wearing a crown. The copy read “Don't you just love this guy? If your answer is yes, don't open this envelope.”

Of course, not all The Nation's tests poke fun at the president. “Bush is just an easy target, I guess,” says Stupar, adding that while they may go for a laugh sometimes, the magazine's readers are very tuned in and take the issues seriously. “We do a lot of testing and try to beat our control package. Just like in any other test of direct mail, some things work and some don't. Humor isn't always the way we go but it seems to have worked.”

Prior to joining The Nation about six months ago, Stupar was with Scholastic as the magazine division's circulation director. Humor wasn't typically an element of direct mail there, he says, because the approach was more academic. Mailings often were tailored toward convincing teachers to use magazines as a serious teaching tool, much like they would use textbooks.

Scheck also has had luck creating humorous outer envelopes for clients. On the other end of the political spectrum, a package he created for The National Review a few years back used an envelope bearing a definition of “Slickaphobia,” a nod to President Clinton's nickname “Slick Willie.” The inside letter, however, took a serious tone for the conservative audience in the voice of William F. Buckley.

More recently, he used the eye-catching headline, “What I Buried in the Manure Pile and Why” for an outer envelope promoting the Rodale Press book “Living Well on a Shoestring,” which offers unusual household tips. (For example, burying copper items in a manure pile speeds up the oxidation process.)

These types of approaches work because they're in step with what the audience of such an offbeat title expects. “If I'm selling Mad Magazine, I had better darn well stay in character,” says Lewis.

But, he notes, marketers must always beware getting socked by a punchline. “The very notion of staying in character indicates that humor is secondary. Say I'm selling you The Kiplinger Letter [and used], ‘A funny thing happened on the way to the bank…’ as my opening. The response would positively go down, because that's not the state of mind of someone who is a serious potential subscriber.”