The Garden Stage powered by Somersby | Friday | 12:15 PM
Three marketers walk into a bar. The first one tells a joke. The second checks if the brand guidelines allow humour. The third asks legal if laughter could create reputational risk.
In the age of constant scrutiny and overthinking, are brands too scared to be funny – or have we simply lost the joke? Humour used to be one of advertising’s sharpest tools. Today, jokes often pass through brand-safety filters and too many rounds of “maybe we should tone it down,” so by the time a campaign reaches the public, the punchline feels less like a punch and more like a tap on the shoulder.
Zoran Kosanović (Founder, Lateral Business and X Man, Pipi), Vatroslav Škare, PhD (Full Professor, Faculty of Economics & Business) and Josip Zekić (Marketing Manager, Carlsberg Croatia), will unpack why comedy became such a complicated space for advertisers. Also, if someone on stage accidentally tells a genuinely good joke, we promise not to run it through a focus group first.