Snapchat’s Comedy Playbook: 6,000 Gen Z Users Crave Humorous Brands
Snapchat and Omnicom surveyed 6,000 people aged 13–28 and found Gen Z and young millennials want brands to be funny. The resulting report teaches marketers a structure for comedy writing, aiming to turn humor into a repeatable skill rather than a guessing game.
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Marketing briefing
Key takeaways
- Snapchat and Omnicom surveyed 6,000 people aged 13–28 and found Gen Z and young millennials want brands to be funny.
- The resulting report teaches marketers a structure for comedy writing, aiming to turn humor into a repeatable skill rather than a guessing game.
- Marketing Dive
- Social Media Today
In this briefing
Mentioned
Key Intelligence
Key Facts
- 1Snapchat partnered with Omnicom to survey more than 6,000 social media users aged 13–28 across the U.S., U.K., Canada, France, Germany, and India.
- 2The survey found that young audiences are keen to see brands lean into humor in their promotions, challenging conventional brand-safety fears.
- 3Snapchat’s report provides a basic structure for comedy writing, aiming to contextualize what’s funny in the eyes of younger audiences.
- 4It may be the first time a social platform has attempted to break down the mechanics of being funny specifically for marketing content.
- 5The initiative is part of Snapchat’s broader strategy to solidify its position as a leading platform for youth engagement amid fierce competition from TikTok and Instagram.
Across U.S., U.K., Canada, France, Germany, India
What’s 67? What’s aura farming? What’s unc? To the older generations, young people’s humor can feel difficult to decode. Yet beneath the memes, inside jokes, and absurd internet trends is something much bigger: a generation using humor as one of its primary social languages.
Introduction to the Snapchat humor report
Analysis
For years, marketers have agonized over being ‘authentic’ yet terrified of offending. Now Snapchat’s data-driven humor guide tells brands exactly what they’ve needed to hear: young audiences are bored by safety and hungry for laughter. With 6,000 respondents from six countries giving the green light, the question shifts from ‘should we be funny?’ to ‘can our team actually pull it off?’
Snapchat has taken the rare step of teaching brands how to be funny, releasing a report that decodes humor for younger audiences and provides a structural framework for comedic marketing. The report, created in partnership with Omnicom, is based on a survey of more than 6,000 social media users aged 13 to 28 across the U.S., U.K., Canada, France, Germany, and India. This demographic—spanning Gen Z and the youngest millennials—uses humor as a primary social language, but brands have consistently struggled to participate authentically. Snapchat’s guidance aims to bridge that gap by showing not only that young audiences want brands to be funny, but also offering a method to do so without alienating the very communities they want to reach.
By partnering with Omnicom, one of the world’s largest advertising agencies, Snapchat signals to major advertisers that it can provide data-backed strategies, not just ad space.
The initiative comes as platforms compete aggressively for creator-driven and advertiser-friendly content that can capture fleeting attention. Humor has long been a universal engagement driver, but its mechanics shift rapidly with each generation. Terms like ‘67’, ‘aura farming’, and ‘unc’ exemplify the kind of niche, context-heavy comedy that older marketers often misunderstand. Snapchat’s research reframes this generational divide as an opportunity: the survey responses indicate that young users actively welcome humor from brands, provided it feels native and not forced. The report’s most notable contribution is an attempt to break down humor into teachable components—a first for a major social platform. This commodification of comedy, however, is not without risks. Creativity can be stifled by over-formulaic approaches, and the inherent authenticity required for successful humor may clash with brands’ instinct to control messaging.
What to Watch
From a market perspective, Snap Inc. (NYSE: SNAP) is strategically positioning its platform as the go-to environment for youth-centric marketing, differentiating from competitors like TikTok and Instagram that already thrive on viral, often unpolished humor. By partnering with Omnicom, one of the world’s largest advertising agencies, Snapchat signals to major advertisers that it can provide data-backed strategies, not just ad space. For marketers, this report arrives at a critical juncture. Brand safety concerns have pushed many companies toward safe, bland content, yet the same reports that highlight these concerns also show declining engagement among younger demographics. Snapchat’s findings affirm a counter-intuitive truth: being boring is riskier than being offensive when dealing with under-30 audiences.
The implications extend beyond Snapchat’s ecosystem. Other platforms may follow suit with their own humor playbooks, turning the art of comedy into a competitive analytics tool. For agencies and in-house creative teams, the report provides a common language to discuss humor with data-driven executives who typically shy away from subjective creative choices. However, the tension between systematization and genuine wit remains. The report’s success will ultimately be measured not by downloads but by whether brands can translate its principles into campaigns that actually make young people laugh—and share. Early adopters who can balance the guidance with a true understanding of internet culture stand to gain disproportionate share of voice in a noisy digital landscape.
Source cluster
Primary reporting
- Marketing DiveSociable: Snapchat tries to teach brands to be funny
- Social Media TodaySnapchat tries to teach brands to be funny
Cite This Page
"Snapchat’s Comedy Playbook: 6,000 Gen Z Users Crave Humorous Brands." Marketing Intelligence Brief, August 6, 2026. https://getmarketingbrief.com/story/snapchat-omnicom-humor-report-gen-z-marketing
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