Come­di­ans like Joan Rivers, Rod­ney Dan­ger­field, Louis C.K. and Tina Fey were/are mas­ters of self-dep­re­ca­tion. It’s a tool that human­izes humorists and, more recent­ly, brands.

We don’t have to look any fur­ther than fast food chain Arby’s, whose good­bye trib­ute to Jon Stew­art – a nos­tal­gic mash-up of his most bit­ing brand com­men­tary – was per­haps sec­ond in buzz only to the final episode of Stewart’s “Dai­ly Show” itself with 1.3 mil­lion views on YouTube and 8,000 tweets report­ed­ly gen­er­at­ed in 13 hours.

A Tool That Makes Brands Seem Genuine, Relatable

The Arby’s spot clear­ly struck a cul­tur­al chord and show­cas­es the poten­tial for self-dep­re­ca­tion in mar­ket­ing in which brands are forth­com­ing about flaws and/or neg­a­tive feed­back either to humor­ous effect to gen­er­ate buzz or to embrace new eras of trans­paren­cy.

BuzzFeed’s Ital­ian Grand­mas Try Olive Gar­den for the First Time – which gen­er­at­ed 3.2 mil­lion views – would be a per­fect exam­ple if it was actu­al­ly sanc­tioned by the brand. (It wasn’t.)

But a sim­i­lar effort, Piz­za Hut’s #Fla­vo­rofNow, did come with the bless­ing of the brand in ques­tion.

In it, Piz­za Hut high­lights a new so-called mod­ern menu with new-fan­gled crusts, sauces, and top­pings by ask­ing Ital­ian seniors – or what it calls “piz­za experts” – for their opin­ions. “All we can say is…they bare­ly tried our piz­zas and they don’t like change,” Piz­za Hut says.

The ’80s Called…

Anoth­er brand shoot­ing for change is now-defunct elec­tron­ics retail­er Radio Shack. While the move clear­ly did­n’t work long-term, Radio Shack did have one of the most pop­u­lar ads of the 2014 Super Bowl with its self-effac­ing nod as the unof­fi­cial elec­tron­ics retail­er of the 1980s.

Fea­tur­ing cameos by ’80s super­stars like Alf, Cliff Clavin from “Cheers”, gym­nast Mary Lou Ret­ton, and CHiPs star Erik Estra­da, the brand attempt­ed to revamp its image with a spot that ranked 5th in USA Today’s Ad Meter, behind only Bud­weis­er and Dori­tos, and fourth over­all by video adver­tis­ing ana­lyt­ics firm Ace Metrix.

It gen­er­at­ed tons of buzz and even a report­ed jump in stock price, prov­ing self-dep­re­ca­tion was at least an effec­tive short-term strat­e­gy for Radio Shack.

Experience The New Buick

For its part, Buick is still run­ning its “Expe­ri­ence the New Buick” ads, which poke fun of the brand’s long­time rep­u­ta­tion as man­u­fac­tur­ing cars for old peo­ple.

The series has gen­er­at­ed a com­bined 1.1 mil­lion views on YouTube to date and, accord­ing to a recent press release, Buick’s sales in the U.S. increased in May com­pared to a year ago thanks in part to sales of its Enclave and Encore mod­els, which are two cars fea­tured in these spots. What’s more, Buick says it has sold more Encores this year than any oth­er mod­el, account­ing for 30 per­cent of the brand’s retail sales.

“What prompt­ed the cam­paign was the con­tin­ued false famil­iar­i­ty among con­sumers around Buick prod­ucts. Most con­sumers had a pos­i­tive opin­ion of the Buick brand, but felt that we did not pro­vide prod­ucts that met their needs,” said Buick rep Nick Richards. “They were bas­ing this opin­ion on the his­toric vehi­cles, and not the award-win­ning, high qual­i­ty vehi­cles we have in the show­room today. When those same con­sumers were intro­duced to the cur­rent port­fo­lio, their opin­ion of the brand and Buick vehi­cles changed. There­fore, we saw the need to attack the issue head-on and start to shift the con­ver­sa­tion about what Buick vehi­cles are today.”

Pizza Turnaround

Fur­ther, quick-ser­vice restau­rant chain Domi­no’s still has its ongo­ing Piz­za Turn­around cam­paign in which it has open­ly acknowl­edged tough crit­ics and is work­ing to be more trans­par­ent, revamp­ing its recipes and stores, imple­ment­ing high-tech inno­va­tions like emo­ji order­ing, and launch­ing a piz­za school microsite that shows how the brand makes its piz­za.

While there isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly overt humor per se, there is cer­tain­ly a pub­lic acknowl­edge­ment of flaws.

Accord­ing to ad agency CP+B, the result has been five years of pos­i­tive same-store sales growth, a 1200 per­cent increase in stock price and over 1 bil­lion free impres­sions of PR buzz in a sin­gle year.

“By pre­sent­ing con­sumers with their own thoughts and feel­ings, then let­ting them see how we addressed their needs, we dis­armed their skep­ti­cism about our new and improved claim, and empow­ered them to believe us,” the agency said. “We also helped them feel like they’d had a hand in mak­ing our piz­za bet­ter.”

So What’s The Verdict On Marketing Potential?

Accord­ing to Andy Beal, CEO of social media mon­i­tor­ing and ana­lyt­ics firm Track­ur, self-dep­re­ca­tion as a mar­ket­ing ploy only works if a brand has a gen­er­al­ly accept­ed flaw that is not real­ly all that bad.

“You have to be able to acknowl­edge it, but at the same time feel com­fort­able that your own self-admis­sion won’t hurt your brand,” he said. “With Arby’s, they can acknowl­edge that their food is not haute cui­sine, but they can do so because they know they have a loy­al cus­tomer base — and are also known for hav­ing fun with their brand [like with Pharrell’s hat and the Pep­si spot]. With Buick, they knew they had a rep­u­ta­tion for build­ing bland cars, but their new designs are styl­ish, so they can be ‘in’ on the joke now.”

Vas­silis Dalakas, a mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sor at Cal­i­for­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty San Mar­cos, agrees two-sided mes­sag­ing that incor­po­rates both pos­i­tives and neg­a­tives is safe when a brand has only minor flaws.

“It can make the brand look more gen­uine as it has no prob­lem rec­og­niz­ing its weak­ness­es, which some con­sumers may find unusu­al and refresh­ing,” Dalakas said. “Along those lines, con­sumers may be more open to any of the brand’s pos­i­tive claims as there is less sus­pi­cion on the brand’s motives to manip­u­late a con­sumer.”

How­ev­er, Beal notes, while self-dep­re­ca­tion can work as a cam­paign, it won’t work for the long term.

“At some point, you have to have a prod­uct or ser­vice that can stand on some­thing of mer­it and val­ue,” he said.

What’s All This Fuss About?

For her part, Nan­cy Harhut, Chief Cre­ative Offi­cer of Wilde Agency, a dig­i­tal and direct mar­ket­ing agency that says it has “exper­tise in lever­ag­ing behav­ioral sci­ence,” said the clear ben­e­fit for Arby’s in the “Dai­ly Show” exam­ple is name recog­ni­tion. “If you are an Arby’s fan, you’ll love it.

If you hate the stuff, there is prob­a­bly lit­tle that can con­vince oth­er­wise,” she said. “But if you are some­where in between, and sud­den­ly you are hearing/seeing all this Arby’s buzz, you just may find your­self eat­ing there. What’s the old chest­nut? ‘It does­n’t mat­ter what they say as long as they spell your name right?’ And this par­tic­u­lar exe­cu­tion has a cer­tain con­fi­dence about it to boot.”

Demonstrating A Little Individuality

In addi­tion, self-dep­re­ca­tion can help express brand per­son­al­i­ty, which Jasper Nathaniel, vice pres­i­dent of busi­ness devel­op­ment and strat­e­gy at Crowd­tap, an online com­mu­ni­ty that con­nects con­sumers with brands, said is increas­ing­ly influ­en­tial in pur­chase deci­sions.

“Peo­ple are increas­ing­ly sup­port­ing com­pa­nies whose per­son­al­i­ties and val­ues align with their own,” Nathaniel said. “By embrac­ing the voice of your cus­tomers and open­ing your brand up to ongo­ing feed­back and par­tic­i­pa­tion, mar­keters can gain a deep­er under­stand­ing of their con­sumers and earn trust by build­ing long-term part­ner­ships with peo­ple who have skin in the game.”

Sim­i­lar­ly, Sarah Hard­wick, CEO of Zen­zi, which calls itself a val­ues-based mar­ket­ing agency, agrees buy­ing trends have shift­ed over the last sev­er­al years and con­sumers no longer want to be mar­ket­ed to – and prob­a­bly nev­er did.

“Peo­ple are demand­ing greater trans­paren­cy and seek­ing out brands that share their core val­ues and beliefs,” Hard­wick said. “For mar­keters, know­ing your tar­get demo­graph­ic is no longer enough – you’ve got to know their hearts and minds. And for many brands, an effec­tive way to make an authen­tic con­nec­tion is through humor, even more so when they are pok­ing fun at them­selves.”

Indeed, brands must be care­ful they know their audi­ences before pro­ceed­ing with a tool like self-dep­re­ca­tion.

“If it’s just not fun­ny or cross­es the line between fun­ny and offen­sive, it can back­fire,” Hard­wick said. “But if you know what they val­ue and what’s impor­tant to them, you are more like­ly to hit the mark.”

Fur­ther, Hard­wick notes laugh­ter releas­es endor­phins, relax­es con­sumers, and makes them feel a part of a com­mu­ni­ty, while also sig­nif­i­cant­ly increas­ing the like­li­hood con­tent will be shared social­ly.

If You Can’t Laugh At Yourself…

It also may be bet­ter for a brand to con­trol the sto­ry with self-dep­re­ca­tion when it comes to neg­a­tive buzz, notes Bian­ca Lee, chief strate­gist at White Rose Mar­ket­ing Solu­tions.

“Con­sid­er the alter­na­tive: This same brand sto­ry being told by con­sumers,” she said. “It is super-easy to make GIFs and tweet links with these same clips in a dif­fer­ent con­text. Even if this ad did­n’t push the equi­ty of the Arby’s brand in a pos­i­tive direc­tion, which I believe it did, it took away the incen­tive for a con­sumer to post a sim­i­lar video mon­tage on behalf of Arby’s.”

But: Pigeonholed

How­ev­er, mar­ket­ing con­sul­tant Chris Dupin notes a poten­tial risk in that Arby’s has staked its posi­tion – poten­tial­ly for years to come.

“They can’t now go be the ‘fresh roast beef’ place and try to move up-mar­ket to catch the Chipo­tles and Five Guys of the world,” he said. “They are now locked into mys­tery meat and pump-dis­pensed cheese.”

What’s your take on self-dep­re­ca­tion as a mar­ket­ing tool?