Using humor and humorous characters in Tv Ads: Analysis on bank commercials

Capitalism has attached its existence to continuous consumption phenomenon and in order to assure the sustainability of the consumerist society, it enforces a `new` product/service almost every day to consumers via commercials by equipping with values, which are not inherent in the so called product/service. As the number of these products/services, which do not have a significant difference in terms of quality within the sectorial category they are involved, increase in the market; the hope for leading consumer choices makes it mandatory for the advertisers to develop new discourses. Obstacles in front of the continuous consumption of consumers for the persistence of the system should always be removed. Although the general rationale of the system operates as work and consume; in fact it imposes masses to consume more than what they work and earn. So right at this point banking and finance sector, which can be defined as the backbone of capitalist production and distribution system, confront us. Banks continuously work with the aim of making people consume more than what they need. Sometimes they even create new needs through their services (travel loan, vehicle loan). As the number and variety of services (needs) provided to consumers within the system increase, a kind of cacophony is experienced in the media, in which a competition environment finds a voice, and introducing these to consumers gets difficult. Because a new service of different banks is presented to consumers everywhere at every moment and consumers may be desensitized against these after a certain period of time. At this point, the efforts of capitalist system to develop different discourses in advertising activities, which it uses as a tool for itself, become more visible. Advertising is essential in the current system with regards to persuading masses and directing to consumption. Advertising, nourishing from the belief being held to its persuasive power, has been in continuous change by being affected from technological, social and economic developments within the historical process. When the purpose is directing to consumption, many tactics, strategies and concepts can be mentioned in the advertising area. In order to persuade consumers, advertising can be stated to use several tempting, surprising, sometimes scary and sometimes laughing advertising contents considering characteristics of product/service, brand and target market. One of the most important tactics feeding advertising strategies is obviously humorous telling. The fact that advertisers use especially humor and humorous characters in bank commercials in Turkey in the recent years is remarkable. While services of banking and finance sectors have a life facilitator interpretation by consumer groups; on the other hand they create a perception framework that will include the concern, which 'indebtness' feeling created. With this presupposition that builds the main starting point of the study, tendencies becoming common in the usage of humor and humorous characters in television commercials have been tried to be put forward over bank commercials. In the study, after analyses regarding advertising and humor concepts, literature based evaluations have been made oriented to usage of humor and humorous characters ın bank commercials as an element of persuasion. In the research section of the study on the other hand, commercials of seven different banks between years 2014-2015 were analyzed by semiotic analysis method. How humor and humorous characters are used while forming an advertisement message and how this formed advertisement messages are interpreted are evaluated via the findings obtained as a result of the analyses done in the study. Keywords: Using Humor In Commercials, TV Ads, Bank Commercials, Semiotic Analysis.