Say it aint so!  Jon Stewart is more influential than the President. Can this be?  In fact, Stephen Colbert also ranked higher than the prez.  So did Conan.  And I believe it.

We see in our own research that humor can influence more than straight talk.  In our own little world, we use the portraits of the founders of Coldwell Banker Real Estate, LLC…Colbert Coldwell and Arthur Banker… on TV, in online display ads and on our website, and we see this trend all the time….the premise being that Colbert is the straight man and Banker is the funny one (which was the truth during their partnership!).

We subscribe to a third party consumer advertising service that has consumers rate advertising along a number of series of categories like watchability and influence…and we have seen that “the boys” outperform our competitor’s ads when they use their CEO as the spokesperson.  We also see click through rates higher for display ads with the founders than without, and we see  interest in getting more information when they are a part of the messaging.  Geico even has the gecko working alongside the CEO because they must know the CEO without a Gecko won’t be as successful.

So it doesn’t surprise me at all that being funny can be more influential than being serious.  and it’s great to see another Colbert (Stephen) ranking at the top like our Colbert (Coldwell)…