When I worked at a PR agency, it was serious business. By this I mean humor rarely seeped into the client’s work. This was not because the client couldn’t appreciate it. It just wasn’t done. You want to be funny, go work for an ad agency.

This was unfortunate because I saw so many client campaigns that could have benefited from a dose of humor. But all too often the humorous idea from the “class clown” ended up on the cutting room floor.

But that was then and this is now.

In today’s information overload, nothing cuts through the noise quite like humor. Everyday I, and many others, click on links to funny blogs, articles, videos sent via popular social networks like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Funny stuff gets noticed and, more importantly, shared. Done right, humor can convey client messages in a way that is far more effective than just the plain facts.

Last week, I tapped into Twitter to collect some initial examples of how PR people are integrating humor into their work. What I discovered was that there are many creative PR professionals using humor and getting great results. That’s right, the “class clown” is finally getting some respect (apologies to Roger Dangerfield).

To get the conversation started, I asked whether humor was still owned by the ad agencies. Most disagreed.

Brian Cross (@vanceOpel), Managing Partner at Elasticity, the firm behind the well-known American Mustache Institute campaigns, wrote:

“Too many large agencies feel that their work is too important to bring humor to. However, we found that humor actually helps with earned media.  In fact, some of our biggest media successes have come as a result of humor. Creative firms and Ad agencies don’t understand earned media.  They can’t tell a story.  And a funny story is better than a funny picture.”

Scott Baradell (@Orchardo), President of Idea Grove, echoed this sentiment and wrote:

“Traditionally PR firms have been very serious — both in how they present themselves to journalists and to clients.  But that is changing. Now more and more of what PR firms do is aimed directly at the public — and the public is bored by serious. So if PR firms cede the entire realm of fun, humorous and/or emotion-based appeals to ad firms, they doom themselves to less relevance over time.”