How To Use Humor To Make A Serious Ecommerce Product Fun (And Sell A Ton)

In this episode, host Francois Marchand is joined by Jessica Postiglione—CEO & Founder of Bonny—to talk about how to use humor to make your ecommerce product fun to sell, and sell a lot.

Interview Highlights

  • Jessica’s background [1:10]
    • Founder and CEO of Bonny, a fiber supplement that helps people poop better.
    • Bonny is Jessica’s second business. During the pandemic Jessica had extra time on her hands and became interested in her wellness. 
    • Fiber kept coming up in the tips she was reading about wellness. 95% of Americans don’t get enough fiber.
    • She tried fiber supplements and they tasted horrible—the ingredients were sugars, artificial flavors, dyes.
    • She started thinking about why we can’t make better fiber. Why can’t we make fiber taste good?
    • She didn’t want her company to be lumped in with other fibers—they wanted to stand out.
  • How to use humor to make a serious product. Why is humor so important to Bonny? [5:07]
    • We all want to be entertained at the end of the day. And that’s the same with your brand. It’s important to use humor with a point of view and a level of sophistication to it. It cuts through the noise.
    • Bonny means beautiful in Scottish. Fiber should make you feel beautiful but also look beautiful because it can help with your circulation.
    • Bonny can help with immunity, because 70% of the immune system is in your gut. So there's a prebiotic, meaning it will feed the good bacteria in your gut. It also regulates blood sugar because fiber slows digestion and regulates cholesterol levels.
  • Other brands that inspired Jessica to position Bonny the way she did [8:59]
  • How customers responded to the way Bonny products were presented, and how being lighthearted has helped with online sales [10:44]
    • They encourage people to be creative with their reviews—and to include potty humour in them.
    • You have to have a point of view and that’s the difficulty with humor—you will turn some people off.
    • How does your branding help convert people to customers? Sharing the content—people want to share their content because it piques their interest. They’re using humor and high-end design, and customers talking candidly about the product.
  • The initial target audience for Bonny [14:31]
    • They focus on people who have been taking fiber supplements and are upset or unsatisfied with it.
    • Their main demographic is older. But Millenials are very conscientious about what they put in their body, and about health and aging. 
    • And Gen Z is also curious and reading ingredients, but the people actively searching for a solution are people who have IBS or are looking for a solution to their problem.
  • Jessica’s tips for other ecommerce brands that see what Bonny is doing [16:19]
    • Start off with identifying what it means to you.

Don't use humor just to use humor. People can see through that. It has to be authentic to the brand and the category in what you're doing.

Jessica Postiglione
  •  Where is the line for you?
    • There are some categories where you can dial up the humour and some where you can go wild with it. But it depends on your customer.
  • Jessica’s advice from her ecommerce brand building experience [20:51]
    • Always look at your data, talk to your customers (does it resonate?), you have to deliver the product when you promised it and be there when things go wrong.

It's great to have the marketing and to have the language. But you also have to deliver the product when you promised it. And when things go wrong, you have to be there to fix them.

Jessica Postiglione

Meet Our Guest

Jessica is an expert storyteller, innovative founder, and stellar brand builder. She has a diverse background as an M&A investment banker, serial entrepreneur, and strategist for startups and multi-billion dollar corporations. Jessica has launched two disruptive consumer packaged goods brands from scratch including Bonny where she is CEO and Founder. Bonny is an amazing-tasting fiber supplement made with real fruit that makes you go. Jessica is a graduate of the Harvard Business School and the University of Chicago.

photo of Jessica Postiglione

Using humor to get the first sale, okay. But if you don't have that product to back it up, you've wasted a lot of time and effort building a brand that nobody wants to see grow in a profitable, sustainable way.

Jessica Postiglione

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