Using cartoons might help brand your selling and drive home important messages. Although surprisingly inexpensive to gain, humor can be one of your most powerful advertising tools.

Humor puts your readers at ease. Readers appreciate a touch of humor in an otherwise overly serious world.

Humor operates on an emotional level, driving home your message in a far more memorable way than words alone. Humor makes sensitive topics more approachable while summarizing and reinforcing points that would otherwise be lost.

Different types of humor work best in different contexts. Many speakers start with a joke to put the audience at ease, or a story about a funny thing that happened on the way to the meeting.

But jokes and stories are less appropriate for written communications. Jokes may be misinterpreted and depend on delivery and timing for their effectiveness. Stories might take too long to tell.

Cartoons are perfect for print communications. Readers who typically check them out before reading the adjacent articles appreciate cartoons.

More important, cartoons communicate at a glance. A cartoon might attract your readers attention and drive home an important point in a memorable way.

The editorial page of any newspaper shows how workable humor could be in simplifying complex subjects and driving home a point of view.

Humor also enhances a visual dimension to your branding, differentiating your message from your competitors. Cartoons encourage readers to look at topics they might otherwise skip.

Where do you get cartoons? One of the best sources is the Cartoon Bank, www.cartoonbank.com. Here, you can license reproduction rights to cartoons that originally appeared in the New Yorker Magazine.

You might select from tens of thousands of cartoons. You may search by topic or keyword. After choosing an appropriate cartoon, you can find out how much it will cost to license it, and then you can download it.

Licensing fees are surprisingly reasonable for most business applications. For example, you might license New Yorker cartoons for use in presentations for just $19.95! For other purposes, the cost depends on where youre going to use it and how many all the people will see it.

There are, of course, other sources of cartoons. If you see a cartoon you like in a newspaper or magazine, write the cartoonist in care of the publication and inquire of about availability and pricing. If there is a particular cartoonist whose style you like, contact the cartoonist about a custom cartoon.

This has worked very well for me and I owned total rights to make use of the cartoon any way I wanted.

Cartoons are grand for the home page of your web site, newsletters, training materials and presentation visuals.

In each case, the unexpectedness of a cartoon immediately captures your audience or readers attention and visually reinforces your message.

Here are some suggestions for advertising with cartoons:

1.When in doubt, leave it out. If the cartoon does not perfectly support your point, leave it out.

2.Always add the