4 Ways to Use Humor as a Marketing Tool Follow these tips and you'll be laughing all the way to the bank.

This fall, Massachusetts congressional candidate Carl Sciortino posted a heartfelt, funny video to YouTube titled "Father's Son." Blurring the line between traditional political advertising and content marketing, it told a sweet, funny story in a little over a minute. Aaron Blake at The Washington Post called it "one of the more interesting campaign ads we've seen in a while." MSNBC's Chris Hayes tweeted to his 250,000-plus followers: "This ad's basically a masterpiece."

Why all the attention? Sciortino is openly gay, and his video plays with the idea of "coming out" to one's father. But in this case, he's coming out not as a gay man, but as a "Massachusetts liberal" to his conservative Tea Party parent. Gay? No biggie. But liberal? Uh-oh. "He's been like this for 35 years," Pops grouses in a kind of kids say the darndest things despair.