The present paper explores the role of humorous content as advertisement and package cue, based on the “encoding specificity principle”. It discusses how the “incongruity resolution process”, the “dual coding theory” and the “picture superiority effect” influence the processing intensity and direction, and provide practical guidelines for the design and the choice of a successful ad retrieval cue. It seems that a humorous retrieval cue (a humorous picture in particular) can increase not only ad and brand specific but also overall reactions. Moreover, humorous retrieval cues seem to direct viewer’s processing to the unexpected picture, to the headline of ad and to the most relevant brand claims, increasing the recall of these creative elements. On the contrary, humorous retrieval cues do not seem to affect the recall of other pictorial ad elements that are irrelevant with humor manipulation, such as the overall setting of the ad and other secondary claims.