Stand-up and be counted; why comedy can make you a better creative

How does the process of writing and performing stand-up comedy contribute to the development of strategists and creatives in their roles?

In the 1984 masterpiece The Karate Kid we saw Daniel Larusso become a karate master, not in the dojo but by painting fences and waxing cars. The film taught us the importance of learning skills and being able to transfer them between disciplines (and enabled 80s parents to persuade their children that by doing chores they’d become a badass). 

The core skills of stand-up are very similar to creating impactful, creative campaigns.

The core skills of stand-up are very similar to creating impactful, creative campaigns; you need to get to that 'ah' moment, get people thinking “oh my god, that’s so true; I’ve never looked at it like that before”, and then deliver that insight in the most concise way to generate a huge emotional response. This is why we feel it’s great training for our team to do a stand-up comedy gig in front of a live audience.

Above: The Karate Kid taught us how painting a fence or waxing a car could be transferrable skills, stand-up comedy can do the same.

How does stand-up help strategists and creatives evoke emotional responses from an audience?

Stand-up comedy is an incredible art form. As a comedian, each joke you do needs to resonate with everyone in the audience. Each person in the audience must feel that the joke was written for them alone, personalisation at scale if you will. To achieve this, you need a specific type of insight that forces you to go deeper into what floats people’s boats rather than just what is around them. 

As a comedian, each joke you do needs to resonate with everyone in the audience... the same is true for advertising campaigns that make a lasting impression.

The same is true for advertising campaigns that make a lasting impression; why do you remember Always’ Like a Girl campaign and not, well, basically any other campaign they’ve done? Well, Like a Girl dug more profoundly into the insight that there is unconscious bias in society around what girls are capable of. The campaign challenged this view and made it feel personal to everyone. We have all heard the term 'Like a Girl' being used in a demeaning manner, and the campaign set out to trigger that personal relatability at scale – and that’s what we, as stand-up comedians, learn how to do.

Above: Always' Like a Girl dug into the insight that there is unconscious bias in society.

Could you share some specific lessons that strategists and creatives can learn from stand-up comedy?

After each team member performs their set, we debrief and list all the things they’ve learnt and how they can apply the learnings to their day job. Having done this for nearly 15 years, my list is quite long. Here are a few lessons I’ve learnt, some are obvious, some are more surprising:

Address the elephant in the room. If you look like Hagrid from Harry Potter, call it out because people won’t be listening to your jokes if they are thinking about how your big bushy beard resembles the character. What’s the relevance to campaigns here? If people have a perception about your product, call it out. Skoda did this brilliantly when it was bought by Volkswagen. Although they made really good cars, the brand appeal wasn’t quite right. They flipped it and did a campaign about people not wanting a Skoda with the line, “If only it were more expensive and not as good.”

If people have a perception about your product, call it out. Skoda did this brilliantly when it was bought by Volkswagen.

Don’t be afraid to fail. Sometimes, your failure is the thing that will make people love you. When you make a mistake on stage it breaks the divide between you and the audience. KFC did this brilliantly when they ran out of chicken. Their FCK campaign was so successful it made people want to queue outside KFCs to wait for the chicken to return.

Above: Skoda called out the preconceived notion of their cars to make a humorous impact. 

Identify the one thing you want people to remember and ramp it up. Have you ever been to a comedy show and tried to remember the jokes? Bloody hard, isn't it? As an audience member you are bombarded with messages but, if you are successful in getting the audience to remember one joke, they are likely to retell it, which creates some level of fame.  Obviously, people won’t remember everything we say, so we fixate on the one bit of the show we want people to remember. We do this on stage in many ways: bring in props, act something out, play with music or house lights, or do anything that changes the dynamic. For brands it is the same; what is the one thing we want people to talk about, and how can we land that message in a way that changes the dynamic?

Have you noticed any measurable improvements in the performance of those who have tried stand-up comedy?

Well, to be honest, I’ve never set out to measure it. This is an excellent idea though, one that I might adopt. 

I had one member of staff that became so good they left the industry to commit to stand-up fully!

The things we instantly see are that people write more concisely, they present more confidently, and they better understand the mechanics of how to make things more emotional.

Above: KFC embraced their mistakes and, when their shops ran out of chicken, released a campaign facing up to that. 

How does the experience of performing stand-up contribute to people's professional development? 

Sometimes badly. I had one member of staff that became so good they left the industry to commit to stand-up fully! Those that decided to stay in the creative industry often talk about becoming fearless but not overconfident; they become less afraid to fail, which is a huge psychological and business benefit

What success stories are there around those who have used stand-up comedy to enhance their skills in engaging audiences?

Our recent work, which launched Peroni Nastro Azzurro Stile Capri, was developed by Charlotte Manners and Joan Crowley, two creatives who had just finished stand-up training. They applied every single element they learnt into that campaign. You can see the plot encouraging the audience to use their creativity to escape; a twist in the execution that drives an emotional response. 

When they presented the work in the form of a stand-up set, they took the client on a powerful journey.

However more than that it also affected how they sold the work to the client. The brand had never dabbled with humour before and, when they presented the work in the form of a stand-up set, they took the client on a powerful journey. It was amazing to watch, and I love the work they made.