Written by Rob Ringle
Steven Wright was performing at The University of Delaware for parents’ weekend not long ago. My wife and I wanted to see him. But my two collegian daughters were not exactly thrilled at the prospect of watching a comedian as old as their father.
So before buying tickets, I needed to sell them on Wright’s brand of comedy. After all they’d never heard of him. He couldn’t be “that good, dad.”
Any sales job needs a work starter. A creative brief. Here’s what I came up with.
Target insights/barriers.
My girls like Dane Cook and his high energy, rapid-delivery storyteller style. That he is young and attractive works for them, too. They’re in college, and they can see pretty much anything and anybody on hulu or youtube and anything that’s “really funny dad” they’ve already seen.
But they are in college, and they want us parents to think of them as more cerebral now that they’re immersed in higher learning.
Product/service/comedian features.
He mumbles, paces, talks in a soft deadpan non-stop. Heavy Boston accent. Bald, on top, with long stringy hair elsewhere. Usually wears a Red Sox hat.
He is uniquely funny. Genuinely one of a kind. Absolutely a rare breed. And at his age, girls, he won’t be around all that long.
Product/service/comedian benefits.
He will make you laugh. And that’s a good thing, considering all the pressure you’re under in college. Or that’s what you say on the phone when you call so infrequently.
Incentive to act/purchase now.
A young, hip comedian (head writer from Saturday Night Live) is booked, too. In fact, he’s going on first. Bonus: He sort of looks like Dane!
Do you want to invite friends or roommates? I’m buying…No? Are you sure??
Promise.
Mom and I will be pissed if you don’t go with us.
What would make this effort a success?
Okay, they agreed to go! My eldest daughter even brought her boyfriend. (They’re at Swarthmore just up the road.) And here’s how the show went down.
After the high-energy young comedian went on loudly FOREVER, Wright opened his gig with this random thought: “I wish the first thing I ever said as a child was the word quote.” He just put it out there. And moved on. After thirty minutes of his profoundly odd and ironic observations, that “quote” comment was totally forgotten.
His deadpan delivery forces an audience to listen more carefully than it wants to. Sitting there, you strain to suppress laughter so you don’t miss the next zinger. “When I woke up this morning, my girlfriend asked me ‘Did you sleep well?’ I said I made a few mistakes.”
It builds an amazing tension as you listen, as the need to laugh gets more and more urgent, sort of like a sneeze coming on. I snuck peeks at the girls, trying to gauge their mood. It seemed they were concentrating more than laughing. They weren’t texting. I took it as a good sign.
It’s hard to figure out when Steven is going to stop. And as I erupted laughing at his question “what’s another word for thesaurus?” he brought the opening full circle.
“If only quote was the first word out of my mouth. Then when I died, I could say end quote.” And he bowed, waved and left.
Later, over pizza and beer (legally), I got their review. “Steven was amazing, dad. Way better than that loud guy.” And that’s a win for the parents, if only for a moment. Then we spent a few minutes trying to think of another word for thesaurus.
Epilogue.
I suppose the moral of this is that a good brief works for any sales job. But it always helps to have a product, service or comedian you really think the world of.
