Funny Business - Part 3

Write Closer to the Context

“Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you do criticise him, you'll be a mile away and have his shoes.” - Steve Martin

A week before my first stand up gig I was struggling with how I could fill the 5 minutes. I had about 5 good jokes, but no real link between them or ‘toppers’* as they’re known by comedians (*a joke playing off a previous joke, that doesn’t need a new set up).

I was adopting the advertising staple for generating ideas. James Webb Young’s ‘Technique for Producing Ideas’. Whereby you read widely, digest that information and then do something else to take your mind off it. As James Webb Young states…

“This is the way ideas come: after you have stopped straining for them, and have passed through a period of rest and relaxation from the search.”

However, the pressure of thinking about not having enough material and having to perform in front of over 150 people meant I needed inspiration quickly, and relaxation wasn’t going to come easily.

I decided on an impromptu trip to a Monday night new material night ‘Old Rope’. Widely regarded as the best ‘new material might in London’ I was treated to a stellar line up of Dane Baptiste, Kiri Pritchard-Maclean, Lloyd Griffith, Rhys James & Phil Wang. All MC’d by the fantastic Tiff Stevenson. 

As I watched Phil Wang stumble into the room with his rucksack in tow, I saw him sit down on a sofa next to the other acts and furiously start writing notes. I realised that I’d listened to how Phil writes material on his episode of The Comedian’s Comedian Podcast. He makes a point that the best place to write jokes, is to put yourself closest to the context they will told.

“When I started doing stand up I literally typed it out prose, in on Word. Printed it out and learnt it as a script. Now I write one word on my phone and try and improv around it, maybe……I’ve started going to gigs early because that’s the mindset where I actually write good jokes. And that’s the only time that you’re aware of the context these jokes are going to appear in. And so you’re in your most relevant state of mind.” – Phil Wang

This was the exact approach I needed to take. I was not confident enough to riff on a subject with only a word on my phone like Phil, but I realised I should focus on the context, and treat my stand up more like having a conversation with an audience, than trying to write and deliver a monologue-like script. 

What this means for strategists.

It has become a real ambition for strategists to get out from the behind the desk and closer to ‘real people’. I was part of the first groups of planners sent out by Kev Chesters & Marie Maurer as part of their ‘Get Out There’ initiative at Ogilvy. I had seen Loz Horner’s great presentation about how talking to people is a planner's secret weapon. More recently Adam & Eve DDB’s Milla McPhee has discussed what she describes as ‘method planning’.

“I’ve coined a phrase called ‘method planning’ by putting myself, not just in the shoes of the consumer but really becoming the consumer myself. Sharing the emotional experience that they experience in and around my brand.” – Milla McPhee, How do you plan?, APG Noisy Thinking

All this reminded me of a book that Rory Sutherland recommended to me. A century old small work of fiction, Robert Updegraff’s Obvious Adams, presents the story of an advertising man that finds humbly ingenious solutions to business problems, by simply walking in the customer’s shoes. When tasked with selling ‘bond papers’, the protagonist O.B. Adams suggests to the owner, Mr. Merritt, advertising the details of manufacturing high quality paper to gain a competitive advantage.

"But we should be the laughing-stock of all the paper-makers in the country if they saw us come out and talk that way about our paper, when all of the good ones make their paper that way. Adams bent forward and looked Mr. Merritt squarely in the eyes. "Mr. Merritt, to whom are you advertising paper-makers or paper-users?" "– Extract from Obvious Adams, R. Updegraff, 1916

Such a large part of strategy is getting clients (and our own agencies) to realise we aren’t the consumer and things that are important to organisations aren’t necessarily relevant to the audience and vice versa. In the book the protagonist describes this convoluted task as being the result of a lack of thinking.

"Well," I pressed, "why don't more business men do the obvious, then? The men in your office say that they often spend hours trying to figure out what you are going to propose after they have decided what they think is the obvious thing to be done. And yet you fool them repeatedly.

Adams smiled. "Well," he said, "since I had that name wished upon me I have given considerable thought to that very question, and I have decided that picking out the obvious thing presupposes analysis, and analysis presupposes thinking, and I guess Professor Zueblin is right when he says that thinking is the hardest work many people ever have to do, and they don't like to do any more of it than they can help.” – Extract from Obvious Adams, R. Updegraff, 1916

The point being that, the cleverer you try to make the strategy, often the more convoluted, and further from the actual problem you get. Good strategy should seem obvious in hindsight. Just like a good piece of observational comedy. It just takes work to get there, and to deliver that information in a concise, clear way.

How can I apply this in my day to day? 

Get out of your own head & practice getting inside other’s.

Empathy like any good ability, is practised. I’m a huge fan of this talk from Dr. Nick Southgate from an APG event. In it he states that “The biggest barrier to understanding consumers is ourselves”.

“We’re going to do some research! What you’re researching is that most of the people in the room are too up themselves to go to Argos, buy something and pay attention to the experience. Research is often a ￡20,000 solution for snobbery, laziness, being unobservant and having a complete lack of imagination or empathy” – Dr. Nick Southgate

Nick makes a compelling case for learning to be more empathetic. Imploring planners to write down a list of all prejudices and beliefs about the people they are about to spend time with before research, so you know the difference between yourself and your audience. I highly recommend watching this talk for the way he describes ‘thinking yourself into the mind of the consumer’ regarding the purchase of an expensive handbag.

If you want to write better strategy. Do the obvious thing and get closer to the context and practice empathy.