Using Comedy to Hit 250M People & The 5 Rules of Humor When Advertising | Kleier Brothers (#186)
We've distilled 5 different points necessary to make sure you're not doing it wrong.
Speaker 2:I'm Jim Huffman and this
Speaker 3:is If I Was Starting Today, a collection of conversations about half baked startup ideas, growth tactics, and stories from founders, including my own journey as a business owner. All of the content is centered around one question. What would you do if you were starting today?
Speaker 2:Today on the podcast, I have Ryan and Sean Klier. These are, 2 guys I've I've known for a while, and it's been so fun to see what they've done. Sean is an actor, comedian, improv star. He's been on everything from Ant Man and Marvel shows to the intern with Robert De Niro. Ryan is a producer and comedian in his own right.
Speaker 2:They have their own creative agency, and they've helped produce videos that have gotten over 250,000,000 views. And they've done it all with comedy and humor, which is really hard. We go on the podcast today to talk about how he make a video go viral by being funny. They talk about comedy 101 and the 5 things to consider when trying to be funny. They get it to how you can come up with ideas and frameworks for brainstorming.
Speaker 2:They even get tactical on how they edit and make videos to put it out there. But just talk about all the things they've done that have bombed, things that have worked, the small tweaks they've made to make a video go from thousands of views to millions of views. It's really fun to hear their approach, and there's a reason why huge brands and actors from Ed Helms to Jennifer Lawrence work with them to make video content. If you're at all looking to get better at storytelling, making content, doing videos, and you wanna do it in creative way, I think you'll get a lot out of this episode. And in the show notes, I'll put a link to their website and some videos they've done that we referenced in the past.
Speaker 2:I really hope you enjoyed this episode with Ryan and Sean as we talk about their agency and what they're building. Ryan, how do we know each other? When did we meet?
Speaker 1:I think we met, like, 14 or 15 years ago, maybe, in New York. We were running in the same circles. I was dating someone that is friends with your wife. I was at your wedding. So that was the first time I met you guys, but it was close to the first.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And I don't know if Sean has been to this magical place, but we really bonded over one night at a Ukrainian spot in SoHo where you know it's gonna be an interesting night when you walk in and a 7 year old woman hands you a shot of vodka, and it's not an option. You throw that shot of vodka down your throat before you enter and you walk out and realize they get their money back on that and you pay other costs for it, but I'm still feeling from that night.
Speaker 4:I love how on brand Ukraine is. Just in all respects, they're just like, this is a fake shop going back vomit, then we bring meal. They never depart. They're very true
Speaker 1:to who they are. Horseradish infused vodka is what we had.
Speaker 4:Was that what it was? Yeah. I'll never forget that. Clear your nostrils.
Speaker 2:Seriously, if you think you're coming down with the flu, pop over there, and they'll clear you right up. But it's been fun, though, because as we met, it was right as I was trying to start the agency. And and you guys were off to the races with what you're doing with video work and, Sean, what you're doing with the acting. So it's been fun to watch from the sidelines. We're gonna get into the background of what you guys have done and what you're doing because it's super impressive.
Speaker 2:This podcast is about me and my needs. So this thing can be very self serving. You guys do something that so many brands, mine included, wanna do. We wanna make a video that's hilarious, goes viral, like the Dollar Shave Club, and it is so hard to do. It's like, what is the formula?
Speaker 2:Ryan, you did a talk on this that kinda knocked my socks off. You guys do this. Sean, you do improv, and you're a comedian. Can you help people like me? I wanna do comedy.
Speaker 2:What is comedy 101 when trying to do a video? I feel like there are a million ways to do it wrong that so many people can fall into those traps.
Speaker 1:A 100%.
Speaker 4:Do you wanna
Speaker 1:take that away, Ryan? I'll start by saying that you don't get there immediately, and you don't get there by reading a book and being, like, I'm a comedian now. You get there by eating it over and over again for a decade and making really horrible, terrible stuff. I did read the
Speaker 4:book, and then I got up on stage. I did stand up for the first time. I was booed out of the room and probably booed out of the room for years because people think humor is something that spontaneously comes from you, which is true after you understand it and do the work to there's theory behind it and an approach that you need to really have a skill set in. Otherwise, you go up and make a fool of yourself. Alright.
Speaker 4:Sorry, Ryan. I interrupted you.
Speaker 1:But that's how you get better is you just grind down the hard edges of the not funny until you get to a sculpture that looks a little bit better. My wife's a stand up comedian. She's been at it 8 years now and is crushing on stage wherever she gets up, but it takes a long time to get there.
Speaker 4:That's the adage about stand up. You are as old as the years you've been doing it would make Jess 8. And that just kind of translates how comedians think about comedy is that it does take a while. And once you are 15 or 20 or 25, Louis CK, before we knew how horrific he was I don't think you could go back and watch that stuff and be like, oh, that's still funny. You'd be like, no.
Speaker 4:That's way too real. But he didn't get good until he was 40 something. This isn't to say it's impossible to understand and know how to do it soon. It takes that long time.
Speaker 1:We've distilled 5 different points necessary to make sure you're not doing it wrong. Rule number 1 is to be authentic. If you're authentic and coming to your audience with a message that strikes true to them, which is more art than science and takes a long time of intuition to understand, once you get
Speaker 4:to a point where you can speak authentically and surprise them, then you'll elicit an emotional response. That's what you're looking for. I'll pop in with an example as you lay these out. Right? When I think authentic, I draw a distinct distinction between progressives, homeowners who are turning into their parents.
Speaker 4:The trope there that makes us laugh is, like, god, that is what parents do. And, like, oh, god, I did do that. The core is authenticity because that trope is real. It's valid. So we'll talk more about how to find those things, those tropes.
Speaker 4:But then think of Liberty Mutual's limu emu who is just a weird thing. And I don't think any of us are, like, looking forward to seeing what the emu does next because the comedic premise was, like, here's a weird thing, and there's no authenticity to that. Who cares? And, yeah. There's nobody who's, like, yeah.
Speaker 4:I've often thought what if there's an emu. Oh, no one has never thought that.
Speaker 1:So there's your difference. Yeah. A a quote I really like about this is from Jon Stewart. It says that comedy is truth written better than you could have said it yourself, and that's sums a lot of it up.
Speaker 2:I couldn't agree more. Like, in New York, whenever we go to the Comedy Cellar, my favorite comedians are the one where you walk away. He nailed it. It's better than I could have articulated it. Those are my that's when you know it's a good comedian or set when you walk away and you can't get it out of your mind.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh. I'd never thought of it that way. For me, that's why I get really excited with comedy or any of these viral campaigns where they just knock it out of the park because they're so in it.
Speaker 4:People can hear that and then say, what about absurdity? There's some ridiculous humor. It still has a core of truth that we go bananas from. We'll talk about that in a little bit.
Speaker 1:If you're authentic and surprising, you have a very clear point of view on the subject matter at hand. We work with a lot of political groups, so that clear stance needs to be clearly articulated from a brand perspective. 4th is playing to the height of your intelligence. There's a tendency in comedy improv classes where someone comes out and they're like, what's a stapler? And you're like, we're way ahead of you, bud.
Speaker 1:Let it go. You're as smart as the character that you're playing, and you have the knowledge that your character has. Let's move it along. The 5th point is something they teach at UCB really well, which is this amorphous sort of idea of gate.
Speaker 2:That's Upright Citizens Brigade, which is an improv trip for people listening.
Speaker 1:Sean and I both went through all the improv training at Upright Citizens Brigade in in New York around 15 to 18 years ago. Years of classes and going on stage and being very unfunny. But this idea of game is something that they teach later on. The concept is to distill what is the premise of the sketch, scene, or commercial that you're putting together. And it can be as simple as a pattern that gets broken or as complicated as a worldview distilled into a character or a place.
Speaker 1:Once you settle on what this thing is, then you're asking the question, if that's true, what else is true about this world? One of the best examples of work that we've done around this was Gil Fulbright, the honest politician. This politician says the quiet part out loud, that he doesn't care about you, that he just cares about his donors, that he's in it for money. If this character is true, what else is true? Well, he would drive a bus with his face on the side that says, I'm for sale, and he would give campaign speeches and dog other politicians about what they're doing wrong.
Speaker 1:You can kind of take this idea and then build out a world from it. Concepts for advertising sort of just fall into place.
Speaker 2:I think that's so cool. And another thing you hit on is, like, you're giving me these guardrails of comedy. I love authenticity, clear point of view, and playing to the height of a person's intelligence. But don't think of a funny idea for knee to approve shirts, and I'm staring at a blank piece of paper. What's more intimidating than that?
Speaker 2:You guys have head on and you've kind of joked this idea of brainstorming, how it's like a horrible word, but it's actually good in practice. How did you guys close this huge account? You you have the foundations of comedy, but how do you be like, okay, we're in the writing room. Let's be funny. And let's think of someone's gonna go viral and get millions of views.
Speaker 2:That's a lot of pressure. How do you give yourself the space to be in the trust tree where you can spitball? How do you approach that?
Speaker 4:It's important among each other and among anybody we're interacting with to say no bad ideas. Every idea triggers the next idea. So, like, let's create a nice, safe sandbox. Let's also put parameters on it. You know, one of the most important things you can do is not look at a desert and say, where were you gonna find a sand castle?
Speaker 4:Look at a sandbox. Here's our budget. Here's our targets. Here's what we want to achieve with this content or campaign. It creates parameters so that you're not swimming in an open sea.
Speaker 4:Then you actually begin to apply game theory. I would say you agree with that. That would be your next step. Right, Ryan? You would look at the product or the company and how it's perceived and how would people interact with the problem that the product is solving or the company is solving.
Speaker 4:And you would say, what is true about that for people? And is there a truth within there that could be exaggerated or made to feel like a larger problem than it is for someone or less of a problem than it is for somebody? Nudge these truths in different directions in your mind. See if anything starts to trigger you to feel like, oh, that's kinda funny. That's kinda interesting.
Speaker 4:And it's a process of distilling these little bits about the product, about the company, or about your client that might resonate with people, it doesn't happen immediately. We could do it with sweat proof t shirts and generate 10 really terrible ideas in 5 minutes. Two really good ideas in an hour and probably the idea that we want a day or 2 from now.
Speaker 2:Is there something to having space to let it cook and then coming back to it? Because I feel with writing, I just won't get something on a page and then go away, and then I come back a little bit fresher. Do you have to give it that time to cook?
Speaker 4:A 100%. Yeah. A 100%. Especially when you think you have it. The mistake I still make is, like, oh, that's the idea.
Speaker 4:That's great. And I'm ready to go to whoever needs to see this. Let's share it far and wide and then a few days I'm like,
Speaker 1:oh, goddamn it.
Speaker 4:Why didn't we just take another minute or 2?
Speaker 2:GEICO also has a lizard? Yeah. I can't do that.
Speaker 4:That's where I got that from every commercial I've seen every 30 minutes for the last 10 years. The incubation time is key and more than you think.
Speaker 1:And, like, 8 hours of sleep, getting exercise, eating a Mediterranean diet, all all those things are really important to and and being relaxed because your best ideas come in the shower or on a run or when you're out on a drive, whatever you're doing that relaxes you, do a little bit more of that. And it's not going to feel like work, but your brain is always churning on the problem even when you're not actively working on it. And you're going to make connections that you wouldn't see anyway. When all that groundwork is done, like, what Sean's talking about is, like, this middle section of problem solving between the goals that you have at the top. Brain swarming is really about creating a diagram.
Speaker 1:At the top, you have your goals or sub goals, things that you want to hit. You want to reach this amount of people. You want them to get this message. And at the bottom, you put all the resources at your disposal. We have video production crew.
Speaker 1:We have paid advertising. We have our newsletter. We have this. These are all the ways that we can reach people. In the middle are ideas connecting as many resources as possible to as many goals as possible.
Speaker 1:Creating that sort of framework is how you're going to be able to brainstorm in a group, which is, like, Sean and I don't play charades against us. We can read each other's minds. Sean will pull an obscure Simpsons reference out of nowhere, and I'll get 3 lines ahead of him because we have over 30 years of being friends and connection. With a big group or a new client, running this process is going to draw new connections that outsiders wouldn't necessarily understand about your brand and what you're trying to do. We might be able to make connections, and your internal team is going to have more resources and knowledge of what's available and the goals you want to hit.
Speaker 1:And so doing that work together is going to lead to more connections, which is really the game.
Speaker 2:I I like those guardrails to set on how to approach this. Another thing you guys have hit on is also factoring in or even starting with the emotion you want to create or elicit. You can hit on a few different ones. Can you talk about what are those emotions that you're kind of pulling at and then how you factor in the emotions or in a shareability?
Speaker 1:Totally. So there's there's 4 sort of categories that we try to evaluate ideas that come out of a a brainstorm or just a brainstorming session. The first thing that we look at is what what emotion does it elicit, and is that emotion really, really strong? I had a friend that worked at a company in London that was doing testing on video marketing, and they were filming people's faces as they showed them viral videos. And they could predict within 90% how well a video would do based on how much someone's face changed when they watched a piece of content.
Speaker 1:So that eliciting of a strong emotional reaction is your number one signifier that the concept that you have is really, really good. The only way to internally test that when you're writing a concept is if reading it on the page makes someone who hasn't heard the idea laugh, you're on the right track because that is really a conceptual jump that reading something and then laughing from it is really, really huge. But in terms of what those emotional responses are, happiness, surprise, admiration, and sometimes anger are some of the best motivators, but you gotta be really careful with anger. Yeah. Bachelorette politics.
Speaker 2:Alright. So for Neet, what's the low hanging fruit? How do I, like, minimize the chance that this will fail? What should I go for?
Speaker 4:I'm gonna hop in with a few ways that people inevitably do this wrong, and I think it starts with prioritizing your result. Limu Emu is an example of people being like, we really want everyone to pay attention, so let's do something weird. What's weird? This is weird. Go for it.
Speaker 4:That honestly doesn't often trigger any kind of excitement from me. I think the most fail safe way you could do it is to get real honest with your brand or product first. Here's an example. Arby's sucked for a long time, and arguably it still does, depending on how much you like the meat. But they grew revenue by a mass amount when they switched from being, like, we sell good sandwiches, and everybody was like, no, you don't.
Speaker 4:They've been like, we got some meats. They began to interact with their audience authentically. And anyone can do that. It's easier for an existing brand because you already have an identity, and you could play against it. As Pepto Bismol, you could say, here's a bottle of Pepto Bismol, share this commercial and no one will.
Speaker 4:Or you could be like, hey, no one wants to hear from Pepto Bismol because it means something bad has already happened to you. And people will be like, oh, that's a more interesting way to engage with Pepto Bismol. You know, for d to c, it's probably harder because there's no existing identity, but there is an existing relationship to this problem you're trying to solve. I would put your attention towards that problem, how people are experiencing it, or even how people are experiencing all these brands coming to solve that same problem, how people are experiencing your competitors in that space. And I would build a concept off of that that can interact with customers of their expectations for your new brand.
Speaker 2:I like that. It's like start with the authenticity of what problem you're solving or your existing brand and see what emotion is connected to it rather than this has to be the funniest ad ever made or I have to be the old spice guy riding on a unicorn or whatever he the centaur. I forgot what he was, but that thing was everywhere for a while.
Speaker 1:I'm on a horse.
Speaker 4:Oh, there's your absurdity. Pin pin him. When we get back to absurdity, I wanna talk about him.
Speaker 2:We're in the trust tree. We're doing the brainstorming, swarming. We're thinking through the emotions and how people wanna share. We run quite a bit of Facebook and Instagram ads, and you could put so much work into something. But if you don't package it the right way, if you don't have the right headline, if you don't have the right thumbnail, all this work does not matter.
Speaker 2:It's really the first three seconds on a lot of our, like, u g user generated content ads and whatnot, where we're just getting so into the minutiae, but that's worth it. Are there some final mile things that you guys really put a lot of TLC into? Because you're like, this can make or break the ad or make or break this amazing video we put all this time into.
Speaker 1:Definitely. Having a hook within that first 3 to 5 seconds, especially depending on the platform, is really key and important. The first opening line or opening image we are presenting the audience with right off the bat is so important. You mentioned the headline is really important. Sometimes a headline is so good, you write the concept to fit that.
Speaker 1:We got tasked with making a spot for the Drug Policy Alliance, and we brought Rachel Leigh Cook back to do an updated This Is Your Brain on Drugs spot, and that headline is like, Rachel Lee Cook comes back to right a wrong that was sort of presented before with bananas. We're like, anything we do within that, as long as we start with her holding up a frying pan, that's going to catch. Sometimes, it's that simple of just like, oh, this. And if you can execute, then it's really great. And you do have to execute.
Speaker 1:There's timing issues with comedy. We've seen a lot of great premises get destroyed in edit or the direction height of your intelligence. It can be understated and people will get it. You can trust your audience. Headline is really, really important.
Speaker 1:The other thing that we're always thinking about is when your audience shares this, what does that say about them? What does it make them look like? What's their reputation? Do they look cooler or do they look like they're hawking for a brand, crass, cynical, or lecturing? That's all negative.
Speaker 1:We don't want that. We want them to look cooler and smart. That's the only reason why you share anything online, to look better and to share an emotional state. We distilled this when Sean came to me 17 years ago with this brilliant idea of taking a bullhorn around New York and giving Bill Pullman's speech from Independence Day.
Speaker 4:On the 4th July, it was celebratory.
Speaker 1:But it was so sharing it made you look a little nostalgic, a little ironic, a little ahead of the curve, but also I love patriotism there because it is genuinely moving. It really created a good vibe when they put it out to their friends. And we're like, oh, why did this do so well? And it took us years of thinking about it to break that down.
Speaker 2:Isn't it funny? Reverse engineering. Holy smokes. We actually did do the formula we didn't even know we were doing. Sean, you look hilarious because you look like a presidential candidate that's that's on the road, that's really campaigning.
Speaker 2:You got the rolled up sleeves and stuff. Were there any things to that headline or thumbnail or the opening spot that made it work, or was it just the fact that you nailed the content?
Speaker 4:It's overlapping Venn diagrams of success. If you have one circle that's just funny, that doesn't mean people are gonna see it. But funny mixed with IP, timely and relevant, which it was released on the 4th July, amplifies your shot at success. Yo, though we've made stuff that we're, like, that's gotta hit 3 or 4 Venn diagrams. We feel really good about it, and people didn't care.
Speaker 4:So there's still a lot of randomness to the Internet and mystery. It's hard to accept because they're, like, no. We want to succeed. We did everything right. Give us yes.
Speaker 4:Love us. Love what we do. Now do it. But, definitely, it increases your chances of success to kinda hit multiple hot spots.
Speaker 2:Do you have any examples of things that you posted that totally flopped and then you did tweaks where it works? Because we were doing some ads for Neap, and we had this one that I was like, this is a banger. This is the one. And we did the test and it didn't work. And I was like, the data's wrong.
Speaker 2:And we made some tweaks to the opening thumbnail. We had not that really attractive professional model. And so one that was looked more like the average day person, and it started to work. But we're about to just toss it aside, and I've been guilty of calling things a fail early. Any examples of ones that you tweaked or how you think about testing these things?
Speaker 2:What is normal when putting things out there? Oh, we do 2 variations or we're doing 30 variations.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's a difficult question. I mean, AB testing for your thumbnail image and your headline, like all that, you got to write a ton of those to get one that really works. So write a bunch of those and then do the AB testing, but sometimes conceptually speaking, like especially when you make a spot, you're locked in. What you've made is what you've made and you shot it a certain way so that it would be a certain type of thing to work conceptually.
Speaker 1:So, sometimes you can't change it all that much. Sometimes it's just timing. This needed to be released when the news cycle was talking about it and people were talking about it. There's a little bit more energy about it. Sometimes sitting on something that you love because it might play better later, that could be helpful.
Speaker 4:There's some stuff that's misleading about testing generally. There's a huge difference between an audience that's being asked to evaluate something and an audience that is passively interacting with something. And I don't think that we take a good accounting of that when we push our ideas forward because we've seen a lot of bad choices happen based on testing that end up neutering comedy or neutering the surprise because people are sitting there thinking too hard about it. This isn't to say that you do away with testing it at all, but have some intuition about what is actually going to excite people or make them pause to watch it. And I think testing is most important for that initial thumbnail or click, but not to evaluate the entirety of a spot.
Speaker 4:And I I think that there's just a lot of risk in there
Speaker 1:that we haven't yet baked in. There's a lot of testing of political spots in particular. So whenever we're working with politically affiliated groups, we're listening to the focus groups that they've done. I've sat in on some of those focus groups. I've been behind the glass to see some of that stuff.
Speaker 1:And when you give 12 people a choice between 2 bad options, the data you get back is not great. It's that good. So part of it is really putting the creative muscle behind it so that when you do show 2 options, there are 2 really good options. Because when you're scrolling through things, your competition isn't the AB test of what you're putting out. Your competition is a gorilla spinning in a bucket of water or a dog that catches a Frisbee off a dock and lands.
Speaker 1:Like, it's everything. But if you have to dig too hard to get to the message or you're asking an audience to really climb a hill to get to where you're at, it's never gonna work. You can guarantee that it's not gonna work.
Speaker 2:That that's a good call out because I think that can be glorified a little too much where you're missing the forest from the trees. So you kinda mentioned how you guys got started. You guys were living in New York. You're doing comedy, improv. Good for you for sticking with it.
Speaker 2:Like, if I get booed off of stage, I'm like, well, I'm done. Clearly, you have to do that to break through. Like, Sean, you've gone on to be an actor. You've been in a Marvel movie, grinding out this whole production thing going with huge accounts and budgets. Was that always the plan, or did it just evolve?
Speaker 4:I think stumbling blindly is sort of our main method of, moving through life, I would say. That's our chosen approach.
Speaker 1:We're definitely lucky in our respective endeavors and our combined endeavors. Sean got his first agent off the Bill Pullman Independence Day spot.
Speaker 2:Isn't that amazing getting discovered like that?
Speaker 4:Yeah. I actually didn't think I would end up acting because I'm a comedian by nature, and I like doing what we do more sometimes. And then that stuff's just started to take on a life of its own. So it was definitely a stumble blind sort of thing, But this is too much fun for us. We love sitting down, spinning up ideas, and creating the craziest shit we could think of because that's that that's really what I wanna be doing, and I honestly don't have the energy to get boot off stage anymore.
Speaker 1:I remember one of your first stand up gigs, Sean. It we it was, like, right down the street from us at the creek. Sean was just, like, I have to take a walk and think about my life. Like, this is so bad. I really need to
Speaker 2:I was, like, do
Speaker 1:you want some feedback? He was, like, no.
Speaker 4:I just got my feedback. It was blank stares and a couple of actual angry people. I yeah. It was real bad.
Speaker 2:But then you keep doing it. What's the worst part of bombing? Is it while you're bombing the awareness that it's bombing and you're like, I still have 4 minutes? Or is it afterwards? Even with kids, I think about getting them those reps where you fall down, how you get back up, how you have grit, because that stuff's hard.
Speaker 2:With comedy, it's so much more heightened because it's so real. Whereas in business, I can fail in silence, and it maybe doesn't hurt as bad. What's your mental state, and how do you come out?
Speaker 4:Oh, that's interesting. The worst part is the moment you're bombing, and you definitely have to get through many more minutes on stage. Time slows, and you're panicking, but you're still talking, and it's getting worse. You just wish you could hold the words back into your mouth. You just wanna crawl away and die.
Speaker 4:That's the worst, but then there's something extra difficult because afterwards, you can't help but evaluate it. 1st comes I'm worthless. And once you get through it, you go, okay. What about what I'm doing is just horribly wrong? How do I need to shift my entire approach and mindset?
Speaker 4:And all this needs to happen within the course of a couple, of a day, maybe, because you're due to be on stage again the next night. If you're gonna gonna keep doing this, you gotta keep doing it. That second part is hardest because you see the comics, you go, no. That was funny. Screw that audience.
Speaker 4:I'm gonna do it again. And the people who end up succeeding are saying, okay. I got it wrong. The audience was right. What do I do to fix this?
Speaker 4:That part's extra hard because you don't have the answer yet until you go up there and you screw up even more and a few more times. And I remember that one horrible bomb I got. The feedback was for me, it was like, oh, those are made up stories. What I was doing on stage didn't actually happen, so there was no truth to it. So I knew that there was no truth to it, but didn't tell me what was funny or what wasn't.
Speaker 4:But it steered me towards, okay, let me say some stuff. Let let me now go on and be a bit more vulnerable about who I am. And that's the first step. You know? So unfortunately, there were many more, like, rakes to the face I had to take to step forward with it.
Speaker 2:Right. I I like her. Like, oh, do you want feedback? Nope. I I got it.
Speaker 4:I'm good. Thank you. My god.
Speaker 1:I think
Speaker 4:you gave it to me eventually.
Speaker 1:I don't know that that's true, but I do know that the hardest part about doing something standing in front of somebody else and expecting to make them laugh is you have to really have a very strong understanding of yourself and how you come across and the general vibe that you put out there. Just like a brand needs to understand who they are, what they talk about, what their values are, who they're speaking to, what they're offering. It's the same sort of process. One of my favorite jokes that Sean used to do on stage was he would pause and then look at his hand and go, you know, I should have written down notes. I drew a dog on my hand.
Speaker 1:And that would always get a laugh because of his general sweet himbo nature. He understood exactly how he came across. Like, no one's dumb enough to actually do that, but the kernel of truth inside of it is enough for people to be like, yeah, you sweet dumbo. That's so funny.
Speaker 4:I did I did play a dummy on stage. It came naturally. And I might have to finally agree that that is my authentic self.
Speaker 1:But even the dumb ideas that were being presented, there was a second layer of truth over that of, like, you understood why that was funny. Play a character because we're both from Kentucky and we both moved to New York and now LA. But playing off that Kentucky persona of like, I don't know, man. This is what Fox News tells me is true, so it must be true for you, too.
Speaker 4:You asked earlier what the best way to do when you have that blank page in front of you. Having had this conversation, what I'm thinking is what I would do next. For any given brand, I would say, what if that brand had to stand on stage and do a stand up set? If they started with with what they want the audience to believe, the audience would boo them. But if they started with what's true about themselves, that's why often the first joke you'll see a stand up do is self deprecating.
Speaker 4:Because it signals to your audience, I know what you guys think of me. You know, there's a lot of different types where it's honest, like, I sound like Dora the Explorer's backpack if you have a tiny voice, you know, and everybody's laughs because that's true, or you step on stage and you go, I know, I have a very imposing disposition. So you've gone the other direction. You've used bravado to sarcastically tease yourself and everybody still can hop on with the joke. You know?
Speaker 4:There's so many directions you can go with the same joke but it all pulls back to what people believe to be true about you. And brands need to start with what people to believe to be true about them.
Speaker 2:I think it's one of my favorite comedians. I've seen a bunch like Ryan Hamilton. I think we've seen him together in New York. He has an opening joke that does exactly that, which is very cool. I wanna talk about the business side of your all's video production creative agency.
Speaker 2:You all work in a world where you can close huge 6 figure deals. Right? But then it can be potentially feast or famine. I I know from experience as an agency. 1 minute you're like, how are we going to hire all these people?
Speaker 2:Then another man, you're like, is anybody out there? Talk to me around the path of where you're thinking for this, and I'm going to lead the witness here and give my opinions on what you guys should do. Here's my first one. I love that you're niching down on political campaigns. I wish you would come over and help more and more brands because you have the chops.
Speaker 2:You guys have already done that with what we work with. And there's 2 ways in. 1 is the unfair advantage having Sean and what you're doing on the acting side. There's 2 models. Right?
Speaker 2:There's the obviously like Ryan Reynolds and Fastvertising and what those guys are doing, which is amazing. Ryan, we've talked about this, Sean. Have you seen it's GregTube and Nate Weir? They're basically an improv group that has their own creative agency. They launched on the back of True Classic where they would do these videos for True Classic, and they're hilarious.
Speaker 2:And it blew up their creative agency. And now there's a wait list to get a bid from them. I see the stuff they do, and it's really good. But, honestly, I see the stuff you guys do. There's no reason you guys shouldn't be doing that because I talked to my buddy, Ryan Hamilton, and he talks about sometimes the best thing a comedian can do is leverage the ad spend of a brand to get their face out there to then blow up.
Speaker 2:Even Flow from Progressive, everyone knows Flow because of the ad dollars Progressive was pumping in into it. So what I'm thinking you guys should do, even though you didn't ask for my opinion, but you have such an unfair advantage of the comedy chops that you can produce. You can actually be the character in it, and then you're growing following as well, Sean.
Speaker 1:I agree. There's another group on the East Coast called the Harmon Brothers that do a lot. I think that's probably closer because Sean is not and Sean, don't take this the wrong way. Sean's not Ryan Reynolds in terms of cultural impact. So maybe if you're interested in being the face of a brand, Sean, we can go that route.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to get my wife to do more. She does a lot of UGC stuff on Instagram and and TikTok. That could be a tough racket. But in terms of what we're set up to do, we started in politics because we were interested and wanted to make a difference in 'eight, 'nine when the housing market crashed and we were like, we need to get money out of politics. We found the group that believed in us enough to say, Here's $300 will you make us something?
Speaker 1:And it kind of started from there. Do you remember? Yeah. Actually, we might have done one for free. We did feeders for $300
Speaker 4:I thought it was 3,000. I would never have agreed to that.
Speaker 1:It was the 2010s, you know, before inflation. To gain a foothold, we needed to make a niche for ourselves. Comedy and politics is a weird niche to be in, but we've been at this enough and we have enough proofs of concept that branching out into other verticals is really the next step. So whatever we can do, and part of that has been a small step, which is political campaigns. There's a difference between awareness marketing and campaign marketing in politics, but those principles that we've shared with you today and that we talk about and we do are applicable in so many different rounds that we can help d to c brands, you know, sell more t shirts, for example.
Speaker 4:Yeah. There's definitely a a big wide open door for us to walk through the t shirts. I I think there is something to where campaigns are at politically or marketing wise right now that there's a huge opportunity because everybody knows campaign ads, and everybody knows they're all the same. They start with negative music that says so and so, or they start with positive music being like, we need change, and that guy is dressed like every human you've ever seen run for office. So, obviously, we're doing something wrong here because that defies everything anyone would tell a brand to do.
Speaker 4:So there's applying not just humor, but fundamental branding to an individual when they run for office. And I think that there's just enormous opportunity to get behind people that we believe in in that manner. So I'm excited about some of our focus there. But at the same time, you know, people need this kind of they just need these ideas in the back of their head. Every brand should say, even if we don't go this direction, we want these ideas in the back of our head because if this isn't working, we need to pivot.
Speaker 4:Or at the very least, we need to understand how our customer base views us. How would they tease us? That's valuable information for a brand to have because it does open marketing doors.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think you guys are smart to stay premium and not try and productize this. I do think people would pay you not even for the final output, but to come in and run a session on how to think through comedy. Then they could use that and go off on their own, and you could scale yourself a little bit more. Because I forget what agency where they, like, basically sell their comedy writing room to brainstorm concepts and headlines and whatnot.
Speaker 2:And, I mean, certain companies that have the budget are more than willing to do that. It's energizing for the team to get training
Speaker 4:on that. Totally. You could easily assign each person to to bring 5 weird ideas about their company or 5 little things they think are niche about their company or 5 ways people are talking about their company online. Everybody comes with one of those and you spin a comedic premise off of each of them. You'd leave a session with 20 premises or whatever.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Why don't we do that? Let's do that.
Speaker 1:We have done that before with our nonprofit clients, but not wholesale, not as gun for hire.
Speaker 4:I think the most important part to remember is that we've been too altruistic for too long working with nonprofits that we believe in. It's time for us to find the skeeziest industries that we could possibly partake with and make them fun, baby. Make everybody love Exxon again. Let's do it.
Speaker 2:We can do it. Zelda Morris needs some comedy injected into their campaign. We could find that for sure.
Speaker 1:What's the nicest thing anyone's done for you in your professional career? I've got this, Sean. Early on when we started making videos, a nonprofit that had just gotten started called United Republic that ended up becoming Represent. Us hired us kind of after the success of one video and they're like, We want you guys to do this more often. It was 3 days after I quit my job and I got the phone call that was like, come, come like incorporate and then like start contract work for us.
Speaker 1:And I was like, okay, this is amazing. What I didn't know until 7 years later was that there was a donor behind that. Her name is Jamie Wolf. She lives in LA. We've gotten to know her very well recently.
Speaker 1:She's an absolute sweetheart and very quietly behind the scenes was funding our work without any recognition. She just liked what we did and continues even today. Last year, we wrote another Guilful Bright Spot and shot it. We had the budget, put it together. Jamie heard that we had done that and cut the check for the entire production because she was just like a patron, you know, like a Medici level, like, oh, I will give a grant to these artists.
Speaker 1:She's a very sweet person and has done that for lots of different artists and architects making LA beautiful. She's incredible and so sweet, and we really owe our careers to her. And we didn't know this for a very long time.
Speaker 4:RepresentUs is where we started, and and they've definitely they started at that point with no recognition. And then within 8 years, we had videos with Jennifer Lawrence, Jack Black, and Ed Helms. They became a much better known organization. Thanks to Jamie Wolf for for that. She saw the strategy when we didn't and saw us as assets when we just thought we were comedians.
Speaker 1:We're dreaming of a a potential career that would be so fun for us to do, and she made that happen for us.
Speaker 2:That's a cool story. Right? One person, the doors they open up and the opportunity from it. That's a banger. That's one of the top ones, Ryan.
Speaker 2:Well done. That's a good one.
Speaker 1:Jamie Wolf is a special person. We just adore her. We'll take her to dinner as many times as we can.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's hilarious. Well, I just thought what you guys are doing. Where should people go if they wanna learn more about your agency, about what you guys are working on? Where can we point them?
Speaker 4:Plyer Brothers dot com. Think oldmcdonald, e I e k l e I e rbrothers.com. Might be backwards. Business card here. Nice.
Speaker 4:People still use those. And and a bunch of our work is there, and you can find out how to reach out to us from there too.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And I I'm a put some of my favorite videos that they've done in the show notes. I'll put in the Pullman video from New York. It's a classic. It holds up.
Speaker 2:This was so fun. Right? It's been a blast to catch up after a a few years. Very cool. So you're doing and Sean always good to to chat, but excited to keep talking and see what you guys do.
Speaker 2:Sounds good, man.
Speaker 4:Appreciate it, man. Thank you.
Speaker 3:I'll give a few plugs. 1st, I send a weekly newsletter each Thursday featuring 5 articles or tools that have helped me. You can sign up for these weekly updates at jimwhuffman.com. 2nd, for anyone running a start up, if you need help growing your business, check out Growth Hit. Growth Hit serves as your external growth team.
Speaker 3:After working with over a 100 start ups and generating a quarter 1,000,000,000 in sales for clients, Growth Hit has perfected a growth process that's hell bent on driving ROI through rapid experiments. Plus, you'll get to work with yours truly. So if you wanna work with a team that's worked with startups that have been funded by Andreessen Horowitz or featured on Shark Tank, then check out growth hit dot com. And finally, I wrote a book called The Growth Marketer's Playbook that takes everything I've learned as a growth mentor for venture backed startups, and I've distilled it down to a 140 pages. So instead of hiring a growth team, save yourself some money, get the book, and you can just do it yourself.
Speaker 3:I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I'd love to hear feedback. I'm on Twitter at jimwhuffman.
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