Let’s Put on a Show

I am back in the office after a very busy month:  three meetings in three weeks.  Each meeting was very different — different organizations, audiences, and subjects — but all three had something very interesting in common: skits.

At the first meeting, the participants were eager to top the musical highlight of last year’s conference where the leaders of the event performed a rap song at the awards ceremony. So how do you do that? Go the opposite direction and lead the audience in a beer barrel polka! The second meeting was a technical conference where they were doing a presentation on gesture recognition. On stage, the banter about “gestures” began, and one product manager knew exactly how to illustrate it. He ran backstage and came back out dressed up as a court JESTER. The crowd loved it, the jester got a huge laugh and more importantly the audience will now remember this feature. Their programmers dressed up in Blues Brothers outfits to promote their party that night at the House of Blues. At the third conference, they wanted to unveil a new product by taking it out of the box. The participants performed a hilarious takeoff of the very famous Saturday Night Live parody song with Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg that also involved a box. They absolutely brought the house down.

All three skits were thoroughly enjoyed by the audience and hugely successful. In today’s corporate world, everything is so sanitized with the expected, standardized PowerPoint deck and a tight script. It was really nice to see something fun for a change, and audiences love it. You can have a message and find a great way to convey it to your audience by making it funny and memorable. And let’s face it, there are lots of people out there who love being on stage and really enjoy an opportunity to showcase their comedic chops.

Could this be a trend?