The Art of Using Comedy in Business, with Adam Hunt
Episode 12, Season 2 – Adam Hunt

 

Welcome to the twelfth episode of the second season of The Micro Niche Mastery Podcast.

Our guest for today is Adam Hunt. A TV producer turned copywriter now the creative director of White Label Comedy.

Are you afraid of writing jokes in your copy? Listen to this episode to learn how to use comedy in your business.

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  The story of how Adam started using comedy for brands is at 1:20

  
  
  
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  Adam’s key to unlocking his company’s growth is in the first part of the episode

  
  
  
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  What makes an engaging and relatable joke? Check out 4:40

  
  
  
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  The two elements in writing an effective joke for a brand are at 8:39

  
  
  
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  White Label Comedy’s ideal clients are at 9:31

  
  
  
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  How to start a conversation with your audience using jokes. Listen to Adam’s success stories at 13:25

  
  
  
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  Get a mix of text jokes, graph gags, and meme-makers every month here

  
  
  
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  Download a free copy of 20 Jokes That Sell here

  
  

  If you find this episode interesting, share it with a friend.

  
  
  
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Important Links:

 

whitelabelcomedy.com

dailycookie. co

Transcript:

Click Below to see the full transcript of this episode





Open Transcript

Voice Over:

Welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast, where we help you establish yourself in the perfect micro niche so you will get noticed and grow your business faster. And now your host, he wakes up every, every day and tries to make this world a prettier place. One business at a time, Ziv Raviv.

Ziv:

Hello, and welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast. Today I have the pleasure to have with us, Mr. Adam Hunt, Adam Hunt is the creative director of white label comedy all the way from London, where you serve people from companies from all over the world with freshly retail comedy that helps them in their business. Wow, this is so specific. Hi, how are you, Adam?

Adam:

I’m really good. Yeah. Really excited to join you. How’s it going?

Ziv:

It’s great to have, you’ve been looking around at your work and, you know, from the GetGo, I thought, Hey, using comedy in business, that’s something that might be scary for some, and that by itself makes it very, very, you know, micro niche. Can you tell me a little bit about how did you come up with this idea?

Adam:

Definitely. Well, I think in a first thing, first, it’s only scary to use comedy when you’ve done what you’re doing. And, and I think the best jokes, the ingredients for those jokes come from a brand safe place. And so the end result is a brand safe joke and, and that, you know, that I think that’s kind of research, underpinned everything we do, but where all this came from, I used to be a TV producer. And so in that kind of half of my world, I had the luxury of working with comedy writers to punch up my scripts and make them better. And, you know, give me sort of funny ideas. I also would sort of Moonlight working for brands and businesses as a social media, you know, content creator. I used to write scripts for adverts and whatnot. And I just, it was really clear to me that on the marketing space, there were companies crying out for engaging content and they had no idea, like, not just how to commission that content, but like they had no idea what that content should even look like.

Adam:

They just thought, oh, I want good content. But they didn’t know. And, and they would hire me to write half funny stuff. And I was like, okay, this is fine. But I know from my time in TV that like when you get those grade a comedy writers working for you, not only is it way more fun, but you can just create content that’s way more effective. So is that right? Let’s bring these two worlds together and let’s build something that uses these comedy writers and their talents and puts them to work for brands, but in a way that is manageable, affordable, and sort of begins to build out a model of, of working because that’s the other thing is, yeah, there are funny ad campaigns. There are funny social media managers, but there was no model. There was no model for how to do it. And so, you know, by having a company that is only about comedy content or human ed content or relatable content, we can begin to develop like a, a proven model for how we do this. And that’s, that’s been my work for the last three years. And a lot of fun.

Ziv:

This is really interesting because you chose a very specific problem, which is how do you actually model comedy so that it could be like reproducible and yet still a very, very specific or relatable as you tell it. And you actually have developed the system you, you wanted to from the get, go to create something that is not just to keep you busy, but to keep it could team of writers busy. So I wonder, first of all, like how hard is it for you to grow your team?

Adam:

That’s an interesting question. And I think there are a number of important parts of the answer, because I think in terms of the kind of writers that have excelled in writing the jokes that we need for our clients, some of TV’s best comedy writers could not handle it. And they could, they’re used to writing funny stuff, but they can’t take this research and then turn that into, into jokes. It’s been a really interesting process because you touched upon the relatability matrix. And basically that was the key to unlocking our growth as a company and our ability to expand, because when we first started, you know, cards on the table, yes. I knew comedy. Yes. I knew marketing. I fudged a bit in the middle, you know, we just wrote loads of jokes and sort of hoped that they were well okay, interesting. You know, which ones work, which ones don’t, but we needed was a way to like, think about, okay, what, you know, the jokes that we are signing off here, the ones that work, what are they, why do they work?

What do they put that they work? And those jokes are the ones that are reflecting, you know, the fears, pains, desires of a given audience and letting that audience kind of the reason people engage with it is because of that representation. Cause it’s, they sort share and declare their ideal selves is, is my favorite for that process. And so what we needed to do was build a system of research that could get those fears, fears, pains, and desires, turn them into something our comedy writers could use, which are relatable truth. So basically sort of short, simple statement that even on its own would get a, that so true that’s so me response, and then let them use those to write jokes. And honestly, building out that model unlocked everything coz all of a sudden, and whereas before we had to write a hundred jokes to get 10 that I would sign off on.

Now we can write 40. And I, I still like to make sure we write loads, but it’s much easier. You know, now we’re giving them the best 10 of the 30 from the 40 that we could have signed off on. And it’s yeah, it’s much easier, but it it’s what I love about the system and the reason why now it works. And now it’s easier for us to bring on your writers and grow. The team is all we’re really doing is looking for the customers or the ideal customer’s own words, how they talk about the problem. We’re simplifying that so that you can understand the idea behind what they’re saying and that’s the relatable truth. And then we’re turning it into a joke and that it’s literally their own words back in their ears as if they wrote the joke themselves and they go crazy for it. So yeah, that’s I, I sort of I’ve rambled around the answer. I, I hope I answered the question, but if not prod me.

Ziv:

No, that’s clearly great because basically what you did is you reverse engineered the, a bunch of jokes. You already knew how to write them, but then you found out through trial and error, which ones of them are not just like as an editor, you know, they’re the best, but which ones also get better responses and why you can understand why. And then you created the system that allows you to produce more of these and teach that to new writers that are working for you, new comedy writers. And that, that must be very fulfilling, not just on the level of getting a system, but also on knowing that you can be predictable for your clients. They can depend on you to actually produce new jokes every month. And these days you, you do two things that I think are noteworthy with your agency, which is like available online on whitelabelcomedy.com.

Ziv:

One thing is that you actually teach the same systems that you teach your team. You teach them as an online course that is available for everyone. And the other thing that is very thing is that you, you have a subscription where people can have freshly written jokes written every month, both up freshly written for them specifically for the client or as a part of the membership where it’s basically it’s fresh content, but other people might use it too. So can you tell me a little bit about your clients? What type of clients will probably enjoy working with you with unique content and what type of clients from your point of view is a good fit for just being a part of your club and getting the same jokes that other people are getting.

Adam:

Definitely just to clarify that so that there are a couple of strands basically to the offer that we have and yet the best way to work with us. Absolutely. If you can afford it, TV’s best covers are not always super cheap, but we try and make it as affordable as we can is working with us as a done for you client, where we do the research, we write the jokes, we create the artwork, we deliver everything for you. And you know that we’ve got clients at every end of the spectrum, you know, all kinds of niches, all kinds of countries, people that came to me saying, ah, but there’s no way you could write for this industry or for, for this, this region. And we’re like, oh yeah, but research, this is the process that works. But at the other end of the, the spectrum is we have a game.

Adam:

Well, it’s kind of part game, part tool, part template set called brands against mundanity. And this evolved out of our, so we were developing a training. We tele training to help the people that couldn’t afford to hire us, but still wanted to learn everything we’ve learned over the last three years. But we needed to get a minimum viable product to market quicker than we could get the training. And you know, I’m not someone to release stuff that I don’t love. So I said, all right, I don’t think the training is there yet. It’s working for us, but we know too much about comedy. We’re not quite ready to release it, but within the training, we had this little idea that was right. Maybe we can teach people how to write jokes using templates using formally using, you know, fill in the blanks kind of elements because the truth is all the joke is, is two things that shouldn’t fit together, but you’ve made them fit together with a perfectly placed twist or a surprise.

Adam:

Simple as that. Sometimes it’s simple as a, a sentence that looks like it’s going in one direction. Actually it then goes in another, but it all makes perfect sense. You know, it’s, there’s always whatever the joke, there’s those two things. And the way to make it work for a brand is to make sure that at least one of those two things relates to what matters to your audience. Super simple. So we started building out these prompts that could sort of teach that and we realized that while we were we’re building it, we were playing them like a card game. This is a game as well as anything else. So very quickly, you know, and it’s called brands against, I won’t, I’ll let you draw in conclusions about the, the card game that that name is a past of. But when we launched that people went crazy for it because not only could they use it to write jokes themselves and, and by the way, also, I, I think the most powerful thing about it is because the blanks are quite big and relate to your, or, you know, your audience and their truths, actually 10 different brands can use the same prompt.

Adam:

They’ll fill it in a different way and you get a different joke and you start to sort of learn that structurally jokes are just these comparisons. So we initially released that this time last year, we then followed up with some expansion. So people wanted more cards. We gave them more cards. We also released a meme maker edition and a graph guide edition. And you know, those so really well. And it’s been so satisfying seeing, seeing people use the prompts and then go beyond prompts and, and kind of start writing their own jokes. It is really great. We’ve just launched the membership. So basically now it’s, every month you get 31 cards in your inbox and that’s, you know, the first month as, as with great feedback. And we’re really excited. We’re just about to send out month two. So in, in terms of, it’s funny, the question was, you know, what different kind of clients should be going from one or the other actually brand against mundanity is part of our sales funnel.

Adam:

A lot of people buy brands against mundanity because it’s a low-cost way to see what the funny version of their brand might look like. And some of them that’s as far as they can afford to go and they get great use out of using the prompts, using the formats, others, they go, ah, I want more of this. And they’re in a position where they can afford an agency and we can start working together undo for you content. So I would say that actually brand against mundanity is there for everyone, no matter how big or small you are. And then it’s just a question of how soon after that initial purchase that you book in a call and start hiring us is another matter. But yeah, it, it’s great being able to sort of take the principles that we work with on a, quite a high value basis and distill them into a product that people can use themselves. I think that’s, that’s been quite a satisfying moment

Ziv:

And the brand against mundanity, and is also available on whitelabelcomedy.com. I have to admit that this is so interesting that I personally purchased it and I find it to be useful and practical. And the, from my standpoint, I think it’s kinda aligned with the way you see it. At some point businesses and business owners, they become too busy to do everything by themselves. And when they do, they delegate and that’s delegate and yet still be special and still be interesting in, in front of your audience and your clients. That’s something that is hard today. You could, you could hire any social media person to do some, to just produce some busy work for you so that you won’t feel bad about not doing it. But if you want to be engaging and, and fun and special and, and unique and relevant, then sometimes you need to go to extra mile and be special and be bold. And that’s when you come into play, I wanna ask you, do you, you have some case studies, examples of clients of yours that could testify on the miraculous results that they got.

Adam:

Yeah. I think our, luckily our sales pages are littered with testimonies like that. I think the biggest reaction that clients it’s get when they start using our content, especially our done view, content is people start engaging as a business owner. The, you feel like you need to put social content out and you feel like it’s important, but you do it. And it gets no response. It’s just like, oh, it’s absolute crickets. And I think you keep doing it coz you you’re told all you need to do it. But the content that we put out for our clients, it begins a conversation with their audience. And I think, yeah, I won’t throw numbers around, you know, there’s there’s do you know, I’ll throw one number around coz one, you know, one of, one of my favorite case studies actually one, one of our earliest, which was there was a client who was posting our content and theirs, you know, side by side.

Adam:

And you know, they weren’t boosting either of the posts and their posts got something like seven likes and ours got almost 700 and it was just test like, you know, same brand, same audience, same day, even a similar topic. It was, you know, it was, it was a, an old people’s home trying to be edgy and, and appealing. And that particular statement that Joe was making really resonated. And again, kind of kicked off now what I would say, we don’t promise results like that. We don’t promise any results, but actually the best use for our content. It’s not about getting exponentially increasing your organic reach so that you can look cool and look good. We call them hand raise a post because what you’re really trying to do within that joke, you’ve got a fear of pain, a desire represented. And if, you know, like whoever engages, you know, that they have that problem and that’s a problem that you solve with your business, they’ve engaged and then you retarget them with paid ads to sell them and your, you know, your costs per acquisition costs per conversion fall to the floor.

Adam:

So actually, you know, the, our best-case studies, they’re not on the website, but they will be fairly soon is just the value of you can build with hand raiser comedy because not only you warming them up, but you are also qualifying them and, and finding out how to, just how to sell up the unit that that’s, that’s something we, you know, we’ve been doing for a confidence coach, client of ours recently we’ve been doing for a couple of tech firms. It’s powerful because they won’t respond unless they believe that. And they won’t believe that unless they have the problem you’re offering to. So, and so the second you then swoop in, they’re ready to be sold to they’re happy to be sold to

Ziv:

That’s so cool. I think that this is been very valuable to just share this concept with our listeners and details matters. So guys go and see the wonderful, if I may say so funnel that you’ve created of like, it’s really fun to go into it, to see how Adam Hunt is the creative director and founder and White Label Comedy have managed to just go into the niche of social media marketing and solve this one, one problem, which is how do you actually create a process that is reliable for, okay, using leveraging comedy in a safe way, in a brand safe way online and you solve that problem. And as a result got noticed by many and helping them from building up the relationship with you and building the trust in like easy to the right direction for, for a company, because they can start with a very low entry point with literally no risk.

Adam:

Definitely man. No. Yeah. I think it’s interesting. You say, you know, talking about it as a funnel rather than anything else. Cause actually some of our earliest clients basically bought the game, liked the way they were sold it. And then, you know, there’s, there’s like another marketing a to agency that hired us to rewrite all of their own web copy. They’re like, ah, I like the way you sold to me, can you help me sell? There’s a real lesson there in terms of, you know, whatever you are selling to your customers, embody that every stage in your own sales process, we can’t always do that. Actually I can afford to put big dog comedy writers on a client’s project. I can’t always afford to put them on my emails or ask our own social posts all the time. So, you know, we are sort of building out our own pieces bit by bit. It really shows when you embody everything that you’re telling other people to do. They’re like, okay. Yeah, I get, I get it. It makes sense. It’s your best case study is yourself in these kind of industries.

Ziv:

Love it. That’s such a pillar of reason. Thank you so much, Adam Hunt for sharing this time with us guys just stop your car, whatever you’re doing right now, go to whitelabelcomedy.com. You will be thankful if you can write it down, just go to daily cookie.co and check out our show notes about Micro Niche Mastery Podcast and you’ll find the link there, Adam, thank you again and best of luck to, with everything you do.

Adam:

Thanks man. Pleasure.

Voice over:

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