A game changing approach to writing comedy: Get a comedy writer.
With the fleeting attention spans of modern audiences, an original comedy idea can be an agency’s silver bullet to break through the noise and create lasting impressions.
Kantar’s AdReaction study has shown humour as ‘The most powerful creative enhancer of receptivity’: ‘Only 33% of the ads we research at Kantar incorporate some form of humour, yet half of our Kantar Creative Effectiveness Award winners use it.’
Jack Druce (pictured below) is a comedy writer with years of experience writing for Australia’s longest-running prime-time comedy programs, including Channel 10’s ‘The Project’ and ABC’s ‘The Weekly’ He’s performed at clubs and festivals around Australia for over a decade, and his debut stand-up special ‘Rat Paradise’ was widely praised and featured in New York Magazine.
It seemed strange to Druce that agencies understood the power of comedy in advertising but didn’t take full advantage of this by hiring professional comedy writers.
Aiming to bridge that gap, Druce began his journey with advertising, writing for Hardhat’s hugely successful ‘Dead Easy’ campaign for Willed, which received this praise on the Gruen Transfer from Todd Sampson: “I love it… Comedy is the hardest thing in advertising. When you get it right, when you get a smile, it makes you want to like that business.”
Relishing this experience, Druce has set out to offer his comedy writing services to agencies, presenting a golden opportunity for anyone seeking to make a script as funny as possible, add value to a pitch, elevate a concept to its highest comedic potential or inject a spark of magic by helping comedic talent with onset ad-libs.
In short, if you need to make something as funny as possible, what do you have to lose by getting input from someone with years of experience doing exactly that?
If you’d like to read more, please go to https://www.jackdruce.com/ads
Don’t hesitate to contact jack@jackdruce.com or connect on LinkedIn for inquiries.
9 Comments
Not sure about this. Comedians usually have similar insights about life, but their personality and performance makes it humorous. The main element is timing – when you have to edit something down to 30 or 15 you usually lose a lot of that natural comedic timing that makes jokes or gags funny. Creatives can write really funny spots, if clients will let them.
Agree with Heckler that nailing comedy in a short format is a skill unto itself. That said, we worked with Jack on a project a while back where he made our good better and our better best. Five-stars, would colab again.
respect this guy’s hustle, but creatives who can’t write comedy isn’t the problem*.
it’s getting an opportunity to actually do something funny, when almost every brand’s tone of voice is ‘we have a sense of humour – but we are not laugh out loud funny’.
and the conservative marketers who zero in on the jokes in your script, without fail, and try and take them out.
*yes, there are some better at this than others.
25+ years of writing / cd’ing ad comedy. Some copywriters get it. Many don’t. Then you can have a great, funny script, wrong director, wrong client, wrong edit decisions, wrong timing and a genuinely funny script becomes a total disaster. I’ve had my fair share of hits, and honestly probably more misses, but in my experience when comedians write ad scripts – it’s like me trying to write standup. It usually completely misses the mark, and their ‘jokes’ aren’t original, on-target or selling the product benefit in any decent way. And that’s not just Aussie comedians, I’ve seen scripts rewritten by Borat that were just WTF. But hey, if you can write a funny script that doesn’t involve some kind of vampire-like borrowed-interest, I’m all for it.
Comedy lives and dies with talent, is murdered by clients, and gets buried by research. Getting a comedian to write your spots won’t make them funnier. If a comedian was the client on the other hand…that would be sick!
I saw Jack do standup a few times yeeeears ago. He did short, punchy bits – the kind that would be ideal for any spot.
If Hollywood gets comedians to punch up scripts, why shouldn’t we?
Love this.
Could you please name one ad agency in Hollywood? In the US, they hire comedians as actors, they definitely don’t get them to write scripts. In fact many US copywriters fell into that because they failed to get a writing gig at SNL, South Park or The Simpsons.
why would we get a comedy writer to make ad work? That’s like getting a comedian to perform surgery! Or a comedian to brew beer!
It’s absolutely something to consider, but not even Richard Pryor’s stand up routine could survive 4 rounds of feedback by a committee of 12 followed by 3 months of market research and a lazy media plan.