In life, lessons learned can be profound, or somewhat trite. But as long as you learn something, I suppose no lesson is truly dopey.
Which brings us to this week's learning...
Last Tuesday, three members of my marketing team added some spice to a pitch they were making to me by filling our executive boardroom with about 100 green balloons.
Not only did this warm the cockles of my heart (they're learning the "new" Just For Laughs way: Nothing we do--NOTHING--should be ordinary and boring), but the pitch itself was a great one and earned my buy-in in about 11 minutes.
Their work done, the trio returned to their respective offices, but as people entered and exited the boardroom that morning, nature took its course and the human traffic basically distributed the balloons throughout the three floors of our building; from the elevators to the bathrooms and everywhere in between.
Throughout the day, I watched people interact with said balloons.
Most kicked them around playfully. Some caught them as they floated up and threw 'em at others. By and large, the balloons were a welcome addition to one's day; like ice cream, babies and puppies, balloons seemed to be a near-unanimous mood-enhancer.
Note I said "near" unanimous.
I happened to notice a couple of our staff members, upon encountering the floating spheres, intentionally bursting them. One did with a letter opener, the other by stomping on them. The correlation was that these were two of the, shall we say, "less happy" members of our staff.
So, this week's lesson?
Perhaps trite on the surface, but increasingly profound the more I think of it:
BEWARE THE PERSON WHO DOESN'T LIKE BALLOONS
(Yeah, I know some people are afraid of balloons; this phobia doesn't count. I'm talking about people who will go out of their way to pop one.)
From here on in, I just may use this as a personality test next time I have to hire someone (frankly, I think it's equally as good for personal relationships): I'll toss 'em a balloon and see if they'll play along...or of they'll burst their own bubble.
Or, if they really want to impress me, untie the balloon and suck out the helium ;)
In other words, what's the true, indelible, embossed-by-official-stamp sign of success in business?
Last week, I found out.
And now, to explain...
One of our target markets at Just For Laughs is the tourism trade. Our event is evaluated on many metrics, but few as important as how many dollars we bring to our local economy from the outside, hence an annual strategy of attracting tourists. One of the tactics of this strategy is attending trade shows, where tour bookers, travel agents and interested individuals gather to decide what destinations tickle their fancy and earn their dollars.
The person responsible for tourism at Just For Laughs is a young man named Arman Afkhami. At our first meeting this year, he showed me last year's trade show booth set-up--a dreary, cliched backdrop of a silhouette of Montreal (the mountain, the cross atop it, the Olympic stadium, snore...), on which was plopped our logo, all fronted by a table-clothed bridge table on which was strewn equally-as-stultifying flyers.
"Nobody will stop at that unless they want to arrest you for wasting money," I told him. His mission this year was to create a tradeshow presence that would literally halt people in their tracks, trumpet the Festival's spirit, and get them interacting with him.
After a few mis-fires ("Arman, would YOU stop at this?" I would chide him when he showed me some dull early drafts), he and Just For Laughs creative director Francois Blanchard came up with this:
Everybody in the company--especially me--loved it. Simple, effective, sells the sizzle, and pulls 'em in from miles away. You couldn't look away if you wanted to. (The aptly-dressed eye-popper is actually comedian Lavell Crawford, a Festival favorite.)
But that's not all.
Arman and co. also came up with the concept of a "human booth" which would debut at the Boston Globe Travel Show. Literally enacting the adage of "taking the mountain to Mohammed," Arman, engulfed by a booth-on-suspenders, would now eliminate the unease of approaching one's tradeshow table. Why wait for people to awkwardly come to you--given they come to you at all--when you can go to them? This pic of Arman as the human booth below appeared on the Boston.com website:
The end result was an unmitigated success. When I emailed Arman on Saturday to ask how it was going, his reply went:
"Everything smooth. Other booths were jealous and complained so I couldn't walk around anymore."
Like H.L. Mencken and Lillian Smith before him, Arman was, for all intents and purposes, "Banned in Boston."
And THAT my friends was the embryo for this week's learning. So, back to the question atop this post, how do you know when you've made it?
--When the competition complains...you know you've made it.
--When you've done something so productive, so outstanding, so attention-getting, so crowd-drawing, so customer-pleasing that all your competition can do is run and cry and whine to the authorities...you know you've made it.
--When someone lays down a new rule*, a new tariff, a new tax, a new law, a new sanction because you're just too damn successful...you know you've made it.
Arman was a little worried, not wanting to piss of the competition.
"Don't be foolish," I told him. "That's our goal. If our competition hates our guts, you know you've done your job. Playing nice is for the sandbox."
So I think Arman and Francois helped us "make it" last week in Boston. This week, Arman is taking the show on the road to the prestigious New York Times Travel Show. Let's see who he pisses off there...
To close, a little (sometimes shaky) video montage of Arman in action, before his legs were cut off and was shackled to his backdrop. Note the delight on the faces on the people he interacts with. Who cares what the competition thinks? Well done!
*To see what I mean, read this piece and see how the NHL changed its penalty rule because of the dominance of the Montreal Canadiens power-play.
Much has been written--much too much, perhaps--about the power of the story in business. In a nutshell, the story (ouch!) goes that by converting your pitch, your unique selling proposition, your heritage into a narrative form, the greater chance it will resonate with, remain with and influence your intended audience.
I have no argument with that.
However (here's the tricky part), what's even more powerful than you telling a story is doing something that will give people a story to tell...preferably about you.
Here's the impetus:
On Friday, Just For Laughs took a table at a hoitsy-toitsy fundraising dinner for the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. The night was elegant, filled with the powerful and wealthy, ranging from captains of industry to high-ranking politicos.
As it wound down, the dinner was capped off with a digestif of fine port...a tray of which was accidentally crashed and spilled all over myself and my friend/partner/pseudo brother Gilbert Rozon.
Almost instantaneously, four horrified members of the white-gloved, black-jacketed staff rushed over to our table, apologized, and offered to send a dry-cleaner to our homes the next day to pick up our soiled suits and shirts and ties. Now, in most cases, there are two ways to handle this:
1) You swear and curse and act belligerently
2) You grin and near it and accept, silently simmering.
Here's what we actually did:
1) Gilbert immediately demanded $5 in cash. When the befuddled staff member said she didn't have $5, he said that $2 would do.
2) I was a little less subtle. I got up, looked at the stains, then slammed my chair up and down continuously like a child, all the time whining: "I was so good all night! I didn't spill anything! And now this!"
The staff, and the surrounding tables, looked at us in a combination of bewilderment and terror.
Then, we gave it up. We hugged the staff, laughed, said that "shit happens," and told them not to worry about it. We gracefully declined their dry-cleaning offer, and said it was no big deal; Gilbert was off on a road trip and I had two other suits to bring to the cleaners the next day, so one more wouldn't kill me.
And then we said with a smile: "You guys are lucky you spilled on the Just For Laughs table. Had you spilled on some of the really important people, maybe things would've been different!"
So here's the learning:
By acting up and acting out, if nothing else, we at least stayed "on brand" (and followed Pow's lesson of two weeks ago).
But more importantly, we didn't just merely convert a negative into a positive, we converted a negative into a POSITIVE ABOUT US that people will talk positively, and often, about.
I GUARANTEE that the next day, our story was told, again and again and again. We were the crazies that demanded cash and tossed about furniture...before showing our true "mensch" colors.
So as you go about your day-to-day, think about it--where's the ever-lasting legacy built?
The magazine's cultural critic goes on to lay down a tell-tale anecdote. I pick it up in progress:
"...but then, with only one more number left to go in the second act, the prop people lower a giant spiderweb that looks very much like an old gym net—and it gets stuck on the way down.
"The musicians keep playing, stagehands come out onto the stage to fix it; Spider-Man, or perhaps it’s one of the many stunt Spider-Men, is pacing around in the wings with his mask off.
"Finally, a sheepish offstage voice announces that the show is experiencing a delay. The audience bursts into some of the most enthusiastic applause of the afternoon.
"There hasn’t been much clapping for the songs by U2’s Bono and the Edge; this is what they paid to see: something going wrong at a legendary showcase for theatrical disasters."
Lemme repeat the important part, bigger and bolder:
This is what they paid to see: SOMETHING GOING WRONG
This "death wish" is not uncommon; despite all the talk about speed and strategy, it's what has made NASCAR the most popular spectator sport in America.
Welcome to the NASCAR-ification of showbiz.
Some may say this is a common trend, given the popularity of sites like failblog.org, the "must see" status of Jersey Shore and other reality/intervention shows, as well as the fixation on human train wrecks like Lindsay Lohan and Kim Kardahsian, but methinks it's not the fail that's the appeal, it's the CHANCE of failure...a subtle, yet crucial, difference.
I remember, during my first-go-around at Just For Laughs, we put on a show so bad that the audience literally booed it of the stage. As a responsible organization, we offered to refund patrons the price of their ticket, or twice the value in tickets for next year's event.
An offer they can't refuse, right?
Wrong.
To my extreme surprise, about 15% of our customers said thanks but no thanks, explaining that being a part of something this memorable--albeit horribly so--was so unique that they were happy to pay for the experience. "I never thought I'd ever be part of anything like this!" one enthused to me over the phone. (Guilty pleasure seekers can actually check out a quick compilation video of the event, taken from our CBC "Worst of Just For Laughs" TV show of a few years ago, as this post's culmination.)
So what's this week's learning? Well, the lesson is that in a world where so much is controlled and perfect and polished, rough edges are not just rare, but sought after. There's a market out there, a sizeable market, where people will pay for risk, chance and the unknown experience. Or as Weinman put it in the article:
"...in a time when live theatre is trying to match the computerized splendour of movies, people can’t help but be attracted by the news that they could get the one thing movies can’t provide: genuine uncertainty about whether the stunt guy will make it."
With this in mind, I'm putting a lot on the line, not just at Just For Laughs, but in my personal speaking performances as well. Instead of the slick canned stuff, I've been leaning more and more towards "Let's see what I can pull off living on the edge."
So, that said, here's what I'm doing tomorrow--Ignite Montreal.
For those of you unfamilair with the concept, the website describes it this way: Ignite is a series of speedy presentations. Each speaker gets 5 minutes with 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds.
Instead of a topic though, what I'm doing is telling the story of my life, but based on 20 slides that I will see for the first time when they're flashed on a screen next to me. The images have been crowdsourced from Igniters (Ignitees? Ignitors?), and I'm certain that more than one will be tossed in, grenade-like, just to throw me off. Here's a quick screen grab of the description:
So how will my performance go? Don't know yet, but Lord knows that the chance of falling on my ass makes the possible victory so much sweeter.
And who knows? If it REALLY works out (or better yet, if it's a goddamn disaster), perhaps I can take it to Broadway ;)
Anyway, now the moment you've all been waiting for (stick with it 'til the end to hear the boos and cat-calls that ended the show):
