Are you all sitting down? I’m about to lay some truth down on you. As hard as it might be to accept, I do not make a living doing comedy. I know, it’s difficult to believe, but a guy who started doing open mics in January still hasn’t gotten his stab at doing The Tonight Show (actually, I’m more of a Conan guy, but you get the idea). In other words, I have a day job.
While I’m “Open Mike” by night, by day I run a market research business by day (and also by night, on the weekends, during vacations, etc.). I’m one of these guys who travels all over the country conducting focus groups or depth-interviews on behalf of my clients. It’s a pretty sweet gig as it allows me to check out, and try to participate in, the comedy scene all over the country.
I see a lot of parallels between my two worlds including the need to feel comfortable performing in front of a group of strangers, the skill to pivot and think on your feet, and, importantly, the ability to build rapport with people quickly. It’s this last point I want to focus on in this post.
The most critical part of a focus group isn’t when you start jumping into the meat of the discussion (i.e. the concept your client has hired you to test), but rather the first 5-10 minutes when you are attempting to build rapport with a group of strangers. Think about it, this is a group of people who doesn’t know me nor do they know each other (if the recruiter did his/her job correctly) and I need to make them comfortable sharing honest opinions with me and each other. To encourage honest sharing, I have to create a bond with this group and make them feel ties to each other. This all has to happen in the first ten minutes of a session or else I’ll have an uphill battle with the group. The same is true when taking the stage, particularly during an open mic when an audience can see upwards of twenty different comics in a night.
In a focus group, I tend to start by asking people to introduce themselves and something they enjoy doing in their spare time. I then try to find some common ground with each individual’s interest (Mary, you said you like music, I do too! Any big shows you are going to see this summer?). If I see another person smile or nod when hearing someone else’s interest, I’ll engage that person (Bob, I saw you nodding when Melody said she likes to run. Do you as well?). Now I can’t take the same approach in a comedy club because that would wind up being a recipe for disaster. Instead, I try to identify some element of the venue I’m in and make a witty observation about it.
At an open mic last week, I noticed that the men’s room used an air freshener with a very unique (and pungent) smell to it. When I took the stage I mentioned that it smelled like the men’s room smelled like an autopsy; a combination of formaldehyde and wintergreen chewing tobacco. It was a ridiculous observation, but it served to cleanse the crowd’s palette from the previous seventeen comics and I earned their attention right away because we had a similar shared experience (except for the women—though I did see some hand prints on the mirror).
So now I’m challenging myself to start a set off with finding some way to identify with the audience. My hope is that by doing so I will be able to establish some trust that I will be able to make them laugh and, importantly, get them on my side. Of course, my material still has to be funny, but I know I’ll have an easier time making them laugh if I connect with them early vs. having to work up to it during the set.
I’ll leave you with a silly focus group joke. I was once hired to conduct a two hour focus group for a drug treating premature ejaculation, but we got through it all in just under two minutes.
