How Cisco Uses Comedy to Grab B2B Customer Attention

Competitively Funny

A content marketer, a comedian, and a customer walk into a bar…
No, I won’t do that to you.
But there is an interesting and perhaps underappreciated connection between comedy and content marketing.
Tim makes the point that a lot of good comedy comes from a place of frustration, from knowing the pain points of your audience and relating to them through that mutual discomfort. Exercises in producing comedic content easily double as exercises in connecting with your audience, which we all know leads to content gold.
Getting the C-suite to sign off on funny content with no call-to-action can be the hardest part. Many executives fear the negative review or inadvertent offense that it may cause. Tim’s clever approach to overcoming this hesitation involves showing their worst nightmare, a negative comment, on a piece of innovative content they have already embraced.
Turning the tables will get them on board and boost you on your journey to connect with customers in a way your competition wouldn’t dare to.

In This Episode

• Why cutting through the crowded marketing space means investing in well-produced comedic content
• How retweets instead of metrics can lead to internal funding for hilarious products
• Why producing good comedic content means preparing for and accepting negative comments in advance
• How getting angry leads to a closer connection with your customers

Quotes From This Episode

“We have this belief that there’s going to be a great deal of analysis that goes into making a decision of that kind of investment. But ultimately it is going to be an emotional decision. All decisions are emotional.” —@timwasher
“We all have to be better writers and get the point across faster and quicker because attention spans are shrinking.” —@timwasher
“It’s more important to get out there, let’s get a laugh and have people share this.” —@timwasher
“Just because somebody watched a video doesn’t mean you’ve accomplished any of your business objectives.” —@jaybaer
Social media is like casual Friday for brands. Click To Tweet
“As soon as we start taking off layers and making it generic, and removing specifics that might offend somebody or people might think it’s too edgy, then the video’s dead and it’s not even worth producing.” —@timwasher
“What angers you reveals something about yourself.” —@jaybaer
“There are those experiences where you take a little bit of risk, and you try to do something differently, and it yields something that really works well.” —@timwasher

Resources

• Tim Washer on Twitter: @timwasher
• Cisco
• Use Humor and Ridiculousness to Reach Your Audience
• Mainframe: The Art of the Sale, Lesson One
• The Network Effect
• Shorts International
• Marketoonist
• Tim Washer on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
• Fast Innovation and the Slow Waiter