Quoted in PRNEWS Special Report: “Funny Ha-Ha or Funny Uh-Oh? Does Comedy Belong in PR?” (April 10, 2006).
For starters, it helps if the PR professional is comfortable in creating and presenting funny campaigns. Scott Cohn, creative director with the New York-based Night Agency, encourages humorous approaches from his team — even to the point of dissecting creative ideas to determine their laugh quotient.
"By and large we find ourselves hilarious, and our own opinion holds the most weight with ourselves," says Cohn. "We usually pass an idea around the office and see if we get some laughs. If we bomb with our own staff, then we change gears and try something else. Then we have a bunch of friends who we send stuff out to for them to review. They'll in turn supply us with feedback, which we'll ignore, and the campaign will go out to the masses for excoriation by wise-ass bloggers."
All flippancy aside, there are three key elements needed for a comic communications campaign to work: an original idea, the ability not to overplay your hand, and the talent to shape your efforts to meet the specific personality of your target audience.