Humour in PR? Steve’s your Guy
January 12, 2007 by Eric Eggertson
Filed under Marketing
Everyone thinks they have an above average sense of humour, but you don’t see a lot of it in the business communications business.
Read the trade magazines, and it’s all “best practices”, new trends, scholarly discussions about the difference between strategies and tactics, and earnest calls for greater recognition of the importance of communications in running a company.
Running the risk of ripping a hole in the time-space continuum, a few PR folks are willing to laugh at the challenges we face.
Take Steve Crescenzo. His writing (and presentations) are irreverent, fearless and often hysterically funny. He’s an overweight, middle-aged, bald American male who spends all year listening to executives and communicators alike explain why their companies are uniquely not responsible for their own mediocrity. The raw material for poking fun at himself and others is all around him. Like all good humourists, his most biting barbs are aimed at himself.
Some of my favourite posts from Steve’s blog:
- Weight Watchers Health Initiative Program: Cindy (his wife) implements a corporate weight loss program based on the points system; Steve thinks sex should be a key component; Cindy’s response: “47 seconds of low-impact aerobics will give me one fourth of a point.”
- I Promise to Never Blog in Bed: Speculation on an anally retentive couple’s experience tapping away on their laptops in bed.
- The Worst job in the world? Here’s my vote: The best line is Steve imagining his wife telling the urologist before the vasectomy, “Taking a scalpel to Steve’s genitals is like someone taking a chisel to Michaelangelo’s David. You better be real, real careful.”
As communications people, we end up sitting through many boring meetings, reading many boring reports and spending many long hours trying to turn soulless, jargon-filled gobbledygook into something that someone might pay attention to.
We have suffered enough. When we sit down to do some “professional development”, we need a bit of comic relief.
Steve delivers that. You barely even notice that he’s worked in some lessons about corporate and human behaviour while he’s at it.
Photo via Simply Communicate.
Tags: humor, steve crescenzo, ragan, communications, comic relief, business
Right on, Eric. No one combines humour with excellent communications information the way Steve does. Reading his writing is a treat; seeing him present in person is an experience not to be missed. I was fortunate to attend one of Steve’s sessions at the IABC International Conference in Vancouver last year, and to interview him a few weeks latrer in Toronto. You can hear the interview at http://trafcom.typepad.com/podcast/2006/06/show_32_an_inte.html
If it weren’t for Steve weighing in on someone else being a Nobody, I’d still be a Nobody instead of a Somebody pretending to be a Nobody.