J. Walter Thompson Cannes 2015: Recap of “What Healthcare Communications Can Learn from Improv-Based Comedy”

On Friday, June 19 I gave a seminar at Lions Health at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity on what healthcare communication can learn from the rules of improvisational comedy. With the help of Kevin Frank, the artistic director of training and education at The Second City Training Centre, we explained why this concept is important and how anyone can use the rules of improv to kick their creative collabs into high gear. Here are a few lessons from our session.

We’re all improvisers.
It’s true. None of us wake up in the morning with a script on our bedside table telling us what to say or how to respond. We all listen and respond accordingly. We all improvise. However, there’s good improv and bad improv – and those who have good improv skills tend to be better collaborators.

One of the most important rules in improv is to actively listen before responding, instead of planning our responses while waiting for the other person to finish. When we do this, we tend to listen better and collaborate better. But why is this important in advertising?

We’re collaborating like never before.
Effective collaboration in advertising is now more important than ever because of how the workplace (especially in media fields) has changed. Within our own agency, we have new roles that didn’t exist five years ago, meaning more people with diverse backgrounds and skill sets are weighing in on ideas and shaping final products.

Outside of our walls, we’re sharing ideas with partner agencies all working together. Professional, consumer, digital, PR, search, sampling, experiential, tech companies. You name it, there’s an agency willing to be at the table, and clients wanting to pull them all together to collaborate on the same problem. And somehow, we’re all expected to work together like one big, happy family.

But are we really equipped to work like this? Do we all possess the skills necessary to truly improvise our way to brilliant solutions?

Here’s a new way to think about “ideas” in the advertising world.

Ideas are like improv scenes.
During an improv scene, actors listen, contribute, and build on offers, which are any actions that advance the scene. In good improv, offers should be accepted in the interest of moving the scene forward. No one person “owns” a scene. It’s a collective creation.

We need to treat advertising ideas the same way, using the same set of basic rules that govern the improv world: listen, accept and build. The actors at The Second City, take a “Yes and” approach to everything they do. It’s an admirable way of thinking about creative.

We should all learn to commit to a scene (or idea) even if we have no clue where it’s going to go. That’s okay. We’ll build it together.

Early in my career I took improv lessons at The Second City. I found it fascinating how often, even as beginners, we could create something out of nothing by first letting go of control, then listening, accepting and building. We learned how to commit to a scene when none of us knew where it was going.

For years working as a copywriter, my partner and I would work like this. This classic creative team setup is perhaps the purest form of improv: one partner bouncing ideas off of the other, accepting and building on offers to get somewhere neither person would have reached alone. I never realized how much we relied on these improv skills until “digital” came along.

Suddenly our well-oiled improv duo was being forced to collaborate with developers, digital art directors and designers, UX people, analytics people and digital strategists. Things became more difficult. I originally chalked it up to the extra bodies in the room, but as time went on, I realized that all these new players simply weren’t improvising correctly.

We had team members giving “No but” reactions to offers. When we tried to brainstorm solutions, our “cast members” were trying to steer things toward a technical (or purely creative) solution they wanted to force. These performers were trying to lead the direction of the scene to the big joke they wanted to get out instead of letting go, listening, accepting offers, building on those offers and letting the scene play out. We weren’t allowing ourselves to arrive at surprising new solutions because as a team, we were breaking the rules of improv.

Thankfully, we’re working better than we have before, but there’s always room for improvement.

This way of working can apply within an agency across disciplines and departments, and outside of an agency with partners and even clients. I believe that this has the potential to changehow agencies approach creative development. Just listen and build.

Because when you stop trying to steer, it’s amazing where you can go.

— Jed Churcher is a VP Creative Director at J. Walter Thompson Canada. Follow Jed on Twitter here.