The Brady Effect!……

I saw Wayne Brady’s (of Who’s Line is it Anyway fame) show in Vegas this past May.  He is one of the most talented people on the planet!  What was most impactful to me was the pre-show, a video of Wayne explaining the audience rules for the show.  It was hilarious, involving tranquilizer darts and karate moves, very creative and completely disarming.  I challenged my class to look for examples online of organization’s audience etiquette policies…discussion below:

Link if clip does not play

I think it’s important to be creative whenever we are talking to our patrons whether it’s actively from the stage, or passively within our policies.  People will read this stuff and the more creative and disarming or even charming we can be, the more accessible we can become.  We need to have a narrative that we can share, that is genuine and comes across as sincere and understanding, otherwise we are like the credit card company with the flashy rates, cards, and advertising but accompanied by a 6 point type booklet of all the incomprehensible policies (including putting your interest rate up whenever they feel like it!).   We need a consistent narrative.

Humor is one way to make people feel comfortable.  Putting a smile on someones face is like letting them exhale, as opposed to the stern stop signs and road blocks that make up so many audience policies, essentially forcing people to hold their breath!  Marketing guru Doug Kinzey once told me that he finds it troubling that orchestras will send out tickets with a leaflet of all the things that the patron CAN’T do with them.  The point is to be positive and to make a patron feel positive towards us.

We must be just as creative in our administering as we our with our performing or exhibiting, particularly with way we talk to our audience whether it is verbal or in print.  My students for a project now have the challenge of redoing the Dallas Museuem of Art (scroll to the bottom) etiquette policy with humor or something disarming.  I might just forward them on to the museum!

 


Wayne Brady – Michael Jackson through the years – From 1 minute in he goes into high gear!

 

 

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