COPYWRITING/STRATEGY
The History of Sketch Comedy
This podcast journeys through the history of short-form scripted comedy, starting all the way back to the first written jokes in Ancient Greece, and ending with modern sketch comedy, and covering stage, TV, and movies. Host Keegan-Michael Key delivers a highly entertaining performance that honors ground-breaking sketches and dissects why they are funny and how they pushed cultural boundaries.
The creative approach to this title looks right into the eyes of comedy nerds, because that's what the content truly calls for. I also wanted to highlight the committed and impassioned performance of a real comedy nerd himself, Keegan-Michael Key. This title is quite specific, and the creative strategy should not shy away from hyper-targeting and aligned events.
Check out the full strategy deck or skip straight to the scripts below.
Positioning Statement
From ancient greek fart jokes to "Who's on First" to "Put a Bird on It!", this podcast is a fun and entertaining lesson on the structures, styles, and methods of sketch comedy, past and present. Students or connoisseurs can go deep with Emmy and Peabody award-winning Keegan-Michael Key's insightful and hilarious performance that exudes pure enthusiasm for the art of short-form comedy.
Trailer Concept 1: Down Memory Lane
In The History of Sketch Comedy, Keegan-Michael Key describes his sketch comedy influences while relating some personal stories from his past. This is a really fun part of the content that helps to surround historical facts in cozy relatable stories. This trailer concept pulls audio directly from the content and uses a 70’s inspired dreamy animation style to visually present a personal flashback and an old sketch from Key's childhood.
Trailer Concept 2: Lessons
In The History of Sketch Comedy, there’s a lot of little lessons on structure and technique of sketch comedy, accompanied by examples of real sketches. Key acts out many voices while describing these sketches. This trailer concept gives a fun mini-lesson (think MasterClass videos) while showing Key's amazing narration and voices from the content.
Trailer Concept 3: Performances
In The History of Sketch Comedy, Key explains many styles of sketch throughout history by giving specific examples. He incredibly and enthusiastically summarizes these sketches while acting out parts of the dialogue. This simple concept lets the content speak for itself, and entertains while showing how fun the podcast's performance is. As a bonus, it also has some iconic references that will speak to a good chunk of its audience.
