Improvising Your Way to PR Gold

"Spontaneity. Creativity. Increased intelligence. Emotional connections. Being in the moment. They are all present when improvising. It is impossible for all these things not to be there when improvising."
---Joey Novick, comedian and improv teacher

As a kind of throwback to my childhood dreams of being on stage, I recently signed up for an improv class at Upright Citizen’s Brigade. Something struck me as soon as I entered the small studio where I would spend Sunday afternoons hashing out crazy creative schemes in long-form improv – this world was a lot like PR. And it turns out that an improv stage is a surprisingly useful place for a communications professional to pick up tips and reminders.

Consider how improv looks to an outsider. It seems like a free-for-all, right? But good performers don’t just wing it. In an improv scene, you’ve got to establish who your characters are, where they are and what they are doing. And you have to do this right off the bat, or else your audience can’t really follow the scenario. It’s the same in PR. We have to establish the basics right up front. Who are we targeting and what are we trying to get them to think and do? What’s our theme and where do we want this to take the brand? In both PR and improv, the rush of the moment is what an outsider sees – the rapid-fire thinking on your feet – but it doesn’t really work unless you’re actively planning.

As a scene develops, it is the improv performers’ job to figure out what “the game” is - the unusual, distinguishing part that shapes the overall scene. If your scene starts out with one person in a pair saying, “It’s awesome having muffins for hands, I can take a nibble whenever I get hungry,” then that’s clearly your game. Sometimes the game is subtler and harder to recognize, such as a weird character trait. Regardless, the rest of the scene must focus on the game and heighten it – the performers must always connect new moves back to the original concept. Sounds like PR, doesn’t it? As communicators, it’s our job to spot what is unusual and differentiating about a brand offering and develop PR strategies that play into and off of that “game.” No matter how varied the tactical approach, everything should tie back to that unique, distinguishing characteristic of the brand.

Then there’s the principal of “yes and.” It’s ingrained in every improv performer that they must respond “yes and” to the material their partner gives them. No matter how off-the wall the idea, the scene moves forward only if one performer accepts the reality established by their partner and adds to it – as in, “Yes, you have muffins for hands, and they’re a delicious flavor of blueberry.” I’ve found that the principal of “yes and” applies equally well to our business. Things start to click when you accept suggestions from colleagues and build off them. Even if you don’t entirely agree with an idea, in practicing the “yes and” mantra, you acknowledge the given idea and advance or redirect it, creating a much more dynamic result. It’s how teamwork really works.

There are countless other parallels between the art of PR and the art of improv. But for me, the take-away is that PR and improv are both about a mental attitude of spontaneity and boundary-less thinking. And by following certain mental guidelines to frame that thinking, you get much more out of your creative train of thought. That’s important, because with so many trains running the same old rails, we need to keep finding new ways to be creative engineers.

Sarah Unger