In 2001, during my stint as a computer chip designer, I showed some 8×10 photographs of some morbidly obese women in bikinis as seen from an underwater vantage point of their swimming pool. I passed the photos around at a design group meeting of 4 individuals – all male – along with my comment that I thought they looked like Florida everglade manatees.
We all had a good laugh but some days afterwards I found out one of the group members present at the meeting found the photos deeply offensive. It seems his wife was a very large woman and had suffered with obesity her whole adult life.
The point of my story, of course, is that humor in the workplace carries risks. Joking around with a client or using humor as an aspect of storytelling, when it serves the purpose of making the story memorable and helping the client stand apart from its competition is a high-risk, high-reward proposition.
“Be entertaining, relevant and memorable,” says Martin of Martini Media, during my interview with him. Just how he pulls this off and why its important to him is fully revealed in the book interview.
Martini Media is a full-service video production firm based in Seattle and Portland specializing in storytelling, HD video production, and viral video.
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