Komeediklubi. Boy, that was fun

For those of you that weren’t there – the premiere night of Komeediklubi stand-up comedy club was great fun. I’m not sure whether it was more fun for the audience, for the acts or yours truly; in that sense it was almost a competition in having fun. (Luckily there were no losers in that competition.)

As a marketer I was pleasantly surprised about the apparent effortlessness of selling out a week ahead of the event. I wrote a blog post, a funny (I think) description of the event and created a Facebook page. Then a couple of people shared the link, added people to the event and retweeted and voila! all the tickets were gone. Probably a combination of unmet demand, novelty factor, a product I believed in, good friends (thank you!) and the fact that on some level marketing had started years earlier. Over the years I’ve invited tens and tens of people along to gigs in London and spoken about going to many more. It’s just that at that point I didn’t know inviting people along would turn out to be marketing for an event I will organise myself.

Some of you know that I had been thinking about the standup gig since February. At first I couldn’t decide on the venue all the way from London. Then I couldn’t find a date that would work for all parties. Then summer started. Then it was almost Christmas time where people have so much to do anyway. All this time I just didn’t want to get this done bad enough, one of the reasons being that there is a notable level of risk but not that all much money. And then I thought of Tallinn animal shelter that I really wanted to say thanks to, that I should donate all profits to them and my perspective changed. Risks remained the same but the payoff was not a bit of money but a good feeling inside. Zero pounds was suddenly more motivating than some hundreds of pounds. Never before had I felt so clearly first hand (first head? first heart?) the difference between doing something for a reason and doing something for a reward.

Before this gets too sentimental – hope to see everyone there at the next event some time in January; new dates will be announced on the Komeediklubi Facebook page.