Making people laugh is serious business

How a vague idea about comedy in advertising turned into an event series with a major agency backers, multiple sell outs and now a road show.

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Origin

When working on The Side Show, I noticed a number of submissions from people who did stand up comedy on the side. I wondered if we could host a live event where these comics could perform for other people in the industry. 

I pitched the idea to a potential collaborator but was shot down with malice, so I sat on the idea for over a year. While getting coffee with David Roth, a copywriter/comic who just moved to Los Angeles I brought the idea back up. He was sold.

We expanded the premise to be about comedy in advertising and reached out to Kirsten Rutherford at Chiat LA. She loved the idea and put us in touch with Matt Gray who cureates cultural events for the agency. We then brought on two more people to help produce the events: Yuriy Mikhalevskiy (David's comedy partner) & Stephen Reidmiller (my Freelance LA partner).

Three events and two sell-outs later (the one that didn't was the night after the 2024 election, so there was that). The LA events were such a success that we started getting asked to take it on the road.

To date we've done shows in Los Angeles, New York and Atlanta.

Los Angeles

The first session was held on October 24th, 2024 at the TBWA\Chiat\DAY LA office. It featured a keynote from LIquid Death's VP of Creative, Andy Pearson. Performances from seven people in our in ad adjacent fields and an agency showcase highlighting current and historic comedic work from agencie around the Los Angeles area.

Our second session was held November 6th, 2024 and focused on education, featuring a talks by Jerry Corley, our own David and Yuriy and commercial/TV director Christine Lakin. 

The third session was held on November 21st. The event started with a talk by Ryan Benson who built the Nutter Butter social account, two panels and another talk by Andy Pearson.

NYC

Our first NYC session was held July 17th, 2025. We had several standup comedians perform before Yuriy and David gave their talk on Comedy followed by a panel featuring moderator Chris Beresford-Hill (BBDO), Greg Hahn + Kevin Mulroy (Mischief), Zoe Kessler (Johannes Leonardo) and Mo Said + Brad Jones (Mojo Supermarket).

Atlanta

Murder Hornet reached out to us shortly after we announced our New York shows and we made the trip to Atlanta a few months later. Held at the Miami Ad School Atlanta campus on November 5th, 2025. 

It was our 5th sellout and the show featured three Atlanta comedians, another talk by Andy Pearson and a panel moderated by Murder Hornet's Noel Cottrell with additional guests Mitch Bennett (Guest House), Tara Ochs (Dagger), Micol Rankin (Majority), and Jimmy Bennett (Arby's).

Credits