The comedy brief, in nine lines

You can book the right comedian, pay the right fee, hire proper sound, and still get a merely fine show. The difference between fine and the thing people quote for a month is almost always the brief. It is the cheapest variable in the entire booking and the one most often skipped, because it looks like admin and is actually the product.

Here is what to send, why each line exists, and the template to copy.

Line 1: Who is in the room

Headcount, function mix, seniority mix, age range. Not "our employees". A comedian writes differently for 480 people who are 60% sales than for 60 people who are all engineers, and differently again when a third of the room joined in the last six months.

That last sentence is worth more than the rest of the paragraph. It tells the comedian there are two rooms inside the room, and gives them a job: make the two halves laugh at the same thing.

Line 2: Why they are gathered

The occasion and the mood behind it. A record year and a difficult one need different sets, and only you know which this is. Be honest here. A comedian told it has been a hard year will write something warmer and land it better than one who walks into that room blind and finds out in minute four.

Line 3: What happens immediately before the set

The single most predictive line in the brief and the one most often left out. Forty minutes of awards before a comedy set leaves a room that has been sitting for ninety minutes and is desperate to move. A CEO address that ran twenty minutes over leaves a room that has already decided the evening is long. Dinner before comedy leaves a room that is full, warm and leaving.

Tell them the whole agenda with times, and tell them who introduces them and in what words. The run-of-show guide covers what the order should be, but whatever it is, the comedian needs to know it.

Line 4: Language

Not the official language of the company. The language the floor actually speaks at lunch. In most Indian corporate rooms that is Hinglish, but the ratio matters, and so does the fraction of the room that is genuinely more comfortable in Hindi, Marathi, Tamil or Bengali than in English. Say the percentage if you know it, and say where those people are sitting. The language guide has the decision tree.

Line 5: The inside jokes

This is the gold. Not the company story, the running jokes. The tool nobody can log into. The manager who says circle back. The parking. The 6am Monday call. The team that keeps ordering biryani for every celebration. The word that has become a running gag in the all-hands.

You will feel like you are handing over trivia. You are handing over the raw material for the biggest laugh of the night, because a room laughs hardest at itself being seen accurately by a stranger. Give five. Give ten. A good comedian will use two, and they will be the two you did not expect.

Line 6: Off limits

The specific list, not the word clean. Layoffs, the merger, a named executive, the appraisal cycle, an ongoing dispute, a bereavement in the team. Two lines is enough. If it is unusually sensitive, say why, because a comedian who understands the reason will steer further around it than one following a rule.

The general content guardrails, as opposed to your specific ones, belong in a separate conversation and are covered in clean versus corporate-safe.

Line 7: Who to be kind about

Almost nobody sends this line, and it is the one that makes the evening feel like it was made for you. Name the person retiring after 22 years. Name the team that shipped the thing at 3am. Name the new joiner who is about to be given an award and will hate the attention.

A comedian handed a name and a reason will build a moment around it, and it will be warmer and better landed than anything the script of the evening had planned, because it is funny first and generous second rather than the other way round.

Line 8: The room, physically

Ballroom or lawn. Round tables or theatre seating. Stage height and width. Distance from the stage to the front row. Ceiling height. Whether the bar is open during the set. Whether food service continues. Whether there are pillars.

This is not fussiness. Every one of those changes how the set is performed: how much the comedian moves, how long the pauses are, whether crowd work is possible at all. A lawn with an open bar and forty feet to the front row is a different job from a 120-seat theatre, and the comedian would rather know a week out than at 6pm.

Line 9: Who to call

One name, one mobile number, on site from four hours before doors, with the authority to make a decision. Not a shared inbox. Not the agency's account manager who is in another city. On the day, the questions are small and urgent: where do I park, is there a room with a door, the sound guy has gone for tea, we are running thirty minutes late.

The template, ready to copy

Paste this into a message, fill it in, send it two days out. Twenty minutes.

What not to send

• —The brand deck. Nothing quotable has ever come out of a values slide. If there is one thing in it worth knowing, type that one thing.
• —A script, or a demand for one. Ask for the direction of the material instead. Comedians rewrite up to the moment they walk on, and a locked script produces a nervous performer reading a document.
• —A list of jokes you would like told. This is well-meant and it never works. Send the raw observation, not the punchline.
• —Nothing at all, on the grounds that they are the professional. They are. They still cannot see your Slack.

The call and the document do different jobs

Send the written brief so nothing is lost, and hold the call so something is found. Thirty minutes, three weeks out, with someone who knows the organisation from the inside rather than the coordinator running the event. The written brief is the record. The call is where the fourth answer to "what does everybody complain about" comes out, and that is the line that ends up in the set.

Update it if the week changed

The brief you wrote two weeks ago described a company that may no longer exist. Somebody resigned. The quarter closed badly. An acquisition leaked. A restructure was announced on Tuesday and the room going in on Friday is not the room you described.

Send two lines. A comedian who knows will adjust and can even use it, gently. A comedian who does not know will hit a wall in minute three and spend the rest of the set trying to work out what happened. This is the single most useful message you will send all week, and it takes thirty seconds.

Every booking through C4E Talent includes the briefing call, because the alternative is a worse show. Start with the date →