Katt Williams’ Viral Shannon Sharpe Interview Has Essential Lessons For Brands

Katt Williams’ Viral Shannon Sharpe Interview Has Essential Lessons For Brands.
FULL VIDEO HERE -- > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oRRZiRQxTs
Jan 9, 2024,04:07pm EST
HBO's 13th Annual U.S. Comedy Arts Festival - Katt Williams
Katt Williams during HBO's 13th Annual U.S. Comedy Arts Festival - Katt Williams at Wheeler Opera ... [+]FILMMAGIC, INC FOR HBO
In less than a week, comedian Katt Williams’ interview on Shannon Sharpe’s Club Shay Shay podcast has racked up more than 37 million views on YouTube. In it, Katt Williams called out various other popular comedians for not being truthful about comments made on their previous appearances on Sharpe’s show, and for not being transparent about how they achieved their success.

A lot was said during the nearly 3-hour long interview that has dominated internet headlines since the show dropped. While most of the conversation online surrounds the controversial things Williams had to say about his fellow comedians, there were lots of other gems from the discussion that are worth highlighting, particularly for marketers. Here are a few.

Respect And Study The Craft
One of the major beefs Williams had with the comedians he called out during the interview stemmed from the fact that he didn’t feel they invested a sufficient amount of time studying the craft. He didn’t feel like they were doing the hard work of developing jokes that would accomplish the primary goal of making the audience laugh.

Williams lamented that his colleagues took a lot of shortcuts.

He contrasted the shortcuts other comedians took, to the more detailed and diligent approach he takes.

He spent years studying the structure and strategy behind jokes of popular comedians of all backgrounds, styles, and eras. Williams also said that he writes new material for every tour he goes on, rather than reusing material from previous years. He even claimed that he spent a significant amount of time studying his competition for movie roles and developed an analytical way to showcase that he was funnier than them.

MORE FOR YOU
How Samsung’s Galaxy S24 Ultra Will Change Smartphones Forever
SEC Issues Sudden Warning As Bitcoin ETF Race Primes Crypto For A 17 Trillion Earthquake Boosting The Price Of Ethereum XRP And Solana
Appeals Court Skeptical Of Trump s Immunity Claims In Jan 6 Criminal Case
The lesson for marketers is not to take shortcuts. Don’t settle for superficiality when it comes to engaging the communities you want to serve — especially those from underrepresented and underserved communities.

CEO: C-suite news, analysis, and advice for top decision makers right to your inbox.

Email address
Sign Up
By signing up, you accept and agree to our Terms of Service (including the class action waiver and arbitration provisions), and you acknowledge our Privacy Statement.
Not only will shortcuts and superficiality not yield you the results you desire, but it greatly diminishes the likelihood of you developing a lasting relationship with consumers from those communities.

Instead, invest in developing a deep degree of intimacy with the customers you want to serve. The better you know them, the better you’ll be able to integrate that knowledge into your craft, so you can better serve them.

It Takes Effort To Diversify Your Audience
Katt Williams talked about the early days of his career when it seemed like he fared better with White audiences than Black audiences. Instead of just sticking with the audiences that immediately “got him” he took the time to study and get to know the audiences he wanted to reach at a deeper level.

He created material for them, tested it with them, honed it, tested it some more, and kept going until he had a winning formula.

Williams talked about a moment when he realized he was getting the same amount of laughs while in front of Black audiences that he was getting with White ones.

Eventually, through his work and learning of his customer, he developed material that worked not only with segregated audiences, but with blended ones. That ability to make an audience that included people who were different from each other laugh came only as a result of learning how to talk to each of them effectively individually.

Katt Williams revealed his secret to winning the hearts of any audience no matter where he was performing, was devoting part of his act to be local to the community he was in. If he was in Atlanta, he infused jokes and observations about Atlanta into the first part of his show. If he was in San Francisco, or Brussels, he took the same approach. If he talked to church folks, he didn’t curse and incorporated jokes related to church culture.

The people you serve are different. Those differences come as a result of race, gender, age, body size and type, sexual orientation, geography, language spoken, marital status, parenting status and so much more.

And those elements of difference form the basis of a manner in which you can connect at a deeper level with the people you serve. When you acknowledge those differences while also demonstrating to people that even though you may be different, you still belong together, you set the foundation to develop loyal raving fans.

Transparency Rules The Day
A major reason why the content of the Katt Williams interview was so riveting, was because of the transparency he offered. It was a rare look behind the curtain of the inner workings (and infighting) that happens within an industry.

The advice for marketers and brands isn’t to be scandalous and to start collecting and producing receipts on your competitors.

The lesson learned is that audiences crave transparency. They crave truth. They don’t want to just see the finished product from you. They want to know your process for getting there. They want to understand your methodology, your work ethic, and the obstacles you had to climb to deliver products and experiences that not only solve a problem for them, but transform them. They want and need to understand the story behind what makes you uniquely you.

Transparency helps you unlock a deeper, more emotional connection with the people you want to reach, in a way that the purely polished presentation of you struggles to achieve.

Servings Underrepresented Communities Is Good Business
The Club Shay Shay podcast has a predominantly Black audience. The interview was between two Black men, talking about mostly Black comedians. And yet, the impact the interview has had has been massive. The high number of views, the conversations all over social media channels, the articles on mainstream news sites, the response videos and commentaries, and even private discussion showcase that the audience and the featured talent are present and profitable.

For comparison, the most popular podcast in the world is the Joe Rogan Experience. The most popular episode he has in terms of YouTube is one he did with Elon Musk more than five years ago. To date, it has more than 68 million views.

The way the Williams and Sharpe interview is trending in it’s first week, it will eclipse the views on that video.

It’s long been said that content with Black leads or leads from underrepresented and underserved communities do not have the same reach, mass market appeal, or revenue potential as more “mainstream” leads. But that objection has been disproven time and time again.

This viral show is just the latest example of that.

Content by Black artists and for the Black community are relevant, mainstream, and profitable. The same can be said for other underrepresented and underserved communities. Just look at the impact of the Barbie movie, and Taylor Swift and Beyonce’s tours world tours had in terms of revenue and attention garnered in 2023 alone.

The lesson here is to stop focusing all your energy on what seems to be gen pop and mainstream audiences. Instead, start leaning hard into content by and for underrepresented, underserved, and underestimated communities.