White Label Comedy is a Creative Agency powered by a hive mind of Comedy Writers and Advertising Copywriters – working together to create comedy content that’s on-brand, on-message, and sells.
We’re the writers room that lives in your back pocket – and if you’re going to invite us to move in, we should probably all get to know each other first. So each week we’ll be introducing you to another member of the White Label Comedy team.
In focus this week – it’s Lee Thomas
White Label Meets – Lee Thomas
WLM: How would you sum up the White Label ‘process’? And what does it offer our clients that they wouldn’t be able to get elsewhere?
LT: The White Label process works because it gets so many top comedy writers together in one place quickly. Collaborative writing can be a long, drawn out process, but with White Label everyone pitches in on an app and it’s amazing how quickly ideas are generated, progressed and then developed or discarded depending on whether we think they’re going to work. I don’t know of anywhere else where clients can have this quality of comedy and writing in one place, and at such speed.
WLM: What’s your favourite kind of White Label client / brief
LT: My favourite type of client brief is one where we’re asked to look at a slightly different angle on a common topic. Finding comedy in everyday events is great fun and it’s easy to ‘get’ from the point of view of both the writer and the viewer/listener. These are the ones which develop like a chat with friends, with the original joke being added to and built upon with everyone basically asking that great comic question, ‘Yeah, but what if…?’
WLM: What do you get from being a part of White Label?
LT: Being part of White Label is a great way of interacting with other comedy writers. Writing and editing can be a lonely job so to have the chance to interact with other creative people, and to see the fruits of our combined labour make it into the public domain is motivational as well as entertaining. And I can totally plagiarise some of the jokes to make myself sound funny when I’m out with friends
WLM: What’s been your favourite White Label moment so far
LT: An idea I’d come up with was chosen by The One Show (Weekdays, 7pm, BBC One), and made into a film that was broadcast to 4 million people. That was pretty special.
WLM: What else are you up to, outside of White Label?
LT: Outside of White Label ‘m a regular contributor to The News Dump as well as BBC radio shows Newsjack and Breaking the News. I’m also running my own business, Atticus Proofreading and Copyediting Services. I aim to self publish my debut novel in 2020.
WLM: Outside of our White Label projects, are there any examples of comedy and advertising coming together that make good touch-points when coming up with new ideas?
I love the current Virgin media ad with bus driving off the cliff. The timing of ‘Sadly he couldn’t fly’ is genius.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtFMETaxzs4[/embedyt]
The Peter Kay ads for John Smith’s were also great. Well written using the sort of everyday humour I love best.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15l3hx6loQc[/embedyt]
The Specsavers ad with the old people on the rollercoaster still makes me laugh. It’s got just the right balance of silly and funny while staying close enough to reality and that combination is superb.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9J_q2OUzis[/embedyt]