The Office: Is It Time to Break the Fourth Wall?
“An office is not for dying. An office is a place to live life to the fullest, to the max…an office is a place where dreams come true.” —Michael Scott (aka Steve Carell)
I know I’m a decade late to the party. But I’ve just started watch/binging the classic mockumentary/workplace/comedy series The Office. Just in unplanned time for this moment in history when employees are being called back to their offices and replying with some version of “hell to the no.”
Maybe if more people had real offices to go back to like Dunder Mifflin, led by the questionable managerial skills of Steve Carell, they wouldn’t be as hesitant.
Maybe. And if this wasn’t 2021.
Who couldn’t appreciate and long for the laughs and heart of ‘the way we were?’
One thing that makes this show such a success is how it regularly and uniquely “breaks the fourth wall.” This is a theatre technique used when the actor or characters suddenly look away from the camera and start interacting with the audience.
Wink, wink. You let us in. You remove the invisible wall between us. We are all “we” in the same boat. We’re encouraged to be part and to join the fun. To know that we all know. The gig is up. The eyeballs opened wider. We’re on the mindful lookout.
It’s always a sweet treat.
What if it’s time to give this treat to your customers and clients? To mix and match a convention. To realize the way we work and how and live and think has changed. To borrow from the theater and break the fourth wall in our marketing and storytelling. How we speak and sell to our clients and customers. To risk and discover there’s even more value to be given and profits to realize?
What’s the payoff? You get to get more real. Bit by bit. You get a little vulnerable. Timing is everything in comedy. And you’re on your own watch. We trust you. You risk taking the tedium out of day work life for your employees.
You assure hesitant, understandably cautious buyers you are worthy of a chance to be trusted. And then another. In these changing times. One year…9 seasons.
You land up telling the story you are likely most here to tell.
How?
You “fake it till you make it.” As Michael Scott says in the Stress Relief episode of Season 5,
“And I knew exactly what to do. But in a much more real sense, I had no idea what to do.”
This is where I can help your office get started. Or unstuck.
It begins with a call together.
Email me now:
Thanks for reading.