Well before the era of “fake news” became, well, real, Scott Dikkers and his fellow founders at The Onion mocked popular culture and media tropes. Dikkers then went on to found the world’s first humor website, TheOnion.com.
From his experience in developing a creative culture of frank honesty and freedom at The Onion, Scott Dikkers shares how he built one of the most famous top comedy brands in the business. Scott explores how the creative process freed his team to keep generating funny content with The Onion’s own distinctive voice.
With humor, Scott shares the inspirational story of how he crafted The Onion’s unique brand – and then grew the publication into a comedy empire with almost no marketing budget. The Onion was a small campus publication launched in 1988, which Scott nurtured with a popular website, books, and cable shows.
Scott outlined his strategy with brand development and marketing in his book Outrageous Marketing: The Story of The Onion and How To Build a Powerful Brand with No Marketing Budget. Scott breaks the rules with branding and marketing The Onion, and he spells out in hilarious terms how standing out from the crowd can get your brand noticed by using some creativity and fun. Through all the hype of the marketing, Scott makes clear how the creative process needs to be open, challenging, and engaging for teams to succeed.
Scott shares how he found escape from a tough childhood through his love of comedy and writing. A small, shy kid, Scott endured an upbringing marked by poverty, divorce, bullying, and even a suicide attempt at the age of eight. He found solace and inspiration from Mad, the groundbreaking satirical magazine, which fed his passion for comedy and later helped inspire him to create The Onion.
He currently heads the "Writing with The Onion" program in partnership with The Onion and The Second City in Chicago. Scott has written multiple comedy books, including Our Dumb Century, which sold over a million copies, debuting as a #1 New York Times and #1 Amazon bestseller, and Our Dumb World, which also debuted on the New York Times bestseller list.
- Peeling the Onion: The inside story on Marketing & Branding the Original Fake News
- How did The Onion, a small college newspaper from Madison, Wisconsin, compete in the cutthroat world of entertainment marketing to become one of the most recognizable and successful comedy brands in the world? You may be surprised to learn it was done without spending a penny on marketing. Scott Dikkers, The Onion’s longest-serving editor-in-chief who founded theonion.com, helped found the print publication that preceded it, and led the company’s effort to build the brand in its formative decades, tells the unlikely and outrageous tale of exactly how The Onion—now a multi-million-dollar company with tens of millions of monthly views online—thrived against all odds to achieve heightened brand awareness and a fiercely loyal fan base. He leaves corporate audiences inspired to do the same for their own companies.
- The Funny Story Behind The Funny Stories
- Scott Dikkers tells the tale of his beginnings in comedy and getting The Onion started, and shares funny stories about how he struggled in the early years, and then achieved great success. As a farm boy with no education, he'll paint the picture of a starry-eyed kid who loved reading Mad Magazine and dreamt of one day getting his work published to improbably founding the world's first humor website and heading up America's longest-surviving humor publication. Dikkers connects his experience to the college audience's lives by pointing out how much more opportunity they have to start something new like The Onion today, explaining that this is a magical time in their lives when they can make just about anything happen for themselves.
- Decoding Satire and Misinformation in a Modern Media Age Have you ever seen a story in your news feed from The Onion and thought it was real? Nowadays, it’s hard to tell satire from real news. Scott Dikkers can help, He is the founding and longest serving editor of The Onion, the original fake newspaper. Audiences at colleges, universities and other educational organizations have a great time when he comes to speak on their campus. He brings plenty of laughs, of course, and outrageous stories about the crazy characters, wild mix-ups, and legal troubles you might expect to hear about — from the onions storied history, all the way up to the present day.