- New York Times Best-Selling Author
- Peabody Award Winner
- Time Magazine Top 50 “Cyber Elite”
Scott Dikkers is a #1 New York Times bestselling author, comedy writer, and comedian widely regarded as one of the most influential pioneers in comedy history. His visionary leadership at The Onion, his groundbreaking comic strip Jim’s Journal, plus his multiple top-10 comedy podcasts have garnered him tens of millions of fans all over the world. Rolling Stone named him one of its top 10 favorite writers. Entertainment Weekly designated him “the funniest person in America” and placed him on the “It List” of the hottest celebrities in show business. He graced the cover of Time magazine as one the top 50 movers and shakers online. He’s the winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor, a Peabody, and more Webby awards than any other individual or organization. Considered a one-of-a-kind comedy legend throughout the entertainment industry, he literally wrote the book on comedy, the bestselling How to Write Funny, which spawned a training center at the famed Second City in Chicago where he mentors young creators who have gone on to win Emmys, Grammys, and Oscars.
An accomplished stage presenter who performs stand-up and has appeared on national TV shows like Late Night with Conan O’Brien and Saturday Night Live, Scott shares how he escaped a tough childhood through his love of comedy. 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 magazine, which fed his passion and inspired him to create The Onion.
Scott outlines his journey in his bestselling book “Outrageous Marketing: The Story of The Onion and How To Build a Powerful Brand with No Marketing Budget”. With The Onion, Scott broke the mold for branding and marketing, and he spells out his unlikely success with hilarious stories that will bring audiences to tears with laugher. More about substance than hype, Scott makes clear how the creative process needs to be open, challenging, and engaging for teams and individuals to achieve their dreams.
In the age of AI, how can we still be creative?
It’s true, AI is THE disruption on everyone’s mind — teams in every industry wonder if they are safe from job extinction, while leaders explore how AI will generate and save money. In the midst of programming, automation, and data points, the art of human creativity (using brains and emotions) is still the key to innovation.
Scott’s talk ISN’T about AI expertise, it IS using a proven creativity method (with other humans or in conjunction with AI) that he used to make The Onion a multi-million dollar company. Scott is a creative catalyst who used a process that leads to constant innovation, improvisation, and adaptability.
While The Onion may be all humor, it is a serious business that has traveled through highways of disruption (from the fall of print media to the rise of the internet, and more). The future of work has always been here. Everything is changing around us — so many disruptive forces and so much change in the way we work, interact, and accomplish anything.
Creativity is how The Onion survived and thrived amid a market crash, digital transition, a hybrid office, and increased stealth competition. Scott’s talk provides attendees a clear method that teams and leaders can use while reminding them of their vital role in innovation.
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. Scott shares an important message that’s uniquely relevant with three big takeaways:
Scott engages with students and community members who love asking him questions and getting into lively discussions about media literacy and other topics, from creative writing to entrepreneurship and marketing.
Attendees will walk away from his talk entertained for sure, but also clear-eyed about the importance of being an informed and just maybe, they’ll think twice next time they see something a little too crazy to be true in their news feed.
Scott Dikkers is the hilarious founder of TheOnion.com, number #1 New York Times bestselling author, and award-winning speaker. He takes audiences through “The Onion Way”, three foundational principles he developed to grow a small college newspaper run out of a dorm room into a multi-million dollar brand recognized the world over with tens of millions of loyal social media followers.
Principle 1:
Live your mission. Scott walks you through finding your North Star, pursuing it with passion, and inspiring your team to do the same. This simple framework spurred The Onion to take bold risks, and it compels audiences to innovate in their own companies, which we need to confront the challenges we all face in business today: The future of work, AI, supply chain problems, the war for talent, and so many others.
Principle 2:
Love your people. In what Scott calls the “Love Economy,” companies that succeed big today are the ones people fall in love with. Understanding this paradigm not only attracts and keeps customers, it frees teams to do their best work, be more creative, and form a culture that can weather any storm and continues to innovate.
Principle 3:
(The most important thing of all is to) Have fun doing it. And at Scott’s talks, everyone has fun, walking away with not just actionable takeaways but tears of laughter.
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.
“I just wanted to say thank you so much for hosting our Leaders Connect program. It was great working with you throughout the process and the energy you brought to the event really kept everyone engaged and upbeat. The overall customer feedback we received on the event was incredible! We have already started thinking about what to do for next year and now there are talks about our leadership wanting to do another in just 6 months! “
“Scott Dikkers killed … his talk was amazing!”
“Scott’s lectures were entertaining, informative, and delivered with an articulate and personable flair. Additionally, his talks have sparked students’ interest to attend future extra-curricular lectures, which is the best possible outcome we could have attained.”
“Our audiences love him… funny, insightful, and relevant.”
“Our audiences love him… funny, insightful, and relevant. He has spoken for us 11 times across the US and never disappoints. We are looking forward to booking Scott for more events!”
“Inspiring and thought provoking … but also simply a good time. He cracked us all up!”
“Scott Dikkers did an AWESOME job as the keynote speaker for our Virtual Writers Weekend Saturday night. He was incredibly well prepared; his tech and studio setup were perfect, and he was just so easy to work with, it took a lot of weight off my shoulders. Moreover, the audience LOVED him, and we all had a great time.”
“They loved him! The turnout for this event was almost as many people as David Sedaris brought in — over 1,200 people.”
“It was a blast! He kept the audience engaged, he was funny and so relatable to our students and community members. On top of all that he was so gracious with his time. We had good media coverage which is always awesome for the college.”
“We had almost 300 people which was thrilling considering the short turn-around time we had for the event. Scott was a great speaker, very natural on stage, easily connecting with the audience (more older students, faculty, staff, and community). And… what an easy, low-maintenance guy!”
“Dikkers’ comedic voice, so integral to creating the distinctive Onion style, lends to a mixture of journalistic verve and an authentically confessional account of long nights and betting on your own talents. Fans of The Onion will relish revisiting some of its best stories and headlines while witnessing its constant reinvention as the media landscape itself continues to evolve.” —Booklist The Onion’s longtime co-owner and longest-serving editor-in-chief Scott Dikkers regales readers with never-before-told anecdotes from the beloved satiric newsroom in this celebration of creativity, resilience, and the transformative power of jokes delivered in AP style. In this laugh-out-loud origin story of a world-renowned satirist and “America’s Finest News Source” Scott Dikkers treats you to a rollicking trip through the 80s, 90s, and 00s, chronicling the inception, evolution, and success of The Onion from his view at the helm. With his famous wit and wisdom Dikkers chronicles the paper’s founding, run-ins with the law, scrapes with death, and raving-mad antics of its staff in chapters like: Childhood Trauma Mined for Cheap Laugh Hurriedly Collected Life Savings Invested Wisely Stop Put to All This Horseplay Award-winning Local Author Inspired, Drunk Look, Area Man on TV Office Internet Briefly Used for Work If you’ve ever been duped into believing an Onion headline, or simply laughed to avoid crying at how closely its fake news articles resembled reality, get a first-person view from the mastermind himself of the publication’s unparalleled legacy as the world’s most trusted news source, celebrated for its fearless commitment to truth-telling under the guise of satire.
Find the funny in your writing, speeches, presentations, and everyday conversations
Step-by-step guidance for everything from sophomoric pranks to sophisticated satire as you learn the fundamentals of crafting humor that resonates
The Definitive Joke Writing Handbook
Learn comedy writing and how to write a joke with a simple comedy-writing and joke-writing formula you can use right now to write your own jokes. See why Amazon reviewers call How to Write Funny “one of the best books on humor writing.” Author Scott Dikkers will show you how to write jokes. He’s a master joke writer, founder of the world’s most popular humor site TheOnion.com, #1 New York Times and #1 Amazon best-selling humor author, and successful cartoonist. Scott created and leads the “Writing with The Onion” training center at the famed Second City in Chicago. His students have been hired for the top comedy writing jobs in TV and won dozens of Emmy Awards. He’s consulted for top entertainment companies like NBC, Comedy Central, and Pixar. This easy-to-follow guide lays out a clear system and simple formula for how to write a joke that will get big, milk-coming-out-of-your-nose laughs, reliably and repeatably. You’ll learn… • The 3 sure-fire ways to generate funny text • The 11 different “Funny Filters” and how to use them to write jokes • The secret to getting rid of writer’s block—permanently • And many more humor writing tips, tricks, and techniques
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