A Poke in the Right Direction?
How a little humour gave my artwork a much wider audience
In the beginning…
The Poke started life as a single video. I was bored one afternoon in August 2026 and decided to make a silly reel of a close-up of me staring back at the viewer and then poking the screen with my finger, causing it to crack. Just 5 seconds of utter nonsense.
I posted it on my social media and called it ‘The Poke – Is Anyone Out There?’ partly because I wasn’t entirely sure anyone was actually watching my art reels (you’ll need to see my blog on this subject to understand where I’m coming from on this) and partly to see what the reaction would be.
To my surprise it was very successful – at least in terms of views and engagement compared to my previous posts on the art I was making.
Besides being a welcome distraction from continually bleating on about my artwork, it also had some unexpected benefits. The social media algorithms noticed that people liked the reel and so showed it to more people, who also liked it, and shared it. And some of those people also liked the other reels about my artwork and started following me.
So, in a roundabout way I was achieving what I had set out to do in the first place.
Keeping up momentum…
In the hopes of continuing this new opportunity I released another reel a week later – ‘The Poke – Rebound’. This was a slightly longer video of 7 seconds, but in a similar vein with the end result being a smashed phone screen. And once again it was very successful at getting noticed and had a similar knock-on effect to likes and follows.
A dilemma…
This then posed a problem. Up until this point Kev Hardy Art had been all about the drawings, with various reels showcasing the work in hopefully interesting ways. By adding silly videos - that had nothing to do with the art and didn’t reference them at all, except for the inclusion of the web address at the end – was I muddying the waters, potentially confusing potential viewers about what I was doing, or even becoming the dreaded ‘content creator’ which had, for me, negative connotations. I always cringe when someone is asked what they do for a living and they say, “content creator”. I mean, really? Is that even a job? (Obviously it is as lots of people seem to be making money doing it)
To make myself feel more at ease with this turn of events I decided to only post silly stuff on a Saturday morning (the weekends are for fun anyway, right?) and post serious art stuff during the week.
Funny bones…
A few things you might not know about me. I have written many humorous songs which I have performed on stage many, many times, I did stand-up comedy and ran a comedy club called 'You Jest!' at The Talking Heads in Southampton for several years, and I often try to use humour in promoting my work. So ‘funny’ comes naturally to me.
With this in mind, I started experimenting with different scenarios, putting my growing video-editing skills to use and having a go at acting again. Which resulted in ‘The Poke - Drinker’ and ultimately to the series inspired by the Smith & Jones sketches from the 80s – ‘Commando’, ‘Relationships’, etc giving new life to some of my old material from my comedy club days.
The big break…
While on holiday in Spain, my brother and I decided to try the outdoor pool table but soon discovered it had some issues – the worst being it was ridiculously uneven. Something we didn’t discover until I tried to break-off and all the balls rolled down the table and into the corner pocket before I could even hit the white.
I have often heard people online saying that “everything is potential content”, and that was exactly my first thought. So, I roped my brother into recreating what had happened moments earlier. This proved hilarious in itself. He was supposed to hit the white ball as soon as I removed the triangle, but he panicked, missed, and nearly fell over.
Take 2 was more successful and recorded the intended journey of the balls. I edited it together and posted it online. The Poke - Holiday Pool.
At the time of writing, the reel has attracted almost 3 million views on Instagram alone, along with 150,000 likes and, rather astonishingly, almost 5,000 reposts.
What does the future hold…
Whether this new-found success translates into more interest in my artwork is yet to be seen. Early indications are encouraging, but I still worry whether I am diluting my artistic identity by posting content that has nothing to do with art.
I am reluctant to create a new profile purely for the humorous reels as I only created them to get more attention for the art anyway. It may be that I have stumbled upon the perfect balance by pure chance, complementing my other content rather than competing with it.
After all, lots of people decided that a little episode of pool-table comedy was worth sharing with their own followers. Who knew that a dodgy pool table in Spain could do more for my social media presence than all those carefully produced art reels?
Only time will tell if this development is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
