Morrison’s work changed how we perceive and understand the African-American experience.

She did what authors have done for centuries. Going beyond the existing stereotypes, she examined the African-American experience from the inside.

For Morrison, “writing is a way of thinking.”

Let those words roll around your mind and ask yourself:
Does my writing help me better understand the world or, at least, a piece of it?

“When I teach creative writing, I always speak about how you have to learn how to read your work; I don’t mean enjoy it because you wrote it. I mean, go away from it, and read it as though it is the first time you’ve ever seen it. Critique it that way. Don’t get all involved in your thrilling sentences and all that…”

Beyond her own writing, Morrison used her position as an editor at Random House to help other writers of color. 

And, to introduce their books to the world, like a stellar marketer, she created events that involved the African-American community.

As a result, we’re having a public discourse over whether words create intent.

More specifically, can words by themselves instill hate and violence?

As marketers we believe words do have intent.

We have a long history of crafting words to motivate prospect action and acknowledge our debt to gifted predecessors like David Ogilvy. 

But with AI and better data, we can develop and define our audience with more refined marketing personas. As a result, we can move beyond labels and stereotypes.

So we can target audience and, more specifically, potential customer intent to respond with contextually relevant information they want it. 

If we can do this, surely we have the ability to move our businesses and our audiences to accomplish higher level goals that serve our greater communities and society more broadly?

From this perspective, isn’t it our responsibility to be more inclusive and supportive in our marketing?

I appreciate that you may not share my beliefs

But we all share this one planet, Earth.

So let's take steps to make our marketing and our businesses more accepting.

Actionable Marketing Tips:

• Set policies for how to treat and talk to your fellow employees, audiences and others. Encourage personnel and customers to treat each other with respect regardless of sex, race, ethnicity, religion and/or other belief.

• Make sure your organization’s content, branding and information is inclusive. Where appropriate, make changes and communicate them across your organization.

• Assess how your business can support your local community.

At Content Marketing World 2019, I'm presenting Continuous Content Distribution Playbook. It focuses on long-term content distribution.

If you’re attending Content Marketing World 2019, please join me on Wednesday, September 4th, from 10:15am to 11:00am, in the Hope Ballroom E (located in the Hilton).

This year’s talk builds on last year’s presentation, 3 Steps For Content Amplification and Distribution. If you missed it, hit reply to this newsletter and let me know. I’ll send you the slides to get up-to-date.

Or, if you haven’t registered for this must-attend conference yet, I would appreciate it if you used my code, COHEN19 to get $100 off the regular price.

Shout out to new readers: 
Brianne, Lynne, Edmond, Othniel, Melissa, Isabel, Nikita, Susan, Prodatalabs, Ena, Alisa, Malcolm, Steve, Mike, Laura, Heather and Nicoleta. Welcome and thank you for joining our community.

Heidi Cohen,
Actionable Marketing Guide

Happy Marketing,
Heidi

Register today. Use my code: COHEN19 to save $100.

Think email is old school?

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Can your audience and prospects hear you?

With more than 1 in 4 Americans using voice-enabled devices, it's time to give your brand a voice.

CMOs need to prove financial results.

But they CAN'T!

What can they do?  Use marketing AI!

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