Boston, Sunday morning, October 7, 2018
Good morning, beautiful!
When I was a young professional, I
rode the commuter rail to my new job every day—to-ing and fro-ing between Boston and my parent's house in the suburbs.
I'd somehow gotten on the mailing list of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. This was pre-Internet, so that meant the Met's print catalogs arrived in the mailbox at the end of our driveway.
When a new one arrived, I'd tuck it
into the blood-red leather bag my mother had given me to celebrate my first real writing job, and during the 40-minute commute I'd pore over the museum shop's gifts and reproductions.
I want to call that bag a messenger bag. But please. This was the 1990s—before bags like it got a hip urban makeover. My bag was not a messenger bag: It was a Briefcase. (Upper-case B.)
Stiff. Heavy. Impractical. It smushed my sandwich. It hurt my shoulder. It banged awkwardly against my body when I walked from the train.
I didn't like it very much.
But I loved my mother, of course. And I loved the beam of pride on her face when she'd given it to me. This bag smelled expensive. My mother was not extravagant. But in her mind successful
professionals carried leather briefcases.
And so every day I lugged that bag (full of duty, gratitude, Met catalogs). Really, how could any child not?
Actually, part of that story isn't true—the part about not knowing how I got on the museum mailing list. I know *exactly* how I got on the Met's
mailing list: I signed myself up. I put myself there.
I was a small-town kid in every way; at that point, I'd never even stepped foot inside the Met. But rocking back and forth on the commuter rail, bracing that boat-anchor briefcase between my feet, I imagined myself living another life entirely.
Not someone who lived at her parent's house in the
far-flung suburbs. But the kind of person who visited the Met. Who might wear a silk scarf printed with Monet's waterlilies.
The kind of person who might spy an open spot on a shelf in a room in my house—the wood-paneled library, perhaps—and think that the very thing that would go perfectly there would be a miniature reproduction of William, the Egyptian blue hippopotamus that is the Met's unofficial mascot.
I studied that catalog—the products, the copywriting—like they were artifacts of some alien culture and I was an anthropologist: What would it be like to be able to afford the extravagance of a William? What would I feel when I looked at William sitting there on that library shelf? What would the wood-polished wood smell like?
I don't actually
remember how much the miniature sculpture cost then. But I just checked the Met's website, where William is now $68 for a small reproduction (8"L x 3"W x 4"H). (There's one on eBay for a rock-bottom $12.)
Then again, maybe it was less about actually affording the hippo in the catalog and more about imagining the moment when, unboxing William, his impossibly turquoise face wouldn't scan his new home and signal
disappointment with a look that said, "So this is it? Where's my wood-paneled library?"
Soooooo what's this have to do with you, marketing, writing...?
I suddenly remembered William and the briefcase and the train last week, sitting in a Las Vegas ballroom, listening to my friend Rohit Bhargava give a
talk that, in part, focused on the need to hone our empathy.
One simple trick is to read magazines you aren't the audience for, he said. Rohit, who is Indian, might read Parents Latina to see what that audience cares about: What implicit questions do the articles answer for the audience? How are products in ads positioned? What does the world of that audience look like?
Rohit described his tactic as one way to cultivate curiosity about people not like us. Cultivated curiosity ups our empathy, he said, because when we observe as well as talk to people outside our usual social circle, we tumble into lives and worldviews very different from our own.
That's important for us marketers, because such practical customer research helps us
understand the motivations, preferences, and behavior of the people we want to reach.
That's the jargony textbook definition. But here's the human one: Cultivating curiosity helps us communicate in ways we otherwise would not.
🗣️ We change not just what we say but
how we say it.
👯 We speak as peers with our customers, versus brand-to-consumer.
😍 We use a human tone. We develop camaraderie with customers, viewing them as
human beings—not just a "target market" or "personas" or "segments."
Too ideal? Nope.
Rohit talked about how the mindset can inspire ideas like the
R70i Age Suit, developed by Genworth Financial.
Genworth sells long-term care insurance, and the suit simulates what aging feels like: It fakes arthritic joints, filmy vision, hearing loss.
Genworth wants the suit to do two things: (1) ignite conversations no one really wants to ever
have about how to deal with aging and a body that will betray you, no matter how young and fit and beautiful you are right now; and (2) heap a little more patience on anyone dealing with the peculiarities of an older person.
On the way home from Vegas, I stopped at an airport magazine stand. What magazine is not intended for me? Or you? What magazine would never be for you? What
magazine would you choose?
I scanned the titles, looking for I don't know what, exactly.... Something that didn't appeal to me...? Something I'd never otherwise read...?
For a moment I lingered on an art magazine. I flipped through it. I half expected to find William the hippo again.
Of course I didn't.
No one ever does.
Here are 6 things worth sharing this week... but first, let's drop a dinkus: * * *
1.
Department of
Corrections
Grammarly published an interview with me last week. In it, I confessed to being a terrible writer at the first-drafts stage. (Point being: I'm much better at the editor and reviser and tearing-apart-er and fixer-up-er stage.)
The Writing Center at Mount St. Mary College challenged that, saying:
That stuck with me. Because I think the subtle clarification is
important for us all to remember:
It's not the writer who's terrible. It's the draft that's raw and ugly
and often terrible.
2.
Passive Zombies
This week in Charlotte, marketer extraordinaire Jen Capstraw shared the "by zombies" test—a
fun way to check for passive voice in your writing.
It's this: If you can add "by zombies" after the verb in a sentence and it still makes grammatical sense, it's passive voice. Rebecca Johnson, deputy director of the Marine Corps War College, coined it a few years ago. It's not 100% foolproof, but it's close.
"No action is needed... by zombies." El. Oh. El.
Passive voice
isn't wrong. But active voice is zippier and feels more alive than... uh... zombies.
3.
Launch Song Trilogy
It was a big week at MarketingProfs World Headquarters!!! We relaunched, rejuvenated, revitalized, rebuilt, rebooted the En. Tire. Site! (Not: The site was
relaunched... by zombies!) New look. New feel. New marketing training programs.
4.
Shelfies: The Wonderful Thing About Triggers
Research says:
- 19% of consumer purchases are attributed completely to word-of-mouth.
- 50% of consumer purchases are attributed mostly to word-of-mouth.
- 91% of B2B purchases are caused primarily by world-of-mouth.
Yet, fewer than 1% of businesses have a word-of-mouth strategy.
"Let's fix that," said Jay Baer. "Okay," responded Daniel Lemin.
So they wrote a how-to book called Talk Triggers: The Complete Guide to Creating Customers with World of Mouth. It's a terrific, easy read that will give you valuable insights into what makes for a successful word-of-mouth strategy. (Hint: You need four things.)
In a conversation this week with the World's Best Podcast Host, Kerry Gorgone at MarketingProfs, Jay
talks about triggering positive conversations about your brand by treating customers with empathy:
"At one point, empathy was the default. When we interacted with customers and prospects, we did so almost reflexively with a degree of humanity, a degree of warmth, a degree of caring. [Now] we are operating in an era of empathy deficit, not only in business but [also] in politics and in life. The
default state is no longer warmth and caring, it is knives out."
5.
More Shelfies
6.
High on the Blog
The word "blogging" to describe writing has always irked me. It's vague and reductive and disrespects the hard work of writing.
Which is why this annual blogger survey is so important, because Andy Crestodina wants to show, for real, what actually is needed for effective "blogging."
He told me: "I'm trying to
make the point that content is serious business and those who take it seriously—put in more time, work with editors, write long-form, use analytics—get better results."
Last year Andy discovered:
- There was a five-fold increase in paid content promotion since 2014.
- The average blog post had 41% more words than it did three years ago.
- The average blog post takes 3 hours 20 minutes to write.
7.
King of Fire
I'm not much of a fan of Stephen King's horror fiction. And I'm not much of a fan of audiobooks, either. But my friend Mitch Joel told me that the audio version of Stephen King's self-narrated On Writing is special. And he is right.
There's something rare and intimate in hearing authors read their own work. But when the author is a literary king like Stephen King, it feels... I don't know... indulgent is the closest I can get. Especially when in the foreword King gives some love to my favorite writer Of. All. Time: E.B. White:
"This is a short book because most books about writing are
filled with bullshit. Fiction writers—present company included—don't understand very much about what they do. Not why it works when it's good. Not why it doesn't when it's bad. I figured the shorter the book, the less the bullshit.
"One notable exception to the bullshit rule is The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B White. There is little or no detectable bullshit in that
book. Of course, it's short. At 85 pages, it's much shorter than this one... Rule 17 is, 'Omit needless words.' I will try to do that here."
