So, if you are a fan of Stephen Sondheim, you should check out the works of Frank Loesser. As with Sondheim, Loesser started out writing just the lyrics, then did both words and music in the 40s, 50s and 60s for shows such as Guys and Dolls, The Most Happy Fella and Where’s Charlie. Like Sondheim, Loesser never repeated himself; each show was completely different in tone, style and subject matter.
(I feel awkward using only their last names, but would be more uncomfortable with the implied familiarity of using their first names, or adding “Mr.” Any advice?)
The way this post ties in with Valentine’s Day is that I really love Sondheim and Loesser's work.
And the way it ties into good marketing ideas is the way NBC used a song from Loesser's How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying for their Super Bowl promo. If you missed it, here's a link, since NBC won't let anyone embed the promo (but let's hope it means Community is coming back.)
Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.
Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said”…he admonished gravely.
Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."
Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
Don't go into great detail describing places and things.
Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.
If you don’t recognize the name of the author, Elmore Leonard, you surely know his books and films, such as Get Shorty, Hombre, Out of Sight. Along with his latest credit, the TV series Justified, based on the U.S. Marshal character he created, Raylan Gibbons.
He has formulated ten rules of writing, that, although designed for writers of fiction, are interesting for anyone who puts pen to paper, or keyboard to computer screen. And certainly his last ‘rule’ applies to any marketing material you may be creating.
It’s only reasonable for me to share what I consider to be funny with you. It’s one way for you to decide if you agree with the way I look at things in general, including my viewpoint regarding good ideas in particular. (Just as with creating humor, generating good ideas often consists of unexpected new ways of putting ordinary elements together.)
So here is something that popped up on my TV screen that I thought was unexpectedly, unintentionally hilarious.
The juxtaposition of two names, (Gain, a laundry detergent, and Jenny Craig, a weight loss program) when the announcer said, during a station promo, “Brought to you by Gain and Jenny,” just struck me as hilarious, and worthy of being included in one of the New York Times advertising columnist Stuart Elliott’s “ 20 questions about advertising” columns.
You may not agree that the coincidence of the two names was funny. And you may not agree that when your bank contacts you to let you know that they are shortening the hours you can access your safe deposit box, and their letter starts off, “In order to serve you better…” is comical.
And you may not even agree that when you are in a crowded, stuffy, stalled New York subway car, and the electronic lady’s voice tells you to “Have a nice day” there is an element of humor.
But you must agree that I have gotten a rather interesting blog post out of a very flimsy premise.
Try to follow this logic, flawed though it may be. If you read this blog you are interested in ideas. If you are interested in ideas, you enjoy the way people use graphics and words. And if you like words, there is something you probably find fascinating about wit and a sense of humor.
Which I guess is an admission that I really love a well-fashioned turn of phrase, for its cleverness and for its grace, especially for insults. I am not talking about those who resort to boorish vulgarities or clichéd epithets. As Dorothy Parker said, Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words."
So here is a list someone has put together (if it’s yours, please let me know so I can credit you), of some classic rejoinders and put downs that made me smile. If any of them provoke the same response in you, I consider this a blog well done.
• The exchange between Churchill & Lady Astor: She said, "If you were my husband I'd give you poison." He said, "If you were my wife, I'd drink it."
• A member of Parliament to Disraeli: "Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable disease." "That depends, Sir," said Disraeli, "whether I embrace your policies or your mistress."
• "He had delusions of adequacy." - Walter Kerr
• "He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire." - Winston Churchill
• "I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure." Clarence Darrow
• "He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary." - William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway).
• "I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it." - Mark Twain
• "He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends. - Oscar Wilde
• "I feel so miserable without you; it's almost like having you here." - Stephen Bishop
• "I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial." - Irvin S. Cobb
• "He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others." - Samuel Johnson
• "His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork." - Mae West
• "Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go. - Oscar Wilde
• "He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts ... for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang (1844-1912)
• "I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it." - Groucho Marx
• “He has all the spontaneity of a Supreme Court decision.” - Jay Heyman
You make the phone call, though it’s the fifth time you have
left the same voice mail. You text the potential client (again). You spend more time
and money on the proposal than you really should, because, as in every one of
the prior examples, you say to yourself, “Hey, you never know.”
Well, guess what…most of the time, you do know. You do know
you have less chance of getting a positive result than you do of getting hit by
the lottery. In your heart of hearts, wherever that is, you realize the odds
are really stacked against you. You even know that if you do win the bid, it
will be a bad fit. But in the battle of avarice vs. logic, greed will win every
time.
So, you rationalize. You’re not that busy, someone has to
win, the more pitches you are in the more likely you are to win one of them, it’s
a valuable exercise.
That’s one reason I keep blogging every Monday, Wednesday and
Friday. A reader may decide to publish my next book, or make a movie out of my
last one. Someone may suddenly give my ad agency a big account. A Paris
corporation may want me to give a series of talks, which will require meetings
at the hotel Lutetia.
I liked this sign promoting the new issue of the Zagat survey restaurant guide. But it got me thinking of dinosaurs.
Which is what I think their print issue is, or will soon become. Though it is the most recent edition, it is already out of date, since restaurants have opened, closed, hired new chefs, etc. since it was printed. The Internet offers easier access, more up to date restaurant guides, food blogs, foodie discussions, actual menus featuring diner opinions and links to restaurant web sites than any print edition can hope to match. And most are free. (Zagat online is an exception; it requires a paid subscription.)
Okay. Enough about Zagat. What about you? Where are you on the endangered species list? And what are you going to do about it? Do your products feature the latest technology? Are you offering 512M flash drives in an 8 gigabyte world? Do you have a phone tree for customer service that has more pushes than a cold blackjack table in Vegas?
And is your marketing antediluvian? Are you taking advantage of modern selling tools, podcasts, social networking, pay per click? They may not be right for you, but you should at least be aware of them, their strengths and weaknesses. Sure, they are just the mechanics, and you still need to first have your good idea. But aside from the classic cocktail, old-fashioned is not where you want to be.
Seth Godin is the main marketing guru, and has written more books on marketing than I have read in total the past year. Though I have never met him, I have seen him speak on TED, follow his blog every day, have always been very impressed with his energy, style and insights, and am always jealous when I go to a bookstore and see his many facings in the marketing section nestled near my solitary spine.
Yet I am puzzled. He recently announced, on his blog, his formation of a members-only "Tribe." It is, and I quote, "A tribe for marketers, for leaders, for those focused on building communities or creating products or spreading ideas. This online community will live on a site we've created that will feature blogs, forums, social networking, comments, photos, videos and a job board. And it's by invitation only until October. Spots are limited and early members get privileges and bragging rights."
Okay, seems interesting, has all the right marketing calls to action, such as invitation only, exclusive, limited time, only on my blog, for leaders, privileges for early enrollment. But I share a concern that was also mentioned on MediaBistro/Agency Spy. As Seth points out, "It's not about selling more books, of course, it's about creating a small hurdle to get the right people in the door."
Well, it seems to be that someone as marketing savvy and intelligent as Seth could have figured out a method of creating a small hurdle that did not involve purchasing his book, if it were really not about selling more books. And the fact that he thought it necessary to say it was not about selling more books, even adding "of course," reinforces to me that it is about selling more books.
It may be a great way to do it, and another wonderful Seth marketing idea. And the Tribe might be a fantastic community. But couldn't the hurdle be a contribution to a charity? Or the title page from one of his previous books? Or, well, Seth is better at this than I am. But I somehow feel these are the types of comments Seth would make if he saw the same idea and hurdle on someone else's blog. What do you think?
Alltop is, to quote from their press release: a news aggregation site that provides “all the top” stories for forty
of the most popular topics on the Web. The headlines and first
paragraph of the five most recent stories from forty to eighty sources
for each topic are displayed. Alltop stories are refreshed
approximately every ten minutes. You can read more about it on Guy Kawasaki's (he created it) blog.
My blog, yes the very same one you are now reading, has been chosen to be included in two topic areas, Marketing and Small Business. Of course, if you are reading this now, there is little reason for you to go to Alltop to read it again. But there are so many other topics, that you might want to pay a visit to their homepage. If you do decide to go to the Marketing and/or Small Business listings, you will have to really scroll down, and down, to find mine, since they seem to list the blogs in order of their having joined, rather than the much more practical and appealing alphabetical method, which works so much better for, well, me.
If you have a blog that you think might benefit from being on Alltop, check it out. Of course, (sorry Guy), it may turn out to be a big nothing, and people may not want to visit the site but rather stick to the more passive RSS feeds. Or they may play well together. Too early to tell, since Alltop is just about as new as my blog is, and the jury is still out on that.
One point about rushing to join the newest things. I have asked a bunch of business owners if they have joined Linkedin, and they have all said yes. When I asked them what they got out of it, they all hesitated, and couldn't name a real benefit that they had yet found. (In fact, my personal slogan for Linkedin is, "Many have joined. Few Know why"). I am sure that there are many real Linkedin benefits, but they may accrue to a fortunate group who know how to get what they want out of it, rather than those who regard invitations to join as a measure of their popularity.
But having said all that, I am somehow delighted to be listed on Alltop.I have visited it, found it useful and interesting, and wish it, and me, the best of luck.
A colleague told me this story, which is worth passing on. He represented a graphic design firm, and was busy selling a prospective client, who suddenly asked him if he had done any work with trade shows. Peter couldn't wait to convince the prospect how much experience he had with trade shows, from booth design to trade show fliers to creating pre-show mailers to show promotions to unusual banners and displays, to, well, Peter ended by stating that trade shows were one of his specific areas of expertise.
Then Peter asked the question he should have asked first, which was, "Why do you ask?" The prospect's answer was basically that he had had some experience attending trade shows, and just didn't see any real value in them for him.
If Peter had asked the "Why do you ask" question before he started spouting off, he would have given a very different answer. But like so many of us he got caught up in the quest to look good, and made a logical, though erroneous, assumption as to what the prospect was really asking. And his subsequent backtracking didn't help him close the deal either.
So when you are in the selling zone, adrenalin pumping, brain clicking and you can practically answer questions before they are asked, it may be a good idea to take a deep breath. And then another. It may slow your responses down, but it still takes less time than it does to remove your foot from your mouth.
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