Archive for the ‘consulting’ Category
Let’s get visceral: Choose your signal before you gut-punch
What forms say before we know anything
I recognize a business card because of the shape and size. I recognize a sermon more by a particular tone and rhythm (which signals a certain intent) then I do the presence of a pulpit or podium. I know a joke is coming because Letterman is on stage and it is 10:37pm. I know the joke will have a setup and a payoff. Or perhaps the third of three statements will be funny. I am ready for the joke because of these forms.
Before we know anything we recognize a form. Our brain sorts how to react to that form, and then, once that is settled, we process communication content. Long before I hear any content, I know what category to place each of those communication events. It is the context that prepares me: when I see X, I know Y is not far behind. My nervous system anticipates the next piece.
But what if the form is out of whack?
What if I hear preaching on a street corner? What if a clever copywriter uses a rubber stamp instead of a business card (“Here, give me your hand and I’ll stamp my contact stuff on you palm.”). And what if Letterman was serious? He has been a few times: right after 9/11 his serious tone—entirely uncharacteristic—began a bit of national healing.
I tell my copywriting students to follow the forms at times and to bust the forms at other times. For instance, we must make our ideas as easy to understand as possible, and so we present our ad concept to a client in a form that is immediately recognizable—even if the idea itself is challenging. And sometimes one thumbs one’s nose at the form on purpose, just to bust through (that is, the communication gut-punch).
In any case, following the form or busting the form is a conscious decision.
And the form is not God (not even a god).
By the way, Dan Pink has a great story about the Pixar way of presenting a concept here.
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Image credit: Kirk Livingston
What happens when we say stuff?
An Epistemology of Writing
I just realized I run my college writing courses in ways possibly dissimilar to how others do it. We have texts, of course, and readings. We have my dry lectures, which I try to turn to discussion (with limited success). We have examples of excellent copywriting and we talk about why they work and when they don’t. We have questions. We have answers (some from me, many from the class). We have cordial fights and the occasional snark (more remains unsaid, I think). We have yawns and longing looks at the clock.
And we have assignments.
You have my attention.
A portfolio addition due ever Saturday night, five minutes before the stroke of midnight. Way to ruin a perfectly good weekend, right? (Ahem: for the record, one need not wait to start an assignment until 10pm on Saturday night).
It’s the assignments—these portfolio additions—that are the real teachers. I try to direct. I try to offer my small ways of thinking, but the real work of this education happens deep in a student’s brain pain: where sparks fly and catch the dry tinder of panic: “What do I say—and how?”
So it has always been with me: I learn as I write. I often don’t know what I think until I write it. Or say it. Just ask Mrs. Kirkistan. But when I research a topic and begin writing about it, all sorts of synapses fire and connections meet and angels sing and the sun shines on my keyboard, where doves and baby deer have collected. Especially after three cups of coffee.
And this is what I depend on in my class: that the threads of our discussion will come together in the doing thereof—the writing of copy. This capturing of a brand, or a dream. The useful words that direct and possibly encourage as they launch into a reader’s mind.
But this: just doing an assignment dampens the angels singing. This class is less about getting my grade and approval and more about creating something you will proudly show to Ms. Creative Director or Mr. Small Business Owner who can hire your magic for their capitalistic endeavors. I can already see those who get this concept. Their work shows it.
Bless them.
And bless all the rest of us, too.
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Image credit: Kirk Livingston
Why Name a Problem?
“They won’t recognize a great solution until they see how big the problem was.”
Along the way to becoming a copywriter one must learn to name problems. This is an essential skill for anyone trying use their creativity out in the world of real people and real issues. Because when you present your bit of inspired copy to a prospective client (as one does when planning for serendipity), they will not see how inspired it is until you tell the problem the copy solved. Once they understand the problem, they can begin to appreciate the genius of the solution you created.
Naming a problem is best done in story form: there was this nasty condition and people worked around the nasty business in this way, which was inconvenient and bad. But we saw that this could be done, and so I created this. Which seemed to work and everyone was happy. Problem solved.
But naming a problem can sometimes be uncomfortable. Not usually after the fact, when everyone can easily see that it was a problem. But before: if you are the first one to notice a problem it takes a bit of courage to say it out loud to others. What if you got it wrong? What if you just don’t understand? If you name the problem, will you be responsible to fix it?
Here’s where a lesson from work fits back into real life as a human: naming a problem is the first step toward fixing it. That is true with my clients and it is true with students and it is true in all sorts of relationships and life situations. To name something is to register that a problem exists. It puts the problem on the radar and communicates to others that there may be an issue.
Until you name a problem you have very little opportunity to address it.
Naming is a bridge to fixing.
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Image credit: Kirk Livingston
Tag:
Boss: With this ping, I have now pled
Think Globally. Act Tactically.
Sometimes we just do our job.
Sometimes we think bigger thoughts and help our boss sort out what next—long before being asked.
I maintain our best work comes from that place where we think strategically and act tactically. Our best work comes from big thinking harnessed to this moment’s need.
Today in our copywriting class we talk about relationships with clients. My line on this is to cherish, honor and protect your client—which starts to sound like a marriage—not quite the right analogy.
Then again, maybe it isn’t far off.
Clients are people who trust us to handle their message. They’ve hired us to do something they cannot do. This is a privilege. Our favorite clients know the best work comes from well-articulated need and parameters followed by the freedom to go and do. And sometimes our clients depend on us to help articulate those needs and define those parameters—simply because we get very close to the need.
This is where the copywriter’s outside perspective helps immensely. It’s also where we deploy our skill of listening into the deep waters of what our client eats/sleeps/breathes/knows. Because sometimes what seemed like only tactical work can turn into an opportunity even the client didn’t realize was before them. And we need to say so.
Such is the opportunity with collaborative teamwork and trusting work relationships. And that’s why it is important copywriters always think Grande or even Venti rather than Short.
Here’s to clients! (Jaunty raising of the ice water glass)
Long may they…, well. Hire.
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Taking Direction from Clem Fandango
A Year of Great Clients
I’m counting my blessings these days because I’ve had a year of clients who have been a joy to work with. Which is to say: they let me alone to do the work we’ve agreed on. And then we come together, talk parts through and make the work better.
All in all, there’s been very little Clem-Fandangoing.
And for that I am grateful.
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Via Sell!Sell!Blog
Talk as an Economic Tool
Flesh out your own opportunity
Grandad was a salesman. Talk was his tool. Talk and presence. He showed up with people to help them locate a house they could own. I doubt he talked many people into buying because he was careful about the economics of the deal. He dealt in houses long before our recent mortgage troubles. He sold houses back when mortgage interest rates were well over 10%. He depended on people keeping current with payments, and they did, mostly. At Grandad’s funeral more than one person told me how the opportunity to own a home had been out of their reach except for his help (which was cool).
Grandad talked his way through a house with a client, through a friendship, through a cribbage game, through dinner. Talk was his tool for getting stuff done, to the occasional exasperation of his wife and daughters. Talk made stuff happen for Grandad.
I’m gearing up for a couple classes that help college students take their writing out of the classroom and into the workplace and Grandad’s example comes to mind. What had been a rather solitary passion for these students—working out stories, poems and arguments for themselves or some instructor—can be made to have broader use in the world they’ll graduate into. This is my argument: enterprising writers use their writing/thinking/talking skills to serve others and actually find it satisfying. Even illuminating: it turns out that looking out for ways to serve others is also as much a knowledge-producing endeavor as the scouring of personal experience and/or feelings that become grist for a poem or story.
Moving writing from an inward to an outward focus begins with a firm grasp on what they can offer—a sort of inventory of one’s communication skills. And then comes some thinking about how those skills may help push forward an organization’s marketing objectives. And just like Grandad’s conversations, writing itself is the route in and the outcome. But it starts with hearing about a need, and that takes a different kind of dedicated listening.
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Image credit: un-gif-dans-ta-guele via 2headedsnake
70 Sheets. 700 Signals.
My $1.25 Grist Mill
For years I’ve kept notes on conversations with clients.
Anyone in business (or anyone in the business of getting something done) knows the value of accurate notes from a conversation. These quick jottings record promises made, delivery dates, special circumstances and conditions.
As a copywriter, I’m also poised to record quotes from my client or team: small summary statements, overview quips, self-proclaimed “dumb” analogies and tangential jokes. These little asides often prove valuable to solving the communication or marketing problem we’re gathered to work on. It’s curious how often the seed for the solution is in the conversation we had that defined the work we would do to solve the problem.
I know this because I often look back through my notes. I go back using a red pen and highlight notes that are proving critical (that’s right: reviewing notes in real-time is productive. Reviewing notes after the work is done is even more illuminating.).
Just today I found myself paging back through my notes looking for a particular conversation and stumbled on another conversation I had forgotten. And that forgotten conversation announced in red ink the precise answer to a communication question I’ve been asking for the last six days.
What good fortune!
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Image credit: Kirk Livingston
Do a Dumb Sketch Today
Magnetize Eyeballs with Your Dumb Sketch
As a copywriter, I’ve always prefaced my art or design-related comments with, “I’m no designer, but….” I read a number of design blogs because the discipline fascinates me and I hope for a happy marriage between my words and their graphical setting as they set off into the world.
But artists and designers don’t own art. And I’m starting to wonder why I accede such authority to experts. Mind you, I’m no expert, but just like in the best, most engaged conversations, something sorta magical happens in a dumb sketch. Sometimes words shivering alone on a white page just don’t cut it. Especially when they gang up in dozens and scores and crowd onto a PowerPoint slide in an attempt to muscle their way into a client’s or colleague’s consciousness. Sometimes my words lack immediacy. Sometimes they don’t punch people in the gut like I want them to.
A dumb sketch can do what words cannot.
I’ve come to enjoy sketching lately. Not because I’m a good artist (I’m not). Not because I have a knack for capturing things on paper. I don’t. I like sketching for two reasons:
- Drawing a sketch uses an entirely different part of my brain. Or so it seems. The blank page with a pencil and an idea of a drawing is very different from a blank page and an idea soon to be fitted with a set of words. Sketching seems inherently more fun than writing (remember, I write for a living, so I’m completely in love with words, too). Sketching feels like playing. That sense of play has a way of working itself out—even for as bad an artist as I am. It’s that sense of play that brings along the second reason to sketch.
- Sketches are unparalleled communication tools. It’s true. Talking about a picture with someone is far more interesting than sitting and watching someone read a sentence. Which is boring. Even a very bad sketch, presented to a table of colleagues or clients, can make people laugh and so serve to lighten the mood. Even the worst sketches carry an emotional tinge. People love to see sketches. Even obstinate, ornery colleagues are drawn into the intent of the sketch, so much so that their minds begin filling in the blanks (without them realizing!) and so are drawn into what was supposed to happen with the drawing. The mind cannot help but fill in the blanks.
The best part of a dumb sketch is what happens when it is shown to a group. In a recent client meeting I pulled out my dumb sketches to make a particular point about how this product should be positioned in the market. I could not quite hear it, but I had the sense of a collective sigh around the conference table as they saw pictures rather than yet another wordy PowerPoint slide. In fact, contrary to the forced attention a wordy PowerPoint slide demands, my sketch pulled people in with a magnetism. Even though ugly, it still pulled. Amazing.
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Quiet Leadership by David Rock. How to Help Someone Have an “Aha!” (Review)
Talk your friend into the answer she already knows
How do you help people connect the dots in their work lives…and in the rest of their lives? Turns out there is a lot we can do. And our primary tool is conversation. In Quiet Leadership, David Rock gives an overview of (relatively) recent neurological findings to show how our brains remain plastic, that is, moldable and changeable, long after childhood. It was once thought that at some point in late childhood our brains stopped—well, it’s not that they stopped growing, but seemed to create new neural pathways with less frequency. That thinking was all wrong. The truth is our brains are capable of growing new neural pathways all the time—new mental “wiring.” And by calling it “wiring,” Rock hints at the mechanics of how we help each other connect previously unconnected thoughts and motivations. He works at changing our mental wiring using questions about our thinking. Helping people find their own answers is light years more effective than telling someone what to do.
Like most books written for the business market, Rock presents a tidy set of steps to follow. Quiet Leadership has six steps. Each step has a chapter or section attached, so there is a lot of very practical, very interesting information for each. I outline these steps below because after reading the book and getting a sense of the potential, I’m curious to remember and try them:
- Think about thinking (focusing on how your conversation partner is thinking about the issue troubling them)
- Listen for potential (listening with a belief your conversation partner already has the tools for success)
- Speak with intent (Be succinct. Be specific. Be generous.)
- Dance toward insight (Conversation really is a kind of dance)
- Permission
- Placement
- Questioning
- Clarifying
- CREATE new thinking by exploring:
- Current Reality
- Explore Alternatives
- Tap Energy
- Follow up (Renewing and restoring the motivational connections by checking in later)
You may be skeptical of tidy steps. You may think “dance toward insight” is too over-the-top. I agree. And yet there is something in what Rock says that speaks to the reality of any conversation. Conversations routinely take off in crazy directions. Conversations often start with a need and we immediately feel helpless to meet the need: we don’t know all the details. Even if we did, we don’t know how our conversation partner is really thinking about the issue.
Rock provides a way to probe thinking (I like how he asks permission to probe) to not only help a person find solutions, but also to help a person be motivated to act on the solution.
I’ll use this book as I teach, with clients, and in general conversation. I highly recommend it.
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conversation is an engine 