Trite Ideas are a Poor Interpretation of a Problem (Paul Rand)
Trite ideas, or unimaginative translation of those ideas, are often the result not of poor subject matter but of poor interpretation of a problem.
Paul Rand, The Designers Art (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1985) 45
Stuffing Spinach and How Engagement Takes a Lifetime
Not page hits or likes, though comments get closer to true engagement
Anybody who has tried to communicate a message knows it takes time, effort and budget. Or if not budget, patience and persistence. But budget helps.
Our writers know this. Louise Erdrich in a recent talk at Concordia University about her National Book Award-winning “The Roundhouse” talked about how she incorporated themes that were important to her in a way that would still be read by readers:
“As a writer, I want to get this message across. But I’ll only do it if it is a suspense novel. I wanted to make a book that you could not put down.”
“And then I would stuff in the jurisdictional legal issues like spinach in a sandwich.”
Spinach stuffed in so you hardly realize it’s there. To get her message across, she had to write a story so compelling that a reader would willingly read on.
Today we talk constantly about apps and software and sites and techniques that allow a brand to engage with consumers. Paul Dunay writing for Forbes wonders if engagement advertising is the future of brand advertising. He thinks we are approaching a fundamental shift in brands talking with, not just at consumers. Dunay named innovative companies already pursuing dialogue over monologue using mobile platforms. Of course, we’ve been thinking about dialogue over monologue for quite a few years, but just now we’re starting to see technology that enables monologue with more ease and simplicity.
But it’s more than technology, of course. It is a firm’s willingness to listen. Listening is on the uptick. Listening is the new thing (which is so absurd it makes me laugh). It’s new because companies realize they left money on the table by constant monologue.
But getting people to care about the stuff you think is important: it’s the writer’s problem. It’s the brand’s problem. Both want to engage to such an extent that one actually takes action. Erdrich wants her readers to do something. Dunay wants to make it easier for all of us to buy the stuff we are thinking of right now.
I argue engagement takes a lifetime.
No brand manager wants to hear this, but writers in it for the long haul know this instinctively. They know they have to write to engage and inform, but engagement comes first. Teachers know this as well. Brands and their managers have yet to learn this. That’s because most engagement strategies still put the brand first, not what’s best for the consumer (though consumer need and desire rank high in engagement messaging). Those brands that have begun to succeed are learning to well, shut up and stuff the spinach inside.
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Image credit: Street art by Nuxuno Xan via 2headedsnake
How to Close Your Believability Gap
Is Your Message Mind-Ready?
- North Korea threatens to turn Washington and Seoul each into a “sea of flames” with “lighter and smaller nukes.”
- Dennis Rodman says Kim Jong Un is a “great guy.”
Sometimes our words create a believability gap. You can see the believability gap between words spoken and the possible results. You can also see the believability gap between the words spoken and the credibility of the speaker. The two bulleted statements above both suffer results- and credibility-deficits, so we don’t believe.
Personally and corporately, we know that we have to speak and communicate in ways that build credibility. That usually means not over-promising. And it means delivering on the few promises we do make. Most of us understand this, even if we don’t always practice it perfectly.
Closing the believability gap involves looking inside (again, personally and corporately) to identify those skills, motivations and insights that can support the results we want our friends, clients and customers to know us for. Sometimes that look inside shows us we’ve been emphasizing the wrong things to the wrong people. It takes courage to step away from a wrong-headed direction, especially when that wrong-way seems to work, for the moment.
Making our messages mind-ready means making sure we have the skills, values, motivations, insights and practices to carry out what we say. Mind-ready messages are credible and result-oriented. People see through bluff and bluster.
But that doesn’t mean we should take threats from North Korea lightly. I guess we’re back to pouring food into their corrupt system again. And Rodman? Let’s make sure he always negotiates when traveling with the Harlem Globetrotters.
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Image credit: Ali Gulec (Turkey) via 2headedsnake
Standing at Intersections
Opportunity stops before it starts.
Again and again I notice friends and colleagues are motivated at interstitial places: those places between things. Between projects. Between jobs. Sometimes between spouses. Between highs and between lows. These are the spaces where reflection has a natural grip, before busyness kicks in again. These are the spaces that open the opportunity to go a different direction, because in that space there is a kind of seeking.
Motivation rises at an intersection, direction is questioned and a brand new openness to a different way can suddenly rise out of seemingly nowhere. Sometimes it can feel completely unplanned, but it is often the space itself, with the psychological or economic pressures on either side that suddenly make a new path seem right.
I encourage loitering at those intersections, because that is where people seek help. I’m a copywriter: I like helping organizations locate and move in that new direction. I like working up the words and ideas that frame the problem or the solution or the intersection itself. And beyond that, I’m a human with faith who likes to help people move forward—maybe only because I’ve been helped forward by so many.
Being available at an intersection makes it quite likely you’ll say something that has the power to illuminate someone else’s choices. And it’s likely your words or theirs will open up the intersection before you, too, the one you didn’t know was there.
Who knows what engine will be fired up by your conversation at an intersection?
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Image credit: johnny-cool via 2headedsnake
BFF Rodman & Kim Jong Un. Let’s Not Mention “Tyrant”
“I Declare” and Other Tool Tools
Dennis Rodman can declare Kim Jong Un a great guy, but that doesn’t make it so. Sadly, Rodman’s declaration will change our perceptions, if ever so slightly. Is Kim Jong Un a great guy? Well here’s what we know for sure since the third-generation has taken the reigns:
- North Koreans remain mostly hungry, so when Rodman spoke of Kim Jong Un’s “epic feast,” we started counting how many hundreds of North Koreans went without food as a result. That’s not a big logical leap: North Koreans often go without food. The Un’s great feast is just another reason.
- Prison camps are growing, not shrinking according to The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea
- North Korea continues testing nuclear technology even as the US and China agree to new sanctions
- North Korea threatens to scrap the armistice that forms the truce with South Korea
Our administration takes Rodman as a joke or a tool, which seems reasonable. Perhaps the whole odd friendship is a publicity stunt, though it is unclear who won this stunt. My hunch is the winner is not Rodman.
But…is Kim Jong Un a great guy? Maybe if you overlook how he continues to starve, beat and abuse his population into submission. Maybe if you overlook how he and his family have turned the entire country into their personal economic engine. Maybe if you overlook how he seems OK with generations of injustice that perch his family at the top.
Maybe then you can see Kim Jong Un as a great guy.
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Image credit: Time
Jesus Land vs. The Master
How we pursue power over others
I watched The Master because I was interested in Scientology. I’m not sure how much I learned about Scientology from The Master, but I did see an able portrayal of glib salesmanship and a nifty, nimble made-up religion. And I did see one writer who found a way to sell lots of books, despite the ethical chasm of painting fiction as reality. I did see people who bought in because it fit the way they wanted to see the world. It’s a dark picture and moody. And depressing.
I also just finished Jesus Land, by Julia Scheeres which shows a similar nifty, nimble made-up religion (this one a sad, dark aberration from Christianity). Scheeres’ memoir chronicles growing up in the 70s with abusive, hypocritical parents and power-mad religionists.
There’s nothing like seeing things through the eyes of the resident teenager to unfurl the hypocrisy in a family. You want to hate the parents for their push for outward form even as they undermined their kid’s confidence and ability with ridiculous rules and expectations. And beatings. And micromanagement. And withholding of affection.
As someone who knows that dark side of Christianity is truly an aberration and not at all the entire story, I am so sorry Ms. Scheeres and others had that experience. And I am equally sorry those experiences sent them running the other way. I certainly understand why.
Many of my friends and likely many reading this will disagree, but I encourage anyone to read through Scheeres’ portrayal of a life where texts and disciplines are wrenched out of context and used as dark and potent weapons. The book is useful if for nothing else than to examine our own habits of turning powerful positive messages to gain power over others.
Both Jesus Land and The Master revolve around made-up religions that are nimble in that they change to suit whatever the leader needs to accomplish. In The Master, Lancaster Dodd is literally writing his new religion as we watch and changing it as he goes. People notice this. He doesn’t care. But his principles are both abusive and entirely without moorings. In Jesus Land, the parents and leaders pick and choose quotes from the Bible to make their point and exert power over the teens. Again—they are blind to having lost the integrity of the message and the ancient moorings that would help them. I can think of half a dozen organizations started in the 70’s that cherry picked Bible passages to make their own aberration of Christianity. At the time, few of us thought to say, “Hey. Stop that.”
Some reading this will say: “But isn’t that the whole point of religion: to make up a set of rules so as to gain power over others?” I appreciate this perceptive comment and it does seem to be true, except that those ancient moorings and understandings can serve to curb the excesses of our current “isms” (whether fundamentalism, evangelicalism, Christian nationalism or whatever). There remains something much, much deeper to explore.
Jesus Land is worth reading, though not at all easy. The Master left me wishing for less.
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Image credit: un-gif-dans-ta-gueule via 2headedsnake
My Heart Has Broken. There is No Mending.
RIP WPR MUG
This mug…this mug….
Predates all our kids. A quantity of coffee just under infinity has poured into and out of it. Oh the things this mug had seen. And heard. Handled by decades of friends and family. This mug cast a long shadow.
Rockdale Union Stoneware, Cambridge, Wis, 1985. Who knew an incentive gift could have such staying power?
And now—an unthinking flick of the wrist in the midst of hurried coffee preparations. A tumble to the floor.
And this.
I’ll be OK. I can move on. Thanks for asking.
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PostScript
A generous reader has offered this heart-felt memorial:
I thank you, from this time of need and reflection.
Why Work Matters—And Why Few Pastors Can Understand This
Here’s a Dancing Boston Traffic Cop Who Digs His Job
Yesterday at a Bethel University “Work Matters Gathering” I heard Tom Nelson speak on why work matters, which also happens to be the title of his new book (Work Matters: Connecting Sunday Worship to Monday Work). Nelson’s book would seem to invite working people back into the conversation about how faith fits with everyday life. Several things I appreciated about the talk (I’ve not yet read the book, but it is on order) include the theological and historical underpinnings he identified. In particular: the central role of work in the Genesis creation story, the recognition that work is bigger than just getting paid—it has to do with how we contribute to the world, and that at several points in faith history we’ve had a far richer understanding (and praxis) of work than we do here and now in the US of A.
I was also pleased he cited Wendell Berry a good half-dozen times.
There’s much more to say about all that.
But one thing I wonder about: Mr. Nelson discovered that all of the people in his congregation actually spent most of their time at work, not at church. People who work—which is most of us—have known this for forever. People who work and have faith have largely been on their own to sort out how to build meaning into their lives of work and faith.
Pastors are just starting to realize it. I doubt many will realize it in any meaningful way. Here’s why: to equip people for works of service out in the world is to simultaneously detract from building the organization we commonly picture as a successful not-for-profit church. I honestly don’t mean this in a mean-spirited way: it’s just that the religious staff is incented to pull people in, not send them out as thoughtful ambassadors (that is, not just parroting religious words and proselytizing with pat answers but deeply engaged in transformational work).
Personally, I think there is a connection between people who love what they do and the creating/redeeming stuff God wants to accomplish in the world. And I’m starting to think people who love what they do can be far more potent than a year’s worth of sermons delivered to roomfuls of devotees. Not they these are mutually exclusive, though my experience is they typically are.
By the way: is the dancing traffic cop a kind of pastor in his own circular pulpit?
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Image credit: thebostonglobe
conversation is an engine 