What is writing, anyway? Every once in a while I have the opportunity to speak to a class of design students at the University of Memphis about writing and about how writers and designers interact in the world of advertising and marketing. I always ask that question. What is writing? One student replied, “words on a page.” Typical but wrong. That would be typography.
Writing is connecting disparate ideas. It is organizing information to tell a logical story. Writing comes from recognizing the complex relationships between words and how your choice of words affects meaning and understanding. It is controlling and manipulating language to achieve a desired effect. It is communication.
But most of all, writing is thinking made accessible to others. You can’t really write until you learn how to think.
What I have tried to impress upon the students is that writing doesn’t necessarily involve a lot of words. In the advertising business we engage in an activity called “concepting,” in which we come up with the big idea and invent just the right vehicle for communicating our message. Sometimes that concept is 50% headline and 50% visual, but it is always 100% writing. Here’s an ad I just wrote for FedEx that hardly has any “words on a page.” Its mission is to remind Memphis Grizzlies fans that FedEx is the official sponsor, and that FedEx is as enthusiastic about the team as they are. The thinking, in this case, is being conveyed by the photograph. What better way to show FedEx fanaticism than bobbleheads in the cockpit?
That’s Rudy Gay and OJ Mayo, in case you can’t make it out in this small rendition. Bobbleheads in the cockpit make for an arresting image and convey the idea that FedEx isn’t just a monetary sponsor; they are dyed-in-the-wool fans. These days the hapless Grizzlies could use more of those.
Making something look good is aesthetics. Making people understand? That’s writing. Whether you use words or not.
Officespeak, that constantly changing language of buzz words and phrases heard around corporate conference tables, is an interesting paradox. It is universally deplored yet universally deployed. Remember facetime and interfacing with clients? Having to think outside the box and pushing the envelope? It was all about being on the same page.
Nowadays, someone is bound to ask how much bandwidth you’ve got. They’ll want to reach out, drill down and circle back. You might hear “value-add” as a noun and “impact” as a verb (remember when only teeth got impacted?). And no-doubt there are times when, no matter what you are doing, you’ll be asked to take it offline.
To be successful, you’ve got to promise the right deliverables while staying within your core competencies. Optimize ROI. Look for a way to grab the low-hanging fruit. How? Well, you’ll need a roadmap going forward. You’ll need to incent employees. You’ll need ideas that can piggyback on mine. Ideas that are actionable. You’ll need to add a new thread. Take ownership!
At the end of the day, what you are really looking for is a gamechanger, a paradigm shift, perhaps something viral. (I’m feeling a little viral, myself.)
In the marketing business, we hear folks talk about marketing concepts that are “channel-neutral,” meaning ideas that can work for a variety of media–direct mail, print advertising, web, and so on. Just the other morning, I heard it called “channel-agnostic.” What’s next? Channel-atheistic? If that’s the case, we can all just go home.
Got any others? Why not touch base? Leave a comment or shoot me an email.
Now for something fun and pertinent to our recent economic upheaval. If you live in the United States, please participate in the following poll. To aid us in our research even further, please leave a comment restating your answer and providing any explanatory information you might want to offer, especially what part of the country you are originally from and what part of the country you live in now. I’ll leave this poll active indefinitely in hopes of accumulating enough answers to draw reasonable conclusions. Thanks!
