Greetings, and welcome to 2021, which is so far not remarkably distinct from its predecessor. But, in any event, I have a new piece of writing to share. Earlier last year my friend and colleague Megan Myers asked if I might share some thoughts on navigating career choices post-PhD for a graduate student journal, Spanish and Portuguese Review. Click here if you’d like to check it out!
Has your brand found its fall?
The following is an excerpt from the fall edition of my newsletter, The Write of Way. Interested in learning more? Subscribe here!
It's the second official day of fall, unless you demarcate seasons via Starbucks, in which case it began on August 25. Either way, it's a time of extreme significance for marketers. Why?
For fall is the greatest marketing triumph of them all.
Now, if you're reading this in New England, I am willing to listen to your dissent on this point. You have an actual need for that fisherman sweater and an apple-picking excursion to get to. Sorry to hold you up. Oh you're from Salem? Get your witch on.
But as it relates to the South, I have never seen a greater shared delusion (in which I fully participate, by the way).
Now, I will acknowledge at this venture that my argument is somewhat undercut by the (most inconvenient) recent dip in temperature here in Atlanta. Let us be reminded that this too is an illusion wrought by an onslaught of hurricanes. But before we stray into a discussion of climate change, let's get back to what we can glean from a marketing perspective.
For many, fall represents less of a lived reality and more of an inspired feeling, a reprieve from the chaos of modern life. Any number of products can feed into this appeal, which makes it marketing gold. Whether the temperatures actually drop, we embrace seasonal squash, sweaters and dubiously spiced products as a means to access a projected sense of coziness. It's a oneness with our physical surroundings and a sheltered state in which one can be at peace with, and even welcome, change.
The emotional pull of the fall experience is so strong that we embrace it and change our behavior even if the weather doesn't change all that much (go to the beach the weekend after Labor Day for confirmation). While I'm not suggesting we should all go out and sell vaporware based on emotional draw, I do think brands often miss the chance to capture the experience of their product, to paint a scene customers can actively embrace.
The fall approach goes a step beyond prioritizing benefits in your copy. It's about getting your customer to visualize a positive experience with the product. Imagery is the most economical choice, but don't underestimate the value of a full-court content approach. Because at its core, the fall approach is all about connecting experience with aspiration and emotion. In practical terms, there's the "show, don't tell" principle at play here. Let's analyze.
Ostensibly, this is a notebook with a circle printed on it. But by walking readers through how they might use that circle to develop a movie plot, we get to imagine ourselves laying out our own ideas, safe in the support of the circle. The copy guides us from step to step, pushing our ideas forward and helping the story take shape. If and when you hit "Purchase," you're not buying the notebook, you're buying the chance to organize the creative chaos that lives within your mind (just me? fine).
I mean as long as we're using fall as a leading example, why not turn to the mecca itself, Target? These geniuses of the throw pillow outdid themselves with "4 ways to refresh your bar cart for fall." On its own, it's just a bar cart, but through a combination of strategically curated products and alliterative copy, it's four different fall experiences. It's your reading nook on wheels, rolling storage for "aromatic autumn meals," a moving vanity stocked with your makeup "fall favorites," and a bedside table adorned with fall florals. One might even say it's four chances to feel whole again.
Of course, the experiential element is infinitely easier (and more sellable) in a CPG context. But it's the B2B enterprise (and technology companies in particular) that miss out the most by foregoing the fall approach. While there's many a "follow the mouse and check out our interface" video haunting home page heroes, how effectively do these narratives connect with core, internal (usually emotional) motivations?
The next time you create something for your customers, keep the following in mind:
Are you giving people something to aspire to, to picture in their mind's eye?
Is there a pleasant scene they can crop themselves into?
Has your brand found its fall?
What's your favorite "experiential" marketing approach? Let me know in the comments!
Like what you read? There's more! Subscribe to the newsletter here.
Be more engaging than snacks
The following is an excerpt from my newsletter, The Write of Way. If you’re interested in learning more, be sure to sign up here!
Can you spot the signs of pandemic semantic fatigue? You're looking at the screen, and certainly time has passed, but you've yet to actually land anywhere intellectually. Your eyes scan phrase after phrase as your mind turns to the dwindling supply of fatty snacks downstairs.
It's near-impossible to compete with thoughts of snacks. And yet here we are, rolling that boulder up the hill, day in and day out. It doesn't help that in the last two months, we seem to have confined ourselves to a select four or five turns of phrase that MUST preface any and all marketing communications.
Now more than ever - in these uncertain times - you know the ones!
I've used them as much as anyone else. But it's starting to feel like a Stage 1 kind of response, where you just want to say something thoughtful and eliminate any possibility of being an ass. But we all feel it. It's getting ... monotonous. It's becoming the text you scroll over, an invitation to zone out.
Specificity is almost always the antidote. Start with meaning. As a practice, whenever I feel I'm using a word too much, I look it up. (This is a fun test – do I even know what I'm saying?) Then, I take the definition and turn it into a question. That way, I can inch myself closer to translating a vague idea into a meaningful, relevant position someone might relate to. Let's workshop:
Step 1: Look it up
For example, "unprecedented."
Never done or known before
If you have the "well, actually," gene, this is the moment you realize ... pandemics aren't unprecedented! But back to the main point.
Step 2: Turn the definition into a question for your industry
As it relates to the industry/business I'm writing for, what specifically has never been done before? What do we know now that we didn't a month ago? What unknowns are we worrying about that we didn't even consider before (again, specifically as related to the industry)?
If you're going to use the word, you should be able to produce specific answers to these questions. And then those tailored ideas are what you should actually use in your copy, because "unprecedented" has become a cue to get bored and think about other things.
Step 3: Ask that same question of your customer
Now, what's something the customer of this business has never had to think about or understand before that is now on their mind? Again, we're trying to think of things specific to the offering, not just "wash hands more" (unless you're selling soap, I guess).
Step 4: Be more engaging than snacks (for a second anyway)
Once you're asking these questions, you're on the path to painting a picture of "unprecedented challenges" without inadvertently inviting the reader to ditch your effort and go get more Funyuns. Or you may find that unprecedented was never what you were really going for in the first place.
In conclusion, if you want to say something real, make meaning your compass.
When you tell the internet about your weight gain
Have you ever noticed that weight gain often appears in “inspirational” stories as a symptom of things gone wrong in a person’s life?
Well, not the case for yours truly. And I decided to write about it.
My latest article for The Everygirl is live! I was pretty intimidated to share something so personal but in the end I really felt like it was a narrative that’s not out there enough. I hope it encourages you to embrace all the good things in your life and live it to the fullest. Read here.
Sound better. I'll help.
Even if you don’t have “writer” in your job title, odds are you’re either creating or reviewing written communications on behalf of your company. I’m here to help you strengthen your company’s voice with insights and observations from the field.
Introducing The Write of Way, your monthly dose of marketing tips, trends … and the occasionally wry perspective on writing. Pairs well with coffee breaks.
So go ahead and subscribe. There’s no harm in sounding better.
Addressing your post – in podcast form.
I once wrote a blog post about how I hated podcasts. Well, what can I say? New year, new me. It’s called growth, people! My friend (and former Emory colleague) Rebbecca and I have been hard at work since this summer developing a podcast for PhDs interested in non-academic career paths. It’s called PostDoctoral, and it now has a trailer! Yay! Be sure to listen and share with all of your PhD friends.
And stay tuned for new episodes on all your favorite podcast sites, launching a week from today!
New article on The Everygirl!
Hello friends.
Be sure to check out my latest for The Everygirl, “Why You Don’t Need a Clear-Cut Career Path in 2019.” I’ve been a reader for six years and I’m so excited to be able to share some of my story (and research-loving nerdom) with The Everygirl audience!
George
The familiar creaking noise beat the kettle’s screams from the kitchen by a few seconds. A fallen quarter rattled on the tattered hardwood floor as a pair of feet pounded up the apartment building’s staircase. He counted from his chair—one, two, three steps on the way to the upstairs apartment. Cacophony, he whispered to himself, as much to expand his vocabulary as to paint the scene in his mind’s eye.
The kettle’s impatient screech now grew to a clarion call that pulled his attention toward the kitchen again. Tossing aside the thesaurus and gripping his tattered armchair, he rose to shuffle into the next room.
The tea kettle was a faded white with yellow lemons decorating its middle, a pattern his late wife had selected in their later years. “This will be a real charmer for you,” she had joked, winking and nudging him. As he lifted the handle, he grimaced to remember all the little jokes about their inevitable parting of ways, the moment when everything had paled and a piece of ceramic could reduce him to all black, no crevice for light. He hated her and loved her in equal measure for it, and wasn’t this proof? He kept it always, though no one else knew the exact reason. He slammed the kettle down on the burner.
Lost in a prism of kettle-ridden sadness, he almost forgot about the living drama ensconcing the apartment above. Like clockwork, the footsteps had meandered their way to an all-too-familiar rhythmic pulse that rattled through the ceiling beams above. Soon, the faint reverberation of moans followed. He gripped his mug with its instant coffee and headed back to his chair. When he reached the side table where he always set down his diluted drink, he paused to grimace at the ceiling as the intrusion grew louder and more absurd.
Every afternoon for the past week! But could he give in to the stereotype and reach for a broom, wave his fist and use words like “racket”?
“Racket,” he whispered. “Stop all that racket.”
Instead, he mimed the tip of a hat to the young lovers, shrugged his shoulders, and eased his way back into the ragged armchair. Her face was always on the other side of sight, and so he tried not to close his eyes, but soon, as the afternoon sunshine drifted in through the window, she won the room.
When she was alive, he didn’t notice the changes. But now, the images played over his mind like a reel of film projected on the back of his eyelids: the body pouted and curved, then shrunk and faded to grey and, as a grand finale, gasped its last breath in a slow scrape that quickened to a sharp, loud crack.
He woke up with a start to the sound of footsteps pounding back down the stairs. His heart was beating with the desperation to shake up the edges that haunted his sleep, so he pulled himself up again to walk to the window.
Peering outside, he expected to catch a familiar glimpse of one half of the upstairs duo. Instead, he met the eyes of a stranger.
All other thoughts screeched to a halt.
Meredith and Charles.
Please join us to celebrate the union of Meredith and Charles.
Meredith and Charles, who had been busy every afternoon for the past week interrupting his lonesome revelry with their quickened rhythm from the floor above.
Or so George had thought.
That wasn’t Charles.
Who the hell was that?
Charles, a stunning specimen of height and sun-kissed olive skin and hardened pectorals. Suit and tie during the week, carefully coordinated athleisure (Merriam Webster’s latest addition) on the weekends.
This man, scrawny and dark-haired and seemingly in women’s pants. Black, everything black. Cigarette between his thin lips. He squished it into the sidewalk with his pointed boot and strolled away, indifferent.
George shook his head in disbelief, for once unaware of the fact that he did it for no one at all. He had been listening to those steps day after day, surmising them to be Charles’.
Charles makes his way up the creaking stairs in loafers never imagined for unpolished surfaces.
His fingertips glide over the railing, smoothing the surface until they curve up her skirt.
He had imagined Meredith’s skin. The flush of Meredith’s cheek.
He could see it all. He knew both the picture and the frame. Now they both shattered. He was roaming around in the shards, and this wasn’t the way it had all added up for him, until now. Until, of course, the sudden appearance of the man with the skinny pant leg.
They never spoke of it, and so he had remained still. Stillness centered her face for him, kept anything else from making its way inside. But now, everything around him spun out of control and order did not return. He couldn’t see straight. He hobbled over to his chair, grasping at his thesaurus, but its pages bended at the edges, jumbling all the letters together into one indistinguishable blathering of text.
When he closed his eyes he saw flesh and it blended with the sun. Unlike everything in waking sight, it did not twist or distort at all. It was clean and he could reach out and touch it.
He stood in the center of the living room, panting. A droplet of sweat glided from his forehead to his nose. Unable to find anything solid to hold onto, it dripped out onto the floor.
George made a steadied beeline for the door.
When he reached the top of the stairs, he paused to take a breath before tapping just above the metal “M” and “C” affixed to the old wooden door.
She answered after a few knocks, dressed in shorts and a t shirt. Her hair didn’t show clear signs of being disheveled, but it was naturally curly and would hide that well. He was going to need more information.
“Hey George,” she said with total normalcy.
“Meredith, spring greetings.”
She could not hide her disapproval of such an odd statement, darting her eyes from left to right despite the lack of a sympathetic companion.
“Good to see you. You doing okay?”
Get it together, George, he imagined her saying to him.
“Milk. I need milk for my coffee. Do you have any?”
She smiled, no longer in a panic over his forced pleasantries.
“Come on in, George.”
As he walked in, his eyes searched for signs. He sat in their armchair, patient for any small detail to drift its way into a clue.
The outline of the apartment guided George’s gaze over each unknown crevice. They all shared the same floor plan, and yet, without the touches of light that lingered on the expected lines or the creak under his foot as he shifted his weight, he couldn’t have recognized anything around him. What made the space so different? The living room was still old and sparse but cleaner—was it just that they had painted the walls a brighter shade of white? The furniture offered little in the way of comfort but brought that coat of paint into modernity. The space between the two apartments now felt so vast that George was no longer sure he would find his way back.
He ran his index finger over the sofa’s fabric and her words finally echoed to him, clearing the fog: Who buys a white couch? You can’t keep it that way.
Did Charles sit here? He put his hands in his lap, afraid of marring the clean slate. His hands with their cracked, dry skin. Far from olive.
“Minimalism” George whispered to himself. “Just the minimum.”
George leaned his head to peer into the galley kitchen. Meredith was lifting the carton from the rusted fridge. She turned her head and looked back at him, then slammed the refrigerator door. He wondered if she would devour him, but then she crumpled on the sofa, shaking her head and looking toward the floor.
“It went bad. It’s not even real milk and it went bad,” she chuckled, her shoulders heaving.
Was this a good sign or a bad sign? Anything, he thought, just give me any little thing.
“For Christ's sake” she cried, brushing back her dark curls and wiping each side of her face with determination. She didn’t look anything like his late wife, but he knew that resolve.
“How long have you been living here George?” she asked, staring straight ahead.
“What do you think of this, this--” her arms were sweeping in every direction now--
“palace?”
Now they both laughed.
“Well,” he stalled, surveying the living area, expansive but in need of more touches of neoliberal gentrification (Scrabble would never be the same since he picked that one up).
“It’s a whole hell of a lot nicer than mine” he offered.
She chuckled, then asked,
“Is this how you thought you’d end up?”
He paused. What did he think? He met her eyes, hoping she’d understand his sincerity:
“I’d always thought I would die first. So, in that sense, no,” he sighed as he adjusted his bifocals.
Now his eyes were swelling with tears.
George had run out of words.
He didn’t know Meredith and Charles all that well, of course, but well enough that they invited him to a housewarming a year ago and chatted with him in the hallway on occasion after getting the mail at the slots by his door. She ran her fingers through her hair during small talk, always searching for a place to run her fingers, as if they lacked a proper home. Charles was brusque and monosyllabic. Inscrutable, and so George spiraled in his thoughts. During these chance meetings, everyone’s mind was elsewhere.
George always, always wondered what his wife would have said. In any number of circumstances: when a commercial was stupid, when the housing market fell, when he tried Melba toast and didn’t hate it. And especially about Meredith and Charles, so mismatched, so sterile in their presentation, so out of place in the building. She could always find the signs, read into the little nuances. What would she think? What would she say?
He lifted his head. He scanned the room, unable to tell one strategically placed succulent from the next. And then it was clear: he would never find out. He would never, ever find out.
Not even if he learned every new word for every new time that he lived without her. He would live it all without her, and never know what face she would have made, or what soap she would have bought.
He thanked Meredith for the idea of the milk after vague gestures to “get together soon.” Then George closed the door with care and prepared himself for the deluge of steps that awaited his slow creep back to his apartment downstairs. His trousers, a faded grey, creased with each movement. He stared down at the dancing fabric for a few steps.
Midway through, he realized he wasn’t alone. When he glanced down to place the next step, a new pair of shoes faced his on the stairs. From there he traced the perfected crease of a trouser that mocked his own, and kept going until he was looking up to meet the glow of a face far younger, yet even more hidden, than his.
“Charles,” he whispered.
“George,” he replied, even-toned and solemn as ever.
He smelled expensive. His suit never betrayed him. Everything stiff and put-together. Nothing undone: not a glint of the eye, the hint of a smile, crooked tie, nothing.
And yet there it was—the skin he could reach out and feel, with nothing waiting on the other side of light.
They faced each other on the stairs.
Without a moment left, George grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him close.
It didn’t take a miracle. He stepped into the light.