 Many of you have asked about The Fabulous Honey Parker’s debut novel.
It’s been surprising and heartening, and I thank you. I’d been reluctant to push the book in this space, thinking it was off-topic. After all, the relevance of a book called Careful-ish: A Ridiculous Romp Through COVID-Living As Seen Through The Eyes Of Ridiculous People seems limited herein. Now, after digging into the marketing, I’m realizing now how on-topic it can be. Branding and the psychological science of decision making have been far more at play here than I stopped to realize. Silly me. There will be more about that to come. You're going to find it elucidating. In the meantime, would you like a Careful-ish deal? And before I get into this, did you know... You can read Amazon Kindle books without owning a Kindle device. There is a free app from Amazon, available in the App Store and Google Play. Download the app, and you can read any Kindle books on your phone or tablet. Why is this good? Kindle books cost less than paper books, sometimes they're even free, the app lets you highlight and make notes, and you can load your books across devices. (I love reading books on my phone when I'm stuck in line at the supermarket or the post office or in the waiting room at my bail bondsman's office.) SIDEBAR: I love getting free classics from Project Gutenberg and sending them to my Kindle. I have dozens of books like Candide and Brothers Karamazov that I’m pretending to read. Anyway, that: anyone can read Kindle books without paying for a Kindle. And that matters because... Here’s the big deal: 85% off the Kindle edition of Careful-ish. The e-book edition is normally 6.99. But TODAY ONLY, it’s 99 cents. This deal was supposed to end yesterday. But Honey said I could extend it an extra day for readers of Hot Shots. If you’d like this deal, just click here. Or, go to Amazon and search Careful-ish. It’ll come right up. As of Monday at lunchtime, the book was on the Satire Fiction chart at #90. That position put it right behind the instant crime satire classic from Random House, My Sister, The Serial Killer. WARNING: This book does contain strong language and vague sexual situations. (It’s about young people in New York during lockdown. What do you expect?) Next week, we're going to talk more about what anyone can learn from the marketing of books, unless we decide to talk about all you crazies who email me when I write a crazy screed like last week's. Have a fabulous Thanksgiving, and please be careful-ish with your holiday! Cheers, Blaine Parker Your Lean, Mean Creative Director in Park City LIGHTNING BRANDING ON AMAZON The Kindle edition of our new book is now available at Amazon for the bargain price of $19.95. For details about our new Lightning Branding courses, both do-it-yourself and we-do-it-with-you editions, click here. (There's even a video of us!)
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 Just had a shocking realization...
I have no idea how to write advertising. Yes, that seems odd for a guy who’s been doing it for over 20 years. But it’s the truth. I don’t know how. I’ve sold stuff. Lots of it. Won huge awards. Have my own business. And you can do it, too. But where does it all begin and end? There is no system. Everybody wants a system. But if you’re starting from the boundaries and structure of a system, how can the outside creative idea penetrate your work? Yes, purpose and intent are critical and compulsory. But so is chaos. Creating from chaos? How does this happen? Example... This morning, I’ve been sitting in front of the computer, pounding out taglines wild and reckless. None of them are good. Until… One is. Not great. But OK. What does that idea look like? I go to Google, type in a related search term, and hit “images.” Chaos with captions! But there amid the chaos, a new creative thought emerges. Could work. What about our big-brand competitors? What are they doing? I search a big brand by name. There’s some good stuff with good feeling. What can we do that’s different, that feels as good or better? And how will it be informed by our own brand veracity? Quick, Google search on reviews from our customers. Lots and lots of same same in there. But looking for the things that aren’t the same, that’s where to find the diamonds that feel right and good and true and tasty. No, they can’t be quoted in the ad copy. But they can inform the ad copy. And maybe that’s the challenge right there: what feeling informs the copy? How are you being informed? Ideas are everywhere except inside your head. Gotta beat the bushes so they fly out like a covey of lovey doveys. Does that even make sense? It doesn’t matter. Write it down. We have more tools at our disposal than ever. Try to create in a vacuum, and it sucks the life out of you. Use Google as your guide and other tools to find the chaos that brings ideas and informs the feelings and the order you’re trying to bring to bear on customer-winning copy. Ask questions. See what happens. Think up craziness. See what comes. Collect the gems. Slogging through a lot of stuff seems chaotic--but it can bring brilliance. I don’t know how I create ads. But I do know that what I don’t do is sit and stare at a blank and empty. It doesn’t help. (Unless it does.) It’s a systemless system and a methodless method for hoovering ideas into your vacuum. See? I really don’t know. You can, too. Cheers, Blaine Parker Your Lean, Mean Creative Director in Park City  We’ll get to that particular joy in a moment.
First, you should know where this pizza came from. It came out of my home oven. It was made by a total amateur. And it is not a pizza for everyone. This pizza is what we call a Danger Pie. The reason we call it that is because it has too many toppings. Those toppings include the following:
That's why a pizza like this is against the rules. Sometimes, a pizza like this becomes unwieldy. Sometimes, a pizza like this turns into a pile of crap inside calzone. Therein lies the danger. And therein also lies the joy. Not ending up with a calzone requires practice, patience, skill and understanding. It also requires a knowledge of the person you’re serving it to. My wife really enjoys this pizza. My brother would hate it. He hates shrimp. He hates mushrooms. He probably hates cilantro. (We’ve never discussed cilantro. But it’s a safe bet that cilantro falls outside his narrow spectrum for desirable foods.) Who made this pizza? Your relentless scribe, of course. I made it for you. Why would I do that? Because, after years of dabbling in pizza, and refining my pizza during lockdown, I’ve come to a realization… Pizza is a good metaphor for advertising. A good advertisement creates desire. A good advertisement makes someone happy. A good advertisement cannot appeal to everyone. A good advertisement is a synergy of mundane components that come together to create an effect greater than the sum of its parts. And, without practice, you end up serving a pile of crap inside a half-baked calzone. A good pizza is poetry. And so is a good advertisement. Either one can bring joy. And on occasion, it will make someone weep. Here’s the other thing: anyone can do it. It takes practice. It takes patience. It takes skill. It takes understanding. That’s all. Simple ingredients assembled properly. It can be a foundation of flour, salt, yeast and water. Or a foundation of focus, purpose, intent and words. Each of us has the power to make a pizza. Each of us has the power to create an ad. It just starts with the desire, a little practice and paying attention to the rules. (And knowing how to break them, of course.) SIDEBAR: Do you want pizza power? The most common question about my pizza is, “Do you make your own dough?” Like it’s some kind of magic trick. It’s not. It’s just flour, salt, yeast and water. Would you like the recipe for an Ad Guy’s Pizza Dough? Reply to this missive with the two-word phrase, “Dough recipe.” I’ll send it to you. Cheers, Blaine Parker Your Lean, Mean Creative Director in Park City  The snick of the penpoint across the page is proverbial. Familiar, like a casual friend. It’s been awhile. But he’s back. And it feels good to hear him. See him. Sense him. Be wary of him. (The pen can get a guy into trouble. And that may be happening right now…)
This morning in The Extra Hour that comes with the first dawn of Daylight Time’s death, I’ve been making coffee. Preparing to make coffee. Readying the little pot for when my little wife shuffles up the stairs of our little home and into the little hours of the new morning. This Extra Hour brings bonus time for focus. But…on what? The diminutive details. Like the spoon in the espresso-grind bag of dark-roast Hispanic-heritage coffee that folks routinely mistake for Cuban but was founded by an entrepreneur Spaniard and is as American as the Brooklyn Bridge and born in the Bronx. In this silvery spoon, the dark, powder-fine grains of deep-brown black heap to a precarious peak and hold before dropping into the filter. Why is it I never noticed that except here in The Extra Hour? And speaking of The Extra Hour, the kitchen clock has been losing time. Like, maybe it’s trying to get that hour back. I go and grab a double-A battery from the place where I keep the recording gear. I take that battery to the clock and replace the old one that’s there. The old one has an unusual, unidentifiable label. It’s some imported battery brand not available to the general public and is sold only to the manufacturers of a giant-faced clock that is operated by a tiny electric motor fueled by the second littlest of the standard-size single-cell cylindrical dry batteries known to man. It is also double-A trash. “Thunk” into the can. It sounds as if it struck soft into yesterday’s damp coffee grounds. And the snick of the penpoint across the paper in The Extra Hour brings a question: What now? And what does this have to do with advertising anything? Simple. Do you find yourself challenged by trying to create copy that’s surprising, engaging or is candy to the ear? Try paying big attention to little details. For a moment, forget the sell and focus. Drill down into the sounds and the sensations. Just take a breath and… Hold. Listen. This is not a meditation. This is a moment. A moment is a brief period of time. It is also a force in physics. For example, the force it takes for an object to resist inclination and return to position is called a righting moment. But here, let's call this our writing moment. Take that moment to hear what happens. Feel the space. It is rich with the subtle force of soft sensations and quiet things going on--even in a crowded room. (Why do so many writers like working in cafés and bars? It’s not because they’re quiet…) There is a copy culprit to whom we all fall victim. We don’t take the time. We’re losing minutes. We rush into the creation of busy words that fill the space instead of filling the ear and on into the heart. It happens in so many ways. A lack of care. A lack of question. A lack of sight and sound. We ask ourselves, How hard can we push this motivational boulder over the top so it comes crashing down on our customer, smashing into the crazy conviction that there has never been a better time to rush in and buy now. That is, after all, the common question. But it yields an answer that nobody needs. That’s because… It’s not the question the customer is asking. Right now, our culture is awash in noise. Everyone is shouting. Nobody is listening. So shut down your computer. Take a pen. Grab some paper. And… Scribble the words--the ones that come when you start to feel the room and see the shapes and feel in your gut the whims being whispered at you. Grasp the gold that’s just lying there for the taking and see how it suddenly informs your mission--which may not even be yet defined. That is, after all, how we ended up here in The Extra Hour... LIGHTNING BRANDING ON AMAZON The Kindle edition of our new book is now available at Amazon for the bargain price of $19.95. For details about our new Lightning Branding courses, both do-it-yourself and we-do-it-with-you editions, click here. (There's even a video of us!) Cheers, Blaine Parker Your Lean, Mean Creative Director in Park City |
AuthorBlaine Parker is prone to ranting about any and all things related to brand. In many ways, he is a professional curmudgeon. While there is no known vaccine for this, the condition is also not contagious. Unless you choose it to be so. Archives
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