 Word Of The Month: Vernacular!
This is the tagline from a roadside advertisement. A local diner boasts: “Where good food originates!” Know what I love about this tagline? The same thing I love about the word “vernacular.” No customer will ever use those words. Never. "Vernacular" is a fancy word for the idea of, “How folks say it round these parts.” The only person I can remember ever using the word “vernacular” was one of my college professors. It was part of his personal brand. He was a little, bald, German man who wore tinted glasses and stank of chocolate pipe tobacco. In his delightful, heavily accented English, he loved to condescend to the lowest of his low-level students for whom who was dumbing down the simplest possible course material. During the course of said condescension, one of his favorite phrases was always uttered with ex-cep-tion-ally pre-cise dic-tion: “As we like to say in the vernacular…” Somewhat later, he was indicted for fraud. But I digress. In advertising, "employing vernacular" is a fancy way of saying, “Speak in the language of your customer.” A roadside diner saying, “Where good food originates!” is like Motel 6 saying, “We illuminate your accommodations!” That tagline was probably written by the owner of the diner or someone near him. This person was probably thinking, “How do I make this thing sound clever?” “I know! We can say that this hole-in-the-wall joint in this tiny town in this cozy corner of Appalachia is where good food originates! Done! Phew! Let’s go get us some griddle cakes!” Line up the competition along the highway and decide for yourself. “America’s diner.” “I’m lovin’ it.” “Be your way.” “Where good food originates!” Nope. Fail. Doing something even slightly better doesn’t require deep thought. Let’s assume we can’t come up with a qualifier more evocative than “Good food.” The client says, "That's what people know us for!" It's non-negotiable. How about saying, “Good food for happy travels.” “Good food, fast and friendly.” “Good food for going down the highway.” “Good food that gets you back on the road.” “Good food for getting where you’re going.” In less than a minute, that’s five possible alternatives. None of them are brilliant. But all of them are (yes) vernacular. That means (ahem) speaking to the customer as the customer would speak. Once upon a time, Honey and I were in one of our favorite small towns in the American south. It’s a simple place from a different time. There was a new restaurant in town, a fancy Italian joint with foodie pretenses. We were talking to a local lawyer friend about this new restaurant. We asked him how he liked it. As he took a tipple from his adult beverage, he said in his inimitable southern drawl, “I believe they are firing over the heads of their customers.” “Vernacular” is a word that fires over the head of the customer. “How we speak” might be on the nose, but it’s clear and it leaves the light on for you. If ya know what I mean. 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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 King of the crumbling road!
In celebration of President Joe Biden’s The American Jobs Plan, a multi-trillion-dollar initiative to restore the nation’s self-esteem through gigantic infrastructure blender drinks, the Fabulous Honey Parker and yours truly are utilizing the original national infrastructure project that helped Make America Great In The First Place. (MAGIFP! Put that on a hat!) We are grateful that this antique infrastructure project has not collapsed enormous Appalachian mountains upon us upon us nor dumped into the mighty Mississippi River. Honey and I are driving cross country on the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. You may know that system by its more prosaic name, the Interstate Highway system. Or, as the kids call it... That crumbling stretch of road to nowhere flanked by endless cornfields. One of the great things about the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways is the examples of advertising genius that it offers us. Billboards, billboards, billboards! The only thing more plentiful than billboards is corn stalks! Advertising greats like Howard Gossage and David Ogilvy were notorious for their hatred of billboards. Yet billboards remain, a scourge, a pox, a blight upon the nation’s countryside. So let’s make the best of them and see what genius they have to offer us. For us, today, it is this tagline that came from a billboard in Somewhere, Ohio. Ready? “We’re good at what we do!” I’d love to tell you what that’s a tagline for. But I can’t. I don’t remember. Neither does Honey. What we do remember is reading it, having a great laugh, and then applying it to every possible advertising campaign we could think of. McDonald’s. “We’re good at what we do!” Ford Trucks. “We’re good at what we do!” Legal Zoom. “We’re good at what we do!” Pampers. “We’re good at what we do!” Though, in fairness, maybe the latter should be, “We’re good for what babies doo!” And this tagline has replaced (at least for the moment) our other favorite, all-purpose tagline, to wit... “It doesn’t smell like urine!” That’s the punchline to a long story of advertising from a long time ago in a land far, far away. Yet, it still resonates for us and periodically makes us laugh because we often exhibit the same, sophisticated sense of humor as adolescent children hopped up on Pop-Rocks and Coca-Cola. But I digress. That notwithstanding, roadside advertising lesson of the day is… If your tagline is so generic that it can easily be applied to any business, it’s not a tagline. McDonald’s. “We’ll leave the light on for you.” Ford Trucks. “We’ll leave the light on for you.” Legal Zoom. “We’ll leave the light on for you.” Pampers. “We’ll leave the light on for you.” Doesn’t work on any of ‘em, does it? But when you apply it to a chain of budget motels with a folksy demeanor, things change. And suddenly, you feel better about that cheap motel. Here’s to feeling better about your advertising and infrastructure and national self-worth in the wake of Easter Sunday. More roadside advertising glee to come… 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!)  Romance, Meet Marketing. And weep.
The action in New Zealand right this minute has little to do with a pandemic, and everything to do with a sickness. At the moment these words are flowing onto the page, it’s the final day of the 2021 America’s Cup racing in Auckland. By the time you read this, the America's Cup will belong to either New Zealand (again), or Italy. You probably don’t care. Most people don’t. If you’ve seen any of the footage on NBC or the interwebs, you know that it’s all speed, all black, all inscrutable. When did yacht racing become a sport filled with crash helmets? The Fabulous Honey Parker asks, "Where are the cup holders?" Yes, this form of sailboat racing and the boats that race in it look a lot different today than they did in 1851. Ah, the romance of sailing. “I don’t like what America’s Cup has become. All the romance is gone!” I’ve heard people say this. What happened to the romance? White sails. Graceful sloops heeling over in the sun as the water does a diamond dappled sparkle in the waters off of Newport. Strapping young men with suntans grinding winches. Loud, middle-aged men barking orders from the helm. Smiling, suntanned women handing over trophies and bottles of frothing-over champagne. Those were the days. You know what? Be not fooled. Like advertising, America’s Cup yacht racing has always been about money. Romance has always been irrelevant. Today’s space-age yachting war of technology and determination is a place where exotic materials meet systems engineering, and it’s all seasoned with towering black sails, crash helmets, and big-money corporate sponsorships. It’s a great metaphor for the culture at large. And yes, the ostensible romance of advertising is also gone. The good ol’ days of advertising have sailed over the horizon. We are left slogging through a morass of technology and terminology. The 21st century digital culture has little to do with writing a message and everything to do with believing that the real message is the delivery system. “If you’re not marketing on social media, you’re missing the boat!” I saw a headline like that just this morning. It made me shake my head. While advertising has never been about romance, it was always easier for the poets to be seen. Writers were the visible heroes of advertising. But at the end of the day, it was never about them, either. Advertising was (and will always be) about money. It’s just that some romantics in the business think they can raise the bar and make people feel something less crass. America’s Cup racing is the same way. The first race in the 1800s was not the product of any romantic notions beyond making money. A group of six New York millionaires formed a syndicate. In case you were wondering, “syndicate” is not a word that has any romantic intent. The millionaires in this syndicate formed it to build a technologically advanced yacht. The six titans of industry involved sat in their offices in New York while a professional crew sailed the yacht to England. The millionaires later followed as first-class passengers aboard a very comfortable steamship. Their mission was to win money in yacht races. These men were gamblers, pure and simple. It also didn’t work out in their favor. They failed in their mission. But their effort spawned the multi-billion-dollar madness that now happens every few years in some part of the world not New York or Newport. The days of white sails with no advertising and the pretense of gentlemanly sportsmanship are over. Yes, the visual poetry and thematic fabrications are gone. The game has become such a huge, technology-powered cash vacuum that it requires more sponsor dollars than anyone ever knew existed. And at the end of the day, then as now, it’s still about people who want to make money. It has just left any possibilities of sailing romance as we know it behind. And so it is with advertising. Sales messages are ubiquitous. Maybe there’s no hope for bringing back the romance of America’s Cup yachting that never really existed. There’s also probably no hope of bringing back the romance of the glory days of Madison Avenue, which also never really existed. But it is possible to remember the one thing that never changes. Romance is just one of many thematic components that inspire customers to buy. Maybe romantics like us can push past the ignorance of media chauvinism and aim for the juicy center of the person to whom we’re selling. Maybe then, we can all feel better about selling better by making people feel better about buying. And we can all feel like we’re sailing on the wings of a more poetic day of gentle waves and sea breezes with nary a black sail in sight. 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!)  Why on earth would you write 100 headlines?
“I’m not feelin’ it.” OK, that’s not exactly the line Honey used, but it might as well have been. She was talking about the headline I’d just given her for a client’s home page. The client is very smart. She’s funny. She enjoys a laugh. And she unafraid of smart writing. She also has an unusual job. That’s why she ended up with an unusual headline. It’s a headline that would make some clients very afraid. This client is a Certified Divorce Financial Advisor. Yes, such a thing actually exists. It seems the financial decisions made in divorce are often uninformed and emotional. For instance… “I want the house!” That’s a great thing to want. But can you afford it on only one income while you’re crying in your soup? And lawyers are not typically trained to examine such things. They’re merely trained to “make it so.” “I want the house!” “Let’s make it so!” A CDFA asks, “But can you afford the house?”, then looks at the numbers. Hiring a Certified Divorce Financial Advisor means making smarter financial decisions. You end up with a divorce that’s fundamentally healthy and doesn’t leave anyone twisting in the breeze of financial devastation. The headline I’d first given to Honey was so prosaic, I can’t even remember what it said. Honey, doing the right thing, rejected it. So I sat down and wrote many, many more headlines. I probably hit 42 possible headlines of varying degrees of electricity before writing this one… “Why let bad financial decisions ruin a perfectly good divorce?” I liked it immediately. And I kept writing. Because writing something you like doesn’t mean the job is done. There is always more, and there might be better. Too often, a writer stops as soon as there are words on the page. That’s not how copywriting gets to a place of surprise that inspires response. There were close to 100 possible headlines in the writing that happened for this client. Some of that material ended up as subheads, headlines for other pages, and body copy. But when I read aloud, “Why let bad financial decisions ruin a perfectly good divorce?” Honey laughed, I laughed, and we knew it was a winner. And when we presented it to the client, she laughed, too. And we all laughed for the right reason. Better than that, our Certified Divorce Financial Planner understood it to be just the kind of sentiment she needs to surprise her core client into responding to her message. And she loves where her brand is going. It’s smart, funny, informed, concerned, friendly and approachable. Those things don’t happen by accident. This is another page from the Purpose & Intent Playbook. No copywriting happens in a snap. As the very famous Mary Heaton Vorse once said, “The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.” Sitting and writing past the first thought is how the writing gets to a place that makes you say, “Hey, this feels a little dangerous, but in a good way,” instead of “Well, I filled up the space.” Write yourself into The Zone. Let flow happen. Write more than you need to. And stop thinking about it. Just sit. Write. And Win. 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!)  Big words are fun! Recently, I was reading a marketing agency’s pitch for themselves. It made me scratch my head. Among the first things they say is, “When you want a new marketing firm, it’s important to look for an agency that is entrenched in all aspects of your industry, approaching every project from a fresh perspective.” Here’s the good news: they start by talking about me instead of about themselves. They realize the most important person in the equation is the prospect. The bad news is, they clearly don’t know what they’ve just said. If they did, they wouldn’t have said it. I know what they mean to say. But if they knew what their words really mean, they’d realize it’s not what they mean at all. Phew. Being entrenched is a bad thing. According to Oxford Languages, the definition of “Entrenched” is “of an attitude, habit, or belief that is firmly established and difficult or unlikely to change; ingrained.” In other words, here’s what the marketing agency is saying… “Look for a guy who is resistant to new ideas so you can have new ideas!” And by that sentiment, we have another example of how simple ideas are often best expressed simply. Wanting to write well is good. Not knowing you’re writing bad is a problem. When your business is communication, you need to know the words you’re using mean what you think they mean. Writing about a bad thing as a good thing in a sales pitch looks silly. It could cost big money. Granted, water finds its own level. Someone out there could read that line and think, “Hey, that’s for me!” But look where we are now. We're talking about the problem with the word instead of about the intent. Knowing what your words mean is a good idea. Being word aware matters. Checks and balances are useful. Sometimes it's having someone read what you’ve written. At the very least, using a word that is in any way questionable ought to be questioned. Ask Google. Or Jeeves. Or somebody. Questioning my own usage has saved my pork belly more than once, and I ended up cooking bacon instead. Cheers, Blaine Parker Your Lean, Mean Creative Director in Park City
 People are often in one camp or the other…
 "What have I done?"
--Nicholson at the Kwai Bridge Indeed, what have I done? This screed is a mess. It all began with a question: What profound gem of copywriting or marketing can I toss your way as a parting thought for 2020 that will change your life in 2021? And the answer: Probably nothing. You are witnessing the not-knowing of writing a regular weekly assignment in an effort to be useful, purposeful and intentional. Sometimes, this exercise is just hopeless. Go ahead. Leave now. Save yourself. Something I’ve found myself doing lately is thinking back. Not with nostalgia, but curiosity. What writers have made me sit up and take note? What writers have influenced my work in one way or another? They are a diverse and intelligent lot, all smarter than I. Some of them you probably know. Ogilvy. Bernbach. Williams. Godin. Gossage. Well, maybe you don’t know that last one. Howard Gossage is a kind of a cult figure among copywriters. He died too young, but still had a profound impact on ad guys as diverse as Goodby Silverstein’s Jeff Goodby and late, great, Guerrilla Marketing guru Jay Conrad Levinson. But there are other, less likely writers. For instance, there’s the late New York Times columnist, Russel Baker. I was in junior high school when he wrote his column about how to carve a Thanksgiving turkey. His prose made it clear how hysterically funny a newspaper columnist can be--especially when he’s not writing about politics. I also remember the opening paragraph to Baker’s satirical piece about televised sports, titled “Kaleidosport.” “For days, we sat at the box mesmerized by sport. We saw the Mets beat the Nets and the Jets, saw Pancho Segura score a hole in one, and watched thunderstruck as Evonne Goolagong came off the bench in the final seconds of play to whip the mighty Nebraska Cornhuskers with a line drive to center field.” That’s just the beginning. It becomes a lesson in crazy. I remember discovering PJ O’ Rourke, known today as a conservative pundit, via an article he wrote for Car & Driver magazine about competing in an off-road rally in the new Jeep Cherokee. In the article, he touted the joys of packing a suitcase while drunk (when you get to your destination, opening the suitcase is like Christmas). He asserted that while Michael Nesmith has zero skills to offer as a rally competitor, he is an excellent conversationalist, and that was sufficient to put him in the car. And O’Rourke’s saying that a hotel-catering shrimp cocktail looked like “a Sea World exhibit gone horribly wrong” was an object lesson in how a simple line of excess can break up a roomful of people. Sometimes, a writer is sticky for just than a single line. For instance, Carl Sandburg’s “The fog comes on little cat feet.” It’s a seven-word gem that is firmly ensconced in my gray matter. In another life, it might have been good ad copy. It's succinct, crystalline and memorable. David Ogilvy is so very quotable. But from his writing, there are two lines that stick with me as quintessential. One is his classic headline: “At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in the new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock.” The other line is an admonition to advertising professionals: “The consumer is not a moron. She is your wife. Don’t insult her intelligence.” Pow! Right in the kisser! (Oh, look. That's a quote from Jackie Gleason.) I can also pretend I read the classics. With that, I will say that Shakespeare has done it for me with one line, but not any of those lines so oft repeated they're now seen as clichés. Instead, it’s Marc Antony’s soliloquy over Julius Caesar’s body: “And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge, with Ate at his side come hot from hell, shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice cry, ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war.” No, it's not a cheery sentiment. But not all writing is cheery. Sometimes, it needs to be potent and powerful. (Forgive me for not writing this in the proper format for iambic pentameter.) An equally sticky, deadly line for me couldn’t be from a more different source. It is said by Charles Bronson in the movie, The Mechanic. [SPOILER ALERT.] Mob hit man Bronson has been training aspiring mob hit man Steve. Steve returns the favor by betraying Bronson and killing him. Steve moves into Bronson’s house. He's now living large on the memory of his mentor. He goes to the kitchen and opens the freezer door. In the freezer, Steve sees a note. Bronson’s voiceover reads: “Steve, if you're reading this, it means I didn't make it back. It also means you've broken a filament controlling a 13-second delay trigger. End of game. Bang! You're dead.” And the refrigerator explodes. Cheery and violent! (Monty Python.) What is the point of all this? Let’s call it a New Year’s Call To Action. Write inspired. And know that you’ll find inspiration in the unlikely places. Read what’s evocative. Find words that make your head explode. When words take you by surprise, ask, “Why?” Obviously, you can't copy it. That's called plagiarism. But you can hold it in your hand like a shiny jewel and raise it up to the light and understand what makes it shine. Even bad craft has value. Sit with a group of friends opening their fortune cookies and you see it in action. as they read their fortunes aloud, each person in the group writes something new based on that little slip of bad copy. There is value in raw material all around you. Be informed by it, and it can inform your writing. And your writing is one thing you do that can clearly set you apart. It will let you raise the bar in your service to others. Being surprising enhances the sell. And in your professional life--maybe even your personal life--the loudest noise will be the electric clock. Bang. You’re living large. Happy New Year. Got a favorite inspiring line? Reply to this email and share it. If we get enough, I’ll compile them for another Hot Shots. 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!)  Making Writing Fun Again--If It Ever Even Was...
Writing with pen and paper. Is it like composing on a piano or guitar instead of a synthesizer? Pounding the keys or plucking the strings instead of turning knobs and flipping switches? I started writing this screed on a computer. How ironic is that? And how much more vital will this missive be made by switching over to the implements of our forebears, replacing the prattle produced in zeroes and ones with the prattle of pen and paper? Maybe not at all. Maybe it’ll still be drivel. But, all this to say… This Christmas, Give Yourself A Writer’s Gift You find yourself writing a lot--or, at least, writing more than you want to be writing. And staring at that blank Word document in the computer sucks out loud. (There. I said it.) I know the feeling. I’ve also been doing something about it. You can, too. It requires giving yourself a gift. It doesn’t have to be expensive (though it can be). It can also change a lot about the way you connect with what you’re required to write. In fact, it might make writing feel like a pleasure again--or maybe even for the first time ever. It’s also going to sound stupidly simple, even ridiculous. You might even hate me for this. Ready? Buy yourself a good, small notebook and a good pen. Then, find yourself a good place for sitting. And writing. My reference standard for writing materials are a grid-lined A4 Moleskine notebook (that’s about 5 x 8 inches) and a Waterman Hémisphère pen with a rollerball cartridge. (The smaller Moleskine is great for carrying in a pocket or purse, and you get to feel like you’re one of those Lost Generation writers cruising the Left Bank.) Yes, a Moleskine and a Waterman together can set you back about 80 bucks. But they’re special. With them, you develop a different kind of connection. You almost feel like you’re sitting in Les Deux Magots across the room from F. Scott as you scribble your next sales sonnet for the new ad campaign. That said, a simple ballpoint and a good Moleskine knockoff can be had for about 15 bucks, and can still make you enjoy what you’re doing with them. So can the venue. In the house, I have a new writing spot. It’s a club chair with a reading lamp and a side table. On the table are two generic ballpoints and four notebooks. When I wake up at 5am, which happens often, I brew up a French press full of Italian roast from an American purveyor (all without creating an international incident), and I sit in the early morning darkness beneath the ring of light from the reading lamp to scribble and scrawl. (My handwriting sucks.) Sometimes, as this morning, I’m making notes for my next non-fiction book. That happens in a Moleskine knockoff that came from Walmart. The notebook was about six bucks. The ballpoint was free. And the resulting verbal pearls are priceless. (IMHO. YMMV. AIPW.)* Other times, I’m reading a book about the anthropology of music and finding parallel inspiration for the creative and psychological processes as they pertain to branding. That writing is happening in a proper Moleskine that I bought years ago, and has been sitting on a shelf, waiting for a little attention. Some mornings, I whip out another Moleskine that’s filled with notes about clients and branding and ads and--yes--drafts for this screed. (!) One notebook is a gratitude journal. As something of a comedian and cynic, this is not an exercise I ever saw coming. But enough intel about this thing called gratitude journaling keeps finding me that I decided to take a crack at it. Who knows? Maybe it’s making me a better person. At the very least, it’s going to give me something else to joke about. Once upon a time, when I was doing stand-up comedy, I was branded as a low-rent Dennis Miller. If this can’t fix that, it can make me more low-rent than I was before. But why does any of this make a difference? It’s the power of pen over Pentium. There’s a connection between your brain, your hand, the pen and the paper that cannot be replicated with a keyboard and screen. Don’t get me wrong. I’ll never give up digital media. They’re here to stay, and they’re a necessary tool. But I find that I’m writing better when sitting alone with the organic components of writing as it used to be. Science also offers insight to back us up on this. Writing with pen and paper engages more of your brain. It excites your Reticular Activating System, which is like the CPU for the computer that is your very being. Everything lights up and comes alive. Writing with pen and paper can establish a more profound emotional connection between you and your reader. You also gain better recall of what you’ve written. Bonus: you’re not distracted by the computer’s siren song to check the headlines or read email. Is it time to turn over a new leaf--literally? Maybe. I know I’m enjoying the process more when I'm away from the computer. My time alone under the light with the pen and paper is visceral in a way computers can’t be. I think about the late, great Hal Riney, who wrote some of his legendary advertising on notepaper in a bar. Some great writers of the Lost Generation used pen and paper. Hemingway used a blank page and a stubby pencil. James Patterson and Stephen King write longhand. Quentin Tarantino, Joyce Carol Oates, Amy Tan and George Clooney are all analog lettering Luddites. Even JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter novel was written by hand. Yes, she was too broke to afford a typewriter or a computer. But if she had used one or the other, how would it have changed the nascent genius that has turned her into one of the wealthiest people on the planet? Want to feel the tiny thrill of wordsmithing that's more exciting and impactful than you expect it to be? Try a good pen and a good notebook. There’s all kinds of scientific evidence to back up the power of analog instruments. And the emotional significance of that special place where you can compose might even make you look forward to the blank page each morning. And if you decide to try this, let me know how it goes for you. I’m curious to hear about your success. Belated Happy Hanukkah. Merry Christmas. Happy Kwanza. Happy National Cookie Exchange Day. Whatever you’re celebrating, have a fabulous holiday. *In My Humble Opinion. Your Mileage May Vary. And It Probably Will. 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!)  The Slangster is a treacherous creature.
It covertly roils and boils. Everything seems delightfulighty and wordylicious and then—when you least expect it—the Slangster leaps out to derail your writing! This is important whether you wield the sword-like pen yourself, or others do so on your behalf. Here now, an example full of light… Over the weekend, The Fabulous Honey Parker and I were watching a national TV news magazine. This is a big network show, a legacy program from a legacy network that was once the gold standard in the news biz. Amid a parade of Christmasy stories, one anchor stepped to the side for a segment on the Jewish Festival Of Lights, better known among the hoi-polloi as Hanukkah. Among the Hanukkah traditions discussed was the dreidel. As you know, the dreidel is a little, four-sided spinning top. It’s used in a children’s game. Kids spin the top in an effort to win chocolate coins from each other. It’s like a child’s first foray into gambling. The exact phrasing the host used to describe the spinning top was this: “The whirling dervish called the dreidel.” Well, then. You can imagine the linking of ideas that took the writer to this metaphor. One plays the dreidel by spinning it. So, the writer made a connection from spinning to whirling. Then, the idea of whirling led to “whirling dervish.” This is not the most apt metaphor. For one, a dervish is a person. The colloquial definition of the phrase is a person who is energetic, in constant motion, possibly even chaotic, blathering and uncontrolled. That’s the slang usage. The literal definition of a whirling dervish is a member of religious order that practices an ecstatic ritual that involves spinning in circles. That religious order is, specifically, Sufi Muslims. So, on a notable Jewish holiday, an experienced national news professional comparing a dreidel to a member of Muslim sect is exceptional writing for the wrong reasons. At best, this kind of writing creates a mental speed bump. For anyone who’s paying attention, there’s a “What the…” moment that derails focus from the message and onto the writing problem. It certainly took the two of us out of the story. At worst, Jews (and Muslims) could take offense. Here There Be Slangsters! Why does a WASP from Connecticut who lives in predominantly Mormon Utah care about this? I care because I have great respect for effective, evocative communication. I also enjoy writing and having fun with words. (You can, too!) That said, it’s also necessary to know what the words mean. Writing with purpose and intent matters. Even writing with purposeful, intentional ignorance and offense has its place. But when using slang, it’s necessary to know what the slang means and that it’s being used correctly. We know a highly educated, high-level professional in a career where language is imperative. This person uses mangled clichés like, “I haven’t rested my laurels,” “Shift horses mid-stream,” “It’s a little chicken and the egg,” and “Head ‘em off at the path.” It’s a little like having a business consultation with Norm Crosby or Slip Mahoney. As far as the dreidel goes, what might have been the alternative language choices? For instance, what if the writer had used the phrase “spinning Tasmanian Devil”? It’s still a weird personification. But at least that’s not a potential religious offense. Though, it could be offensive to real Tasmanian devils, who do not in actuality spin like the drooling, frantic and hyperventilating Warner Brothers cartoon character. And the actual, literal Tasmanian devil is a surly marsupial with a voracious appetite for the raw flesh of other animals. So maybe that’s the wrong metaphor. Instead of comparing the top to a living creature, how about just using modifiers like, “revolutionary, gyrating toy top for fun and frolic”? But that sounds kinda stupid. We could just call it what it is... "The dreidel spinning top, a child’s game of chance and chocolate." It’s not exactly poetic, but it’s clear and definitive and alliterative. All this to say, in an effort to be an evocative communicator, watch out for The Slangster! Stock phrases and over-worn clichés do not always mean what we think they mean. Sometimes, they bite! And really, why not just make up your own stock phrases? (See the beginning of this missive.) Being original and surprising and delightful can be far more interesting and useful and profitable. Shalom and Happy Hanukkah, my friend! 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!) |
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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