 First of all, the small announcement. If you are a lover of pizza, and have always wanted to make your own, please join me over at www.FreeThePizza.com. It’s fun, and there’s a free chapter from the forthcoming Free The Pizza book that includes a free dough recipe. Just look for the button, “Free dough recipe.”
Now, word for today is, “Hiatus.” The word hiatus represents a gap. I hear about gaps, and the first two things I think of are 1) The Gap, a clothing store founded in 1969 selling only Levi’s jeans and LP records. You would more likely know the grown version of this store as GAP, which looks nothing like its former self and is a company that also owns Banana Republic, a company which also looks nothing like its former self when it was selling funky safari and travel clothing to people whose lives had an enormous gap between themselves and safaris. What’s nice about the word hiatus is its optimism. A gap always has something on the other side. More to come! A phrase made popular by the London Underground, “Mind the gap,” is a polite way of giving the order, “Watch your step.” And since you’re getting on a train, you’re going somewhere. Maybe it’s good, and you will be back. Interestingly, the etymology of the word “hiatus” stems from 16th century Latin, and literally means “gaping.” As in, there’s a gaping hole in your resume during those three years when you stopped selling shoes Santa Monica and lived in a smelly, pseudo ashram in Pacoima. (“Pseudo” and “Pacoima,” two P-words that have nothing to do with each other in any way, including pronunciation of the “P.”) A hiatus sounds more optimistic than anything that’s gaping. So that is what I am presenting to you today: your relentless scribe’s announcement of hiatus. Things are changing rapidly in our post-COVID lives. In order to serve you better, we will be closing the doors on Words Good for the time being. When we return, it will be Big. In the meantime, feel free to ankle on over to Slow Burn Marketing’s new brand for all things related to homemade pizza at Free The Pizza dot com. You can get an occasional dose of wordy weirdness right there. Thanks for playing! 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 REDUCED bargain price of $9.95 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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 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 |
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
February 2022
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