Archive for the ‘Ideas to go’ Category

Newer Entries »

The creative writer’s pack

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

A short story

There’s a guy in reception to see you, he’s got a big black box.

What does he want?

He says he’s a creative writer.

I thought all writers were supposed to be creative.

I dunno, maybe it sounds better than writer on its own.

Whatever, why does he want to see me?

He said he’s really optimistic about our company.

I am pleased to hear it but what has this got to do with me?

Maybe this is how he chooses his clients.

I see, he just hangs out in reception of companies he’s optimistic about?

He did seem to believe he had a good reason to be here.

Spooky! Anyway what’s his name?

He didn’t say.

Can’t someone else see him – I’m busy.

He insists on seeing you.

We run an open company here, we have no secrets.

Shall I ask him to leave?

I don’t need a creative writer, everyone around here can write, okay!

He wants to help us to communicate our philosophy.

That’s what marketing does isn’t it?

Do they? Anyway I’ll ask him to leave.

Tell him I’m busy but he can leave his box of tricks. I’ll take a look at it later.

He may not be prepared to do that.

Tell him he can pick it up tomorrow, any time.

Here it is. He hopes you find it useful, it’s yours to keep.

Really! It’s huge …‘The Creative Writer’s Pack’

Go on, open it up.

I can’t, it’s locked – is he still out there?

No he left immediately, he wasn’t at all put out.

How I am supposed to open this?

You’re not going to believe this. He said, ‘Tell him to say Abracadabra.’

You’re kidding me – that’s a joke …Abracadabra!

It’s not, look it’s opening, the lid is opening!

It could be a bomb! Quick….

No, it’s full of books, old children’s storybooks…

Yeah, and they’re all crumbling to bits. I’ve had enough – tell him to come back for his box right now, call him on his mobile.

I don’t think that’s a good idea.

Are you telling me you know what this is about?

Perhaps it’s about how the power of language can create the world we live in.

So we have got to start telling each other kids stories, ‘Once up on a time there was a petrochemical company that dreamed of world domination.‘ Get real.

It’s not that simple. The creative writer uses language to help create the company we want to be.

We have a mission statement, thank you.

It’s not a mission statement, more a dialogue with our vision of the future.

Hang on a minute, I remember that book, my mother used to read that to me. How could he possibly know? I am not kidding you, those are my actual books! Those are all my books!

Posted in Ideas to go | 1 Comment »

So what do you do for a living?

Monday, January 11th, 2010

A reply to the killer question

Anyone in corporate communication can relate to this. Someone pins you against the wall at a party and asks what you do for a living. The strained expression on your face tells your interviewer they have stumbled on to sensitive ground. Perhaps you have just been made redundant or worse. What your slightly sozzled mind is actually trying to formulate is an answer that avoids the dreaded follow up, ‘So have I have seen anything you’ve done on telly?’ As you race through the limited glossary of terms that describes our profession, all you can do is eliminate.

The first term to eliminate is ‘corporate’. It smacks of smoke stack factories and armies of pen pushers. ‘Video’ has connotations of weddings or You Tube and is likely to lead to a tedious conversation about digital cameras. And if you dare mention the word ‘training’, the words John and Cleese bubble up from the memory of some long forgotten course on telephone etiquette and you are dead in the water.

‘I work in communications,’ you offer lamely. Your interviewer immediately asks whether you know of a fixed-price, all-in-one, totally for the rest of your life mobile phone and broadband package. You stop that train of thought with the qualification, ‘business communications’, or ‘business to business communications’ or, in total desperation ‘public relations’. Still none the wiser, your interviewer suddenly realises her glass needs refreshing and you are left standing there like the gay vicar at the garden party. ‘Next time,’ you say to yourself, ‘I really must get my script for this conversation sorted out. I need a reply that eliminates all confusion and makes me look cool.’

‘So what do you do for a living?’

‘Government and private sector communications, you know, high end stuff; behaviour change, product launches, environmental awareness programmes.’

Note clever avoidance of words industrial or business and the conflation of totally different types of communication.

‘What sort of communications are they?’

‘These days it’s all about mixed media. We use a combination of live action, dramatisations, CGI and of course it’s all integrated at the back end using Web 2.0, social media, online collaboration tools, you know the sort of thing.’

Your interviewer looks at you wide eyed, she hasn’t the faintest idea what you are talking about but it sounds very cool. You quickly intervene before the next question.

‘For instance I am just working on a regular communication for a pharma company. They need to get the rank and file up to speed on their new blockbuster molecule. The whole thing is shot in a dedicated studio (virtual of course) with VT links to our roving reporters across the world. They won’t get much change out of half a mil.’

‘Sounds really cool, how exciting.’

‘The communications industry is big business these days; turns over around £3billion, bigger than advertising. But we like to stay in the background, (taps nose conspiratorially) our clients are the stars.’

The communications industry is more impressive than corporate communication and never say, ‘but no one has ever heard of us’.

‘So what’s your  job?’

‘Nothing really, I just come up with the ideas and stop the client from making too much of a hash of it. Our job is all about managing expectations.’

Quit while you’re up, never let the conversation stray into specifics, move on ever so quickly.

‘So what do you do, anything interesting?’

Jonathan Priest does something very interesting. He’s a creative writer working on high end, back end, end-to-end communication solutions.

Posted in Ideas to go, Video | 1 Comment »

The amazing power of three

Monday, October 19th, 2009

Did you hear the one about the Englishman, the Irishman and the Scotsman? Like the story of the Three Little Pigs or Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Or the three trials before the prince wins the hand of the princess. They all follow the rule of three. Things that come in threes seem to be funnier or more satisfying. Aristotle wrote about it in his book Rhetoric. Winston Churchill demonstrated the rule’s power in many of his speeches. Adjectives are often grouped in threes to emphasize an idea such as my favourite edict about creative projects; ‘You can have it good, quick, cheap – any two’. Snappy dialogue often turns in threes as in, ‘Face it, Brian, I’m a bad father, a lousy husband and a snappy dresser.’

The rule also works visually. On this site, I have divided my services between three panels. I didn’t deliberately set out to do this; this was how the cards fell once I had finished endlessly shuffling them. Designers generally advise you to use no more than three different fonts or three different colours. And then there’s the ‘three click rule‘ – that no content should be more than three clicks away from the home page, though for me that’s already one click too many.

Why these holy trinities are so compelling lies buried deep within our psyche. After all, when we come into this world we form a trio with our parents. It is the perfect relationship, it implies protection, belonging and love. Perhaps we are always trying to re-discover that state of perfection and therein lies the power of three. So if you have a communication challenge  – good, bad or indifferent – trying thinking in triplicate.

Posted in Ideas to go | No Comments »

Newer Entries »