Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

“Just be yourself”: For most of us, that’s not good enough

by // Leave a Comment

Eventually, the mind becomes merely a Magic 8-ball of contradictory bits of wisdom bouncing off each other and bobbing to the window. The best we can do is to categorize them.

Yesterday's post has me thinking about branding, so here's my Magic 8-Ball—Branding Category:

Nobody likes a whiner.

Everybody loves a winner.

People crave authenticity.

"The market for something to believe in is infinite." —Hugh Macleod.

People like to be around happy people.

It's good to show a little vulnerability now and then.

Never let 'em see you sweat.

"A leader is a dealer in hope." —Napoleon Bonaparte

You've got to see yourself as other people see you.

You wouldn't care so much about what others thought about you if you knew how seldom they do.

"Tell all the Truth but tell it slant—Success in Circcuit lies." —Emily Dickinson

You never get a second chance to make a first impression.

You are what you consistently do.

You are what you eat.

If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.

"If you want to draw a crowd, start a fight." —P.T. Barnum

People don't often remember what you say, but they always remember how you made them feel.

"Everybody already knows everything." —David Murray

Whether you're a person or a company, it is which of these notions that we apply to what situations, and how we do it—and the mysterious way it all interacts with Who We Really Are (and Who Our Audience Is)—that determines whether people find us lovable or even likable, compelling or even interesting, worth listening to or impossible to hear.

This is why, when someone calls him- or herself an expert in branding, it's an awfully big claim they're making.

Probably too big.

Then again, to win at this life you've got to act as if …

Kent State ad claims: We’re no slouch

by // 5 Comments

Like chubby people who always call themselves fat,  we local Kent State students always rapped our school in order to cut others off at the pass.

"If you can't go to college, go to Kent," we said, and we called it, "Can't-Stand-It University."

I was surprised when I moved away and learned that people had respect for the school—especially the Baby Boomers who were hiring us. Because of the May 4, 1970 shootings, they equated Kent with the antiwar movement and the antiwar movement with places like Berkley and so Kent with Berkley. So I stopped running down my alma mater with ironic references to "the Harvard of the Midwest," and started sticking my chest out a little. "Yep, Kent State."

The truth is that Kent was a good enough school for me. I always had at least one interesting professor per semester, including an early writing mentor, Dr. Jack Null. And the classes that weren't fascinating weren't terribly taxing, either. So I always had time to look out the window and think up poems, and wonder at the purpose of it all. And along the way, I met Tom Gillespie, who would become my best friend, and Cristie Bosch, who would become my wife. What wasn't to like?

So I don't know exactly how I feel to see this commercial, where the guy from Devo vaguely credits Kent with his success. "So while you may not know my name, you probably know my music. And if my music moved you, thank the place that moved me."

While I liked "Whip It," I wouldn't describe it as a composition that "moved me," exactly. And I'm not encouraged when I think of all the alumni lists they mined before turning up Mr. Mothersbaugh as the shining gem.

Keeping it middlebrow: Using Mothersbaugh for this ad puts me in mind of the exchange in Caddyshack when Ted Knight's character Judge Smails says, "And I'm no slouch myself." And Chevy Chase's Ty Web replies, "Don't sell yourself short, Judge. You're a tremendous slouch."

[For alerting me to this ad, hat tip to Kent State PR associate prof Bill Sledzik; he no doubt would have been one of those one-per-semester intellects whose lessons I still fondly remember.]

My latest on Huffington Post: The courage to communicate

by // 2 Comments

Why speeches still matter (sez me, in my latest Huffpost, on what I've learned in a year of editing Vital Speeches):

The social utility of speeches is undiminished by technological advances such as YouTube, Twitter and even the Kryptonite of rhetoric, PowerPoint. There comes a time—a crisis in confidence, the crescendo of a debate (and, yes, commencement season)—where everyone knows: One member of the society has to screw up the courage to stand naked before other members of the society and share what he or she believes is true. The act is significant for the same reason it always has been: The audience has the speaker outnumbered and can accept or reject the speech before, during or after its delivery.

And the more communication tools we have to hide behind, the more the public speech comes to matter.