2 Monkeys Wrote 50 Headlines: See Which Worked Best

When it comes to novel ideas, less isn't more, Adam Grant says in Originals.

"Many people fail to achieve originality because they generate a few ideas and then obsess about refining them to perfection," Grant says.

But originality take tonnage.

"Quantity is the most predictable path to quality," Grants says.

He cites the case of two copywriters employed by Upwworthy.

Each wrote headlines for a video depicting monkeys receiving food as a reward.

Some were good. One was gold.

The headline "Remember Planet of the Apes? It's Closer than Your Think," for example, drew 8,000 viewers.

The headline "2 Monkeys Were Paid Unequally: See What Happens Next" drew 500,000.

Upworthy in fact has a house rule: You must write 25 headlines.

You need to unearth tons of debris to discover a diamond.

"It's only after we've ruled out the obvious that we have the greatest freedom to consider the more remote possibilities," Grant says.

The first twenty-four headlines may be lousy, but the twenty-fifth "will be a gift from the headline gods."

A Call to Armchairs

Midway through his fireside chat at SXSW last month, President Barack Obama issued government communicators a call to arms.

Or, more accurately, armchairs.

It's communicators' fault that citizens only associate government with failure and corruption, rather than humming infrastructure, the President said.

"A significant part of the task at hand is telling a better story about what government does," Obama said.

Sadly, the President's call for storytelling comes a little late. 

His second term will soon be history.

Not that private-sector storytellers are much better at the craft, as Hill+Knowlton's content director Vikki Chowney notes in PR Week.

Private-sector flacks are too technocentric to tell stories customers care about.

"In an age in which people get their information from digital platforms, it’s our responsibility as communicators to not just think about building new things—but also think about what we say and where we say it in order to get people to care more," Chowney says.

Private-sector flacks should shun the shiny objects swimming before their eyes and get back to PR basics, Chowney says.

"Cutting through the overwhelming noise of online content with a clear, concise message is something we should all be reminding ourselves to focus on daily."

You Don't Have to be Jewish

Once upon a time, I had the privilege of interviewing madman George Lois for a magazine article about ad creative.

When I asked, "What makes an ad effective?" Lois said, "An ad has to kick you in the ass with an idea you like."

In other words, the advertiser needs to startle you, then evoke a little love.

Last year's most-shared ads, according to Unruly, did just this.

Each ad transmitted a powerful idea by marshaling a string of surprising sounds and images that, taken together, can't help but excite love… at least a little.

As Don Draper said in Mad Men, “Advertising is based on one thing: happiness. And you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car. It's freedom from fear. It's a billboard on the side of the road that screams reassurance that whatever you are doing is okay. You are okay.”

And now for last year's most-shared ad…



Read more about emotion's role in advertising here.

Big Data Meets Big Idea

J. Walter Thompson wondered whether big data could be assembled to paint "The Next Rembrandt" for client ING.

So a team of art historians, scientists, developers and analysts created scans of Rembrandt's 346 extant paintings and used a computer to catalog the data based on commonalities.

They then asked the computer to paint a Rembrandt.

The resulting portrait combines 160,000 fragments of the artist's oeuvre.

HAT TIP: Appraiser Todd Sigety alerted me to this story. 

Hack vs. Hacker

Never mistake a hack for a hacker.

Unless she's evil, a hacker creates code.

A hack creates crap.

In general, a hack's a writer who produces undistinguished prose. (The opprobious name derives from hackney, a horse for hire.)

In marketing, a hack's a writer who's:

• Passionate about content; immune to ideas.
• Happy to plagiarize; put off by research.
• Enamored of opinions; averse to facts.
• Obsessed with quantity; indifferent to quality.

Foremost, a hack's a writer who chases eyeballs.

Speaking of quantity, Express Writers offers a useful hack: publish content of "ideal length."

I'll hack the info graphic. Here's the bottom line:

• Write blog posts 2,000 words long; 
• Write Facebook posts 40 characters long; 
• Write Tweets 11 characters long; and 
• Write Pinterest captions 200 characters long.

10 Tips for Promoting Your Next Event

"Event marketers are used to doing a marketing task and crossing it off their list," says BrightBull director Ricardo Molina. "Social media isn’t like that unfortunately."

Social media takes perseverance to pay off.

Molina offers 10 tips to help you reach the finish line:

1. Start with influencers. Ask them to share their opinions on a topic or discuss what they're reading at the moment.

2. Focus on your audience’s pain. Forget about amassing followers, and focus instead on engaging people by publishing relevant content.

3. Tell a story bigger than your event. Tap into industry trends and news. People will register for your event because your finger's on the pulse.

4. Automate, but don't go on autopilot. Unless you're engaged in online conversations, you're faking it. "Automation can be a great time saver, but unless your technology is enabling you to build better relationships online as well as making your life easier, it's suspect," Molina says.

5. Blog. LinkedIn posts have only hours to work, Tweets only minutes. "Great blog posts deliver traffic for years."

6. Don’t expect influencers to help overnight. Results will take months, and come only if you stay on task.

7. Stick to one voice. Inconsistency detracts. "There's nothing weirder than talking to someone on social media and one day they're all informal and jokey and their next post is like a corporate jargon-athon."

8. Enlist your team. Do more with more. "Even if all they do is retweet or give you a bit of a generic back slap for your content, it all counts."

9. Make social media a habit. "Social media isn't an add on 'seasoning' to an event marketing plan," Molina says. You must make a serious effort.

10. Invite followers. Inform, intrigue, instigate, incent; and eschew all me-talk. "If all you do is go 'me, me, me' it's not going to be the shocker of the century when people stop listening," Molina says.

B2B Becomes B2C. Welcome to Bizarro World.

"Hardly a week goes by without someone saying the worlds of B2B and B2C marketing are converging," Gary Slack wrote recently in this blog.

To picture the two worlds as one, he asks us to imagine a place where municipalities buy equipment on impulse, and manufacturers buy machinery and materials without due diligence.

"Were this all to start happening," Gary says, "pigs would be flying, too. 

"Consumer and business purchasers and purchases are just too different—always have been and always will be."

But what if… just what if, instead of businesses, consumers changed?

In that alternate world:

• All consumers would have split personalities (at least six, called a "team").

• Before every purchase, they would email an inscrutable document to at least 15 suppliers, and demand a response within 10 days.

• All consumers would postpone their purchases until their incomes are certain.

• AdAge would be repackaged as an insert in O, and B2C would collapse into B2B, forming a supercontinent named Omnicom.

Stranger things have happened...

In a pig's eye.

Herdwick Shepherd Tips the Model

Q: Social media gurus talk in praise of the tribe. But who stands up for the herd?

A: James Rebanks, the "Herdwick Shepherd."

A self-proclaimed Luddite, Rebanks is a British farmer and author of the best-selling memoir The Shepherd's Life.

With 75,000 followers, he's also a Twitter phenomenon.

Writing for The Atlantic, Rebanks calls Tweeting about sheep "an act of resistance and defiance, a way of shouting to the sometimes disinterested world that you’re stubborn, proud, and not giving in."

What goes here?

Sheep have long symbolized the very opposite of "resistance and defiance."

"Fortunately, the world is not built solely to serve good natured herd animals their little happiness," the free-spirited philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once said.

"I define 'sheepwalking' as the outcome of hiring people who have been raised to be obedient and giving them a braindead job," Seth Godin says.

Intentionally or not, Rebanks has flipped the model.

Or should I say, tipped?

Suddenly sheep are superbly chic.

SPEAKING OF TIPPED: Ann Ramsey tipped me off to the Herdwick Shepherd.

4 Keys to Content Marketing for Events

Event producers didn't have enough to do.

Now comes content.

No sweat.

BrightBull founder Ricardo Molina offers four keys to unlocking the time you need for content marketing:

1. Repurpose. Event production is a treasure trove of content. Your list of speakers and the producer’s notes about their expertise are "a quick polish away from being a 'who’s who' list." Transcripts of production research calls are "blog posts in the making." "Think about all the possible sources of content that already exist in your organization," Molina says. "You’ll be amazed how much there is."

2. Outsource. Why tackle the chore alone? "The world is full of great content creators," Molina says. Buying or bartering for third-party content can be a great way to acquire super stuff, quickly. Combine the task with your search for email lists.

3. Repackage. "Take one kick-ass piece of original content, e.g. an industry survey, and create a whole content series out of it," Molina says. Publish the findings as a report, an e-book and an infographic. Ask speakers to write responses to the findings for your blog.

 4. Email less. Invest less time in emails, to free time for content. "Emails are "the event marketing security blanket," Molina says. "Event marketing plans are littered with them." But with all your time spent writing and blasting emails, you have none to spare for content. Change that.

7 Rules to Rock Your Content

Scale your brand's voice… 

Master the social networks…

Ignite likes and shares…  

And pocket more money than you ever thought possible!

No kidding.

Content will rock your bottom line.

But, you ask… How? 

How do I rock my content?

It's easy.

Follow these 7 rules.

They come courtesy of maxi-marketer William Claude Fields...

1. A thing worth having is a thing worth cheating for. 

Is your goal to grab millions of eyeballs? Stuff your stuff with keywords.

2. If you can’t dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit. 

Great content takes hard work. Why bother?

3. You can fool some of the people some of the time—and that’s enough to make a decent living.

Every platform delivers a different audience, so repackage every piece of content you create. But don't spend a lot time at it. 

4. Start every day off with a smile and get it over with. 

Cheery content's contagious, so publish drivel daily before 9 am. Then head to the beach and relax.

5. I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally. 

Don't discriminate: treat all audiences with the same low level of respect. Pretend you're United Airlines.

6. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it. 

Fail fast, fail forward.

7. A rich man is nothing but a poor man with money.

Take the 6 rules above. 

Rinse. 

Repeat.

And have a happy April 1, my rich friend.

6 Simple Tips for Presenting Benefits that Convert

"Copywriting can be fatally disconnected from the real world of buying and selling," says Brad Shorr in Convince & Convert.

To bridge the gap, B2B marketers need to converse with salespeople, because "they are in the trenches, actually talking to customers and prospects and hearing firsthand what motivates them to buy and what keeps them from buying," Shorr says.

But how do you turn the conversations into copy that converts? Shorr offers six tips:

Lead with "application" benefits. First things, first. Nothing else matters if the product offered doesn't fill buyers' needs.

Hit buyers over the head. When you're reaching more than one audience, call out the high-value benefit applicable to each segment. Here, subheads and design can help.

Let customers do the talking. Testimonials, "if they are employed systematically and not arbitrarily," speak volumes. Using a benefit-bearing subhead to introduce a testimonial will clarify it.

Track. Track website form and phone leads back to their marketing sources, to learn which benefit statements convert the most buyers, and favor those statements in the future.

Get personal. "Don’t underestimate the power of personal benefits, even in B2B," Shorr says. Find out what they are by interviewing buyers. Prompt them to choose or rank personal benefits from a list.

Avoid temptations to pile on benefits. Avoid at all cost the "laundry list of benefits." Lists only convert buyers into skeptics.

The Past isn't Dead. It isn't Even Past.

Ideas that Germans call Schnapsideen are those so stupid, you must have been drunk when you conceived them.

What kind of schnapps-idea is this? a German might ask. 

Urban Outfitters' Vintage Kent State University Sweatshirt is an example.

Whether a real offering or a PR ploy, the product was a Schnapsidee.

In 1970, the Ohio National Guard fired on anti-war student protesters at Kent State, killing four and wounding nine.

When Urban Outfitters released its product, the members of the Twitterverse into Vergangenheitsbewältigung—the struggle to overcome the past—went ballistic.

The company quickly fired off a retraction:

Urban Outfitters sincerely apologizes for any offense our Vintage Kent State Sweatshirt may have caused. It was never our intention to allude to the tragic events that took place at Kent State in 1970 and we are extremely saddened that this item was perceived as such. The one-of-a-kind item was purchased as part of our sun-faded vintage collection. There is no blood on this shirt nor has this item been altered in any way. The red stains are discoloration from the original shade of the shirt and the holes are from natural wear and fray. Again, we deeply regret that this item was perceived negatively and we have removed it immediately from our website to avoid further upset.

The lesson for marketers? 

Those who forget the past are condemned to recall.

5 Ways to Combat Design Fixation

Marketers who default to an old fix for a new problem are guilty of "design fixation."

It's one reason so much marketing looks copy-cat.

Design fixation—also known as the Einstellung Effect—refers to our tendency to rely blindly on old solutions, and insist our first idea is always the best.

Fortunately, novices are more susceptible to design fixation than old hands, studies show.

How can you free yourself?

Jami Oetting, writing for Hubspot, suggests five antidotes:

• Immerse yourself in new subjects. Escape your marketing bubble and reach for far-afield ideas. Learn a little about voles, snow-sports, fire protection, Washington Irving, and Czarist Russia.

• Work with others. Diversity in experiences, expertise and cultural background and can stimulate fresh thinking.

• Review previous solutions. Peer reviews will expose biases and flaws faster than anything. They force you to look at your ideas with iron-cold eyes.

• Analyze and brainstorm. Generating more ideas helps assure an innovative one will emerge.

• Test. Gather feedback from focus groups and A/B experiments.

2,200 Steps to Killer Content

Do the content marketers in your organization sit in cubicles all day?

They should know better.

Big ideas don't come from sitting.

As Nietzsche said, “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.”

Writers have always understood walks are not trips around the block, but treks through idea-land.

Aristotle, Kant, Rousseau, Blake, Dickens, Woolf, Hemingway—all were avid walkers.

"The moment my legs begin to move,” Thoreau said, “my thoughts begin to flow.”

Why does walking work?

Because we don’t have to think hard when we do it.

Our minds are free to wander—and unleash a parade of images.

"Writing and walking are extremely similar feats," Ferris Jabr says in The New Yorker.

"When we choose a path through a city or forest, our brain must survey the surrounding environment, construct a mental map of the world, settle on a way forward, and translate that plan into a series of footsteps.

"Likewise, writing forces the brain to review its own landscape, plot a course through that mental terrain, and transcribe the resulting trail of thoughts by guiding the hands.

"Walking organizes the world around us; writing organizes our thoughts."

Two Stanford researchers have, in fact, shown that walking boosts creativity by 60%.

So, here are the steps to killer content.

Go outdoors.

Walk a mile.

Come back.

Kill it.

The Future of B2B Content Marketing

Videos are the future of B2B content marketing.

Seven in 10 B2B marketers already use them, according to Demand Metric.

That's little wonder, when one in two people watch marketing videos on line every day, as Liz Alton reports in Sales and Marketing Daily Advisor.

Videos' matchless power comes from their "immediacy and intimacy," Alton says.

She describes five kinds of videos B2B marketers use:

Explainer. Explainer videos are "short, focused videos that give an elevator pitch of what products and services you offer." They're often produced in whiteboard style.

Case studies. Case studies give customers "an inside look at your work," Alton says. They can be testimonials or project reviews that prove you deliver results.

How-to. How-to videos address FAQs you receive. Depending on the complexity of the topic, they can provide quick tips or in-depth guidance.

Real-time. Meerkat and Periscope let you connect with customers in the moment. "Companies are using the tools for live Q&As, to report in from events and trade shows, and to respond to industry news," Alton says.

Culture. Culture videos let you showcase staff, illustrate workflows, or give a glimpse of your systems in action. Many customers crave this “behind the scenes” look, Alton says.

But wait, there's more...

Besides boosting your brand, marketing videos attract more customers to your website, thanks to Google, says Swati Joshi in The Huffington Post.

"The fact that Google owns YouTube plays a role in video’s increased popularity," she says.

"Google has been constantly adjusting its algorithm to give its users a meaningful experience while searching. To satisfy user intent, they show a variety of results, and not just exact keyword matches. As a result, search results now prominently feature videos among top results."

Micro Ads: Small is the New Big

Micro ads deliver macro results, according to a new study by IPG Media Lab.

When viewed on smartphones, micro ads—videos 5 to 15 seconds in length—yield better brand recall, preference and purchase intent than longer ads, the study found.

Micro ads also yield better results among Millennials than viewers of other ages.

Micro ads enjoy an advantage because they're bite-sized, the researchers say.

The ads enjoy an advantage when viewed on smartphones because they seem to dominate the tiny screens.

Millennials dig micro ads because they grew up with smartphones. They find micro ads more enjoyable and of higher quality than viewers of other ages.

The study also found micro ads work better when viewers are out and about, rather than home; and when the ads have voiceovers.

For a micro ad to drive more than just brand awareness, its minimum length should be 15 seconds, according to the study. 

A micro ad shorter than that is simply too micro.

Love Story

I remember little of my first formal date, except that I took the girl to see the schmaltzy blockbuster, Love Story.

The film's tagline perfectly states what every B2B marketer wants skeptical buyers to believe.

Love means never having to say you're sorry… you bought from us.

That's why B2B marketers adore case studies.

They're the ideal way to spread customers' love.

You're nuts if you're not dishing them out repeatedly.

Case studies are like movie reviews, except your customers are the stars and every movie's a love story.

And buyers can't get enough of them, because people love to compare themselves to others.

Here are seven case-study do's and don'ts. Keep them near and dear:

• Case studies adhere to a classic construct—a three-point story arc: problem, solution, results. Don't stray from that. 

• Make your customer the headliner. Keep you company off the marquee.

• Interview your customer in a knowledgable, but laid-back manner. Don't put her on edge with tough questions, or prompt her to say things she wouldn't say naturally.

• Use a lot of customer quotes for color and credibility.

• Illustrate your case studies with photographs and charts.

• Ask your customer to sign a release.

• Besides publishing the case study on your website, create a PDF version customers (and your salespeople) can download and share.

Travel's Romance with Video

Travel brands will increasingly lean on video to seduce mobile-carrying customers, according to Skift.

As evidence, the newsletter cites the 25-minute reverie French Kiss, recently produced by Marriott.

"Instead of selling hotel rooms and airplane seats as commodities, brands are learning to tell stories using video that create an emotional connection with a specific audience," Skift says.

Leading the field, Marriott runs a full-scale, in-house studio that produces original shorts.

Technicians

Bill Bernbach, named by AdAge the most influential adman of the 20th century, had a beef with technicians.

Before quitting Grey to start his own agency in the late 1940s, Bernbach sent a one-page letter to his colleague that creatives, to this day, love to reproduce.

Bernbach told them he worried Grey, by ceding the agency to technicians, would "follow history instead of making it."

"There are a lot of great technicians in advertising," he wrote. "And unfortunately they talk the best game. They know all the rules. They can tell you that people in an ad will get you greater readership. They can tell you that a sentence should be this short or that long. They can tell you that body copy should be broken up for easier reading. They can give you fact after fact after fact."

Bernbach admitted technicians can help—a bit.

"Superior technical skill will make a good ad better. But the danger is a preoccupation with technical skill or the mistaking of technical skill for creative ability."

Bernbach pled with Grey to shun "routinized men who have a formula for advertising." His parting advice became his eventual battle cry—and a mantra of creatives everywhere.

"If we are to advance we must emerge as a distinctive personality. We must develop our own philosophy and not have the advertising philosophy of others imposed on us.

"Let us blaze new trails. Let us prove to the world that good taste, good art, and good writing can be good selling."

What's in a Name?

Your name speaks volumes about your brand's personality.

Brand names can be descriptive ("Toys 'R' Us"), abstract ("Aloxi") or evocative ("Uber").

Rational brand names ("IBM") appeal to our inner accountant. 

But brand names can also pack emotional punch—positive or negative—as wordsmith Nancy Friedman says.

Friedman lumps emotionally charged names into six categories:

Old words. The right Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman or Norse word "makes us feel warm and welcomed," Friedman says. "Kindle" is an example. "Many successful brand names draw on this old-word resonance to soften a new idea."

Sense words. "Sight, sound, smell, touch and taste are direct routes to an emotional response," Friedman says. "Bevel," for example, names a brand of men's shaving supplies.

Nature words. A name plucked from nature "inspires and soothes, challenges and restores." "Sequoia" names a venture capital firm.

Art words. The language of the arts "can remind us of pleasurable, even transcendent experiences." "Allegra" is a prime example.

Adventure words. Pirate a word from an adventure tale and you'll stir feelings of excitement and exoticism. "Mandalay Bay" is an example.

Personal names. Real and fictional people's names can evoke "friendliness and reassurance." "Lynda" names an e-learning company.

Consider your band name carefully, but don't tear out your hair over the choice.

Remember the words of W.C. Fields: “It ain't what they call you, it's what you answer to.”