Wheel of Fortune

The age of chivalry is past. Bores have succeeded to dragons.

                                                                                      —Charles Dickens

Before it was a game show, the Wheel of Fortune was a metaphor.

It served writers well in the age of chivalry, when they strove to remind their rich and powerful readers (the only kind; everyone else was illiterate) that the best things in life came not from titles and trappings, but hard work and a positive attitude.

Geoffroi de Charny asked every reader to "be a man of worth;" Geoffery Chaucer, to "make a virtue of necessity."

When you worked hard and maintained an "attitude of gratitude," sudden setbacks (the "necessity" in Chaucer's phrase) wouldn't throw you.

Alas, chivalry's dead; not so, reversals of fate.

Riding the Wheel of Fortune is still dangerous.

Copywriters' Coin of the Realm

I am a friend of neology. It is the only way to give a language copiousness and euphony.

—Thomas Jefferson 

While near the bottom of Madison Avenue's pecking order, copywriters do have one prerogative: to coin new words, or neologisms.

Just as everyday neologisms (for example, Spanglish, cattitude and entreporneur) empower conversation, copywriters' neologisms empower ads.

They can, in fact, be so forceful they're absorbed by English, and we forget they began life in an ad (for example, kleenex, astroturf and motel).

Neologisms come in handy because "they sound funny and weird, and have a catchy nature," says Ruta Kalmane in Advertising: Using Words as Tools for Selling.

They also arrive easily. (I'll coin one now: a cheesy telemarketing call is a Mumbuy.)

My favs include fabulashes, craisins and, last but not least, Corinthian leather.

Corinthian leather was coined by a copywriter to describe the upholstery in Chryslers of the 1970s. 

TV pitchman Ricardo Montalban made famous the line "richly-cushioned luxury seats made of fine Corinthian leather."

In reality, Chrysler's upholstery was vinyl and originated not in Corinth, Greece, but Newark, New Jersey.

The late Montalban admitted the neologism "means nothing."

4 Writing Defects You Should Eliminate

Writing is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent elimination.

― Louise Brooks

Your boss demands you do more with less.

Start with your writing.

Slow down and try to write more concisely; in particular, eliminate these four common defects:

Roadblocks. Cut needless words and phrases like "very," "actually," "I think" and "in my opinion." And replace modified verbs with strong verbs; for example, replace "consider thoroughly" with "evaluate."

Jerks. Smooth the breaks between sentences by using transitional words and phrases like "because," "for example," and “in contrast.” Use short introductory questions like "Seem reasonable?" to ease the transition into new paragraphs. Use phrases like "Let me explain why" to end paragraphs.

Clichés. Replace clichés with vivid descriptions. Instead of saying "we raised the bar in customer support," say "our Help Desk is hyperfocused."

Monotony. Give your writing some rhythm. Alter the cadence with a mix of long and short sentences. And don't forget those sentence fragments. Yes, fragments.

Believe it or not, elimination adds. It adds spark to your prose readers will notice.

Here's an example:

Before

In my opinion, we substantially raised the bar for responsiveness in customer support last quarter. I think the team was very careful to consider thoroughly the numerous challenges customers routinely experience whenever they called our Help Desk seeking assistance. I would like therefore to offer a big thumbs up to the Sales Operations team for the can-do attitude they demonstrated in tackling this really difficult issue.

After 

Sales Operations streamlined a number of critical Help Desk procedures last quarter, improving the customer experience. Without exception, my kudos to team members. You tackled one tough job―and succeeded!

Intel Outside

After midwifing the People's Republic in 1949, Chairman Mao set out to erase every trace of China's past.

So it's no wonder Chinese Millennials find their nation's history "remote, irrelevant, and uninteresting," as marketers at Intel recently discovered.

There's not much of it around.

To help right Mao's wrong, Intel tapped J. Walter Thompson to produce films depicting epic moments from China's past and project them on the city wall of Sian at an outdoor event.

Intel didn't stop there.

It used proprietary 3D facial-scanning technology to capture and insert the faces of Millennial event-goers into the films in real time. The Millennials became the starring leads of the film.

"History became personal; history came alive," says Intel's Louise Felton.

Digital and Events: They're Cousins

Yes, we get it: digital's hip and events are square.

But they're cousins, identical cousins all the way. One pair of matching bookends, different as night and day.

B2B CMOs know they spend 50 cents of every marketing dollar on events.

But they don't recognize, in reality, they spend even more.

John Hall, CEO of Influence & Company, recently told me an ever-growing portion his clients' digital spend directly supports customer engagement through events (before, during and after).

B2B CMOs are using online channels to drive face-to-face results; they simply don't assign that spend to the events.

That means CMOs are oblivious to the true picture. Spending surveys don't capture it either.

In this family, the brash, hip child is gets all the parents' attention, while the shy and dutiful one goes quietly about her business. What a wild duet!