Road Rage

Travelogues are all the rage among itchy-footed Millennials, so travel marketers are heading there.

Brett Tollman says his company, The Travel Corporation, will turn to travelogues to break from the pack of tour operators.

The company will rely also on social media influencers to tell those tales.

All told, the company hopes to romance 16.2 million Millennials in 2016.

To that end, one of its brands, Contiki Travel, rolled out Roadtrip 2016 on YouTube in May.

Although peers remain the top source of recommendations, Tollman thinks meandering Millennials will start to shop for destinations based on branded mobile channels—provided the storytelling there is good.

The travelogues on those channels, if compelling, will not only pique Millennials' interest, but build loyalty to the sponsoring tour operators.

Beware of Geeks Bearing GIFs

Designers call it “Greek," but of course it's Latin.

Lorem Ipsum has served as designers' "dummy copy" since 1500, when a printer scrambled a page from Cicero's essay, “On the Extremes of Good and Evil,” to create a type-specimen book.

Lorem Ipsum distracts you from reading while you examine a layout.

But why Cicero?

As the most lauded of Roman rhetoricians, Cicero's works represent the pinnacle of prose in Latin. 

The passage the printer took to create Lorem Ipsum says:

Nor is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure.

(In brief, "no one likes pain without gain.")

Need to use Lorem Ipsum?

It's easy.

In Word, type =lorem() and press enter.

For a change of pace, you can also use another thinker's scrambled works as dummy copy by visiting Nietzsche Ipsum.

Also Sprach Mighty Copywriter.

Soup Up Your Writing

There is but one art—to omit!

Robert Louis Stevenson

Many thinkers, including, Freud, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Pound and Koestler, have noted the German verb dichten—"to write"—also means "to condense."

The word stems from the Latin dictare, "to dictate." Ancient Roman poets used to dictate their verses to slaves, who wrote them down (hence, "condensed" them) on wax tablets.

The most persuasive writing is condensed.

Its strength comes from conciseness, what Hemingway called "leaving out*"—omitting everything that's irrelevant or obvious.

When you edit your writing, think of Darwin.

When only the fittest survive, what's left is stronger and better.

"Like passengers in a lifeboat, all the words in a concise text must pull their own weight," says journalist Danny Heitman.

Your goal in writing shouldn't be to inform, but to suggest—to help readers reach understandings of their own.

And your goal should be speed—speed that comes only from condensing.

"Modern prose had to accelerate its pace, not because trains run faster than mailcoaches, but because the trains of thought run faster than a century ago," Koestler said.

Here's an example of persuasive writing (85 words) from a white paper:

The resounding message surrounding Millennials is clear: Money means less, culture means more. But that’s not to say money doesn’t matter at all. As the generation with the highest rates of unemployment, lowest earnings and record student loan debt, Millennials certainly care about their financial health. A recent study from Gallup found that 48 percent of Millennials find overall compensation “extremely important” when seeking new job opportunities, and one in two would consider taking a new job for a raise of 20 percent or less.

Here's the same paragraph souped up (condensed by 35%):

Millennials are loud and clear: Money means less; culture, more. But it's not that money means nothing: Millennials suffer high unemployment, low earnings and crippling student loan debt. In fact, 48 percent say compensation is “extremely important,” and 50 percent would change jobs for a raise of 20 percent or less, as Gallup recently found.

Websites' New War of Attrition

Adobe reports traffic on 4 in 10 websites has decreased since 2013.

“Traffic increases due to Internet penetration have evaporated in North America," says analyst Becky Tasker. "Websites face a more competitive landscape, where you’re fighting to grow by taking share away from somebody else.”

Winning websites "aren’t resting on the strength of their brands alone to drive traffic,” Tasker says. 

“They have a 360-degree strategy, surrounding people in various channels and platforms to drive traffic to their sites.”

The channels driving the most traffic? Social, email and display.

Winning websites are also providing relevant, nonintrusive content, according to Tasker.

Napoleon's Newspaper

A century before Edward Bernays fathered PR, Napoleon fathered his own media channel, the Courrier de l'Armée d'Italie.

The Courrier was no ordinary rag.

Printed on expensive paper, it was handsomely designed, featuring well-laid-out articles and a summary of each issue's content in a box just below the masthead. To ensure that content was top-drawer, Napoleon hired none other than Robespierre's protégé, the accomplished journalist Marc-Antoine Jullien, as editor-in-chief.

But despite giving readers wide-ranging reportage—plus a steady stream of poems, op-eds, and letters to the editor—the Courrier remained Napoleon's mouthpiece, boosting the general's pet ideas, while shredding detractors', day in and out.

No wallflower, Napoleon contributed signed articles, too; not only military proclamations, speeches and orders of the day, but tales of French politics that painted dark pictures of conspiracies, led by pampered minorities bent on destroying good republicans everywhere ("they do not act alone; they have their auxiliaries in every department, their constituents, their agents, their writers, their armed forces, their hired assassins..." he once wrote).

The Courrier was so effective a propaganda tool, it ensured the success of the 1799 coup that made Napoleon emperor.

Sound familiar?

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Imagine what Napoleon might have done with Facebook!

HAT TIP: Thanks to history buff Ann Ramsey for leading me to this story.