Is Your Content Fat and Soggy?

Is your content fat and soggy?

A story memo can cure it.

Professional writers use story memos to pitch ideas to editors and producers.

The brief memos answer five questions:

• Why does the story matter?
• What's the point?
• Why is the story being told?
• What does the story say about the world?
• What's the story about in a single word?

With answers to these questions, a theme emerges. That focuses the story, makes telling it easier, and serves readers a tasty treat.

Fat and soggy's fine, if you want to appear "content rich" to boobs, bosses and bots.

But crisp and thin converts customers.

Wasting Away

Not every artist is an addict, and certainly not every addict is an artist.

—Steven Pressfield

Getting wasted has wasted many an artist.

The list is long.

Scott Fitzgerald. Dylan Thomas. Jack Kerouac. Jackson Pollack. David Smith. Errol Flynn. Marilyn Monroe. Oliver Reed. Lenny Bruce. John Belushi. Chris Farley. Janice Joplin. Elvis Presley. Jerry Garcia. Amy Winehouse. And more.

Novelist Steven Pressfield thinks the path of addiction comes easily, but not inevitably, to the artist.

She can choose to get wasted; or she can choose to work.

"There are two ways to know if you’re taking the addict’s path or the artist’s," Pressfield says. "One, the artist’s way requires work. We have to sweat to find surcease of pain. And two, the artist’s imperative is to maintain self-sovereignty, not abdicate it. Her heart may surrender momentarily in order to hear heaven’s music, but her feet remain planted here on earth, where she will do the work to bring that song to human ears."

Work obsesses the most unlikely of artists, Jimmy Buffet.

According to his editor, Terry McDonell, Buffet has always worked—never for money, but "only because it was good for Jimmy Buffet."

It's why he's a success, with:

• Over 30 albums (8 Gold, 9 Platinum)
• Three New York Times best sellers
• A branded-merchandise company with $1.5 billion in annual sales
• 7 hotels, including Margaritaville, a 17-story resort hotel in Miami (8 more are underway, including one in Grand Cayman) 
• A family resort in Orlando with hotels, a 12-acre water park, and 1,200 homes
• 67 themed restaurants
• A Norwegian Cruise Line offering named Margaritaville at Sea
• A satellite radio channel
• A suite of mobile games and videos
• One of America’s fastest-growing craft beers
• A line of branded liquors, and
• A line of branded groceries, including iced tea, frozen shrimp, and tortilla chips

PS: With Jimmy Buffet's buy-in and enough financial backing, I plan to open the first Margaritaville-themed nursing home, Wasting Away, in Q4 2017. Call me now, to invest.

NOTE: This post does not constitute an offer to participate in any investment.

Thanks

Opportunity.

Teachers.

Wife.

Children.

Grandchild.

Immigrants.

First Amendment.

Your Trade Show Makes Me Sick

A trade show can amaze you or afflict you.

Most do the latter.

Consider how stressful shows are.

Exhibitors zip in minutes before opening, travel-worn, ill-prepared, and often resentful of the fact they're being denied time with their customers back home.

Attendees arrive in warmer spirits, happy to be away from the boss and harboring notions they'll be entertained. But they quickly discover the exhibit halls are about as navigable and hospitable as downtown Tokyo on a workday.

The trade show maze is the full catastrophe—and acutely stressful.

Research scientist Esther Sternberg has made a lifetime study of the connection between the built environment and the human brain's stress response.

In her latest book, Healing Spaces, Dr. Sternberg distinguishes between mazes and labyrinths.

Complexes such as hospitals are mazes, built to accommodate equipment, not alleviate illness. They trigger stress responses in patients' brains that make them sick, instead of well.

Complexes such as Disneyland, on the other hand, are labyrinths. They're built to help you walk about calmly and mindfully. They trigger floods of dopamine—the stuff that drives engagement.

"Labyrinths are calming," Dr. Sternberg says. "Mazes are stressful."

What's your trade show like?

A maze that afflicts? Or a labyrinth that amazes? 
 


HAT TIP: Bob Hughes inspired this post.

Art & Science

Art is I; science is we.

                       — Claude Bernard

At INBOUND last week, Gary Vaynerchuck told 20,000 B2B marketers to respect art and science equally, if they hope to succeed in the next 10 years.

Most are good at only one.

The problem persists, Vaynerchuck says, because, "We have people who lack self-awareness to know what they're good at and what they're not good at."

Focus on that at which you suck, he insists.

I agree.

I've encountered few marketing leaders who are dexterous at both art and science.

Many master and respect only one (they're true specialists); and many others, neither (they're simply shrewd self-promoters).

Marketing leaders should be Renaissance (Wo)men.

It's no surprise 1 in 3 will be fired next year.