Don't be a Blabbermouth

No matter the forum, choose your words wisely.

That's the advice of 17th century Jesuit Balthasar Gracian in The Art of Worldly Wisdom.

"There is always time to add a word, never to withdraw one," Gracian says.

So be prudent when you speak, particularly when your audience doesn't agree with you; and, when it does, speak only "for the sake of appearance."

"Talk as if you were making your will: the fewer words, the less litigation."

And make good use of everyday conversation, because every encounter is another chance to rehearse for "more weighty matters of speech."

Blabbermouths don't have much future, Gracian says. 

"He who speaks lightly soon falls or fails."

PRUDENT DISCLAIMER: Opinions are my own.

CMO, Want to Avoid Extinction?

No CMO wants to be left on the sidelines. Sidestepping the confines of traditional marketing to deliver a more relevant and integrated customer experience will ensure the future of the CMO on the digital playing field.

— Accenture White Paper

Dear CMO:

Afraid you'll be banished to the North Pole?

Ready to declare every conventional marketing tactic passé?

Well, be warned: your rush to "embrace digital" is abominable.

The reason's simple.

Just like people who use an online dating service, B2B customers use digital to eliminate you from consideration. They don't use it to start a relationship.

Relationships come from face-to-face.

And relationships are the wellspring of growth, the most valuable off-balance-sheet asset your company has.

So why on earth would you "sidestep" face-to-face?

Do you want to avoid extinction—or accelerate it?

In Praise of the Short Sentence

Want to release a powerful idea?

Use a short sentence.

The short sentence gains its power from its adjacency to long ones, which comprise the bulk of most any piece of writing.

Long sentences, says writing teacher Roy Peter Clark, "bring clarity, create suspense or magnify emotion."

Short ones pack punch. They're pithy, truthful, Tweetable.

Consider how our world is the better for these bantams:

• Hunger is the best sauce.
• Good is the enemy of the great.
• A little learning is a dangerous thing.
• No man is great if he thinks he is.
• Be sincere, be brief, be seated.
• You can’t always get what you want.
• Eighty percent of success is showing up.
• Easy does it.
• To finish is to win.
• Do, or do not; there is no try.

Stranger Things

While heading the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover spied on many left-leaning artists.

James Baldwin, Ray Bradbury, Albert Camus, Truman Capote, Charlie Chaplin, Ernest Hemingway, Langston Hughes, Gene Kelly, John Lennon, Dorothy Parker, Paul Robeson, Pete Seeger and Orson Welles all crossed the G-man's radar.

But Hoover's strangest suspect, without doubt, was French Existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre.

Hoover distrusted all philosophers (particularly French ones) and in 1945 asked, "Are Existentialists just Commie shills?"

To find the answer, Hoover assigned a team of agents to spy on Sartre, who was visiting the US in April of that year at the Office of War Information's invitation.

Hoovers' agents applied routine FBI methods—surveillance, eavesdropping, wiretapping and theft—to find the answer. But the agents were stymied. One stole notebooks from Sartre's personal effects, only to inform Hoover "this material is all in French." Their findings, in the end, were inconclusive (a lot like Existentialism's).

Twenty years later, Hoover again focused on the philosopher, tagging him for a co-conspirator in JFK's assassination, because Sartre had belonged to the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, of which Lee Harvey Oswald was also a member. That investigation never quite panned out, either.

INTERESTED IN EXISTENTIALISM? Join The Authentic Existentialist, a private Facebook group.   

PHOTO CREDIT: Victor Romero 

Help

Prerequisite to any purchase is trust.

B2B marketers who want to build trust among customers should try theme-based marketing, says Corey Olfert, head of content marketing strategy at GE Digital.

Most marketing focuses on the brand; theme-based marketing focuses on help.

It lionizes customers, by helping them navigate change.

"Theme-based marketing forces your business to put your audience’s needs and their challenges at the center of your marketing," Olfert says.

Done right, theme-based marketing:

• Builds trust in your company by showing you have perspective on today's issues and can provide concrete guidance;


• Lets customers learn about you while they self-educate; and


• Gives you a "True North guide" for all your marketing content.

So how do you identify a theme? It's easy:

• Interview a cross-section of customers, your company's top executives and salespeople, and your biggest channel partners, Olfert says. Be sure to segment your interviews by region. "What’s important in the United States may not be important in France, South Africa or China," he says.


• Read industry analysts’ forecasts and trend reports in your space and look for potential themes. You can also ask the analysts to identify the hot-button issues their clients obsess over.


• Monitor media coverage and social media conversations about issues.


• Study competitors' theme-based marketing—and go in a different direction. Choose an issue that will still be relevant in two years, vet it with a few customers, and "make sure your perspective on the issue, and the guidance and recommendations you’re providing, are differentiated and true to your business," Olfert says.