Marketing as Poetry

Anyone who’s ever dabbled with writing poetry will have learnt some basic skills that can be applied to marketing:

The start determines the finish

Get the start wrong and no matter how we struggle the end result is going to be laboured. Maybe a few moments will be ‘in the zone’, maybe there’ll be flashes of inspiration, but overall there’ll be nothing but lumpen failure. Getting the start ‘right’ is an art – it’s saying ‘No’ to all those moments when nothing flows (even though the rational mind insists that something must be done) and it’s knowing instantly when words feel ‘right’.

In marketing terms:

Finding the right angle from which to market a product or website is an art. Rationality lays foundations, just as rationality teaches us letters of the alphabet, sentences and how to put pen to paper, but the actual connection between us and our customers comes from trial and error, experience, our intuition and just ‘knowing’ (after a lot of practice) what’s going to work. A starting point can be an image, a word or a feeling: it’s that moment when we realise what’s going to have emotional resonance. That moment will determine the direction our marketing goes. Get it wrong and whatever follows will be off-kilter – get it right, and the rest will slot effortlessly into place.

We can’t plan a poem in advance: it develops as it develops

Trying to rush ahead and determine a poem’s route to fit in with our own preconceptions and desires is pointless. All we end up with is a rational and clunky collection of words that have no magic behind them and zero emotional connection. Ask any top-quality painter, any musician, any sculptor and see if they plan ahead in great detail or if they set a general direction and then ‘hope’. A poem is born, it’s nurtured, it’s observed, it grows as it grows – and it’s our job to recognise where it’s going and to let it develop as it develops.

In marketing terms:

Having found our starting point – the magical connection between ourselves and our customers that we ‘know’ is right – we then have to follow our marketing nose. Just like creating a poem or a painting, or releasing a sculpture from stone, we start in one place and work outwards. We build incrementally, layer upon layer, connection upon connection, point upon point, reacting, observing, flowing, fascinated. Pretty soon we get a general sense of where our marketing’s going and from there we have to ‘go with it.’ Plenty of companies manage to start well and uncover their marketing campaign as they go along, but you’ll see that many also lose their magical touch and soon head for the abacus, the marketing manuals and committee-marketing, forgetting (if they ever consciously knew) that following magical moments is an art.

When we’re ‘in the zone’ we have to fight tooth and nail to stay ‘in the zone’

Magical moments don’t just appear and hang around, waiting for us – we have to concentrate hard on staying in touch with them, but not so hard that we chase them away. The words from a poem fall into place if we let them, if we give them just enough concentration – but they fade away if our concentration is too weak or too forced (we can’t will poems into existence, just as we can’t will a painting or sculpture into existence). Staying ‘in the zone’ is an art that comes from experience, from trying and failing, from starting at the right time in the right way in the right mood, and from following the moments with full and willing concentration whilst at the same time ‘letting go’.

In marketing terms:

Marketing is a flowing, evolving, ever-changing connection between a company and its customers. When a company’s ‘in the zone’ – major corporations can be ‘in the zone’ for a decade or more before they lose the plot, whilst smaller companies tend to stay ‘in the zone’ for only a few years – then the marketing magic works. Falling out of the zone, though, is inevitable. Few individuals can keep their concentration and sensitivity going for very long and few companies can maintain that level of  focus either. Smart companies know that failure is inevitable, but keep chasing their elusive time in the magical moment anyway, in the process gaining both insight and meaning: dumber companies give up and head for the abacus, the marketing manuals, the committee and slow oblivion. Staying ‘in the zone’  is a learnt art – it takes practice and dedication, and evolves from a culture of passion.

A poem is caught in the moment or it dies

A moment never returns, and a poem that’s been put aside can never recapture the original essence that it had that day. Instead, it captures the essence of the day when it’s next worked on, and a skilled poet blends a seamless whole out of those different days (though other poets might see the joins ). No doubt this is the same in all arts: music, writing, sculpture, painting, dancing. Each day there’s a slightly different mood, a different feeling, a different approach and it’s impossible to go back to the insights and feelings of  a previous day.

In marketing terms:

Each day is a new day, and each day the marketing angle is very slightly different. Use your skills to capture today’s insights and blend them seamlessly into yesterday’s marketing.

There’s a time to stop

We stop writing a poem when it’s right to stop, when we suddenly ‘know’ that if we go any further we’re just going to create crap. Often we stop when we reach the limits of our concentration and sensitivity. I suspect all arts have this moment. Certainly, teachers will recognise it though in their case the time to stop is just before the student gets out of ‘the zone’ and is thus no longer capable of absorbing any more (after that it’s time for a break ). When the magic stops it stops, and it’s time to take a rest – then, when the rest’s over (and it’s over when it’s over) it’s time to start again from a slightly different angle.

In marketing terms:

Every marketing campaign and every marketing angle comes to a finish. Knowing when to finish – before it all goes pear-shaped – is another art. Carry on too long, and a whole marketing campaign or marketing angle can be destroyed. For example, if you’ve got an interest or hobby or speciality which gives you a certain amount of inside information it shouldn’t be too difficult to think of a product or company that went from hero to zero because their whole way of doing business, their whole marketing angle suddenly seemed outdated and irrelevant – and they didn’t notice.

Over-analysis destroys imperfection – and imperfection is ‘perfection’

Every poem has to be edited. There’s always something not quite right about it. But editing is an art, just as the original writing of the poem is an art. Editing is done with a different mind-set, but that mind-set is still artistic. Editing is done with a lightness, a touch, an intuition that comes from plenty of practice and plenty of failure. Over-edit and over-analyse and a good poem can be reduced to mediocrity. The paradox is that the moments of imperfection in a poem give it an edge and depth that it wouldn’t otherwise have – so that imperfection creates perfection.

In terms of marketing:

Over-analysis will reduce your marketing to mediocre. Go with it, accept the rough edges, and once you’ve got plenty of experience – provided you’re still fascinated by what you’re doing – you’ll find your decisions are usually right.

Each day that we practice writing poetry, the writing of poetry comes a little easier

If we stop writing poems for a while then it takes a little while to recapture where we were. Practice makes proficient. Our skills don’t die but they can gradually hide from our view. It pays to keep in practice,  if only infrequently.

In terms of marketing:

Marketing a product comes from a unique thought-process and set of feelings, not a superimposed template. We need to keep practising marketing in order to improve.

Be inspired by others

Each poet has a unique way of looking at the world and a unique way of writing poetry. By reading and trying to copy the greats we incorporate a little bit of what they had into our skills and world-view.  Our curiosity and questioning and our attempts to emulate them open our minds and lift us. Painters are fascinated by great painters, musicians are fascinated by great musicians, dancers are fascinated by great dancers. By getting absorbed in the minds of the best we start to echo a little of what they had and literally think in the ways that they thought.

In terms of marketing:

Great marketing is all around us.There are copywriters who know all about emotional resonance,  politicians who know how to sell themselves and their policies, and corporations that happen to be hitting a home run at the time. Look to the various arts for how to communicate at an emotional level; listen to our children trying to pitch us an idea of something that they ‘need’; read newspaper headlines; watch the spread of positive and negative ideas around the globe; assess T.V. adverts and the messages they’re selling; look at shop-fronts; observe how people present themselves. Great marketing is everywhere, and there’s an endless amount to learn.

It takes years of experience before we can touch ‘magic’

We won’t find a touch of poetic ‘magic’ in a day’s creative-writing course. If it was that easy there would be a million poets.

In terms of marketing:

Learning comes from ‘doing’. Learning about marketing involves ‘doing’ marketing. Read the books for a few days, then get on with it!

Hope you had fun reading this!

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Friday May 28th 2010

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