Monday 4 February 2013

Being human is the best kind of marketing

By Candy Gourlay



I heard the oddest story about the Nike Just Do It campaign the other day.


Apparently 'Just Do It' was inspired by the final words of killer Gary Gilmore, 'Let's do it' - before he was shot by firing squad in 1970s Utah.

Adman Dan Wieden of Wieden+Kennedy changed the 'Let's' to 'Just' to give it better emphasis.

"I'm sure they didn't want anyone to know that that was the genesis of the phrase," muses head of marketing Liz Dolan in the documentary Art and Copy, about how the combination of writing and art transformed advertising into something of an art form.

But still Dolan and her colleagues at Wieden+Kennedy were surprised by the emotional impact of the slogan. They found themselves receiving fan mail from people who'd taken the blurb to heart.

"People were applying it to just everything they'd been putting off or pracrastinating about or avoiding dealing with,' Dolan recalls in the documentary. 'People were writing me and saying'I finally left the bum'!"

The public took the simple words to heart and the admen found themselves in the unaccustomed role not of not just selling sports equipment but of high-minded values.



The slogan's runaway success was put down to 'Just Do It' being so human and so emotive.

It worked alongside the campaign's corporate objective of selling sports goods. "People don't mind being sold to if they understand why," said one ad exec. People don't distrust the combination of a commercial objective with a human imperative.

We authors are in a funny place.

Writing is widely regarded not as a business but as a vocation - even by those who try to make a living by it.

So many of my author friends profess a discomfort with the necessary act of self promotion.

Self promotion feels ... well, cheap and trashy.

Says Dolan: "People trash advertising because a lot of advertising IS trashy ... (a lot of advertising) isn't really hoping to do anything creative or illuminating or inspiring. They are aiming low."

I love the Just Do It campaign because it reveals something amazing about the people who are processing the ad. It shows us that audiences are looking for something great in even the simplest thing. In Just Do It they discovered a shared human need to overcome adversity.

One of the things that surprised me in these past years of being a bonafide author doing school visits and festivals is how audiences - especially children - try to bring out these shared human commonalities. After my first few Q&A's I realized that audiences were fascinated by the story of how I spent years being rejected before achieving publication. I had thought this was of interest only to my fellow writers.

Today, I incorporate that story in my presentations. Failure and hope - we all sup at the same table.

In these straitened times, we writers have no choice but to become both the high-minded artist and the scrappy entrepreneur, trying to outshout other vendors in the virulent soup of social media.

But before you whip out the megaphone to call one and all to buy your book, look your audience in the eye and consider their humanity. Go back to who you were before you had a product and a target market. Then put all that into your message.

People like marketing to be human because it makes them feel human too.

28 comments :

  1. A very thoughtful and thought provoking post as always, Candy. BUY MY BOOK! I still struggle with self promotion. BUY MY BOOK! Maybe I just need a good slogan?  JUST DO IT!

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    1. Just BUY it! It does help that your book was one of the best I read last year Dave. It's the best start.

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  2. It IS your humanity that sold both your books to me - you both have a friendly, funny, grounded personality that I knew would seep into your books and make them something I wanted to read - and I was right. Tall Story and 15 Days Without a Head are two of the best books I've ever read. Meeting people, making connections, letting them see who you are and what you have to offer is a fantastic way to promote what you have to sell without actually having to sell - hoorah for social media in enabling that.

    For writers, we so often are what we write.

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    1. I agree Kathryn. I bought both books because of the authors not the synopsis. And I thoroughly enjoyed both. Maybe in promoting yourself you are promoting your values and your talents, and setting up an expectation that whatever book you write, it will reflect these.

      SCBWI and NFTS provide great opportunities to engage properly with people, to get to know them, support them and then suddenly instead of you having to say Buy My Book, friends are shouting BUY HER BOOK!

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    2. Thanks you guys. Perhaps under all these kind words there is another message: esconce yourself in a generous community that embraces you and holds you up.

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  3. Fab, Candy! Great way to show that marketing doesn't have to be a dirty word.

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  4. This is so true. Marketing is fundamentally about two things: word of mouth (i.e. the creation of a must have product) and being real (aka being human), which includes in it, one to one contact - that ability to reach out and touch people.

    The ad campaigns that have stood out over the years are ones that touch human emotions and humanity per se - fear, joy, humour, togetherness and the "aw" factor. The best marketing presentations I've seen have come from people unafraid to be real, unafraid to tell it like it is.

    And you just have to look around cyberspace to see how not to market yourself. The megaphone is not a pretty approach.

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    1. Last week I gave a talk in marketing that I called The Message is the Message ... the point being that with all these lovely media available now for self promotion it's easy forget that you've got to have a message in the first place ... which is not just buy my book ...

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    2. Have to admit that presentation was in first draft form ...I put it better here than I did on the night!

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  5. Love 'if you let me play'!

    In hearing success stories like yours, people find meaning in struggle and aspiration. It interests me that eventual publication makes the long rejection process ok, retrospectively, somehow dignifies it. If you had not been published, you would be the same interesting person and your work would still be as good (although perhaps less edited). But would audiences be as fascinated?

    Now, let us all play!

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    1. The journey continues and after publication we all continue to teeter on various slushpiles. All that hopefulness is good training for the roller coaster ride of a writing career.

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    2. Or should I say writing life?

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  6. Oh so true Candy. I was taken with your point about the struggle of becoming a writer being interesting to children - and anyone else starting out on a new way of life, I suspect.
    Thanks

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    1. If you let me play I too can become an author. If you let me play I can be whoever I want to be. If you let me play I can hope for anything.

      Thanks KM

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  7. Great post - and well timed -Today I'm doing a talk to 150 adults at 'The Abingdon University of the 3rd Age' about writing. This is scary, it's been booked for over a year and up until a week ago I had no idea how to start. But I've gone for as you've said, my writers journey and ending with hope.

    of course I've not done it yet -but fingers crossed it go well.

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  8. I think this post was spectacular. It reminds me of what I've gotten from reading Seth Godin's Icarus Deception. The world aches for humanity and connection. Knowing that takes a lot of pressure off of self-promotion.

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    1. I am a Seth Godin devotee too! Thanks so much.

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  9. Hello Candy...thanks for the FB message...I came to read your blog...LOVE IT!
    This post is so perfect...I actually did one on 'HOPE' yesterday...that hope was the first step towards success...you can't just 'hope'...you have to take steps to get where you want to be.
    You are so right about the 'just do it' slogan...we need to connect with our audience, our market...and most of all, with ourselves...so that we are believable.

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    1. Thanks Vivian! Looking forward to meeting you in Singapore!

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  10. Carol Ann Martin5 February 2013 at 09:21

    Thank you, Candy! I am always awed by writers who go out there and promote, promote, promote. Where, I ask myself, do they find the time, the energy and, most of all, the confidence? I am a children's author and I love it! I spend a lot of time in another world, where magic happens - anything happens! But going out into the real world and asking people to buy my book is hard for me. I can happily spend time sharing my story with children in schools and talking about writing, etc, but my motive never ends up being to sell books.The sheer simplicity of what you suggest speaks to me so clearly. It takes the effort out of being a PR/ marketer/promoter and asks me just to be me. Thank you again:)

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    1. Aren't we lucky NOT to be sports goods! The message of reading and books is a Good Thing to begin with and that's why we should enjoy getting that message out there. Thanks for dropping by!

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  11. Thank you, Candy. "Failure and hope - we all sup at the same table." These words were for me today. Thank you for your honesty, humour and humility. Here's a hug!

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  12. Great advice. It is important to realize that we just need to be ourselves in the middle of the whole promotion thing.

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  13. But before you whip out the megaphone to call one and all to buy your book, look your audience in the eye and consider their humanity. Go back to who you were before you had a product and a target market. Then put all that into your message.

    - Favorite part. This statement reflects how you came up with the title of this post (I think?), and how marketing should be about the consumers, not the sellers. Being human is one thing that most of the marketers forget when coming up with products, which I believe is the most important factor to consider.

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  14. We assume everyone knows how to be kind/think of others

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  15. People remember ads that they connect with

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