Proverbs and marketing

Yesterday I had an intersting lunch conversation with a friend who is at the top of his game as a communication professional and a forward thinker. He was talking about ideas that stick, basedon a new book and the thought that ideas that stick tend to be like proverbs. They go beyond slogans or marketing fluff to actually say something that instructs the audience. It is a really challenging idea as we read and write marketing copy.

Beyond that, I have been thinking further about the difference between art and entertainment and what marketing means in that mix. One of the parameters that I have been seeing for art is that it is dialogical in its approach - thus coming from and "I thou" perspective. Dialogical communication respects the listener as a person. I think this is what art does. Entertainment on the other hand is a commercial enterprise where the person isn't necessarily important. This is not an argument that entertainment is bad and art is good, just a way to seperate the two so that we don't keep trying to sell slasher porn as art in film, just because it is a creative process that went into making.

What does this mean for marketing? It means that we have to consider our audiences as real people in order to make marketing an art.

(End of thought - next webisode)

Two good articles I have read in recent days that are to a large degree unrelated, and to pull them together in my head would be time consuming and a disservice to both writers.Typically, I stay away from any book that starts with “the Gospel according to. . .” unless those name following is Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. However, Christianity Today had a really interesting excerpt from the Gospel According to the Beatles. It shows in the end that everyone, no matter how creative or successful is searching for something, and I think helps Bob Dylan’s point that you have to serve something.

The other article was by Frank Deford in Sports Illustrated. I really like his writing and I think he sums up the state of college athletics pretty well in this short article. I only wish I would have had a chance to listen to him deliver it on his regular Wednesday NPR spot.