I’m the bad guy

 

Last week, I was in a local school, doing an author visit. Over the years, I’ve developed this into a kind of show. You don’t want listen to me droning on, I say to the class, and instead recruit a few volunteers to act out scenes from the book. There are props - a ruby-encrusted cane, a “bomb” in a biscuit tin - and a few costume bits and pieces such as tiger ears. And, of course, the villain get-up of eye-patch and stick-on moustache. 

I get the feeling I have more volunteers for the mad dictator and his bodyguard, and the evil drummed-out-of-the-RAF ex-officer Featherstonehaugh than for the young heroes of the story. And maybe it’s no wonder, as - hand-on-heart - I have a lot more fun writing the bad guys. I’m sure that’s true for a lot of writers - just look at James Bond to Batman to Harry Potter.

This article for Contagious, by Tom Beckman of Weber Shandwick, references another article from Wired. Both note the trend to villainy in popular culture - very clear in the world of films (Wicked, Joker: Folie a Deux, Deadpool and Wolverine ...) and showing up on the fashion catwalk too. The author then moves to music and I’m afraid my attention started to wander at the mention of Charli XCX and “brat style.” I began to wonder whether Tom had been given some kind of trend-cliche bingo card at that point. Still, there does seem to be something in the air as far as being on the wrong side of the tracks goes ...

Brands are also having a go at showing their bad side. It must be a relief after all that po-faced, goodie-goodie stuff to do something like Nike did for the Paris Olympics - no it’s NOT about “taking part”!!!

And why not? Villains have more fun, as the school visit demonstrated. If your brand isn’t in some deadly serious, responsible category, maybe it’s more entertaining and memorable to try for world domination with a bit of tongue-in-cheek that holier-than-thou saving the planet.

And talking of that, here’s Javier Bardem (somehow inspired by Iggy Pop?) for Uber Eats. Is your brand good at being bad?

 

Email Mayhem

 

The past couple of weeks have been pretty packed as far as work goes. I'm certainly not complaining, but the focus on getting stuff thought through and done made me realise just how much time I've spent in hungrier days reading other people's stuff rather than doing my own.

I started a sorting and culling action for the email newsletters that I've subscribed to over the past couple of decades and it has been liberating - like the feeling of clearing your wardrobe and realising a few weeks or months down the line that no, you don't miss any of that stuff or regret giving it away.

I'm not sure how many marketing/brand-type newsletters I was signed up for (in addition to all those from retailers, publishing services and other hobbies-related stuff). But it's certainly multiples more than the 5 or so I had back in 2009 when records on the current laptop begin. Back then, I was getting, say, one work-related email newsletter per day of the working week, which seems quaintly handleable. 

My culling criteria were completely unscientific. I decided anything that appears on or near the weekend in my inbox is bad manners and likely written by workaholic desperados I don't want to know anyway - the sort of lost souls who haunt LinkedIn at the weekend. So sorry, any US-based companies who think they're hitting the Friday morning spot when in fact it's late afternoon here. 

Then I used gut reaction. Is this a newsletter that causes a sinking feeling when it flops into the inbox, or one I'm keen to open? 

The sinking feeling can be caused by design (difficult to read), too much content (those newsletters that link to 8 or 10 or more articles are out), clickbait headlines, or re-hashed and repetitive content (some words are simply a huge yawn).

If I had to name two favourites, they'd have to be Contagious - whose newsletter was one of the five I received in 2009 - and Good Business' Friday5. Both of these have a handleable number of items - someone has made choices over what to put in and what to leave out. The newsletters have a distinct house style and the topics covered have a clear focus. 

I'll leave you with a screen shot of the Contagious newsletter from 11 years ago - 24th November, 2009. Unfortunately the links don't link any more, but it's fascinating to see what topics marketing people were mulling over back then: reports are offered on Mobile Apps, Branded Utility, Goodvertising (which must have morphed into purpose-driven brand communications at some point), Social Media (what that?) and Branded Entertainment. 

But nothing on email newsletters - were they missing a trick?