News of the World

Back in the last decade, it was social media - Facebook, Mumsnet, various writing forums - that were my trap for getting tangled up in when I should have been doing something better. These days, I’m more likely to end up scrolling through endless articles and related comments on regular news sites.

It’s easier to justify because:

1. I’m paying a subscription

2. It’s a good thing to be informed about what’s going on in the world, surely?

Yet these news sites often leave me with that nasty bingey mental junk food feeling that I used to get from Facebook:

    - that wasn’t paricularly nutritious or satisfying

    - and I couldn’t stop: the “enough is enough” button was having a day off

I’ve been reading How Modern Media Destroys Our Minds, from The School of Life, which analyses this phenomenon and offers a few curative suggestions. 

The click-baity title I could have done without - another example of the mismatch I wrote about here. That aside, the book shows how the modern media preys on the less desirable aspects of human nature - passivity, celebrity, nastiness and distraction, which encompasses all sorts of stuff like helplessness, outrage, mawkishness, schadenfreude and sanctimoniousness.

It’s a relief to know that my own reaction to the modern media diet is not unusual.

On to the suggested cures. There are 9 of these, of which two particularly appealed to me:

Become an aristocrat (of the spirit)

This is inspired in part by Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly who declared that “the most beautiful destiny: to have genius and be obscure.”

The book says of Aristocrats of the Spirit: they are set apart not by haughty contempt but by a melancholic certainty that the disputes of the populace will be chaotic, brutal, partisan, deeply illogical and unfair because this is the normal, unfortunate lot of the human animal.

And that obscurity leads to the idea:

Never Be Famous

I’ll admit it: 10 years ago I loved the idea of collecting clicks and likes, for blog posts to go viral, for my books to be picked up by a top publisher and top director and all the rest. But the idea of that now is quite hideous. I like retreating back into obscurity, which is my “safe place”.

In a world without fame, certain books, sofas, cheeses or lamps will still be better than others, certain ideas will still be more valuable, certain people will still have hearts that are kinder and more sensitive, but none of these would have to be identified by the destructive and manic spotlight of the media.

Having said that, of course, this is one area (or many) where brands are not like people.

Your customers choose you

Back in the days, when I could sell my books at live events, I’d get into conversation with people at the museum, or bookshop, or school, or wherever it was. Some of these conversations were unexpectedly fascinating, and could have been the basis for new stories in their own right. Then every so often, a customer would say something - express an opinion - that I didn’t agree with. What was I to do? Snatch the book back, climb onto my high horse and proclaim that I didn’t want people of their sort buying my books? Of course not.

A couple of weeks ago, I saw a video entitled “Thank You, North Face”, which is part of a wider campaign from Liberty Energy to create provocation/put the facts straight (take your pick) about the oil and gas industry continually being cast as the villain in the climate change and sustainability story. In it, the CEO enthusiastically thanks The North Face for being such a great customer. I think this campaign pricks over-inflated corporate virtue-signalling puffery with a very sharp pin. It’s also a reminder that while you can choose your suppliers (although you may not want to shout to the rooftops about who those are), you have little choice in reality about who your customers are.

This all goes back to the arrogance of brands (or the people behind them) that I’ve written about before. However many idealised personas your marketing department draw up - clean-living, well-adjusted people who share your wonderful brand values of inclusion, diversity and wellness, and are passionate about making the world a better place - there will be countless numbers of people who’ll buy your brand who might smoke like chimneys, drink like fish and hold unfashionable, uneducated views. Some of them may even be Brexiteers.

I’m in the UK at the moment, and read about brands boycotting the new news channel, GB News . I haven’t watched the new station - I’m not particularly interested to be honest - but it would seem to be a rather bumbling post-Brexit channel for the sort of people who comment in the Daily Mail. Fair enough.

But advertisers boycotting it? Unless you’re a bijou boutique exclusive brand-thingy that maybe can hand-pick its customers to a certain extent, this seems to make little sense. Especially for a mainstream brand like IKEA that has always claimed to be “for the many people.”

As Batman might have said: “They may be GB News viewers, but they’re also human beings."

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?

Only Marmite can do this

Probably the only good thing about the whole Brexit circus is the creativity it has unleashed from comedians around the globe. I have advised friends here in Germany that the best way to understand Brexit is to look at the jokes, not the news.

I'm not a fan of brands hi-jacking current affairs stories, mainly because the attempts are often done in haste, aren't funny and seem opportunistic.

But for Marmite, I'll make an exception. This ad couldn't be more on-brand if it tried.

Like Brexit, Marmite is peculiarly British, not understood by foreigners and extraordinarily divisive.

And it gets my vote, every time.