What classic literature might give to the marketing professional?

Because everybody loves classic literature. No? I do.

Every now and then in life some people still grab a good ol’fashioned book with their hands. I’m one of those people. I like books. I like the way the ink smells and how the pages feel between my fingers. I’m also a fan of tablets and everything digital one can play with. But not when it comes to reading.

Books are more personal, more friendly one might say, than reading several written works from the same e-reader or a tablet. With the digital reading apparatus you’re only holding that one object that you hold to do so much more than just read. It’s cold, it’s faceless and lacks in emotion. A book exists mainly for reading and it offers better moments of privacy and intimacy than some digital version.

Books can vary in form, be hard or soft in hand and can have excellent visuals at the cover. Physical books have more feeling and diversity than tablets and e-readers. They are more like the human species and being human is a key aspect of marketing in today’s world.

Storytelling

Storytelling is a skill that is helpful to the most of us every day, regardless of what we do as a profession. With storytelling in this context I mean the likes of Alexandre Dumas, Sir William Scott and James Joyce & co. Storytelling to score in some bar with the opposite sex is a different matter, unless your counterpart is a serious D.H. Lawrence fan.

Marketer are the storytellers of today. The mediums and formats are different from the times of Salinger or Kerouac but the idea is pretty much the same. Today, you have to be short and to the point with your words, but at the same time, witty, real and fun to keep people interested in your work.

Storytelling in marketing has to be understandable and relatable to the majority of your audience. James Joyce’s “Dubliners” has stories in it that have themes that, I dare to say, many people could relate to, regardless of the nationality and city they’re in. Not just Dublin and Ireland. The adventures of Ivanhoe and D’Artagnan appeals surely to the majority of boys alive, regardless of age (I would like to think so).

Storytelling with 140 or less characters is hard, but that’s where the pictures and videos come in. One picture can describe a whole story rather well. For example a picture of soldiers hoisting up a flag in some place during a conflict is pretty self explanatory and it tells a story. A story of pain, defeat and suffering but also of victory and heroism. Stories one tells as a marketer has to speak to the feelings of the reader, just like the good storytellers speak in their books.

Books can be dull and have storytelling in them, that is descriptive, insightful and vivid, but ineffective, motionless and boring when nothing is happening. “War and Peace” pops into mind as an example. Exceptionally well written and detailed, heralded by some as the greatest novel of all time, but to an average reader (i.e. me), unfortunately, a little boring and too long.

Creating detailed images

I’m one of those fortunate people that begins to draw mental images in my mind when I read a detailed text of an event in some book. I remember imagining what the forest around the pond Walden might’ve looked like based on Thoreau’s detailed text. I’ve imagined what I might see when I’m reading the exploits of a special forces operative real time when reading something from Tom Clancy. And I can’t forget the mental picture of a humanized cockroach lying on a bed when I read Kafka’s “Metamorphosis”.

These mental images usually rise from something we have seen or experienced before. The image might have its origins in a computer game, the person’s real life events, photograph, graphical illustration, comic book, movie or a TV show (note: All very good mediums for a marketer). The image what you might create for a new bottle today can be someone’s first mental picture of the same context in the future.

People who don’t like to read usually don’t have this kind of imagination, according to a study that I just cooked up (I asked from my girlfriend, who’s not into reading that much). That’s why the imagination of someone else is the next best thing. The marketer has to bring the mental image and thought associations that the majority of people might have to life.

One has to be able to focus on what’s important to the majority of potential customers in marketing. Mary emptying a waste bin is not interesting. Mary mentally cursing and destroying everything because of emptying that smelly, red waste bin might just be in the correct environment. The latter option has feelings that people can relate to, not just objective and colorless description.

The detailed images, and the text you associate with the images, has to feel like they come from a real and genuine instance. So be human, maybe grab a book, touch it, smell it, look at it and just take a moment to live with it.

You might get new ideas for something you’re working on.