Good morning, Wonderful!
I saw Toy Story 4 last week. It was a blistering hot day in Maine, where I was on vacation, and one day we just couldn't take the heat anymore so we escaped into the local Cinemagic.
Inside, the AC was turned on way too aggressively—as usual everywhere in July. So while I lay supine and motionless in the deep pillows of my Cinemagic power recliner—flanked by a barrel of popcorn and a pail of soda nestled in its pail-sized soda holder—I felt a chill settle in.
Suddenly, this was Maine in February.
If you're a fan of the Toy Story franchise—and I am,
sort of—you should go see the movie. Especially if you're in marketing and especially if you love words.
Because of course I'm going to relate Toy Story 4 to marketing. But you knew that was coming three paragraphs ago, didn't you? 😉
New to the Toy Story characters in this film is Gabby Gabby, a talking pull-string doll from the 1950s. A defect in her pull-string voice box makes her sound un-doll-like: weird, gravelly. So she has spent more than 60 years forgotten in the cruddy depths of an antique store.
Gabby Gabby is hoping that if she can just repair her voice... a child will love her forever. (Set aside the troubling notion that you have to be perfect to be loved... We're in the middle of a story here...)
To be loved by a child is the highest calling for any toy, of course—a theme that runs throughout the entire Toy Story franchise.
I don't want to give too much away. But eventually, Gabby Gabby's voice box is fixed. And that gravelly voice is now just like every other pull-string voice.
Fine.
But what does Gabby Gabby say, when finally a child lifts her up and pulls her string?
What words does she call forth from her newly-perfect voice box when the moment comes—the moment she's been hotly anticipating for 60 years...?
The one chance she finally has when a girl named Harmony lifts her up, stares into her plastic baby face, and waits for what Gabby Gabby has to say...?
Honestly, I don't remember. Something like "Hi, I'm Gabby Gabby. Let's be friends."
I don't remember because what she said and the voice she said it in weren't unique or memorable or any different at all.
And that's the point.
Of course I'm having some fun overstating things here... Toy Story 4 is a fun, simple movie, not a business parable.
But we could look at this through a marketing lens, because I do that with everything anyway. (You, too?)
Gabby Gabby has seconds (seconds!) to convert her "prospect." But that's not what happens. She says something boring in a typical way. And Harmony shrugs and tosses Gabby Gabby aside, 1000% unimpressed.
Whoopsie. That's a spoiler. Sorry.
You probably know where this is going, because you and I see it all the time: People, brands, companies, organizations, shops, nonprofits, libraries, realtors, tech leaders, dolls that pay more attention to how they look than what they're actually saying and how they're actually saying it.
We sand off the interesting, rough parts so we can sound like everyone else.
We say the expected stuff that defines us most broadly, instead of honing the great, weird story that makes us unique.
Your story sets you apart. And how you tell it in your own gravelly brand voice is your single biggest opportunity.
Story and voice are a powerful combo pack: Like a barrel of popcorn flanked by a pail of soda.
* * *
1
A Quintet of Brand Voice Guides to Steal From
Photo cred: University of Leeds
So how can you develop and document your own brand voice?
Everybody Writes talks about this. Want tangible examples? Check out my 5 favorite brand voice guides of all time [including B2B, B2C, nonprofit]:
2
People's Voice Awards
Doug Kessler makes the case for the importance of B2B brand voice:
Think of your favorite brands—B2B or consumer. They all have it: a clear, compelling, consistent voice. That's not a coincidence. They're your favorite brands because they have the likeable personality that voice conveys. And, as "soft' as that sounds, it's actually as hard and real as MQLs in a funnel and money in a bank.
3
Rainbow Wheel of WHOA
Domo just released its Data Never Sleeps 7.0—a visual assault of a chart documenting the volume, velocity, and variety of online consumer behavior.
In other words: this is what we're doing when we're staring at our phones.
If you've seen me
speak in the past year or so, you might recall me flashing this rainbow Wheel of Whoa. It quantifies "noise" in a tangible and visceral way.
If this chart had a pull-string on its back, its voice box might say: "THIS is what your tweets and blog posts and B2B whitepapers are up against!"
Think of this chart as a call to arms for each of us, my marketing and writer friends: It's a rowdy, clamorous world. We are all making a racket, each of us.
So let's slow down a bit, together: We don't need more content; we need better, more strategic, more substantive marketing.
👉 👉 👉 Go deeper: Six important takeaways, reflective of broader trends, customer expectations, and how technology continues to change the ways in which marketers communicate, collaborate, and create community:
🐢 Nothing is slowing down. The internet reaches 56.1% of the world's population, or 4.39 billion people—a 9% increase from January 2018.
⛔ Hey haters: Twitter isn't dead. Twitter usage spiked from 473,000 tweets per minute in 2017 to 511,200 in 2018.
📸 Instagram gained too (of course)—from 49,380 to 55,140 photos shared per minute, a 12-ish% increase.
📬 Communication is shifting. The rise of enterprise messaging apps like Slack means fewer emails are being sent per minute—down 8% from 2014. Then again, we're still sending 188 million emails a minute. So, #grainofsalt.
💗 Love wins. With a rise in awareness around bullying, social justice, and mental health, "it's interesting to see how many people are using the internet to make the world a better place," says Domo. Last year, we posted the hashtag #love an average of 23,211 times per minute.
4
Partners in Time [Email Send Stats]
There are a thousand blog posts that will tell you the best time to send an email. (Spoiler: It's Wednesday. Try mid-morning.)
But I'm dropping this link here because MailerLite takes a more nuanced approach.
Emails with a goal of deep engagement (like this one) should be sent when email activity is lightest—Friday afternoons or weekends. But "if you are happy with readers quickly scanning your newsletter just to keep your brand top of mind, send it anytime during the weekday," they say.
Common sense? Sure. But MailerLite has the data to back it up.
Full story here.
5
Write Sweats: How to Really Write a Blog Post
I saw this beast of a post shared a few other places recently... which would usually turn me off of sharing it with you.
BUT. Then I clicked and read, and I learned a few things: It's comprehensive, smart, and a solid view of what it takes to write a blog post that gets traction in the Age of the Rainbow Wheel of Whoa (ARWW) above.
If you are a writer or marketer who hasn't seen it, well...
now you have.
👉 👉 👉
Related: Storytelling Summit is a brand-new online event for marketers, by MarketingProfs. 12 sessions, 12 speakers we consider among the best in the world at teaching businesses how to tell better stories to engage the people who matter most.
Get in for less with discount code ANNSENTME.
6
Easy as Ai
This week I was reading a marketing article, and the writer referred to "adversarial machine learning." WUT.
That sent me down a rabbit hole in which I discovered this trove of treasure: Artificial intelligence and data science defined for non-data-scientists.
Now we can sit with IT at lunch!
QUICKIES
SHELFIES 📚
What I'm reading
DEPARTMENT OF SHENANIGANS
LOVE LETTERS
Shouts from around the internet.
Thanks for reading this far. Thanks for your kindness and generosity. See you on July 28!
XOXO,
