Hiya Tom,
No messing around today. Straight in with a short story, a creative lesson and a life lesson.
Here goes...
It was late afternoon on a warm Tuesday in June 1991.
I was in the street right outside my house, and my neighbour, Flo, who lived opposite, was pointing in my direction, screaming:
“You’re the only one standing there, you soft bastard! It must’ve been you!!”
Harsh words from a usually mild-mannered pensioner.
Seconds earlier, I’d been playing football with 7 friends, when one of them hit a wayward shot right through her living room window.
A fucking thunderbolt.
She was sat in there watching Countdown when it happened. And aside from all the minuscule glass fragments ending up all over her new carpet, the shock of the full leather size-5 casey careering through her 4ft by 6ft window made her drop hot tea all over herself.
Naturally, all 7 of my mates – including the kid who hit the screamer – disappeared immediately.
But I decided to take a different approach.
“If I stand here,” I thought, “It’ll be clear that it was not me who kicked the ball. It’s madness for a guilty person to remain at the scene of the crime. I will tell this to Flo.”
But then Flo appeared at the door - furious and tea-stained - and gave it to me with both barrels.
Despite my calm protestation, and my sensible explanation about why I was still standing there, she was having none of it.
So it was bye-bye to 2 months’ pocket money, and a look of "I’m not upset, I’m disappointed" from my dad who had to fit the new pane.
Gutted.
Now, there are two little lessons to take from this.
Creative lesson: Trying to be too clever is dangerous when people can't see the thinking behind your actions.
Life lesson: When shit happens and everyone else runs, run.
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Obvs the life lesson is a biggy.
But it’s the creative lesson I want to leave you with today.
I regularly bang on about the importance of capturing people’s attention with your advertising copy. You can do this with plays on words, rhymes, metaphors and a myriad of seriously fun stuff.
But just like me in the street, the cleverer you try to be, the harder your message might be to understand.
My good mate, and copywriting genius, Eddie Shleyner says it best:
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