I do words. She does pictures. That’s the deal. Now my friend and work partner has gone rogue and started writing her own material. Here’s the part that makes me bitter. She thought she was writing a funny little story to introduce a golf tournament. But what she did (and I’m not telling her) was create a back-story, a loopy convergence of fact and fiction that enriches the context of the event and actually entices more people to participate.

Personable not Personal

We constantly create short hand narratives of the events in our lives. From personal profile pages on Facebook to corporate web sites, we’re sharing lots of information. But what’s often absent is a context, a sense of the person without it getting all too personal. A story is a great way to bridge the gap between the unfettered ickyness of too much info and the projection of a personable presence. The irony of the online networks that bind us together is that the realtime unfolding of our lives is less compelling than the constructed experiences we share. A story is profoundly human precisely because the doings and dilemmas of the individual have universal appeal. It is interesting that we (people, organizations, businesses) become more authentic versions of ourselves, not because of the facts we share, but because of the stories we tell.

Susan’s Secrets to a Better Back-Story

Okay. Keep this quiet because Susan doesn’t even know she knows this. But you can use her model to craft a better back-story for anything you care about.

1. Keep it short. Ask Mark Twain how hard this is. Ernest Hemingway seemed to have the knack, but getting to simple did take its toll. 250 little (or even big) words.

1. Keep it true. That means true to you and your experience. Authentic works. Sure you can change things up as long as you remain true to the spirit of events. Check out Two Fisted Science by Jim Ottaviani for an entertaining and illuminating treatment of a real event. Or, just add a big old disclaimer saying that ‘the facts have been changed to make me more interesting’.

1. Mix in some mythic. Make your back-story engaging with a mash-up of the mundane and the mythic. Origin, quest, transformation and redemption. It worked for the Bible and Danielle Steele too.

And now, the best back-story ever in recent history.

Tater, the crappy Bassett statue

The Princess and the Pup, or How the TATER CUP was Born.

By Susan Bachman

Once upon a time, there was a tiny kitty named Sarah. The Princess loved her because she was soft and fuzzy, and well, all kitteny.

Excitedly, the Princess ran to show the mean Ogre the soft and fuzzy kitty.

“Grrrr” said the Ogre “We don’t need no stinkin’ kitty.”

The kind Knight said “I don’t like the name Sarah, and perhaps neither does the Ogre.”

So the Princess named the kitty Tater.

“Can we keep Tater, mean Ogre, I mean darling Husband?”

Flash forward to almost present times…

The Princess wandered about, searching for a Tater to call her own.

The King, taking pity on the Princess said “Here you can have this crappy Bassett statue and call it Tater.”

And Tater, the crappy Bassett statue was born.

The Princess took it home. But something was amiss. Tater wasn’t soft. Tater wasn’t fuzzy. And Tater definitely wasn’t kitteny.

One evening, the Princess and the Ogre were sitting on the balcony of their castle and wondering what they should do with Tater.

“Grrrr” said the Ogre, “We don’t need no crappy Bassett Statue.”

“I KNOW,” screeched the Princess, “we must have a joust, a tournament. We shall tie iron to sticks and hit rocks about. We will invite only the fiercest competitors, and the tournament will be long and arduous, and last many months.”

“And at the end, only one team shall stand victorious. And they shall be the winners of the illustrious TATER CUP – and be presented with Tater, the crappy Bassett statue!”

The End.

Eggs as art.

Easter has come and gone. But a well-decorated egg lasts forever, at least in pixilated form. So what’s the dipping, the designing and the unpredictable process of creating colorful eggs have to do with choosing a marketing firm? More than you might think.

Pricing: There’s no denying that cost is a consideration when choosing a partner to promote your business. Just be aware that you will get egg-zactly what you pay for. Store-bought eggs are uniform in color, they’re mass-produced in un-chick-friendly environments, and they’re devoid of the very characteristics that makes them genuinely eggy: an orange sun yolk, a resilient white, and a yummy, buttery taste. If you’re the real deal and you want others to know it, you might want to invest just a little bit more to work with people who know how to market (and even create) colorful characters.

I Changed It So It’s Mine: Okay, I borrowed this from Lawrence Clore, an ardent foodie who knows how to cook up a storm. His particular gift is to start with someone else’s recipe and then reinvent the formula so that the finished dish is entirely his own. He’s married to my work partner so we often joke that he should write a cookbook with the title I Changed It So It’s Mine. But the ability to change things up is what the right agency can do for you. This goes beyond business book stuff like ‘your unique selling proposition’. What’s uniquely human about what you do, make, or sell? Why would someone tell a friend about what you offer? You see, anybody can make egg salad. But only Larry Clore can make HIS egg salad – which, by the ways is delish. And only you can provide the thing that is uniquely yours – even if you start with eggs like everyone else.

The Invaluable Immeasurable: Everybody’s talking about metrics. How do we track page views, click-throughs, time spent, impressions, word of mouth and more? How do we validate results? I’m all for the thoughtful consideration and assessment of marketing activities. But I do worry that we are so obsessed with the means of measurement that we forget some things of genuine value are immeasurable. Yes, we can break people into parts, analyze their online behavior and adjust campaigns accordingly. But the risk is reactive marketing, like leading by a poll. I’d rather help people discover something they didn’t know they wanted, couldn’t have imagined they needed, and wouldn’t have said they would purchase. Measurement can inform your decisions, but it cannot remove risk. If you want someone to take your pulse, go with a metrics-driven group. If you want someone to breathe new life into your business, take a look at the invaluable factor of creative thinking.

You can’t give people egg-zactly what they want because they often don’t know what that is. Instead, why not delight people? Be a good (and colorful) egg. Be resourceful and serve up your brand of egg salad. And when you choose an agency, see if they measure up in all the imprecise ways that will make them egg-zactly right for you.