Creative communications from London
London: How can I miss you if you won’t let me go?
After presenting a writing workshop for TELLABS UK and CCGroup last month, I was treated by a volcano to an extended stay in London.
Although by day 12, my clothes almost made me vomit, I was grateful for my extra days in London. How could you not love a city where the art museums are free, the restaurants are glorious, the train is never more than two minutes away and all the men are more handsome and charming than Jude Law?
Plus: the communication! I saw some brilliant stuff in the land of Shakespeare and Milton. Here are a few of my favorite things:
Give great verb
When it comes to your headline, the verb is the story. The sexier the verb, the sexier the story.
That’s why I love the cheeky verb in this headline, from Vitaminwater:
“Spank those naughty little oxidants.”
Before you write your next headline, use Visual Thesaurus to find the most stimulating verb for your story.
What’s in a name?
Is the name of your company fluent — that is, short, easy to pronounce, easy to rhyme and maybe even homophonic? (Shut up. I said homophonic, as in sounds like another word.)
If so, you might try wordplay like the Tate museums. Tate plays with its name for twists of phrase like:
- Tate a Tate — member get-togethers
- Taste of Tate — museum restaurants and cafes
- Tate to Tate — the Thames boat shuttle from the Tate Britain to the Tate Modern
How can you apply this approach? Use RhymeZone.com and Phrase Thesaurus to transform your organization’s name into clever twists of phrase.
Compare it
Analogy makes your benefits more tantalizing by making them more tangible. So use metaphor and simile to make your concepts concrete.
ING Direct, for instance, makes its mortgage process more alluring with this analogy for its competitors’ approach:
“A mortgage application that can take just 25 minutes. It’s a mortgage application, not a thesis on quantum physics.”
And Confused.com makes its discounts more tempting by making them more concrete with this promise:
“Save a guitar on your car insurance.”
To make your benefits more compelling, make them concrete.
Back in a flash
It’s great to be home (though my cat is no longer speaking to me). But after a couple of nights in my own bed, I’m ready to return to London.
Just with different clothes this time.
Play With Your Words
Surprise and delight readers
There's a little piece of your brain — it's called the Broca's area — that's responsible for helping you sort through all of the many messages you get each day.
Well-worn phrases and familiar ideas don't activate the Broca's area. Plain old 'splainin' doesn't do anything for it either. But creative techniques like wordplay do.
At Master the Art of Storytelling — our two-day hands-on creative-writing master class on Feb. 19-20, 2019, in San Diego — you’ll learn how to tickle your readers' Broca's area — and cut through the clutter of competing messages — with wordplay. Specifically, you’ll learn how to:
- Go beyond twist of phrase: Learn to flip phrases; compress details; sub soundalikes; list, rhyme and twist — even coin new words.
- Find online tools that do most of the work for you: Walk away with links to some of the best (free!) wordplay resources — as well as ideas for how to use them.
- Polish your skills in our wordplay workout: Get “recipes” for creating 14 types of wordplay, from anagram to etymology to oxymoron.
Learn more about our
San Diego master class.
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