It’s dead easy. You just need to do it right.
Sitting in the Piccadilly Tap with Dave the Dev. We’ve deconstructed Blade Runner 2049, and the talk turns to the dour, dire run of new Star Trek series.
“It’s not hard. Just give us characters we like and that like each other.”
“It’s dead easy, isn’t it? Write good characters, put them in challenging situations.”
Standing at the bar in the West Riding. The Moaning Toe’s not happy. Again. We’re in a relegation fight. Again. And Patrick Bamford’s not scoring. Again.
“It’s not hard. Just put the ball in the box and useless fucking Bamford taps it in.”
“It’s dead easy, isn’t it? Ball comes to you on your right foot, hit it with your right foot!”
Sitting at my desk, poring over a brand guidelines document that I’m screensharing with Ben. As always, we’re not entirely sold on what our sort-of-competitors are giving our clients.
“It’s not hard. Just put the work into verbal identity that you do into logos and colours.”
“It’s dead easy, isn’t it? Create a key message, give it equal prominence in the book to the logo, and add some tone guidelines.”
It’s never hard. Writing multi-million dollar TV shows, playing top flight football, creating brands.
It’s dead easy. You just do what I would have done. But perfectly.
And if they don’t, then let’s all hop on social media. We’ll chew out the Paramount writers’ room, call Paddy Bamfs a useless posh prick and don’t forget to slag off some bad advertising while we’re at it.
Because it’s dead easy all that. Not like my job.
Just amazing that even though it’s all so easy, it seems to be too much trouble to find the good stuff to share and learn from, instead of piling on the sub-par.
Wouldn’t that be mint?
Something mint - this menu from a Toronto restaurant
It’s done the rounds on Twitter a few times, but this is how you use content to go viral.
✅ Simple enough to explain in a sentence - “they’ve renamed their food items so you can put them on expenses!”
✅ Supports the user experience - the supporting copy hasn’t been changed, so people still know what they’re buying
❌ Doesn’t force the concept - they aren’t trying to theme the names with the items in a Bob’s Burgers style pastiche.
Will business owners in the Greater Toronto Area fall for it? Who knows, people in the GTA have fallen for the Leafs’ promises to win a playoff round for years (and as a taxi driver once told me, the Toronto Maple Leafs are absolutely rubbish). But if you’re going to try something quirky to grab attention, this is how to do it.