There’s some things I’d only ever see my mum do at Christmas. Smoke a cigarette, have a drink, and tell a joke.
Festive that.
Thing is, my mum only knows two jokes. Both with a very similar punchline. And because the jokes are quite sweary, they’d achieved mythical status in my head. Until I was 13, 14, it was always “Andrew, go put the kettle on while your mum tells her joke.”
Talk about building up anticipation. I waited years to hear my mum’s favourite joke. Years. Did it live up to the hype? Did it meet my wild expectations?
You tell me.
Mickey Mouse is standing in the courtroom.
The judge turns to him and says ‘Mister Mouse, you can’t divorce Minnie just because she has buck teeth.’
Furious, Mickey fires back ‘No your honour, I said she was fucking Goofy.’
If you think I oversold the potential hilarity, you imagine waiting years to hear it.
For the record, her second joke was something about a housewife giving the milkman a fiver and shagging the binman because her husband told her to tip the one and fuck the other.
I told you the punchlines are similar.
They both rely on one universal truth. What we say and what others hear aren’t always the same thing.
I was reminded of that during a meeting to re-do the HNW website when Martin wanted us to explain what we meant by message when we say message-first marketing.
It’s obvious. To Ben and I, who’ve been noodling away at this since 2020. It’s message. It’s your message. Message! Prospects who hadn’t been noodling for three years mightn’t have made the same connections we did.
Sometimes, when you’re too close to something, the best thing you can do is take a step back, and let someone else ask the tough questions.
Like why are my family’s traditional Christmas jokes all about marital infidelity?
Or why isn’t your business’ marketing getting your key ideas across?
I can’t answer the first. But I’ve got an inkling about the second…
Something mint - this amazing minimalist messaging from WWF
Your message is an idea. Something that sums up everything that you offer to the world, or that you’re trying to do.
The World Wildlife Fund’s message is simple. To save the natural world, people need to act NOW.
The copy? A simple, direct expression of that message. WE’RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME.
And the visual? It’s perfect. The hourglass is a bit on the nose as a metaphor, but when it’s got wildfire slowly trickling into a sole remaining tree, it hits home. Hard.
Once you’ve got a message, simple, elegant, thought-provoking ads like this become possible.