You write so beautifully, but you talk like a peasant

Write like you speak's only good advice because you can't type in an awful Northern scally accent

Way before Wikipedia, there was this website. h2g2. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Earth Edition.

Set up by Douglas Adams, h2g2 was a user-generated encyclopaedia with articles written by people all over the world. Quite odd people.

People who loved telling the world about banal shit like the best place to get half fried rice, half chips and curry sauce for £2 in some suburb or other, and weird shit like what life is like as a dominatrix (Sort of SFW, oddly).

As a teenager, I used to be one of those people.

The first kind of people. Obviously. Nobody wants a spotty, 17 year old dominatrix with fuck-awful sideburns.

I used to work really well with one of the volunteer sub-editors. A German lady by the name of Claudia. And you have no idea how careful I had to be writing about German subs after that intro.

We finally bumped into each other at a h2g2 meetup when I was in my 20s. And she hit me with the most brutal piece of personal feedback I’ve ever had.

“You write so beautifully, but you talk like a peasant.”

Cheers mate. Those words come back to me time and time again. Especially last year.

Last year, I’d decided I was going to be a video star. Written word’s dead, business needs video content. So I’d write scripts and do to-camera pieces.

Beautifully written, natch.

But delivered with darting eyes and feverish pace in a Salford accent so thick even Bez would think I was playing it up for the cameras.

Hiding a book entitled HITLER behind a whisky bottle. That’s great marketing optics.

Martin - the Williams bit of Hampson Nattan Williams - kept taking me to one side and asking to just publish the scripts as blogs. But I knew better. Nobody reads. YouTube is where it’s at.

My first ever substack last week got quintuple the views of my most popular video.

Because it doesn’t matter that I talk like a peasant, so long as I write beautifully.

Find a medium that plays to your strengths, and always stick to it. It’ll deliver in the long run.

Something mint - this party game. No, really.

Never mind talking like a peasant. The real marketing wins come from talking like a caveman. This game won’t make you write more beautifully, but it’ll make you a better communicator. Guaranteed.

It’s dead simple. You’re given a word or a phrase. Let’s say “cologne.” You then have to get your team to correctly guess said word or phrase using clues of only one syllable. Like “it nice smell spray for man.”

Use longer words, the opposing team twat you with an inflatable “NO!” stick.

It’s a good technique for complicated marketing projects. No fucking clue how to position a “leading-edge medtech assessment platform?” Describe it using words of only one syllable, while a colleague menaces you with a weapon. Inflatable or otherwise.

“Revolutionary?” *SMACK* “Paradigm shifting?” *BELT* “Solution?” "*SPANG*

“It dead good health check tool to put mind at ease?” *BEGRUDGING NOD*

It doesn’t half cut through the bullshit and get to the crux of the matter.