It’s been a year since I began sending out this weekly nonsense. The newsletter started as a way to dust off the cobwebs after a professional period that was intellectually and creatively lacking stimulation. Since, it’s been a place to test out ideas, reflect on the industry, and work on my storytelling.
I think writing is a dramatically underrated skill across most businesses, but especially Marketing. The ability to create a narrative or properly frame an argument is just as indispensable as any technical aptitude.
Here are some lessons I’ve learned in my first year of publishing that are just as relevant for marketing strategists as they are for Substackers.
Write Every Day
It took me a majority of my 20+ years in the business to realize the importance of writing, but since that epiphany I’ve made it a principle to write something at least once a day. Usually, it’s a couple of lines tapped into my phone in a Google doc. Eventually some number of these fragments start to relate to each other and get turned into a post. Less usually, something happens in the media world that triggers an outpouring of words.
But even if you’re not publishing regularly, it’s easy to practice writing on the regular. Most of us send countless emails, texts, and DMs every day, but we don’t treat it as writing. Those moments are mini opportunities to make an argument or perfect you’re joke-telling, and with just a little more thoughtfulness can help advance our communications skills generally (and yes, emojis count).
Have a POV
As a generalization, agency people are wired for call-and-response. Client asks question, we generate answer. So opportunities are limited to explore original thoughts outside of a very specific client context.
One of the benefits of being an independent business has been the ability to lean into different ideas that I think are valuable. With a bank of established thoughts, many of those ideas can then be redeployed with additional context to answer client needs, like pulling the most appropriate book from the library shelf.
If all our ideas and opinions are formed only in response to highly specific questions, they hold no value beyond their immediate needs. I believe there is power in an in-going POV, even if upon action or reflection that POV turns out to be wrong. Without it, we’re starting from scratch or, even worse, trying to retrofit one situation’s solution onto another.
Write For Yourself, Not the Algorithms
I usually cross-post each weekly piece on LinkedIn to broaden exposure and solicit more feedback. And with only one exception (see the most popular post below), the content I thought would get lots of engagement wound up disappointing.
The lure of social engagement is difficult to ignore, especially when LinkedIn aggressively updates you on your stats, but I’ve found that the less I think about how readers will react, the more I enjoy the writing itself. And it turns out, the more I enjoy the process, the better the pieces turn out, and the more engagement they get. (Though now that I’ve said that, I am sure that this post, which I’ve quite enjoyed putting together, will totally bomb)
But Also, Write for the Algorithms
This newsletter also taught me how to use ChatGPT. Don’t worry, not a single word was copy and pasted, but while doing background research or verifying some assumptions, I learned that better writing means better AI results.
In fact, writers hold the keys to our AI futures because they can uniquely coax the best possible answers from large language models.
And ironically, using conversational AI can make us better, more persuasive writers. Asking ChatGPT questions in conversation helps to improve sentence structure and composition.
Embrace Vulnerability
While I’d like to think I’m the James Joyce of marketing newsletter writers, I know I’m closer the editor of a high school paper (if that).
Every newsletter I’ve sent is an experiment in thinking with an uncertain outcome. Some I felt extremely confident about, while others didn’t pan out exactly how I intended or didn’t quite land the point.
But if I waited for every thought to be perfectly formed I would never hit “send.”
The imperfection is kind of the point.
In marketing and life, none of us really know what the hell we’re doing; we’re all just figuring it out as we go, and putting words on paper, for me, is the best way to work through that exploration. The fact that other people are interested enough to join the journey is a bonus.
So What’s Next?
Despite the lessons above, I feel like I’m still happily grasping around in the dark, and I’m excited to keep learning about both the content and process of writing. As part of that learning, I’d love to include some more voices or feature some posts that are dialogues among experts with opinions.
I also hope to more often deviate from the “Here’s An Observation, Now Here’s Three or Four Bolded Implications” approach. I know it’s an easier format for readers to digest, but it’s also less interesting to write.
I plan to continue to write at least one longer, more thoroughly researched essay every few months, like the commentaries on Taylor Swift or the Star Wars hotel. And lastly, I hope to mix in some more introspective, stylized pieces.
All that being said, thanks for reading. There may only be seven of you that I don’t share a last name with, but I’m glad you’re here.
This Week’s Whimsies
Pardon the self-indulgence, but since we’re being reflective, this week’s Whimsies are looking back at past posts. Longtime subscribers: feel free to listen to Green Day’s “Time of Your Life” while reading.
Far and away the most popular post was this one that defended strategy (and agencies in general) in response to some clout-chasing CMO who seemed to believe neither should exist. While it was contributing to a timely conversation on LinkedIn, I fear that it did so well because it had a very clearly defined enemy (marketing ignorance).
Our least popular post is one of my favorites but fell victim to me still figuring out posting scheduling best practices. I enjoyed exploring the changing ways we consume love stories. And, if I say so myself, it was a useful breakdown of an important media trend which also finally perfected the case that Shakespeare in Love is cinema’s greatest artistic achievement.
If you want to know why we call this thing Reason & Whimsy, I get into it here.
The most commented on post was the one about the danger of losing the movies, which was picked up by LinkedIn news, which resulted in lots of exposure to people outside of my network and LOTS of comments from MAGA-types who had some strong opinions themselves about why people weren’t going to the movies. My favorite comment: “The more critics like you pound on the product for not beating the numbers, the less viewers will want to see it. Aren't you proud?” Guys, I’m a movie critic! Not all the comments were terrible, and one actually led to a 3,000 word essay by Michael Kok who made a compelling counter argument and is well worth checking out.
i always enjoy this kinda 'meta-post' about the act of writing itself. and here was my first typically: https://k7v.in/about-writing
I’ve signed up to quite a few substacks in the last year or so, and yours is pretty much the only one I still look out for when the notifications come through. Thanks for sharing your reflections, maybe we never stop trying to figure it out. Great read as always.