Happy drivers make better drivers.
A recent campaign by Hyundai Sonata ignored the usual data drivel typical of automobile advertising. Instead, it captured an emotional moment that most of us have experienced while driving: singing along to a song on the radio.
After one of my recent tips came out, my associate and friend John Frost sent me an email saying: “When I was at KHTR in St. Louis, I hit a little slump in my on-air performance. My Program Director suggested that I create a “best of” tape and listen to it every day on my way to work. That way, I would have an objective reference point to what I did well, and it would help build my confidence since I was listening to my own work.” The thought was “Yes, I can do this because I’ve done it.”
There are sights and smells from our childhood we never forget. I grew up in the home my grandfather built.
I can still remember the sound of the grow ups talking downstairs while I was upstairs pretending to go to sleep. I remember the sound of the grandfather clock at the bottom of the staircase chiming every fifteen minutes and chiming the specific number of times on the hour.
My grandmother also lived in our hometown. The sights and smells of her home are just as vivid.
Continue readingKonstantin Stanislavski was the father of “method” acting. Practically every actor since Marlon Brando in the 1950s has read and/or studied his writings and techniques.
One of his main tenets is “Talk to the eyes, not the ears.”
It’s all about making things visual. If I can visualize it, I can crawl inside it, emotionally. But if it’s just “ad copy” or doesn’t bother to engage me visually, it just goes by unnoticed. Or it’s noticed, but not in a good way. It’s just noise.
“You can have a family member flown in for Christmas” is sort of generally visual, but “Imagine eating Grandma’s recipe with Grandma…” is very visual. Then, “We’ll fly her in!” adds another visual component.
Think “what does this situation (or this behavior) look like?” and you’ll be on the right track to stand out in the sea of disc jockeys reading crap off a computer screen.
Writing every week for 648 weeks is not for the faint of heart. That’s every week for 12-½ years for those scoring at home.
I’m often asked, “Where do you get your ideas?”
Fortunately, that’s the easy part. My answer is, “Everywhere.”
In those 648 weeks I’ve also learned where ideas DON’T COME FROM.
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