So allow me to share some fantastically exciting Content Bureau news, in frightfully simple bullet-point fashion:

• The Content Bureau grew 32 percent in 2011, celebrating another record year

• We are incredibly delighted to call Autodesk, PayPal, and SAP our three largest clients

• Though marketing copywriting remains our key differentiator, more clients are enjoying our high-quality design services. We saw huge growth in iPDF and Flash—and even PowerPoint

• Our new venture capital line of business has gone through the roof, with clients like ABS Capital, JMI Equity, and Sequoia Capital choosing us to write high-profile investor materials

• Our team has grown to include 25 fantastically talented and experienced writers, editors, and designers, plus the finest account management and administrative professionals in the marketing communications industry

I’m so terribly proud.

Wishy-Washy Word of the Day: velleity

You know all those things that you’ve always wanted to do, but not badly enough that you’ve ever done them? Now you have a name for them: they’re velleities. Another way to think of velleity is a slight inclination, not accompanied by any action. The word is closely related to will, though the semantic link is obviously a bit on the weak side.

Velleity is the perfect January word for me. I don’t bother with short-lived New Year’s resolutions; instead, I fuss year-round with velleities. You don’t need a list of my velleities. They’re probably not that different from your own.

But here’s one constant, nagging velleity worth mentioning: the wish to actually read and follow up on all those helpful web pages I save to my bookmarked Reading List: news articles, recipes, money-saving travel tips, book reviews, movie reviews, gadget reviews—and such inspirational lists (that defy my own resolve not to truck with resolutions) as: Remodelista New Year’s Resolutions: For the Home. (Note: If you’ve never meandered through Remodelista before, you will curse me for introducing you.)

So: Banish gloom with dashes of color? Unclutter with clever desk accessories? Repaint / reupholster / reimagine / redefine? Yes indeed, what grand velleities these are!

And so, when asked to write a blog post about what copywriters can learn from poetry, I thought first about concision and compression, and my mind turned to Dickinson. But eventually Walt came knocking, insisting on his version of things, on the words coming in like the tides, the ebb and flow of a sentence’s rhythm, the power of crashing surf.

If you love sentences—and even those of us who spend most of our time crafting case studies and white papers got into this racket because we do—you know what I’m talking about. When you write, you’re guided by meaning but also by sound. And when you’re writing well? You get in the groove, channel that inner rhythm, fit the words to it so they resonate. And the excess rises to the surface, and is washed away.

This post is not a how-to. Rather, it is an example by immersion, and a practice for the ear. A reminder that when we read, we listen; when we write, we draw from what we have heard.

*

Emily Dickinson wrote poems that, in their time, were considered basically unpublishable. Those few that were published were changed by their editors to force them into line with contemporary tastes (though the well-known editor as bad guy tale turns out to be more complex than originally thought). She punctuated her work with a complex system of dashes large and small, a score for the reader’s ear and eye.

My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun –

In Corners – till a Day

The Owner passed – identified –

And carried Me away –

 

And now We roam in Sovreign Woods –

And now We hunt the Doe –

And every time I speak for Him

The Mountains straight reply –

This is deeply strange, and deeply compelling. There is nothing wasted. But, even as the emotion of the poem enters you, listen to the rhythm: It is ballad meter, at base as familiar to us as it was to readers of its time. Each stanza consists of fourteen accented beats, in a 4/3/4/3 pattern—the rhythm of both “America the Beautiful” and the Gilligan’s Island theme song. Dickinson channels familiarity at the level of our ear, our heartbeats. But then she does something else: makes that rhythm her own, makes it bend to fit its contents. Look at that dash in the first line:

My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun –

and imagine the line without it… all the energy would simply leak out. But Dickinson knows how to keep the line drawn tight, weaving her elliptical, compressed language through the loom of each stanza:

 …

To foe of His – I’m deadly foe –

None stir the second time –

On whom I lay a Yellow Eye –

Or an emphatic Thumb –

 

Though I than He – may longer live

He longer must – than I –

For I have but the power to kill,

Without – the power to die –

I could go on and on, and of course others have. But just take a moment to appreciate how the flow of the meter, and its collision with the dashed breaks inside the line, heighten and intensify the mystery at the core of this poem: “For I have but the power to kill, / Without – the power to die –“  That brief breath after “Without,” paired with the dash at the end of the poem, is a lesson in itself.

Maybe you need a little air at this point? Let’s turn to Whitman, and these flowing, rustling lines from Leaves of Grass:

A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;

How could I answer the child?. . . .I do not know what it is any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,

A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped,

Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose?

 

Or I guess the grass is itself a child. . . .the produced babe of the vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,

And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,

Growing among black folks as among white,

Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same.

 

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

 

When we think about Whitman and rhythm, we need to pull back, see the currents from on high. This is indeed “free verse,” no rhyme scheme or syllabic count to constrain and guide it—and yet it feels deeply inevitable. Part of what makes it so is another echo whose source is deeply embedded in our culture: the language of the King James Bible. Look at the parallel structure of “I guess… I guess…,” the lines of varying lengths spiraling out from their source, but always coming back to the origin. The listing of names of rivers, and how it elevates the ordinary, makes it shimmer. The mirroring of “I give them the same, I receive them the same.”

These are rhythms many of us heard growing up, whether Christian or not, religious or not. They are the rhetoric of the political stump speech, the solemnity of the marriage vow. They hold us aloft, satisfy us. They tune our ear for the next thing.

And when the next thing comes, and it is not what we expected—

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

—because the rhythm starts out the same then ends abruptly, it only strengthens that part of us that is reading for meaning, that is brought up short by the power of the image.

And then there is a breath, and then (because it is Whitman, because the grass keeps on growing), the poem sets out again on its next journey, carrying us onward.

But if you work in marcomm, you can always afford to improve your collateral. To that end, here are four easy resolutions you should feel free to borrow.

1.       Shorten your copy. In this age of tweets and text messages, nobody reads long copy anymore, right? Try to cut all headlines down to three words or fewer. Omit your intro paragraph entirely and begin each piece with your second paragraph. Limit yourself to three bullet points and don’t let them exceed two words apiece. And do that one-word sentence thing as much as possible.

2.       Stop putting a phone number in your call-to-action. Instead, send people to your Twitter page for more really terse information (which they’ll probably only have time to skim).

Here’s an example of our first two resolutions in action:

Your Optimized Solution

That’s why you need the XYZ Platform. Integrated. Efficient. Driven.

You’ll get:

• Better visibility.
• Faster results.
• Bottom line.

@XYZPlatform

See? Your prospect only invested six seconds, but she learned that your product is good. She can now pass this along to her decision-maker and run to her next meeting.

3.       Eliminate “world-class.” Thanks to decades of adjective inflation, world-class is the new mediocre. Start calling your products “universe-class.” Your competitors will mock you at first. But then they’ll grudgingly copy you to avoid giving anyone the impression that a better product may, in fact, exist just south of Ursa Major.

4.       Work out every day at 6 a.m. You didn’t think I was going to let you off the hook with a bunch of wimpy mental resolutions, did you? For crying out loud, get out of bed and exercise. Don’t you know it’s good for you?

Keep in mind that 45 percent of New Year’s resolutions are broken by the end of January. Think these over and then implement one of them in a week or so. You’ll certainly make it to February—and look like a champ.

Pure. Genius. Right?

Let’s look at an example from USAID (below). At first glance, the poster’s strong symbols and clear typography lead us in and boldly declare the theme of the story. The provocative question: “Why invest in women?” and the image of the child provide the first emotional connection for readers.

The numbers denoting the statistics are bold and intriguing. They demand our attention and seduce us toward the fine print. There’s an interactive quality in this, which makes the information more personal. For instance, we see the “99%” figure and want to know if we belong to that number or how else that number may relate to us.

The visual quality of the “Why invest in women?” infographic helps to make the information, collectively, a relevant and memorable story versus a grouping of dry statistics. To further the quality of our involvement, the infographic is arranged in a “call and response” way. As we scroll down and read the unsettling statistics on the left, we also see the positive responses on the right. We are made to understand what it takes to bring about positive change and how we can help. We are now part of the story.

This is reinforced by the use of color. The matter-of-fact statistics underscoring the problems are depicted in black and green. The responses needed to help affect change are illustrated in the more urgent red tone. It’s an alarm: We are needed. The core message in the flow of this graphic is “These problems are serious,” followed by “YOU can do something to help.”

In an environment where so many types of media are vying for our attention—trying to move us to a consumer behavior or social action—bland data and charts just don’t cut it, no matter how interesting the information. As designers, we look for ways to connect emotionally, to clarify, and convince at a glance. This is the realm of infographics and why they work.

Picture it: My family and my amazing English in-laws were sitting down to a Boxing Day meal at our local Chinese restaurant. We eat a lot of ethnic food around here—we joke that our girls acquired a taste for Indian food while still in the womb—but rarely eat Chinese. So the ultra-long, ultra-sleek and slippery chopsticks in their gorgeous red paper wrapper were extremely exciting to our girls.

Our nine-year-old, Abigail, who had informed us several days earlier that she wants to be a writer when she grows up (!!!!), announces to the table that she has found typos on her chopsticks wrapper.

The wrapper reads: Welcome to Chinese Restaurant. Please try your Nice Chinese Food with Chopsticks. the traditional and typical of Chinese glorious history and culture.

OMG. My eyes well with tears. I am bursting with pride and joy!

When Abigail announces that she has spotted more typos on the wrapper, seven-year-old Anna gets into the action. The girl who will feign exhaustion to avoid choosing a book at the library—or reading it for that matter—is now hunting for typos!

She finds one on the back of her chopsticks wrapper: Add second chopstick hold it as you hold a pencil. Anna exclaims, “There’s supposed to be a period in the middle of the sentence!” Genius child!

I am practically weeping into my egg flower soup over the fact that my children are excitedly identifying typos. Can you picture the tearful, humble, knowing look on my face as my husband and perfect in-laws avert their eyes and sip their drinks a little faster than usual?

The night was only complete after the big girls inspected every fortune to discover more typos, while our sticky-fingers four-year-old, Eva, polished off the cookies. It was the sweetest bliss, I tell you.

Here’s to the small moments. Happy New Year, everyone.

Never one to compete with the experts, I am taking, instead, very broad aim at a very broad term: tradition.

And then, because nobody needs an exegesis on the origins of the word tradition, the meaning of tradition in the holiday season, or the life-affirming redemptive powers of tradition, I will zoom down to the micro-level on a particular example thereof: the Ramos Gin Fizz.

The Christmas morning Ramos Gin Fizz was as close to a sacred rite as my determinedly nonreligious father-in-law ever got. Somewhere around eleven o’clock, after a leisurely exchange of Christmas presents but before the ample brunch involving smoked salmon—this was Christmas for grown-ups—Bill would appear in his once-a-year red vest with brass buttons, bearing a tray of cocktails that required such elaborate preparation that they, too, only appeared once a year: Ramos Gin Fizzes, the distilled essence of holiday cheer.

A frothy concoction of lemon and lime juice, egg whites, soda water, cream, simple syrup, various flavorings, and, of course, gin (“Old Tom gin if you can get it” advises the Gumbopages recipe), the Ramos Gin Fizz is said to have been invented in the 1880s by Henry C. Ramos, proprietor of the venerable New Orleans establishment, Meyer’s Restaurant. Apparently Governor Huey Long never traveled without a New Orleans bartender who knew how to make a proper Ramos Gin Fizz. Talk about tradition!

My in-laws were about as far from old-timey New Orleans as you could get, but their Christmas mornings were as exotic as the French Quarter to me, an urban child of the East. They lived in the sort of light-filled, glass-walled, 60s-modern beau idéal of Sunset magazine, surrounded by massive oaks, with expansive views of the Valley that would come to be known as Silicon, but was then lovely Santa Clara. For me, Christmas morning still held childhood associations of dawn assaults on the gift-wrap followed by eggs and cinnamon rolls by eight-thirty, so this sophisticated approach to the festivities was all the more alluring.

Bill put his own idiosyncratic spin on the Ramos Gin Fizz by using a nontraditional ingredient: juice and a twist from the Rangpur Lime tree that grew in a huge patio container outside the kitchen door. The Rangpur Lime is not really a lime (which is too frost-sensitive to thrive in Northern California); it’s a sour mandarin orange with a unique citrus pucker that can take the place of limes, but delivers its own zesty tang. Bill’s Rangpur Ramos was unbelievably delicious, especially since we only sipped it on Christmas morning.

There: that’s my exegesis on tradition.

And to illustrate how tradition lives on, here’s the Rangpur Lime tree we planted in our own yard many years later:

And here’s an artifact I picked up from Facebook: my son in his college dorm, celebrating the end of finals, wearing his grandfather’s red vest with the brass buttons.

*The Terms of Christmas, Present by Mike Pope on the ThinkMap Word Count blog.

Who can forget my bullish prediction that purple would be a design trend in 2010? Well, as it happened, Pantone—the self-appointed “global authority on color”—respectfully disagreed, giving their nod to Turquoise instead.

To be fair, Pantone’s picks tend to lean toward fashion, home, and cosmetics. (This year’s shade—Honeysuckle—is likely a bit too pretty-in-pink for that annual report.) But Pantone recently announced their color of the year for 2012, and it’s got some real marketing potential.

Pantone 17-1463, known more familiarly as Tangerine Tango, is a “spirited reddish orange … a bit exotic, but in a very friendly, non-threatening way.” I’ll admit I’m usually unimpressed by Pantone’s annual announcement, but I really like this color! The high-impact hue is perfect for calls-to-action, punchy headlines, and web badges.

Is your corporate color palette feeling a bit drab? If you’re overdue for a refresh, consider tossing Tangerine Tango into your mix—even if only for a limited-run campaign or a more consumer-focused piece.

To celebrate English buffs’ passion for the written word—and show you forgive them for playing QUIZ on a triple—here are a few holiday gift ideas:

1. Trivial Pursuit: Book Lover’s Edition. No more grappling with “Sports and Leisure” stats. This special edition is all about what the literati love: “Children’s,” “Classics,” “Authors” … you get the idea. If you buy for yourself, consider keeping a box of TP cards on your coffee table as a conversation starter; $77 (www.amazon.com).
2. Elements of Style Illustrated Edition. A slick re-do of Strunk and White’s classic, with robust illustrations by Maira Kalman, who turns concepts such as “sentence fragments” into color-punched visuals. Updated text complements the updated look; $17 (hardcover, www.amazon.com).
3. Arguably. A vast collection of essays (exercises in pure wit) by the late Christopher Hitchens, the literary world’s favorite intellectual curmudgeon. Described by one reviewer as “a brilliant intro for new fans and a ‘best of’’ for old”; $20 (hardcover, www.amazon.com).
4. Chicago Manual of Style Minibook. Download a “decorative minibook” of the 16th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style and use it as a gift tag for something fabulous (reservation to a writers retreat?). Some assembly required (easier if your hands are tiny). Or use it as CM intended, as an ornament; free (www.chicagoreader.com).
5. “I’m So Adjective” Hoodie. Marketed as outerwear one might choose to ‘dress to impress at the mall’ (!) I see this as playing better at a public library or independent bookstore … but either way, it’s clever; $45 (www.cafepress.com).
6. Powell’s Oregon Mug. Serious wordsmiths will know about this famous bookstore in Portland, Oregon, or they’ll thank you for making the introduction. The graphic is a clever twist on I ♥ NY. Embellish with coffee beans and a Powell’s gift card; $6 (www.powells.com).
7. Trip to Costa Rica. Treat tu amigo to a two-week language immersion program that will leave them feeling linguistically pumped up, even as they wind down. Any tropical and remote locale will do. Invite yourself to go along to serve as muse! $Priceless

I could spend hours waxing nostalgic about snowy driveways and the clip-clop of hooves, but then I’d only be ignoring the jittery, strung-out elephant in the room: stress.

Hard as it may be to believe, some folks actually find the holidays stressful. Now, it would be all too easy for the Content Bureau to churn out a list of tips on how to reduce holiday stress. But that has been done to death—in books, on blogs, and in those magazines at the grocery store check stand that refer to celebrities by their first names, as if we’re supposed to know who they’re talking about.

Instead, we’ve decided to cater to an underserved market: those who wish to ratchet up the intensity of this season. Here, then, are five surefire ways to triple your holiday stress:

1. Read as many articles as possible on how to reduce your holiday stress. Nothing increases stress more than trying to avoid stress. Read up on stress-reduction tips, and then try to implement them all. Buy several boxes of seasonally appropriate herbal teas—and if you have trouble finding Cran-apple Holiday Hearth Spice, check a few more stores. Have your sleeping area professionally evaluated against feng shui principles, and then stay up as late as necessary tweaking it. Carve out at least two hours per evening to focus on the Things that Really Matter—but keep looking for ways to make these things matter more.
2. Plan. Make lists, and lists of lists. Schedule gym time weeks in advance. Think of creative ways not to abandon your diet. Set iPhone reminders to make calls and visits. And then methodically, relentlessly execute. If you find your schedule slipping, simply re-do your plan from the start. There’s no shame in being an abject disappointment and failure.
3. Review your quarterly goals during the week between Christmas and New Year’s. And when you find something you forgot to do, start emailing meeting requests to your co-workers. With each Out of Office autoreply you receive, your systolic blood pressure will spike approximately five points.
4. Leave the house. Go on. You know you want to. And once you do, you’ll be assaulted by red, green, tinsel, glitter, reindeer, SALE! SALE! SALE!, blinking lights, Bing Crosby’s disembodied voice, more red, more green, and front-lawn displays that, frankly, make yours look like a sorry first draft.
5. Evaluate yourself for signs of holiday-related stress. Since mid-November, have you become testy? Moody? Easily distracted? You’re officially stressed—which is a legitimate source of stress. And if you don’t find signs of stress . . . well, what kind of lunatic doesn’t get stressed by the holidays? Start stressing about that!

Remember: You’ll only get one shot at this holiday season before it’s gone forever. And your deadline is December 25. There will be no extensions—and holiday mirth doesn’t carry over into Q1.

So stand up, get out there, and share the joy!