Here's some advice for those who need to speak to the public --
Fill your messaging banks with gold.
And if those messages are good enough, they then turn into real gold.
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Ah, the sweet, sweet sound of effective lines.
There are all sorts of convergences in the world.
Sperm meets egg, ergo, baby.
Sonny meets Cher, hence, “I Got You, Babe.”
Chubby slugger meets candy bar, Baby Ruth.
(Baby theme in there, how did that happen? Although, actually, the candy bar was named after Grover Cleveland’s daughter, Ruth Cleveland. As was Cleveland. I mean after Grover. As was the muppet. Although, Cleveland was actually named after General Moses Cleaveland. Who, apparently, couldn’t spell his own name. And wow, we are truly linguistically rollercoastering.)
Great lines do great things. Period. A great line, a great name, a great title can literally be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
“Men are from Mars, Women are from Vegas.” (Wait…)
That title (Venus) became a book in 1992, became a brand, became videos, became a business, became a massive workshop series, became, well, everything. It carried the author, John Gray, through more books (variations on the theme), audio and video recordings, a range of seminars, themed vacations and cruises, his own one-man Broadway show, a TV sitcom version, actual workout videos (yes, for real), a mult-episode podcast, men's and ladies' clothing lines, a line of fragrances, travel guides for the sexes, and his-and-hers salad dressings.
Yes. Salad dressings. His-and-hers. Don’t crossdress. Literally.
One thing I love to do in ghost-creating is work toward filling up a bank with incredibly hooky lines, especially those that are attached to products.
Here are some of my own. Perhaps you might see/read them some day.
“Revenge of the Marriage Counselor’s Ex-Husband: Relationship Advice from a Comedian Who Divorced a Marriage and Family Therapist”
“The 100 Things that Interest Human Beings (and Why Learning to Use Them is a Key to Success in Business and in Life)”
“Persuasion Training for Parents: Get Everything You Want from Your Kids Without Yelling, Threatening, Punishing, Begging, or Manipulating”