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Poetry can be human and say things people might not want to say out loud, or are afraid to. Can’t say, ‘I love you,’ here’s a poem. Can’t say ‘I’m struggling,’ here’s a poem. In these pieces, we learn what they’d move heaven and earth for. And it’s there – there you can find out how to turn an eye roll into a slow walk, or scroll of intrigue.
As strategists, we might live a thousand lives through our briefs as we take epics’ worth of data about our audiences and pull out their strongest feelings and often hidden meanings. We’re the English students from school who read the context of the work and wrote about how intentional that perpetual mention of grey clouds mirrored the narrator’s upset, instead of just saying, ‘I think he was a bit sad,’ (with more data to back it up, of course). And that’s not a bad thing. We too can find the most bizarre sentiments in the written word, or as creative expression becomes more ‘short-form’ - from behind a camera.
The things that people have felt so strongly about, they had to prep the ring light and sit in front of a camera to share. Subconscious, unspoken feelings can appear in a heartbeat. I’ve sat in both writing workshops and focus groups where I’ve watched opinions on lines or brands change as conversation unfolds. When The Outsiders carried out research for McDonalds with Leo Burnett, they found the now infamous eyebrow raise to be a wordless invitation[1] which then became the basis of an entire campaign. Encapsulating all you know about your audience and beyond is one thing, writing it out is another.
I remember the first time I tried to write a ‘Get-To-By’, I scribbled it out a few times because I thought there was no way you could wrap up a problem/solution in three steps. Obviously, I was wrong because being able to boil all your discovery down to that degree makes it easy for you, the strat to process and for others, as well. Poetry doesn’t always need flowery, romantic language, but sentiments that make feelings as clear as possible, even through metaphor.
But what if we did want to use over-the-top, embellished language? Represent the problem of heartburn using multiple metaphors and dramatic feelings. You can if you want to, strategy doesn’t have to be a Saville Row suit, it can be a Brazilian carnival outfit if you want it to. It can be a carefully crafted Pinterest collage that communicates the essence of the brief. We have agency to evolve the way we work with our creatives as long as we’re clear.
The strategic summary for a Cadbury’s brand evolution was grounded in what the brand thought of their audience – that they were generous.[2] Being able to add ‘colour’ to frameworks makes it feel more human, less rigid and gives people breadth to think about how this could come to life. Sometimes less is more when you want to pack a punch or tension in less than ten words. There’s a scene in HBO’s Interview With a Vampire where Lestat loses composure in a confrontation and reveals his heartbreak in five words:
Now, granted he yelled them, even if they had been spoken, or read – in the context, the feeling is the same. Strategy can be stripped back to a thought, a feeling and tension can live in it. Let’s trust that leaning away from the functional and into the clearly obscure can concoct something that pulls on the funny, shocking, and sad.
Because poetry doesn’t have to be epic (in length), it doesn’t have to fit a perfect format or use a certain kind of language. It just has to make your readers feel something. When creating poetry, it doesn’t matter if you unravel heartbreak in five pages, five words or five metaphors, it just has to make you feel something. Let’s write more poetry where we’re not afraid of feeling a little more.
Now re-read that last part and switch out ‘poetry’ for ‘strategy.’
[1] MRS Awards 2023, Creative Development Research - https://www.mrs.org.uk/pdf/CD1%20-%20Outsiders%20&%20MacDonalds.pdf
[2] Just One Word – Cadburys, VCCP for The Marketing Society https://marketingsociety.com/sites/default/files/2024-07/Just%20One%20Word.pdf
By AJ Morris
Strategist
