So a couple of years ago I used to write short stories. Most were pretty lame. Some were okay.
One day at the behest of my girlfriend — who later went on to win the great prize of becoming the Mrs. Elias Martinez — I edited down a story and entered it into the Weekly Alibi’s Teeny Tiny Tales competion. The contest was a collection of short stories containing no more than 119 words. My entry was named one of the “Best of the Rest.”
It lost out to entries about a girl who sweats perfume, a woman’s life after liposuction, and a couple of other entries that were named “Honorable Mention.” To be honest, I still haven’t read them all. Some of them make my brain hurt.
I guess I bring this up because the other day I saw a pretty interesting tweet from GSD&M executive creative director and Hey Whipple Squeeze This author Luke Sullivan.
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It’s a pretty interesting challenge. When I first read the tweet I thought it was a little crazy. But then I thought back to the short story contest. Suddenly it didn’t seem all that crazy. If an amateur author can conjure up a moving 118 word tale about the anguish and despair they suffered at the hands of their abusive carpenter father, why can’t a seasoned account planner boil the essence of a brand down to a 140 character tweet?
In the end, I didn’t really like the short version of my story any better than the original, yet it still manages to bring the reader to the same point.
When you place the below examples in the same context as you would a campaign or marketing communication, wouldn’t you expect all of the color and tapestry to be in the creative execution rather than the brief? Wouldn’t you expect the brief to be as simple, straight forward, and well, brief as possible?
I guess if you think about it in that light, maybe a perfectly acceptable and effective creative brief could be created in 140 characters or less. All we need is one really pioneering account planner and creative team to test it out.
You can read my 119 word Teeny Tiny Tale below:
“These Colors Don’t Run” by EL Martinez
Seventy-five percent of the 2.8 billion pencils manufactured today are yellow. This is because pencil makers paint their pencils yellow, the traditional color of Chinese royalty, to create association with China and its high quality graphite.
Jeremiah sweated nervously. The floor of the Annual International Office Supply Tradeshow, held this year in lovely Des Moines, Iowa, was hot and crowded. He wondered if the A.C. would ever click on.
He glanced down at a single ink stained index card. It read:
• Pencils!
• Yellow?
• Yellow pencils = Communism.
• Trust Commies with our writing needs in these turbulent times?
People began to congregate before his red, white and blue adorned “Freedom Pencils” booth.
Here’s the full unedited version of that story:
These colors don’t run
Pencils are not made of actual lead. They are made of a nontoxic mixture of graphite and clay. The term ‘lead pencil’ came from the Roman Empire where scribes used lead to write on scrolls of papyrus. In the 1500s the English discovered that pure Graphite worked just as well as lead and the world switched. However, pure graphite became more difficult to find as time passed. Eventually people mixed clay with lower quality graphite to get the desired effect. In the 1800s the French found several high quality graphite mines in Asia and began to manufacture pencils. They painted their pencils yellow to let consumers know that their pencils were made from only the purest of graphite. Because of that association, today about 75% of the 2.8 billion pencils manufactured are painted yellow.
Jeremiah sweated nervously, feeling like an overstuffed sausage in his three piece business attire. The floor at the Annual Business and Office Supply Tradeshow, held this year in lovely Des Moines, Iowa, was hot and crowded. He began to wonder if the A.C. would ever click on.
He glanced down at a single ink stained index card. It said the following:
• Pencils!
• Need them to write.
• Not really made of lead.
• Graphite and clay.
• The French made the first yellow pencils.
• Do we really want to trust yellow ‘French Pencils’ with our writing needs in these turbulent times?
A group began to congregate in front of his red, white and blue adorned ‘Freedom Pencils’ booth.
