The magic of comms compounding + On settling v striving + Bryce Courtenay’s bullshit

It has always struck me that there are strong parallels between successful investing and successful communications.

One nexus is the power of compounding.

In investing, compounding is when you earn returns on returns.

It’s been likened to a snowball rolling down a hill.

The snowball might start small, but as it keeps rolling, it picks up more snow, becoming bigger and bigger as it goes.

Over the long term, compounding your money generates huge returns.

The same force operates in communications.

Each piece of communication might not have a large effect on its own.

But over time, it combines into something big.

Each piece of communication you produce and promote creates greater and greater awareness in your audience’s mind.

If you keep it up, you will build something that generates its own momentum and creates enormous value.

A recent report, The Power of Compound Creativity, therefore got my attention.

The report, by marketing technology company System1 and the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA), found that successful companies and organisations harness the power of compounding by becoming what they term ‘consistent brands’.

Consistent brands share three major characteristics:

· They have a strong, insight-driven positioning in the market

· They produce fantastic creative material; but above all

· They stick with that positioning and creative for year after year

They do not chop and change.

That relentless consistency and discipline allow them to, over time, gather more awareness, more sales, and more market share relative to inconsistent brands.

Ultimately, that leads to superior profit.

When it comes to communications and marketing, everyone is looking at what they can change.

But it’s just as important to ask: what can stay the same?

To ask: what are you doing well?

And then keep that going for, not the next month or so, but for the next few years, so you reap the full benefits of compounding.

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On Settling

I read a similar concept recently in a wonderful short book, On Settling, by Australian philosopher Robert Goodin.

We live in a society that exalts striving; Goodin asks us to appreciate settling.

The overarching concept of settling is what Goodin calls ‘fixity’: settling on something for a period of time.

Interestingly, Goodin argues that while settling and striving are ‘contrasting practices,’ they are also intimately entwined.

Settling is inherent to striving for two reasons:

· Firstly, we need to settle on what to strive for. (In the next year, we will settle on launching a newsletter.)

· But we also need to settle other things to free up the resources we need to strive for our goal. (While we are launching and bedding down the newsletter in the next 12 months, we won’t launch a new PR campaign, write an e-book, or look for speaking opportunities.)

As communicators and marketers, we face endless possibilities in terms of target audiences, channels, platforms and goals. (Should we add Instagram, produce a white paper, create a new ad, start a newsletter, host an event? … )

Settling is a powerful concept in comms because it allows us to be focused and disciplined and ultimately become a ‘consistent brand’ that harnesses the power of compounding.

In addition to what you are striving for, begin to ask what you are also settling on.

Three questions might help:

· What one new goal will you settle on for the next 12 months?

· What will you not change in your communications and marketing?

· And what will you not do in the next year?

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Byrce Courtenay’s Bullshit

Growing up, Bryce Courtenay’s books seemed to be everywhere.

I’ve never read them, but I was intrigued by his son Adam’s recently launched biography of his father.

I was intrigued – and then bought it – because the book deals, not just with a complicated relationship, but with one of the most powerful tensions of modern times that we as communicators grapple with: truth versus narrative.

Bryce Courtenay’s life, of course, was built on ‘narrative’. In blunt terms, he was a great bullshit artist.

He used story to reframe a painful childhood, to reinvent himself in Australia, to become a successful ad copywriter, and then to become a rich and famous author.

His son, Adam, however, dedicated his life to truth as a journalist and non-fiction author.

‘My Father Bryce’ is essentially a truth-seeking journalist casting his eye over his narrative-driven father.

As Adam details in his book, his father’s narrative bent – his carelessness with truth and honesty, which Adam dubbed ‘Dad facts’ – delivered huge upsides in terms of fame and fortune.

But it also spilled into other areas of his life, often with painful consequences.

Perhaps the most painful was Bryce’s book April Fool’s Day, a ‘non-fiction’ book about the heroic and tragic life of his haemophiliac son Damon, who died of AIDS.

Bryce created characters, ridiculed the deceased, mischaracterised Damon’s girlfriend and greatest supporter, Celeste, and above all, made himself the hero of the story.

“To have been as instrumental [to looking after Damon] as April Fool’s imputes, he [Bryce] would have had to have always been there,” Adam says. “He wasn’t.”

And yet, despite this, when reading Adam’s book, I was still struck by the sheer power of story.

As I’ve written before, I’m somewhat of a story sceptic, particularly in business.

I’ve argued that it is a tactic, not a strategy; that we are laboring under a glut of story; and that few people are great storytellers. (I suggested instead that communicators focus on anecdotes.)

Yet reading Adam’s book, I could see how story allowed Bryce – and other proponents – to entertain, to dream, to reframe the past, to inspire the future, to create bonds, and to sell.

In our lives, it is a powerful force.

So, how as communicators and marketers – and indeed as a society – do we reconcile the tension between truth and story?

We can perhaps turn to Byrce’s own words:

“My job, and that’s my job, is to dress the naked truth. To make it interesting, to make it viable, to make it seem like something you understand and feel and love.”

The key is to not lose sight, as Bryce Courtney often did, of the naked truth.