A Hash of Inspiration: The Pun Game as Marketing Tool

Ever looked at a corporate hashtag and thought “Who voluntarily uses that?” The short answer is normally “Someone who wants to win free stuff”. Without such incentives, though, there is a fine art to convincing the denizens of Twitter to take your message to their heart/feed.

Every brand dreams of appearing in the hallowed left-hand Trending column, without paying for the privilege. Major sports and entertainment events are always going to create a buzz, and then there are less predictable trends (‘Smash’, anyone? ‘London’?), which hit the sweet spot by pure serendipity. For the regular Twitter user, following trends that promise no clear reward is about feeling part of a community. One popular trend provides a major opportunity for creativity in marketing.

At any given time, a pun-based game will be trending on Twitter, and more often than not, it will be for little or no reward. The reward for the user comes firstly with the satisfaction of coming up with a good pun and secondly from the acknowledgement of the tweet. Take for example the #RuinAMagazine game trending as I write. It’s not been organised by a company or promoted, but it’s captured the community’s imagination. So much so that it’s extended beyond mere text entries into lavishly Photoshopped images.

A brilliant example of a business embracing these games was the @Foyles #BookGame. Each Thursday, the independent book chain would set a topic and invite users to tweet their best thematic rejigs of book titles. There was a modest prize – books, of course – but the real value came in the kudos and the community. Show off your knowledge of books and your linguistic gymnastics, enjoy the sheer geekery and get your efforts retweeted by a cult bookstore.

The regularity, flexibility and thematic coherence of the game made it hugely popular. Too popular, almost. Foyles faced good-natured outcry when they finally closed it down.

Once Foyles had relinquished #BookGame in 2011, mainstream rivals Waterstones attempted to appropriate it in conjunction with a hard-sell link. Breaking the spell of playing for playing’s sake (and a handful of books), they broke the golden copywriting rule: if someone realises they’re being sold to, they will stop reading. Thankfully, the original #BookGame spirit prevailed and the game was adopted by independent bookshop @PetersBooks, minus the clumsy corporate drive.

The lesson to learn from this is one about human nature. A hashtag that invites engagement works if it requires a little effort and creativity on the part of the reader. This, importantly, is not seen as work or hassle but fun and satisfying. As philosopher Bernard Suits put it, playing a game is “the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles”. Why would we do that? Because we just love a good challenge. As for this particular format, pun games work simply and effectively with Twitter’s short-form restrictions: they’re short, they’re quick and they’re an instant contribution to a community activity. As the old internet maxim says:

For more on the importance of fun in marketing, check out our post 'Art versus Copy'.

The Hardy Weeds of Wackaging

Around three years ago, the knives came out for a trend in copy-writing dubbed 'wackaging'. Running amok were smoothie cartons and tube adverts affecting to be on-the-level, down-to-earth jokesters. They weren't trying anything as hard-nosed as selling the product; they were just 'letting you know' or 'giving you the low-down', while tossing around various bits of dated slang, dropping in a pun or two, or displaying a jocular self-awareness.

The Wackaging tumblr was soon set up in response, while articles in the Sabotage Times and the Guardian ripped into brands for their "faux homespun pish" and for "swaddling us, suspended in a fruit-filled Neverland, where we wake to find ourselves the life partner of a packet of ethical crisps". In short, these articles complained, consumers were being treated like children.

But wackaging survived the assault and continues unabated today. Here's a sign in the window of Oddbins I walked past on Friday:

Yeah, DH, you dawg. Come and buy some wine, and then we'll run it back to the Kiowa Ranch for you. Wait, I think we're addressing the customer now.

If this tone of voice is so obviously excruciating, why, then, does it persist? Possibly for the same reason there will always be people we find socially inept and infuriating. Brands, just like people, project a persona, and personae are always in danger of misfiring, always poised on the edge of caricature, particularly when they are freshly minted for an occasion. A person or brand that strives for an image of scrupulous professionalism can very easily (and arguably in the majority of cases) come across as humourless and inflexible. Similarly, and more spectacularly, attempts to appear relaxed, jovial, approachable and so on can manifest as the greasy, creepy advances of a chancer. It's from this we get the stereotype of the suffocatingly talkative door-to-door salesman.

But while we might take note of – and object to – such failures, the successes are likely to pass us by. Thus, the continued proliferation of instances of wackaging is probably the result of brands successfully transitioning to a friendlier tone of voice. Where they go, others follow, making missteps along the way, just as the unfunny clown at the pub is attempting to mimic his wittier, more elegant peers. So while wackaging still makes us cringe, instances such as Sainsbury's game of pun tennis with a customer over Twitter are hailed as PR successes.

The 'scrupulous professional' tone still has two major advantages, of course. Firstly, it has a solid grounding in tradition, with corporations being well-practised in inhabiting the persona of the no-nonsense businessman who can make you successful. It is a lived-in suit, a neutral grey that is less likely to raise hackles.

Secondly, it gels more readily with the practical need to disseminate dry facts about the business in question. The most egregious instances of wackaging include attempts to make information 'fun':

This jarring juxtaposition means that a friendlier tone of voice is prone to coming across as particularly disingenuous, when in fact, there's little to differentiate the promises of these brands from, say, a bank that proclaims it wants to 'do business' with you or make your life easier. One throws an arm around your shoulder while the other extends a smartly cuffed hand for you to shake, but both are gunning for your trust and loyalty.

Art versus Copy

True story: I’ve just won a major poetry competition. I’m about to get a profile boost. People will be googling my name and stumbling on my website. Good! I’ve been writing poems and making books for a decade now, and the more people know about them, the better.

But my website, like many writers’ websites, has fallen into disrepair. Not only is it not up-to-date; parts of it have stopped working altogether. Before I can celebrate, I’ve got to fix the old girl up, and in doing so, enter into an uneasy negotiation with myself about the merits - and the perils - of self-publicising.

By and large, writers - by which I mean fiction writers and poets - are bad self-publicists. They’re bad because they’re reluctant, and they’re reluctant because so much of the business of self-publicity seems grubby - even, dare I say it, shameful. Shameful that you aren’t important enough for someone else to be doing it for you. Shameful that you’re stooping to ‘sell’ yourself like a brand of washing powder. Shameful because what you really want to write about is other people, other subject matter. If you were an attention seeker, you’d have gone into stand-up comedy. As a writer, you want people to look at you only so that they can then look where you’re pointing. There’s something inevitably absurd about your name being rendered in imposing letters at the top of a web page, as if people were coming to watch you dance or make a speech.

But to think of self-publicising purely as a matter of touting one's credentials, or 'brand' management, or placing oneself centre-stage, is to miss the opportunity to treat it as a creative enterprise. Art and publicity are not on opposite sides of the fence, the former for dreamers, the latter for schemers. Good copy shares much in common with good poetry - it is memorable and concise. Both can be used to tell the truth or make a beautiful lie. The point is to bring people closer to something.

One of the hardest parts of renovating my website is cutting down the word count. I’ve written a lot of poems and made a lot of books, employing different techniques and making use of, so I’m told, ‘a wide frame of reference’. Every project is different. Heck, every poem is different. But I can’t expect a visitor to want to pick their way through a full run-down in the hope of finding something that piques their interest.

I have to start by introducing myself, just as if I were meeting them in person. If I want them to follow my outstretched finger, I have to be an engaging guide. It's just like the first page of a book, or the first line of a poem - nobody likes an infodump. A brief summary of what I do and some examples of the range I cover can, I find, be folded into a short explanation of the layout of the site. I do want visitors to wander, and become lost, eventually. In this respect, I intend to be treacherous. But initially, at least, I would like them to feel they’ve got the measure of me, so that the (inevitable) majority who only stay for the briefest of visits can go away with an accurate impression.

Complications and setbacks can provide an impetus to do something unexpected. www.jonstone.com wasn't available when I was shopping for domain names, so I had to settle for www.gojonstonego.com. Not as catchy, but at least I can have some fun with it. I add randomised text above the masthead, so that instead of just being my name in bold type, it reads 'Go to your room, Jon Stone' or 'Go crazy, Jon Stone'. This performs two additional functions: it's a little self-deprecating, which weighs against the egoistic focus of the site, and the randomisation means the site looks slightly different on each return visit.

I deploy endorsements, but try to choose ones that accentuate something odd or unique about me, rather than general praise. I keep the menu headings simple, but use subheadings so that I can add a variety of content. I want the site to look neat and navigable, but to have hidden depth. This is, after all, the first creation of mine that some people are going to encounter, I reason, so it should reflect the skill and attention that characterises my best work. It should not seem like something perfunctory, something that exists because a publicist told me I had to have a website.

And that's it, right there. Self-publicising is grubby when it's treated as an artless enterprise. Say it with feeling, and it need not be so.