CT No.41: A matrix of coronavirus-era clichés
Plus a review of Sparktoro and links for any mood
Housekeeping and shoutouts:
On Tuesday! I’m presenting a webinar with Qordoba: “No Sense of An Ending: Marketing when the world has lost a narrative structure.” It’s an expansion on this post, with new writing and context and some suggestions on how to keep moving, plus a conversation with Qordoba CEO May Habib. Join us!
Earlier this month I was excited to launch a project I’ve been working on since last September: the relaunch of the new BiarriNetworks.com. The site was a full redesign and rebrand, and a collaborative effort with the very talented Biarri Networks team and a crew of other independent web professionals. Check it out.
This week friends at Monicat Data launched a fundraising campaign for their new Yellow Data Platform, a unified data management and reporting tool for creative businesses and arts organizations.
In lieu of shitposting, close-reading our pandemic language crutches
All writers use clichés. We all have our tricks and tropes that we fall back on, generally when there’s a deadline or stressful situation looming. When I read through a draft, I look for my most trusty cliché crutches and evaluate: is there a better way to say this? What am I really trying to say here? Sometimes I fix the cliché, and sometimes I say Fuck it. And I move on.
These days every word feels like a giant shruggie. Nothing I write is life-or-death. What meaning could I possibly make if the supposed leader of the free world is telling citizens to inject bleach?
But as a close-reader-by-trade, I’ve found myself analyzing the phrases and clichés of our current crisis. Some are quite sticky and useful, and others make me want to shitpost a response. So: my analysis, presented in the magazine trope (cliché) of the Approval Matrix.
Please note: Everything here I’ve seen in many contexts, so I’m not intending to call any individual out. Don’t be offended or self-conscious: we’re all trying our best. I’ve used some of these. We all have. You didn’t tell anyone to drink disinfectants. You’re just being a writer.
The pandemic cliché matrix, explained, in no specific order whatsoever
1. In these uncertain times - A nice way of saying “I don’t fucking know” a few weeks ago, but now the phrase is precious. Were times ever certain for you? I mean, sure I had a plan for the year that’s been shot to bits, but come to think of it: that happens every spring. Acknowledging the pandemic directly is a better look.
2. Flatten the curve - I don’t understand statistics or epidemiology, but Flatten the Curve is the most helpful phrase to understand the model of what’s happening, understand the goal of the social distancing protocol, and understand when it’s over.
3. The new normal - As anxiety-inducing as this phrase is—no one wants to go on like this forever, and no one wants our current (preventable) situation to be normalized in any way — it implies a “before” and “after” that’s useful. Sure, I want to scream “this can’t be normal!” whenever I hear it, but the construction works.
4. Social distancing - I hate social distancing. It keeps me away from my friends and family and the places that I love. It encourages xenophobic behavior and keeps me from using mass transit. But I know exactly what “social distancing” is. Again, a useful phrase that succinctly describes behavioral practice… even though Bette Midler’s ear worm has snuck into my head more than normal in the past six weeks.
5. Shelter in place - I gotta say, this phrase hasn’t stuck for me, which is why more people have been gravitating toward “stay home” (what I used to do on Friday night when I didn’t go out), “quarantine” (not actually accurate), or “social distance” (see above). Shelter in place appropriately conveyed the gravity of the situation early on in the pandemic, but it’s hard to feel like I’ve been “sheltering” for six weeks. I am still going to the grocery store, running in my neighborhood, etc. Shelter in place is clinical, dispassionate, something a governor would tell you and you’d have to listen for the good of humanity. It’s as unpleasant as… sheltering in place.
C’mon, Mick, leave ‘shelter’ to the governors.
6. “If you’re not learning X, you’re [wasting time, not making the most of it, etc.]” - I have resisted posting “fuck you” on LinkedIn every time I’ve seen a post anywhere near this effect. Don’t tell me what to do with my grief and my time. I’m already not processing my emotions properly; I don’t need to feel guilty because I’m not paying partial attention to a digital training program.
7. I need a nap - Sometimes you have nothing else to say.
8. Stay home. Save lives. - Sure! I’m fine with this. It’s descriptive. It’s functional.
9. Healthcare heroes, calling any frontline workers “heroes” - Being a healthcare worker right now must be terrifying. The accounts I read are nightmarish, and the second-hand stories I hear are horrific. However, the usage in any marketing or corporate materials most often sounds as hollow as “thoughts and prayers” after a shooting: unless this one is tied in with providing proper protective equipment and appropriate pay to healthcare, grocery, delivery and other front line workers, it rings disingenuous. (My sister is a physician; she is being asked to work without pay or proper PPE as a “hero,” which is ridiculous.) (Also the U.S. needs massive systemic healthcare reform!)
10. Anything related to the notion of “six feet” - Is it coincidental that the social distancing recommendation is the same as a common understanding for the depth of a grave? Yes. Does this mean that we should refrain from invoking connotations of burial during a pandemic? Also yes. People are dying so rapidly we aren’t able to actually bury them properly. So. Err on the side of caution.
11. That was before - The before/after narrative convention is a way of classifying events in memory, and even though our “before/after” can’t be pinpointed to a day (like 9/11), I find the construction helpful in explaining why expectations now should be radically different than they were two months ago.*
12. X in the time of coronavirus/COVID-19 - Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote a really phenomenal book title and hey! Sincerest form of flattery and all that. Literary references are always welcome here, but use only if you’ve read the book. The phrase is not original, but it’s eloquent.
13. We will get through this - Unless the writer is a community leader or friend with whom I will use We without question, or unless I see that you’re actually struggling as well… use with caution. If it’s coming from a credit card company or a billionaire, I don’t want to hear it. Faux community always rankles me, now more than usual.
14. Hang in there - I feel useless and foolish every time I say this, but these phrase conveys that useless feeling fairly accurately. (Shout out to Mary Cooke at Fjorge, who brought this one up in a convo this week.)
On my wall, a souvenir from an artsy shop in Austin, Texas.
*Can someone point me to where I originally read about people dividing their time into “before” and “after”? I do not know where someone first pointed this out to me — and Google isn’t helping me in the article search. (Next week: the failings of algorithmic memory, especially in the age of newsletters.)
The long-awaited, fresh spin on web interest scraping: SparkToro
When I talk about having faith in a brand personality, I have deep trust in Rand Fishkin. No one has ever explained SEO more thoroughly and succinctly than Rand on a Whiteboard Friday, and I’m willing to tolerate a higher amount of eccentricity from him than from any other SEO or content dude in quirky clothes. Moz remains one of the best SEO SaaS companies on the web.
With quiet fanfare amid the background of the pandemic, Casey Henry & Rand Fishkin’s SparkToro launched earlier this month. I missed several emails inviting me to the early release I excitedly signed up for years ago… but luckily the “early release” offer was the same for all new users: 10 free searches with limited results per month.
SparkToro’s goal is to help marketers think beyond Google and Facebook when considering digital ads, highlighting audience-specific media to target for partnerships, sponsorships, and all those tactics that used to be known as “public relations” and “link building.”
The preview was definitely enough for me to recommend that you take a look.
SparkToro at a glance
SparkToro is an audience research tool that combs social profiles and behaviors for similar digital media properties. Users can enter in a keyword, social profile, hashtag, or a website and receive YouTube channels, podcasts, similar websites, or other influencers that the audience might also like.
It’s digital media placement 101, without the super hefty fees that come with a ComScore or enterprise-level audience intelligence tool. It also goes deep — in my first few searches, keywords on very niche B2B topics turned up solid, relevant results.
Semantic data of social profiles has never been my thing; I’ve generally stuck to search data for the breadth and complexity it combines. In my experience, semantic and social network data has been very limited to high-level B2C results, and my B2B clients find few results worth mentioning, and the software is prohibitively expensive. (Note to software salespeople: Don’t only use giant national consumer brands as your demo client! Pick something B2B or local and not Adidas or Coca-Cola.)
Advantages of using SparkToro (versus another semantic social profile search tool):
Price point
Simple user interface with clear relevance measures — immediately glance if something is 7.2% relevant versus 0.2% relevant and understand the level of “confidence” in an audience
Podcast and YouTube channel data that unveils programming it would take hours of searching to find otherwise
Niche and B2B data on complex terms
Data is fully exportable on paid plans
I’m not a media buyer or an influencer manager, but SparkToro will be a great place to start content research for new client projects to get a sense of what an audience gravitates toward and understanding what else is out there.
Content tech links of the week
Related to this week’s essay: a poem written from the first lines of quarantine emails.
If you are involved in any brand or sales communications at all, I highly suggest reading the 2020 Edelman Trust Barometer: Brand Trust and the Coronavirus Pandemic. The findings reflect attitudes at the beginning of the pandemic, but I despite the very vocal minority to resume as-we-were, most people still support keeping shelter-in-place rules and, I imagine, still feel similarly about companies placing profits over people.
Most people need to take breaks from reading coronavirus news, the Pew Research Center found, along with a breakdown of how people are dividing their news consumption between local and national sources.
Although I don’t have traditional television and haven’t been watching more than a sketch or two of the remote SNL, I’m fascinated by articles about writers rooms and remote production. This Hollywood Reporter story from last month outlines how writers rooms are using Zoom. (May I also recommend Mural for your working sessions, writers?)
As for final tv experiments: Here’s a preview of a produced-in-quarantine experimental project from Jenji Kohan.
In the oft-linked newsletters category: Normcore Tech on What I’m Doing Differently Online (paid, worth it); The Margins on Are Billionaires Bad? (free, also worth it)
The 2020 edition of the Martech 5000 is out, complete with a searchable crowdsourced database. Honestly, it’s not any more helpful for me in the content space, since the behemoth of Adobe doesn’t have even remotely the same function as Auphonic, a hyperfocused podcasting tool, and both are in the subcategory of Content Marketing. But it’s there, if you want it.
And on the lighter side…
Amy Sedaris’s What’s in the drawer? Instagram series brings me endless joy and makes me wish I were craftier.
Spotify playlists: Jonathan Demme 80s Roadtrip, Haruki Murakami’s Vinyl Collection, my April 2020 mix
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