Twenty-six Ways of Looking at a Blackberry: How to Let Writing Release the Creativity of Your BrandBusiness writing can be particularly difficult to get right and far too many people resort to deathly-dull jargon and nonsense buzz words to try to get their point across. In Twenty-six ways of looking at a blackberry, John Simmons proposes that in order to create business communication that is truly engaging, writing needs to be more expressive and adventurous for young, aspiring brands as well as big, corporate brands. The book explores ways that everyone involved with communicating a brand's values - marketers, advertisers, PR people and so on - can focus on the potential of language to reach their goals. To illustrate this, the author has taken a piece of generic business writing - the 'base text' - and rewritten it in 26 different ways, each following a constraint. For example, as a fairy story; without using the letter 'e'; written in the style of Dickens; as a letter to a friend; as a six word story; as a sonnet. In each case, Simmons looks at what effect that particular constraint has on the writing, how it helps or hinders, and what lessons can be drawn from the exercise that can be applied to business writing in different situations. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
exercises in constraint | 11 |
Pronoun shift | 13 |
Fairy tale | 18 |
Questions | 24 |
Style of Dickens | 29 |
Written in Starbucks | 35 |
Sixword stories | 41 |
Letter to a friend | 84 |
Change of structure | 90 |
Shakespearean sonnet | 96 |
Newspaper leader article | 102 |
Written for an eight year old on a BlackBerry | 108 |
In the theme of Blue | 115 |
Detective fiction | 121 |
Democratic Party campaign speech | 128 |
Alliteration | 48 |
No e | 53 |
Song lyrics | 59 |
Eightword sentences | 66 |
Greek myth | 73 |
Graphic novel | 79 |
Plain English principles | 136 |
Seven deadly sins | 150 |
Haibunhaiku | 165 |
Forever Young a lecture at Shakespeares Globe | 185 |
Notes Acknowledgements | 208 |
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advertising annual report asked audience Barack Obama base text become blackberry Bob Dylan brand essence bullet point business writing challenge chapter client colour communication company’s connection constraint corporate create creative customers Cyan Dark Angels emotion example explore favourite feel give Grant Thornton graphic novel haiku Herman Miller ideas imagination inside Jessie Simmons/Full Stop John Mitchinson John Simmons Jon Potter keep language lastminute.com letter listen lives London Design Festival look marketing meaning metaphor move paragraph particular Pentagram perhaps personality photograph by Jessie phrase Plain English Campaign play poetry question reader realise rewriting the base rhythm seems sense sentence Shakespeare Simon Armitage simply sound Starbucks started story storytelling structure technique tell Thanks There’s things thought tone of voice understand vocabulary Waterstone's words writer for business written