The Old Man's Shoes

My father always bought two pairs of the same shoes.

When the soles of his shoes couldn’t be patched anymore, my dad would buy two replacement pairs. One to wear, one to be stored in their box on the floor of the closet in my parents’ bedroom.

One day, with an exasperated, what’s-wrong-with-the-old-man attitude, I asked my mom, “What’s with dad and the extra pair of shoes?”

I was a kid. I was expecting an explanation of why my dad was an idiot. Not that he was an idiot, but I think I need to discover a way that I was better than he was.

He spoke 5 languages fluently. Or was it 6? Extraordinarily well-read and well-traveled, he was a tough target for competition for the boy who wanted to be as good if not better than he was.

My mom patiently explained, “When your father was growing up in Europe after the war, leather shoes were hard to come by. He was lucky and had a pair. He wore them for years, even when he outgrew them. He patched them with cardboard and anything else he could scrounge. When he sees the new pair of shoes in the box in the closet, it helps remind him of where he’s been and that he’ll never be there again.”

I was young enough not to have thought about my parents having a life before my sister and I were around. I was old enough to be impacted by a picture of my father's childhood so different from the one he was now providing his family.

I was also old enough to feel shame about thinking he was an idiot for buying two pairs of the same shoes.

I grew up a little that day.

The day I scratched the surface of getting to know my dad.

In Search of a Title

Before deciding on The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald renamed his manuscript a number of times including: 

Trimalchio in West Egg

Among Ash-Heaps and Millionaires

Gold-Hatted Gatsby

Under the Red, White, and Blue

The High-Bouncing Lover

The world almost never had The Great Gatsby. 

The book yes, but the title no.

Kinda makes you wonder what other classic books had different titles before they were published.

A little digging to satisfy my curiosity turned up:

Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird was originally titled Atticus.

Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises was originally titled Fiesta. 

Alex Haley’s Roots: The Saga of an American Family was originally titled Before This Anger. 

Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind was originally going to be Tomorrow Is Another Day, Not In Our Stars, Tote the Weary Load, or Bugles Sang True. 

JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings series was originally titled The War of the Ring.

William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury was originally titled Twilight.

George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four was originally titled The Last Man in Europe.

Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita was originally titled The Kingdom by the Sea.

Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint was originally going to be The Jewboy, Wacking Off, or A Jewish Patient Begins His Analysis 

Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead was originally titled Second-Hand Lives. 

W. Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage was originally titled Beauty from Ashes.

Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth was originally titled The Year of the Rose.

Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was originally going to be Alice's Adventures Under Ground, Alice Among the Fairies, Alice's Golden Hour, or Alice 

Don DeLillo's White Noise was originally titled Panasonic.

Jacqueline Susann's The Valley of the Dolls was originally titled They Don’t Build Statues to Businessmen.

Toni Morrison’s Paradise was originally titled War.

Carl Bernstein’s and Bob Woodward’s All The President’s Men was originally titled At This Point in Time.

Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast was originally going to be The Eye and the Ear, Good Nails are Made of Iron, or Some People and The Places. 

Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited was originally titled The House of Faith.

Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front was originally translated Nothing New in the West (a direct translation of the German).

Carson McCullers's The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter was originally titled The Mute.

William Golding's Lord of the Flies was originally titled Strangers From Within. 

John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men was originally titled Something That Happened.

Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice was originally titled First Impressions.

William Faulkner's Light in August was originally titled Dark House.

George Orwell's Animal Farm was originally going to be Animal Farm: A Fairy Story, A Satire, or A Contemporary Satire. 

Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden was originally titled Mistress Mary.

James Joyce's Dubliners was originally titled Ulysses in Dublin.. 

Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged was originally titled The Strike.

Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 was originally titled Catch-18.

Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace was originally going to be All’s Well That Ends Well or The Year of 1805.

Copy and content writers are naturally curious.

Which makes the internet a magical playground.

Have you gone down any interesting internet rabbit holes recently?

Batter Up

 

Nobody hits it out of the ballpark every time they step up to the plate.

Not every piece of copy you write is going to work to the desired level.

In baseball, a season batting average of .300 or higher is considered excellent, and an average higher than .400 a nearly unachievable goal.

Batting .400 means you got a hit 4 for every 10 times at bat.

Businesses have batting averages, too. 

In high school, I worked for a small cheese and gourmet food shop in suburban New York. The owner, Bob Fortunato, had opened the place after quitting his job as a Sears store manager.

One day, while taking inventory of the cheeses that hadn't sold during a BOGO sale, he told me that during the 1960s, store managers at Sears were expected to have 3-out-of every 5 sales promotions succeed. "Get that number consistently and you had job security. Hit 4 out of 5 often enough and you'd get promoted."

Sears expected 60% of the manager’s promotions to win and rewarded those who achieved 80%.

 

If your client is expecting you to get on base every time you step up to the plate, you should do a better job of managing expectations.

Yes, be confident.

Yes, try to hit ‘em all out of the park.

But if you don’t, don’t make excuses. And don’t stop swinging the bat. Figure out why. Make appropriate adjustments.

And manage your client’s expectations.

You’re not going to hit 100%. 

You’re also not going to be judged by baseball standards where a 30% success rate isn’t only acceptable but celebrated.

Somewhere in between, find a reasonable expectation for performance that both you and your client can live with.

And give all that you've got to exceed it.

Every time you step up to the plate.

Trust Your Reader

Paulo Coelho advised, "Keep it simple. Trust your reader. He or she has a lot of imagination. Don’t try to describe things. Give a hint and they will fulfill this hint with their own imagination."

An example of Coelho's advice being executed well in the marketing world?

These Harley-Davidson ads from over 20 years ago.

Somewhere on an airplane a man is trying to rip open a small bag of peanuts.

Give us life at ground level, rolling along the endless highway on a Harley-Davidson®. 100% depressurized. Just sunlight on chrome. The voice of a V-Twin ripping the open air. And elbow room, stretching all the way to the horizon. Maybe you too think this is the way life ought to be lived. Time to spread some wings. The Legend Rolls On.

No. I've decided to opt for a small and rather uneventful life.

You could eat up a lifetime pondering what to do with your days on earth. Or you could take one look at at machine like the Wide Glide®. And let gut instinct take it from there. Get a load of the high handlebar and stretched-out profile. We didn’t hold anything back in building this ride. So what’s holding you back? The Legend Rolls On.

May all your encounters with the law start with the words "Nice Harley.

Be forewarned. There’ll be no keeping a low profile on this one. Raw Sportster® muscle, with a look last seen mixing it up at the local dirt track. Orange and black racing paint job. Wide flat-track handlebar. Curvaceous 2-into-1 exhaust. The new Sportster 883R. Lucky thing there’s no law against having a little fun. The Legend Rolls On.

Upstaging scenic overlooks since 1903.

Turns out purple mountains don’t have a monopoly on majesty. Not when there’s a Harley-Davidson® in the vicinity. The eye is immediately drawn to the timeless metallic lines of the V-Twin. The perfect shape of the fuel tank. This is our styling tradition. As unchanging yet ever evolving as the landscape itself. The Legend Rolls On.

These ads aren't about horsepower or gas mileage, they're about what it means to own a Harley. 

The freedom. 

The adventure. 

The camaraderie. 

These ads are a master class in associating a brand with a desired identity and lifestyle instead of focusing on product features/benefits. 

_________________________

Agency: Carmichael Lynch, Minneapolis

Photographer: Chris Wimpey

Writer: Jim Nelson 

Here's commentary from Nelson on the "Peanuts" ad: This Ad Didn't Come From Me