Using wit in corporate writing is a double-edged sword. It’s a tough balancing act, especially for organizations and marketing writers with no track record of humor.

Still, I’m looking at the announcements about the advent of the Beatles’ catalog to iTunes, and wondering why most of them are so banal:

First, there’s a bit of syrup from “Macca:”

“We’re really excited to bring the Beatles’ music to iTunes,” said Sir Paul McCartney. “It’s fantastic to see the songs we originally released on vinyl receive as much love in the digital world as they did the first time around.”

Thank you, Sir P.

Next comes Steve Jobs, who is known far more for business acumen than for articulateness:

“We love the Beatles and are honored and thrilled to welcome them to iTunes,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “It has been a long and winding road to get here. Thanks to the Beatles and EMI, we are now realizing a dream we’ve had since we launched iTunes ten years ago.”

Get it? “Long and winding road?” That’s in a Beatles song, you know. Yeesh. Somebody has been waiting ten years to put that in a press release. Puleeeeze tell me Jobs himself didn’t write (or approve) it.

And now a word from our Ms. Ono, whose every sentence this year invokes the memory of her late husband:

“In the joyful spirit of Give Peace A Chance, I think it is so appropriate that we are doing this on John’s 70th birthday year,” said Yoko Ono Lennon.

“What good news for that little band he had before he met me,” she might have added.

From George’s widow comes the brief, to-the-point felicitation we would expect from the wife of a sensible man of few words:

“The Beatles on iTunes – Bravo!” said Olivia Harrison.

Amid all of this uninspired copy lies a solitary gem:

“I am particularly glad to no longer be asked when the Beatles are coming to iTunes,” said Ringo Starr. “At last, if you want it-you can get it now-The Beatles from Liverpool to now! Peace and Love, Ringo.”

This quip from the man who brought us memorable turns of phrase like “eight days a week,” “tomorrow never knows,” and “it’s been a hard day’s night.” He delivers a welcome whiff of irony amid the bland cheerleading. The reference to Badfinger lyrics notwithstanding – did he have anything to do with that record? – Ringo’s was the only text in the announcement worth reading.

Do you think you can get away with that ironic kind of personality in your marketing communications? Do you have a Ringo in your organization of whom such talk would be expected?

Have you ever given this a try?

John White of venTAJA Marketing is a marketing communications writer for technology companies. He posts about technology writing from the perspective of the marketing manager. It’s dirty work, but somebody has to do it. Download his eBook, “10 Questions to Ask When Hiring Your Marketing Communications Writer.”

photo credit: steffenz

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Ghost blogging backs up a recognized person with professional writing experience. Marketing communications writers may also need to tune the person’s voice. Is it blogging?

“By the way,” the vice president of product development told me. “I want the posts to have a certain personality. They should sound as if Alec Baldwin wrote them.”

Alec Baldwin? Which Alec Baldwin? Alec Baldwin in “It’s Complicated,” or in “30 Rock,” or in “The Departed,” or in “Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends?”

“More or less like ’30 Rock,’” he continued. “Don’t be afraid to use a little bit of irony, a bit of dry humor in the posts.”

Ghost blogging – Pros and Cons

As the term suggests, ghost blogging is like ghostwriting, except for a blog. The rich and famous are well known for hiring ghostwriters to pen their autobiographies, sometimes for partial credit, sometimes for no credit, as in Theodore Sorenson’s work for John F. Kennedy in Profiles in Courage. (Even Mozart is said to have ghostwritten music for wealthy patrons.)

The vice president in question is keen to build a stream of content and comments around a newly launched product. Someday, a collaborative approach to this blog may arise, with experts on his team contributing alternating posts. Meanwhile, he wants to get the ball rolling, and marketing communications writers doing ghost blogging will work for the time being.

It’s easy to find opposing views on ghost blogging. Proponents believe that it allows impossibly busy people to provide content to a waiting audience, and opponents consider it a treacherous breach of Web 2.0 trust.

But hey, we all know that Barack Obama has people who write his speeches. And, when it boils down to the choice between ghost blogging valuable content and imprisoning it in the head of somebody with no time to write it down, isn’t the Web better served by the former?

“Bring me the voice of Alec Baldwin”

So with that ethical speed bump behind us, we turn to the issue of voice.

The vice president of product development does not look like Alec Baldwin, let alone sound like him. If we study enough video on YouTube, we can come up with a way of drizzling his brand of on-screen wit and personality over the  business and technical problems that underpin the blog. I’m not worried about that, because it’s just another dimension of persuasion, which is the heart and soul of the Web.

However, even if we can assemble valuable content and season it with the actor’s tone, isn’t the result a Web-based double chicane? Is it bogus? Will the blog get flamed? Will digg and reddit pan it? Regardless of our desire to pump out valuable content, vox populi, vox Dei (the voice of the people is the voice of God), and we shall have to live with the consequences.

Frankly, however it pans out, it’s a pretty interesting project. Potentially inflammatory, but interesting nonetheless.

Back to the vice president of product development: “One more thing: Not the voice of Alec Baldwin in his blog. I can’t stand the guy’s writing.”

How would you handle this?

John White of venTAJA Marketing is a marketing communications writer for technology companies. He posts about technology writing from the perspective of the marketing manager. It’s dirty work, but somebody has to do it.

photo credit: David Shankbone (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported)

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1. Blogging is Tough. Passion Makes It Bearable.

However, we’re having trouble agreeing on what constitutes “valuable” content.

And we haven’t figured out the right voice and personality for the content.

The developers, of course, already know what they want in the site. We just haven’t gotten around to asking them their opinion yet.

That reminds me of a couple of messages I need to send…

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“Ketchup on fries” is the fast-food equivalent of putting personality in your writing. Does your company want that or not? On which pieces?

White papers and position papers are notoriously devoid of personality. “Get the facts down, persuade the reader to see things in a new way, make him or her pick up the phone.” Not much room for personality in that recipe.

Direct mail letters do roughly the same thing, but they’re absolutely dripping with personality. Robert Gilgamesh (“You can call me Bob”) writes an effusive direct mail letter telling you everything about his boyhood, if only you’ll download the demo from the Web site, or send in your $19.99 for the set of knives.

Long-time marketing managers may know to tell the writer how much or how little personality they want in a given piece, but if they don’t think of it in advance, the writer may invest a lot of time in a piece that will be completely off-target.

We’re launching a new software product (development platform, really) with a stem-to-stern overhaul of user manuals, technical guides, references and knowledgebase. I forgot to tell the writer whether I wanted personality in the writing, but she came back with a well paced piece capped with a pretty good title: “Who Let the Docs Out?” People will read that. Maybe even engineers.

One writer told me that in her work for a financial services software provider, they love it when she puts personality into her writing. She also does work for an unnamed maker of personal computers (that are not PCs) and personal electronic devices over which consumers are positively gaga, and they make it clear that she can leave personality at the door, thank you very much.

So as you’re whipping up a creative brief for your next set of content (I’m sure you all do that, the same as I do), remember item #8 and tell your writers whether you want ketchup on the fries or not.

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