Don't be boring
My war against "the corporate tone".
Our brand guidelines for DemoTime consist of only three words: “don’t be boring”.
This is easier said than done.
The creative part is easy (to me). Ideas are everywhere and I’ve always been somebody with a lot of ideas.
The hard part is resisting the pull of the bland, universal “corporate tone”. Writing something different feels like pulling against the gravity of a neutron star.
More people = more corporate.
Without fail, the more people involved, the more bland, uniform and corporate the tone. This could be a power law of the universe.
So logically the antidote is to go it alone. Set up a one-person skunkworks inside your own company.
The only way I could make a demo video like this was to involve nobody else until it went up. No reviewers. No collaboration.
This meant doing it end-to-end on a Sunday. Alone. In just a couple of drafts. (Iterations also try to pull you towards neutral corporate nothingness.)
And this isn’t even a particularly edgy video! It’s unlikely to offend anyone. But it’s definitely a different tone. This could never have been written inside any corporate client I’ve ever worked for. And even if it had - it would have been shot down (or at least bogged down) in committee before release.
Even after posting this video, there’s pressure to conform to corporate norms. “I feel you went a bit too far” my best friend warned me by WhatsApp this morning.
The strangest part? I own the company.
Why not a comic book for an about page?
There’s a paradox here.
Many marketing folks from the business world would agree on the need to differentiate. To innovate. To create.
So why is it that from all the possibilities - every company’s about page reads exactly the same? In every other genre from TV shows to packaging there is tremendous differentiation, and yet our about pages all read like we asked ChatGPT for four inoffensive paragraphs which overuse the word “exceptional”.
We have the creativity. But we’re too busy being correct.
If you ask a room full of 5 year olds for ideas for an about page - you’d get all kinds of whimsical stuff.
For DemoTime’s about page I am going to commission a comic-book panel. It’s going to tell the tale of me getting bitten by a radioactive 🤩 emoji and developing the power to turn sales meetings into highlight-reels.
Obviously there will still be the true story (we wanted to send something really good after our SAAS demos - so we started editing our Zoom recordings manually after every demo… then realized that everyone in SAAS sales needs a tool to automate this).
Even writing this plan in an article about not being boring I find myself second-guessing. It’s psychologically difficult. When you take the bland, corporate path you’re placing yourself in the safety of the normal distribution; unlikely to be remembered, but unlikely to be criticised.
Venture from that and you expose yourself to ridicule (“wait was that supposed to be funny…?”) Or confusion. Or offense. But also buyers.
My theory and solution
My theory is that making a logical, conscious decision to choose “don’t be boring” will yield more attention and be more endearing.
But it’s really, really hard. It involves de-programming myself and anyone else who will write copy for DemoTime.
This isn’t really something you can split-test. To have small islands of interest in a sea of corporate beige will come across as schizophrenic. It has to be a conscious choice.
It reminds me of early on in my academic life. At earlier level English we would scoff at the tabloid newspapers. Don’t they know how to write properly? It was only at graduate level that we truly appreciated how much harder this style is to write.
To not be boring in business - first you must learn the corporate tone, and then you must rally against it. You must give explicit permission. (Even - it turns out - if you own the company).
The solution I’d suggest to anyone who wants to experiment with a less corporate tone: explicitly ask “what would this look like if it wasn’t boring?” - this question can send your brainstorms off on wild paths through long-forgotten childish possibilities. There’s so much imagination we have un-learned as we rise through the corporate ranks.
Final thought: it’s 2023. So in keeping with the theme of this article, I asked ChatGPT to rewrite the default “subscribe” text above ☝️.
Here’s what it came up with (ironically it’s not that interesting. Maybe my hopes were too high! 👇)