Verbs in “The Brook” by Alfred Lord Tennyson

October 27th, 2009 by Arun Sinha

Just a brook, but look at the things Tennyson makes it do.

He uses 25 verbs to give the brook some muscle and make it an active participant in its fate, not just a passively moving body of water. Or 26, if you count chatter twice because it has 2 meanings in the poem — one to represent the sound of human speech and the other to indicate shivering.

Here is the poem The Brook by Alfred Lord Tennyson, followed by the 25 verbs.

I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorpes, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.

Till last by Philip’s farm I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.

With many a curve my banks I fret
By many a field and fallow,
And many a fairy foreland set
With willow-weed and mallow.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

I wind about, and in and out,
With here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling,

And here and there a foamy flake
Upon me, as I travel
With many a silvery waterbreak
Above the golden gravel,

And draw them all along, and flow
To join the brimming river
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
I slide by hazel covers;
I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers.

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeam dance
Against my sandy shallows.

I murmur under moon and stars
In brambly wildernesses;
I linger by my shingly bars;
I loiter round my cresses;

And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

The 25 verbs:

  1. come
  2. make
  3. sparkle
  4. bicker
  5. hurry
  6. slip
  7. flow
  8. join
  9. go
  10. chatter
  11. bubble
  12. babble
  13. fret
  14. wind
  15. travel
  16. draw
  17. steal
  18. slide
  19. move
  20. gloom
  21. glance
  22. murmur
  23. linger
  24. loiter
  25. curve

To read the full version of The Brook, click here.

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Yellow Pages Become Slimmer

August 22nd, 2009 by Arun Sinha

The new phone books from AT&T landed on my doorstep a few days ago, looking suspiciously slimmer than last year’s models. I checked a few numbers, and sure enough, this year’s yellow pages and white pages were both short a few pages.

The main countywide yellow pages tumbled from 1,015 pages in 2007 to 751 in 2009, a decrease of 26%. (For some reason, I didn’t keep the 2008 book.)

The yellow pages companion volume, the smaller and more portable version of the big book, shrank in thickness as well — from 636 pages in 2008 to 551 in 2009, a drop of 13%.

White pages were trimmer by a few ounces too. My city had 6% fewer listings than it did a year ago. The largest city in the county, Bridgeport, lost 5% of its listings.

Do I use the yellow pages? Yes, I do. Though not a whole lot, but that may be because after living here all these years, I mostly know where to go for pizza, eating out, and shopping, and whom to ask for referrals to electricians, dentists, or lawyers.

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Delta Airlines Commercial in French Is Sublime in Any Language

August 1st, 2009 by Arun Sinha

Even if you don’t understand French, you’ll be entranced by the beauty of this commercial.

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Upselling at Burger King

July 29th, 2009 by Arun Sinha

Yesterday, I fell victim to an upselling tactic from a cashier at Burger King. I had ordered a Whopper, and the cashier said, “With cheese?”

I paused for half a second. “Yes.”

And thus did Burger King make another 40 cents off me.

The cashier had used one of Elmer Wheeler’s 5 “Wheelerpoints” on me: “Don’t ask if — ask which.” Wheeler published his Wheelerpoints in his book Tested Sentences That Sell in 1937. They worked then, making Wheeler and his clients rich, and they work today.

This Wheelerpoint had helped Abraham & Strauss sell more eggs in their soda fountains. The soda fountain clerk was told not to ask “Would you like an egg with that?” but “One egg or two?”

You can guess the result: customers who had probably never intended to buy eggs told the clerk how many to add.

On the same principle, the Burger King cashier didn’t ask me, “Would you like that with or without cheese?” but “With cheese?”

And of course I fell for it.

Since there’s nothing new under the sun, the origins of this tactic are probably lost in antiquity. Surely millions of people have fallen for its spell, and millions more will continue to fall.

Except me. I’m on alert. The next time they try a Wheelerpoint on me, I’ll just say, “No.”

And I’ll keep my 40 cents.

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Open-Ended, Short Questions Elicit Insightful Answers

July 26th, 2009 by Arun Sinha

Adam Bryant of the New York Times regularly interviews CEOs and other business leaders for his column, Corner Office. I’ve long admired his interviewing style. He asks short, pointed, open-ended questions that get his subjects thinking — and opening up to him.

Lately, I’ve been noticing how he gets in a one- or two-word follow-up question and draws out more insights from a source. Anyone who has conducted interviews will appreciate the beauty of questions like:

  • “What else?”
  • “Any others?”
  • “How?”

Because it’s questions like these that take a source to places they weren’t expecting. And the interviewer uncovers new layers to a previous answer.

Read a few of Adam Bryant’s interviews; watch a master at work.

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Good Translations Are Important

July 8th, 2009 by Arun Sinha

Given the global nature of business, marketing and communications pieces written in one country are often consumed in another. Sometimes, it becomes necessary to translate documents. Other times, the document is used as is.

A marcom document created abroad and used in the U.S. without change may still work. For example, an American reading a website written in British English may stumble a bit at certain words and phrases, but he’ll understand what the writer intended.

Even if  he reads a halfway-decent translation from a foreign language, he’ll get the gist of the piece.

But if the marketer wants the communication to have an impact, the translation must be perfect. Here’s why:

In any writing, you want the words to be “invisible.” By that I mean, you want the reader to get the effect of the words rather than have him or her think, “This is a wonderful/terrible piece of writing.”

Non-standard English on a website or brochure draws attention to the words. Instead of absorbing the meaning of the words, the reader gets distracted by thoughts like, “Ah, this seems to be written by someone whose first language isn’t American English.” That adds an extra, unnecessary step between your text and its comprehension.

For best results, the translation should be done by someone who is more fluent in the language being translated into.

To be sure, many foreign companies with badly-written marketing materials sell their goods and services in America every day. It may be that when we know we’re dealing with a seller whose first language is not English, we make allowances.

But everything else being equal, the company with the brochure that has fewer language mistakes will get the business first.

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Bing — The Decision Engine Tries to Change Search

June 14th, 2009 by Arun Sinha

Bing is trying to create a new category called decision engine, which is clever. Because then it can never be the second-ranking search engine.

But will decision engine take?

No. For many reasons.

One, it’s usually futile to try to change entrenched nomenclature. For instance, try getting people to say table tennis instead of Ping Pong.

Though if anyone has a chance of bringing about a name change, it’s Microsoft. But not if they keep running ads like the one below.

Two, search is a verb, decision an abstract noun. You can visualize someone searching for something; it’s hard to imagine a decision. Search is a more appealing term.

Search engine more closely expresses a user’s interaction with the software. Search is what a user does when he types keywords into a box. A decision is what he makes from the search results. Without search, there is no decision. Without the journey, there is no destination.

Ultimately, no matter what Microsoft calls it, users will treat Bing as a search engine. And compare it to you-know-what.

Posted in Advertising, Marketing, Uncategorized, Web | 5 Comments »

Communications for CEOs Who Don’t Communicate

May 31st, 2009 by Arun Sinha

In a New York Times column, David Brooks writes about a recent study on the traits of successful CEOs. To be good as a CEO, he says, it pays to have these qualities:

attention to detail, persistence, efficiency, analytic thoroughness and the ability to work long hours.

On the other hand, these attributes don’t count for much:

…a good listener, a good team builder, an enthusiastic colleague, a great communicator…

But the rank and file needs to hear from its CEO and department heads (call them mini-CEOs). There’s ample research showing that effective internal communications improve employee productivity and company performance.

Good executives know this. They also know they need expert communicators who can translate their thoughts into messages that employees can relate to.

Which is why guys like me stay employed.

Here’s a secret: Most CEOs may not be good communicators, but all of them care deeply about the company, its people and its future. This sentiment gets masked by the CEO’s constant drive to analyze and execute, which is why it falls to the writer to recognize it and give it expression.

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Large Advertisers Spending Less, Buying More Media

May 18th, 2009 by Arun Sinha

Wal-Mart, Unilever, McDonald’s and others, according to this story in Ad Age, are reaping “an improved bang for the buck on their media in the last quarter, or say they will do so this year”

The prime suspect behind the increased efficiency is weak pricing in some media and markets, though there may be other reasons as well.

Wal-Mart, for example, reduced its advertising costs 20% compared to last year, mainly because of lower media costs. But its share of voice rose 67%.

The company didn’t speculate on whether that SOV increase was helped by some of Wal-Mart’s competitors cutting their spending to near zero.

Procter & Gamble, too, extracted more efficiency from its ad buys. It said spending as a percent of sales dropped 2.4% last quarter, while global ad impressions edged up 5%.

P&G’s chaiman and CEO wouldn’t commit to that 5% number in a conference call, however, merely saying he thought in a lot of cases P&G was building its share of voice.

There’s that reference to SOV again.

The lesson: Maintain or increase your ad impressions during a downswing in the economy. You’ll be rewarded with higher SOV as competitors slash their spending. And that could translate to increased SOM (share of market).

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“I Never Said She Stole My Money” - 7 Words, 7 Meanings

May 4th, 2009 by Arun Sinha

This story in the New York Times has a great example of a sentence that has 7 different meanings depending on which word is stressed.

The sentence is: “I never said she stole my money.”

Here are the 7 ways to say it, and their meanings:

I never said she stole my money. (Meaning: Someone else may have said so.)

I never said she stole my money. (She may or may not have stolen it. The only thing you can say with surety is I didn’t accuse her of the theft.)

I never said she stole my money. (I may have pointed at her or written it somewhere.)

I never said she stole my money. (I said her sister did it. You don’t listen too good, do you?)

I never said she stole my money. (She merely found it on the floor and thought it was hers.)

I never said she stole my money. (Better check your wallet pronto.)

I never said she stole my money. (But did you notice the Degas is missing?)

What other meanings can you think of?

P.S.: The Times story is about an IBM computer that will compete with humans in a real game of Jeopardy! It’s quite interesting; check it out.

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