Confessions of a World Builder Part 2 - Vol. 1 Ed. 41
Apr 28, 2021 5:31 am
World Builders' Guild Newsletter
This is the second and final part of David Ogilvy's immortal list of building great campaigns that we're looking at through the lens of world building.
Worlds are advertisements for exciting new realities.
David Ogilvy wrote a chapter called "How to Build Great Campaigns" in his hit book Confessions of an Advertising Man. If you follow his series of points you should be able to capture the hearts of millions of potential customers.
The 5 we covered last week:
(1) What you say is more important than how you say it.
(2) Unless your [world] is built around a great idea, it will flop.
(3) Give the facts.
(4) You cannot bore people into [visiting].
(5) Be well-mannered, but don't clown.
(6) Make your [world] contemporary.
You're not building for the future.
You're building the future.
If you're historical fiction docu-drama's world isn't moving your audience to a new and unexplored place of intrigue and wonder, then you're not contemporary, you're dead.
(7) Committees can criticize [worlds], but they cannot [build] them.
You're the visionary and it's your skin in the game no matter how many people show up to leave you a bad review or tear down your world on social media.
People with too much to say and nothing to lose don't get a vote.
The true champions of your worlds visit and live and play and breathe their stories into existence thanks to you.
(8) If you're lucky enough to [build] a good [world], repeat it until it stops pulling.
None of the greats quit after one.
Joe Abercrombie is on his 4th First Law book trilogy (that's somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 pages or more).
There are 9 mainline Star Wars films over 4 decades plus scores of spinoffs in every other media category.
Nintendo published more than 20 core Mario Brothers titles. There are hundreds counting spinoffs and Mario-related games.
GRRM might look like he's lost steam on A Song of Ice and Fire, but he didn't stop after A Storm of Swords.
And he very easily could have.
(9) Never [build] a [world] that you wouldn't want your own family to visit.
Would you build an amusement park that had death traps for rides? Noxious confections? Degenerate entertainment?
Worlds can be challenging and gripping. They can toy with emotions. You want your inhabitants to experience meaning. They will have reactions. You don't have to resort to extremes to produce the most violent and shocking reaction. Memories come from the soul.
Find the soul of your world and bare it.
(10) The Image and the Brand.
Ogilvy says that some manufacturers want to be all things to all people. They "are reluctant to accept any limitations on the brand." This leads to a flat image.
Your world can't be the place to be for everybody. Some people will chose your world above all others. Some people will dabble and drift. Interlopers, tire-kickers, part-timers: they all play their role. There are those who will never set foot in your world and that's okay, too.
You can't win the hearts of your dedicated few by appealing to the whims of the masses.
Celebrate your world's focused brand.
(11) Don't be a copy-cat.
Cards Against Humanity (coincidentally it violates rule 9 to some degree) spawned a genre of party games that follow the theme of socially endorsed non-sequiturs.
While their novel approach to extremist humor won them fortunes, it fails in almost all other productions by wannabe game makers. There are only so many times you can force a chuckle at a joke (the same joke - everybody waits for that magical combination of cards, you know the ones) you wouldn't make in a middle school locker room, let alone at a gathering of 40-something professionals.
Ditch the copy-cat shtick. Build greatness from the ground up.
To future worlds,
Matt Ventre
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