Navigating the squiggle
You know that graph of success that’s a big ol’ squiggly line? Hang on, I’ll find it for you…
TA-DA!
I reckon it’s also a pretty good representation of the emotional experience 94.32% of us human-folk are having right now (the discombobulated squiggle part… not so much the upward trend).
Some days, things feel ok, right? You can focus on what’s in front of you, be productive, and feel relatively secure in the knowledge that this too shall pass.
Other days, things feel utterly hopeless, and you roam around your home like a sad-sack-flesh-mound, peering longingly out windows, and eating whatever surprise crumbs you find in your hair.
And, in between these two extremes, you have moments of manic glee, where you prance around and voice confusing sentences, like "YASSS, TIGER KING AND ICE-CREAM AND OMFG I’M GOING TO LEARN HOW TO JUGGLE!!"
Despite these very detailed descriptions (PLEASE DON’T SHAME ME FOR THE HAIR CRUMBS!) I’m *not* suggesting your experience of this pandemic is the same as mine or anyone else’s (it’s not).
I'm just saying that none of us are moving neatly through the world right now.
OUR DAY-TO-DAY EXPERIENCE ISN’T LINEAR, AND THIS IS PRESENTING A UNIQUE KIND OF CHALLENGE IN THE WORLD OF COPY:
How do you join the conversation that’s going on inside your prospect’s head when a very noisy part of that conversation is changing day-to-day, hour-by-hour?
I’m gonna come back to this in a sec, but to give it more context, I want to show you another squiggly graph: one that charts the experience of grief.
MORE TA-DA!
And yep, like the failure graph up top, this big squiggly mess is meant to be a bit of an inside joke…
But it’s only funny ‘cause it’s true.
As you may already know, I spent the first part of my career as a therapist working with people affected by chronic and terminal illness.
Aaannnd, as you can probably guess, all of this work was anchored in loss and grief —not just death and dying, but the myriad of other losses associated with that, like:
Loss of ability
Loss of future
Loss of income
Loss of certainty
Loss of intimacy
Loss of place
Loss of purpose
Loss of identity
Loss of control
Any of these looking like losses your prospects might be trying to navigate right now?
Cool. And, look —
I’m sure I’m not the first person to tell you we’re all muddling our way through a big ol’ global grief puddle right now, but I want to take this convo a little bit further, and give you some direction on what to do with that knowledge.
Because, despite the best intentions, a lot of businesses are missing the mark.
And the ones that *can* cut through the noise and respond to the squiggle are (I think) the same ones who will win a little place in their prospect’s hearts, and come outta this pandemic in a relatively strong position.
So how about we make sure yours sits in that category?
First up, let’s acknowledge that grief in general has a pretty unique ability to make everyone around it deeply uncomfortable.
As a result, we typically:
Ignore other people’s grief completely, figuring that saying the wrong thing is worse than saying nothing at all
Project our own experience (real or imagined) onto the other person, accidentally sending the message that there’s only one ‘right’ way to respond
You know two of the very worst things about grief?
It can feel so, so lonely (see point a), and we as the griever can feel utterly inadequate or deficient (see point b).
And, since you're clever and wonderful, you don’t want to make your prospects have either of those experiences, which means...
Your job is to acknowledge the elephant in the room, *without* dictating how your prospect should feel.
This looks like:
anchoring your copy in the current context (which can be as simple as adding a couple of sentences to an asset you’ve already got)
granting your prospect permission to feel whatever they’re feeling at any given moment (like the first two paragraphs of this here blog post) and — where relevant — giving voice to losses your prospect feels they can’t acknowledge in these current climes (e.g. trying to get your work done when you've lost the luxury of space and routine STILL sucks, even though other people have lost their jobs)
normalising parts of their experience… especially those that might feel strange or shameful (*cough* munching on surprise hair crumbs *cough*)
acknowledging that you’re just as lost as the next person (aka the more specific, descriptive, and therefore useful version of "we’re all in this together")
showing up as an authentic, relatable human being (because presenting as a sheeny shiny beacon of perfection amidst all of this is a sure-fire way to alienate your prospect)
Ok, there are more nuggets where these came from, but this blog is already longer than our one remaining roll of toilet paper, so I’ll leave it here.
Go acknowledge that elephant.